All Hail the Dark Lord, Or Something Idiotic Like That

A New Friend

A/N: Not my story! Original available on ao3

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"Maybe DADA is going to be a better class than I thought."

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Harry walked straight to the back of Percy's office where he had set up Sirius's Polyjuice to start brewing the night before and took it out of stasis, banishing the notice-me-not ward around it. He pulled over the next ingredients and started to chop them for the next step in the potion. "I can't, Percy," he mumbled, not looking up at any of the others in the room.

Percy just sighed and gave him a sad but understanding smile. "I know..." He turned to where Ron and Hermione had just walked into his office and cast several wards on his door to keep anyone from listening in to what they were saying.

Without comment, Percy turned around with an intense expression on his face and strode right up to his brother, pulling him into a tight hug. "Percy?" Ron questioned in shock, looking with wide eyes over to Hermione who just shrugged.

"I missed you so much," Percy mumbled into where his face was buried in Ron's red hair. "I'm so, so sorry."

Ron awkwardly patted his older brother on the back, still stunned at this turn of events. "You know I haven't lived through whatever it was yet, right? And...Harry said we'd stop it, so no big deal..."

Percy finally pulled back some and breathed in to steady his emotions, motioning to where Harry was trying to lose himself in brewing. "Clearly it's a big deal to us, even if it hasn't happened yet, and will never happen," he told his brother with a sad look.

Ron tried to give him an encouraging smile through the whirring of his brain trying to process everything. "Well...erm, I'm just glad you might not be a prat anymore. How'd you end up with Harry anyway? I never would have pegged the two of you being together."

Percy sighed and ran a hand over his face before sitting on the edge of his still mostly empty desk. "You have to realize, we lost a lot of people. Our family...well, you wouldn't recognize it anymore. We all changed so much; you and I got pretty close right before you were taken. You hold onto those you have left, you know? Hermione and I were close too before the end," he gave the girl who was now looking at Harry's potion set-up a sad smile.

"Are you brewing Polyjuice?" Hermione asked Harry, acknowledging Percy with a matching smile. Harry gave a little nod without looking up from what he was doing.

"It's for Sirius," Percy answered for his partner who was doing his best just to hold himself together. "Look...Harry doesn't talk about what happened. Based on how he seemed to not even see this coming, I expect he's buried everything behind so many Occlumency shields that it's a vault in his mind."

"Something happened to you and Luna?" Hermione prodded a little more at her unresponsive friend. "When? What was it?"

"I can't, Hermione," Harry mumbled. "The runes only hold it all at bay for so long, and I just can't go there..."

Percy nodded while Hermione and Ron just looked confused at them both. "He has some runes to muffle emotions. I hate when he uses them since he's not processing, but it's only a temporary fix anyway. Look, I'll tell you what I know, but it's not much. I only know what future Ron told me after it happened."

Ron moved over and sat in one of Percy's chairs before nodding for him to continue. "Tell us what you know, and Hermione and I will figure out how to keep him together."

"You might be putting too much faith in our abilities," Hermione warned him before sitting down herself. Harry gave a little snort of agreement from where he was still slicing ingredients.

"Right," Percy nodded and leaned over to light the fire under the cauldron for Harry. "So, this all happened not long after the war ended. It was before Harry developed his well-deserved and hard-won ridiculous level of paranoia."

"It's only paranoia if people aren't actually out to get you all the time," Harry gave him a glare before picking up a jar of beetles.

Percy nodded and walked over to kiss his neck before giving the potion a stir since it was starting to boil. "That's never not going to be super weird and disturbing," Ron grumbled to where only Hermione could hear, getting a smirk from his sort-of girlfriend.

"Anyway, from what I remember at the time, Harry had just started his mastery in Amsterdam," Percy continued, going back over to sit on his desk in front of the two teenagers. "He would take a portkey back to England twice a week. One day, he would visit with his godson and you two. The second portkey was for a standing lunch in Diagon Alley with Luna, and sometimes Ginny would join them when she didn't have practice...she ended up playing quidditch professionally."

"This was before I realized that having a set, predictable schedule was just communicating to my enemies where I would be at any given time and give them the opportunity to plan accordingly," Harry grimaced at his own past bad decisions.

"You didn't know," Percy assured him sadly, hating that he was still in so much pain. "What happened was that Harry and Luna were kidnapped by some rogue Death Eaters when they were leaving the café they had lunch at. We couldn't find them for three days..."

Harry hissed as the knife slipped and he cut a gash in his hand. "Merlin!" Hermione jumped up.