Chapter Text
Thomas had always admired his wife.
Even as a child, she had been brave. Brave enough to break into a funeral at Hunsdon House, where she had no business being; brave enough to switch around the pictures that he had been allowed to pick out and take home. Brave enough to lie to the Leroys over her contact with him for many years; brave enough to dive in on Halloween when she was eighteen years old, dragging him out with her. She had saved his life, and Thomas never did forget that.
It had been that way over more than a decade together. Polly was direct—she was driven, she motivated, she made a decision and she carried it through. When they had first gotten together, Thomas had hesitated—she was too young. Only eighteen or so to his nearly thirty, and he knew what people said. But Polly never cared, and Thomas—well, perhaps Thomas had always needed someone like Polly to pull him forward, just as Polly needed someone like him to pull her back and to tell her to sit down and think it through.
Even now, having made a decision, Polly was striding ahead of him beside Ms. Thompson, the non-magical liaison. They took the Underground to central London, where Ms. Thompson directed them behind a small pub on Charing Cross called The Leaky Cauldron. It was out of place, on such a heavy thoroughfare, slotted between a record store on one side and a shining, new bookstore on the other, though the alleyway behind it was cleaner than Thomas had learned to expect from London alleyways.
He didn’t see what Ms. Thompson had done at the back of the alley, but as he approached, he could see the bricks moving, lining up on opposite sides to create a doorway. On the other side, he could see—
Well, it was certainly brighter than Hunsdon House. The street didn’t look like the streets of London, but neither did it look magical. Indeed, it looked like an old, very normal, cobblestone street plucked out of a charming medieval village. From his angle, Thomas could see an ice cream shop, labelled in bright curling letters that read Fortescue’s, as well as a shop with books lined in the front window called Flourish and Blotts. The people who strode down the street were dressed … normally, for lack of a better word. There were suits, there were jeans, there were long flowing dresses, but the people looked like they could have come off any middle-class street in London.
“This way,” Ms. Thompson said with a tilt of her head, and she led the way through the doorway.
Thomas couldn’t help but notice more signs of magic as he followed her down the neat, cobblestone street. There were shops that he could never have seen in London—Eeylops Owl Emporium, filled with hooting birds, or Weasley Wizarding Wheezes, which sold he-didn’t-know-what but it made a racket that could be heard three shopfronts down. That shop was surrounded by children and teenagers, all excitedly chattering, while adults strode past with indulgent smiles. There were apothecaries, of the kind that Thomas had only imagined from the past, selling beetle eyes and unicorn horns and he didn’t even know what else, and a shop called Quality Quidditch Supplies that had a broomstick in the window.
Everything was so… bright. It wasn’t dark, like even his earliest memories of Hunsdon House had been, where even high noon could feel dim. It felt light, and it felt more normal than he could ever understand.
He could tell that Polly, too, was impressed. She had never been particularly good at hiding her feelings, even if she tried, but he knew her blue eyes were watching the street wide in wonder. It felt like all too soon that Ms. Thompson was leading them into a cool, stone building, labelled simply, Diagon Alley Auror Station.
“The police station, if you will,” Ms. Thompson explained, catching their curious looks. “Aurors are magical police—their headquarters are in the Ministry of Magic, which isn’t part of Diagon Alley, but keeping a station here is convenient since this is our largest magical district. Auror Potter, please.”
The last words were directed at a very normal-looking woman sitting behind a very plain grey desk, obviously made out of some sort of particle board, who immediately nodded and disappeared. Looking around, Thomas could see papers, folded in the shape of birds and aeroplanes, winging their way through the open space. Except for the fluttering papers, it looked like any other police station he had been in.
“Come on in,” a low voice said, and Thomas looked over to see a tall, thin man with dark hair and round spectacles gesturing him forwards. “Muriel, thanks for bringing them. The boardrooms aren’t much, Mr. and Mrs. Lynn, but I can get you water or coffee or whatever you need—whatever makes you comfortable. I know this is going to be tough for you, but as Muriel said, we really need as much information about Hunsdon House as you can provide. We have enough for an arrest based on what we found at the house, but the question of who they are, what they are, how we can find them before next Halloween, we really do need your help.”
There was a moment of silence, where Thomas exchanged a look with his wife. Her blue eyes were bright, and her mouth was set in a grim line—but it was determination, and it was always for her determination that he loved her.
“That’s fine,” she said, turning back to the officer and speaking for both of them. “We—we would like to know that no other young musicians are lost, too.”
It would be easy to say that the aftermath was easy, but aftermaths were never easy. It had taken them hours to go through what had happened—pieces of Thomas’ story, from when he had first met Laurel, from when he had found himself in the unwitting position of a trade, and pieces of Polly’s story, from the threats of the Leroys to losing a significant part of her memories to, remarkably, recovering them on her own. The end was the hardest—neither he nor Polly really knew exactly how they had managed to get away, other than the fact that they did, and Polly baldly stated that she never saw Sebastian Leroy ever again. Nine years later, they didn’t see Leslie again, either.
Through it all, the strange sense of normalness permeated the room. The lights above them, while clearly not fluorescent and obviously magical, still had the same too-bright, too-bland sheen of office lighting. The Auror sitting across from them, asking them questions, seemed competent and professional, and took down their reports in a notebook. Ms. Thompson stayed with them the entire time, pouring glasses of water when necessary, and while Thomas couldn’t be sure whether they were helpful, they were easy and encouraging.
They finished hours later, but the cobblestone streets outside of Diagon Alley were well-lit with lanterns. People still crowded outside of shops, now settling into terraces and tucking into an evening meal. Everything was so normal, so mundane, that Thomas couldn’t help but feel safe.
This wasn’t magic as he had experienced it before. This was something different.
It was well into the evening, well after Ms. Thompson had guided them home and said she would be back in another week to check on them and discuss Sarah’s admission to Hogwarts, when he turned to his wife. Sarah was, fortunately for her, at a friend’s—had been sleeping over at a friend’s, and had called and asked to extend her visit.
“So?” he asked, looking at Polly.
Polly shrugged. “It’s not the magic we knew.”
“It’s not.”
“So, I suppose—I suppose we should hear her out properly, next week.”
“I think so, too.”