Chapter Text
Usually, Harry lived for the music. The low light and flurry of movement made it near impossible for anyone to see his scar or his signature mop of unruly hair. In the club, he wasn’t Harry Potter, he wasn’t famous, and he wasn’t important.
He could be anybody.
But tonight, the music was drilling into his skull, relentlessly throbbing around him, and he wondered vaguely how he ever stood it before. He groaned, pitching his head forward onto his arms, wincing at the sheen of sweat he could feel clinging to his skin.
“Cheer up, mate,” Ron said, poking him sharply in the side and ignoring Harry’s answering noise of protest. “You’ll figure something out. You’re the Chosen One.”
Harry lifted his head, which felt like it was weighed down with alcohol and sleep deprivation, so that he could send Ron an angry glare. Ron just laughed. He took another swig of his drink and flicked the bottle cap towards Harry.
“You don’t really need more fighting anyways,” Ron said, shrugging. His teasing smile had softened now into a thoughtful look, and he ran the tip of his finger over a nick in the wood. Harry remembered when Neville had put it there after a particularly rowdy night.
“But I liked it,” Harry insisted, lowering his voice so that he wouldn’t attract Hermione’s pitying gaze. “I wanted to be an Auror.”
“Right,” Ron said, but he didn’t look convinced in the slightest.
“I did!”
Ron held his hands up in surrender, his eyes still fixed on the scarred counter of the bar. “You couldn’t follow orders for the life of you, and we both know it.”
Harry glared at him again, but he knew Ron was right, and that was what annoyed him most.
He had gotten off easy the first few occasions, but even Robards had a limit to the number of times he could accept the Harry Potter card. Usually Harry hated his name, and wouldn’t use his fame to get anything he didn’t deserve, but with Robards, it was all too easy. The problem was, Harry wasn’t good at listening. He had too many good ideas, and there were too many opportunities that slipped just outside of the boundaries of regulations.
No matter how much Harry protested and debated, Robards determinedly ignored that Harry’s methods worked. It didn’t seem to matter that he got better results than anybody else, because if he wasn’t following orders, apparently he was a liability.
Harry tried to restrain himself, he really did. He managed it for about a week, and then he’d made a call just this side of wrong, and Robards had exploded. So now here he was, moping around at the bar because he was out of a job.
Harry wrinkled his nose at the smell of beer and sweat, swiping his finger through glittering ring of condensation left by his glass. It was immensely satisfying to watch it smear over the countertop, following his finger’s path.
“You don’t even need a job,” Ron mused, tapping a finger on his chin again. “You’ve got enough money to last a lifetime, probably.” It was a testament to their friendship that Ron’s voice was completely devoid of bitterness.
“It’s not about money.”
“Then what’s it about?” Ron asked, sounding slightly incredulously.
Harry opened his mouth to say something — he wasn’t quite sure what — but Luna saved him.
“Hello Ron,” her voice floated over the music, somehow making it sound like the club was entirely quiet, bending to the whims of her voice. She smiling at him and slipped into the space between them. “Hi Harry.”
Even when Luna was drunk, she was still eerily perceptive. Somehow, her wits were just as sharp, and her laugh just as clear. Harry envied the ease with which she carried herself, especially now when his head was full of cotton lead.
“Hey Luna,” Ron grinned, holding up his bottle in a silent cheer. “How are things?”
“Oh, things are fabulous,” she said absentmindedly, glancing over Harry’s shoulder towards where Ginny was sitting. “What’s wrong, Harry?”
Harry just groaned in response, scrubbing his hand over his face and relishing the tired sting in his eyes.
“He got thrown out of the Aurors,” Ron said in a low voice, as though speaking more quietly would spare Harry’s feelings. It didn’t.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and Harry grunted in thanks, but she plowed on. “I never got the impression that you liked it very much, though.”
“Doesn’t matter much now,” Harry sighed. “Robards isn’t going to take me back unless I can follow orders.”
“And there’s no way you can do that,” Ron grinned, and his shoulders starting shaking with silent laughter, as though he couldn’t help himself.
Harry was grateful, in a way, at Ron’s ability to poke fun. It was better than Hermione’s worried looks, like he might crumble. The way a lot of people had taken to treating him after the war.
“Shut up,” Harry grumbled, kicking him in the shin.
“Ow! Watch it!” Harry could hear the suppressed laughter still ringing in his voice.
When he thought too hard about it, as he often did with things nowadays, he was almost glad that he’d been thrown out. For Ron’s sake. All throughout Auror training, even as Ron had gotten top marks, there had always been a lingering undercurrent between them. It was weird, the way it ran through their friendship like an unspoken rift. Because Robards would always congratulate Harry slightly louder than Ron, or clap him on the shoulder just one time more than Ron, even when Harry performed worse.
Now, Ron didn’t have to worry about the competition. He had never been good with competition, or with being overlooked.
“Are you applying for another job?” Luna asked, cutting through Harry’s thoughts and Ron’s laughter.
“I don’t know what to do,” Harry mumbled. The alcohol sat heavy in his stomach, and suddenly he longed to be back at his flat. The music seemed to have picked up a beat, in perfect timing with the uptick in his headache.
Being fired had thrown things quite harshly into perspective. The thing was, he’d never really thought about doing anything other than becoming an Auror. Fighting dark magic had been the entire point of existence. That’s what he was born to do, and what he was supposed to die doing.
But he hadn’t died, and now the entire point of his life was lost.
“What do you like?” Luna asked, and Harry opened his mouth to answer. And then he closed it again. And opened it. And closed it.
Ron looked away to hide the amused expression that was stealing back across his face, and Harry glared at him again. Prick.
“I — er, well… I like Quidditch.” He grasped onto the only topic he was confident about.
“Why don’t you play Quidditch then?”
“Yeah!” Ron jumped in excitedly. “Quidditch! You could play against...” He trailed off awkwardly, the tips of his ears flushing a telltale pink.
Harry chose to ignore Ron’s blunder, instead turning him down.
“No.” Harry was shaking his head before Ron even started, because he knew once that happened, they would end up talking for the rest of the night about Quidditch. Or about something else, that he would rather not think about. “I don’t want to play professionally.”
“You wouldn’t really have to play against her,” Ron muttered awkwardly, his ears flaming a brighter red. “If that’s why you don’t want to play, you know you’d be in a different league.”
“I know,” Harry said, slightly annoyed that Ron wouldn’t let it drop. “I don’t want to play professionally.”
“Okay, whatever you want mate.”
Harry wracked his brains for another topic, not wanting to probe at the other crack in his friendship with Ron. It had always been so easy, being his friend, but there were little things that had wormed their way into their lives. Not enough to change anything, not really. Just enough to be there, ever-present and tainting their words.
Luna hummed thoughtfully, breaking Harry out of his reverie again, and stood up. “I’ll talk to you later,” she said absentmindedly, sliding of the bar stool. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
“I — okay,” Harry said, thrown by her abrupt departure and slightly cryptic words, but he was thankful nonetheless. Somehow Luna always seemed to know the right time to leave.
But Harry’s gratefulness towards Luna soured immediately as Dean took her place, nudging Ron so that he could squeeze in.
“Watch it,” Ron warned playfully as Dean elbowed him in the side, but Dean just smiled.
“What’s up?” Dean asked, yawning. He was trying to be nonchalant, Harry could tell. A small surge of satisfaction worked its way into his chest at Dean’s obvious discomfort, but he pushed it away guiltily. He hadn’t talked to Dean in a while, and he wasn’t going to mess this up. Hermione had been nagging him about it for ages.
“Harry needs a job,” Ron blurted out, and Harry glared at him again. That was happening a lot lately.
He’d been through this enough times for the night, and didn’t really feel like hashing it all out again. Especially not with Dean. He was about to wave it off, to move the conversation to anything else — even Quidditch would do at this point.
But Dean beat him to it. “You should come work for me.”
Harry jerked up, expecting to see the signature smirk that they had all acquired from Fred and George, the one that said it was all a big joke. But Dean looked surprisingly genuine.
“What?”
“If you want to, I mean,” Dean shrugged. He was trying to look casual again, Harry noted. “I have some open spots I’m looking to fill.”
“What would I have to do?”
“Well, it’s a wizarding tattoo place,” Dean said hesitantly, like he hadn’t expected to get this far in the conversation. He probably hadn’t, and if Harry was being honest, he hadn’t either.
“Right. It's called Skin Deep, isn't it?”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
Dean had always been an artist. Harry could remember from late nights in the dorm room, when roaring laughter was echoing around the room at another violent Gobstones tournament. Dean had always preferred to watch, sitting curled up in a chair with his sketchbook, making random people into his subjects. Or when he used to look at Dean’s homework (definitely not copying, definitely just looking), he remembered that Dean would have doodles sprawling across the corners.
“I can’t do art,” Harry said immediately, almost disappointed. It would have been good to work with Dean. To clear the air between them.
“That’s ridiculous,” Dean said, laughing. “Anybody can do art.”
“Not me,” Harry insisted, put off by Dean’s laugh. “I’m more of a brute-force kind of person, like an Auror.”
It wasn’t entirely true. Harry remembered spending several nights late in his cupboard, drawing out fantasy worlds in the dust on the floor, barely able to see them in the sputtering light. But that had been long ago, and besides, they had been little more than dusty blurs.
“You don’t need to know much about art.” Dean shrugged again. “You can start with the simple ones, like hearts. All the clichés are pretty easy to learn.”
Harry stared at him, dubious. It didn’t sound like much fun, if he was being honest, but he didn’t want to hurt Dean’s feelings. He still had some kindness left in him, whatever the newspapers claimed about his war-torn soul.
“Or you can help with charm development.”
Harry perked up with that, sitting up straighter. “What do you mean?”
“Well, wizarding tattoos are kind of a new art. We didn’t adopt them from muggles until pretty recently, but there are ways to make them move, or tell the time, or do a lot of other useful things. You could work on coming up with new charms and spells for that, if you want. Of course, you don’t have to work with me, it was only a suggestion.”
“That — yeah, actually,” Harry said, surprised at himself. Usually it took hours for him to make decisions, lists of pros and cons, and quite a bit of pulling out hair. “Could I try? For a week, or something like that.”
“Sure!” Dean smiled at him, all hesitant and genuine and nervousness. “You can start Monday, if you want. Working on spells, I assume? You didn’t seem too chuffed with the other option.”
Harry grinned back sheepishly. “I think the charm development is more up my alley.”
“Okay,” Dean said, “Okay. Okay, wow. Perfect. Cheers, mate!”
Ron, who had managed to hold his tongue during the entire exchange, slung his arm around Harry’s back, grinning in a satisfied way. Harry knew that the second they left, Hermione would be all over him, pleased and proud in that quiet way of hers that he was finally talking to Dean.
“The press will have a field day with this one,” Ron smirked. Ron seemed to be in a thoroughly over-amused mood today. “Harry Potter, the Savior, an artist.”
“What’s wrong with artists?” Dean asked, frowning at Ron. Ron grimaced, trying to take back his words quickly. “Nothing, of course! I didn’t mean — I just meant that, I mean of course artists are great, I…”
“Calm down, mate, I was pulling your leg.” Dean rolled his eyes and smiled, before standing up, stretching. This time, his comfort seemed less feigned. “I’ll see you Monday, then?”
“Sounds good,” Harry confirmed, feeling a strange tendril of hope rise inside of him. Although he would never admit it, the idea of doing something that wasn’t fighting was mildly appealing to him.
“Okay.” Dean paused for a second, contemplating Harry like there was something else he had to say.
Ron seemed to realize that there was a moment happening, and looking between the two of them, he cleared his throat awkwardly. “I’ll just — er —” He gestured vaguely over towards where Ginny and Hermione were sitting, but Harry grabbed his sleeve. He didn’t want Ron to leave, not now.
“No, it’s fine,” Dean said hurriedly, rubbing at the back of his neck and shifting his weight from foot to foot. “Thanks,” he said more quietly to Harry, and Harry nodded back. “See you later.”
“Yeah,” Harry said again, ignoring his too-tight grip on Ron’s arm. “Monday.”