All Hail the Dark Lord, Or Something Idiotic Like That

A New Friend pt7

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

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"Brain check?" Percy dryly asked with a look over at his partner...something he'd asked multiple times that day whenever he got a moment.

Harry rolled his eyes but did look gratefully at his partner for checking on him. "I'm fine, Perce...shields are up again, nothing is buried, but it's also been nine years. I have some time and perspective from what happened. The problem was that I only knew how to bury the memories before, so they hit me like it had just happened yesterday."

"I'm sorry, Harry," Percy refrained from putting an arm around the man who looked fifteen since they were still in view of the castle as they pretended to be on a walk and not going down to Hogsmeade, where they were headed to meet with Snape. It had been very difficult to pry Harry loose from Ron and Hermione after what had happened earlier, but neither wanted to deal with Snape, so they eventually and begrudgingly allowed Harry to leave the castle.

"At least it shouldn't be hard to avoid Luna. You never actually interacted before this year, right?"

"Right...but I've seen her twice off in the distance after what happened this morning," Harry sighed and scrubbed his temples, still having a bit of a headache from all the mind magic he'd used that morning. "Apparently, she was always there just not part of my circle of friends until this year. I really want to talk with her, but I know I should give it a week at least and let my new shields settle. I'm confident I will be fine, but keeping an empath from being flooded with the crazy in my brain is not something I'm willing to try until I'm completely certain."

They turned a corner around a grouping of trees. "This seems a safe distance," Percy remarked since they were now out of sight of the castle.

With a relieved breath out, Harry removed his glamour. "Merlin, it feels good to not have most of my skin invisible to everyone else," he said before leaning over and snogging Percy soundly. "I also missed doing that," he mumbled.

"Me too," his partner kissed him back and wrapped his arms around the man he missed living with and waking up beside.

"Hmm," Harry hummed before pulling back. "I think once we take care of Voldy and Hadrian Black takes over, maybe Harry Potter should just quietly drop out of school and move or be homeschooled in some undisclosed location."

"Oh, thank Morgana," Percy breathed out and kissed Harry one more time for good measure before taking his hand and continuing their walk through the gates. "I don't think I can do two more years of this before slipping up and getting in some major trouble for my underage boyfriend."

Harry just raised an eyebrow at the seemingly 19-year-old man beside him. "I don't particularly like being the older one in this relationship either, but at least you can gradually start removing your glamour and maybe people won't notice too much. I'm not saying you're not cute at this age, but you definitely look Ministry Secretary and not Badass Necromancer like this."

Percy chuckled but had to pause as they got to the outskirts of Hogsmeade. It took him a minute for his brain to catch up with the differences between the present and the future. Hogsmeade itself hadn't really changed that much after the war, but it had changed significantly over the year it was held by Death Eaters and during the battle. It wasn't super overt, but older paint and structures, slightly different colors, and a couple stores that had no longer been in existence caused some dissonance in his brain.

"It's always strange seeing these places, isn't it?" Harry remarked, seeing what his partner was as well. "I feel like there should have been a time travel manual that Hermione left for us. Granted, I could have planned a little better, but I wasn't planning on Neville assassinating a dementor so quickly and had to move everything up."

Percy shuddered. "Remind me please that fiendfyre is not an appropriate spell to teach fifth years if I ever forget. I don't want to see Longbottom overthrowing you as the next Dark Lord."