A Scoundrel's Staycation Ch. 30 (Harry Potter AU)

(Every character depicted in the story below is a consenting legal adult over the age of 18)

A/N: Luna stops by for her interview~

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The next couple of days, Harry finds himself settling into something of a routine. He heads over to Europe at least once a day to collect some more blood, but in the end he’s taking his time on that front and not exactly rushing it given the relatively lax time frame that he was operating within.

Meanwhile, his Private Eye business, while not exactly ‘taking off’, also wasn’t doing too bad. He had one new client a day coming in at this point, each with something that tended to be relatively easy to deal with so far. Nothing that would take him multiple days yet at least, not like the current job for Ms. Davis.

Meanwhile, his nights tended to be filled with some form of fucking either Fleur or Death, usually with the latter having the former watch. Fleur Delacour certainly had a predilection for watching, seeming to enjoy being made to enjoy the show almost as much as being part of the show herself.

At the same time, there’d been no further attempts on his life, even as the days slowly passed by. Harry kept waiting for it to happen, only to be left wondering if maybe he’d put up too many defenses and scared his hidden killer away in the process. Of course, he couldn’t exactly dial back now… not without both risking Fleur and potentially giving the game away.

He could only rely upon the assumption that whoever was behind the deaths of every wizard in Great Britain wouldn’t give up easily. They were surely already making plans for how to off him once and for all, regardless of his magical defenses. He just had to wait and see what happened next.

In the end, that was kind of what Harry was doing in general. Waiting for the Wizengamot Session to arrive. Waiting to see how the rest of the Magical World would fully react to his presence. Waiting to see what sort of woman would next walk through the door of his new business.

It's as Harry is waiting on one such day that he finds himself visited by someone he really should have been expecting to show up sooner rather than later. Fleur sends him a message from the front desk letting him know that one Luna Lovegood, ‘with the Quibbler’, had stopped by to inquire about the interview he’d promised her.

Seeing as Harry wasn’t doing anything else at the time… and he HAD promised both Luna and Lavender interviews to keep them quiet about the incident regarding Penny’s panties… well, he has Fleur send Luna right on through.

The eccentric blonde skips (literally) into his office just a few moments later, looking around with a bright smile on her face and that seemingly vacant look in her eyes that she always has. Harry, of course, knows better. Luna isn’t dumb or stupid or ‘vacant’ at all… she simply sees the world through a different lens than everyone else does.

After taking in his office for a moment, Luna finally settles on Harry himself, still smiling as she moves forward to stand before his desk.

“Hello Lord Hallows. Thank you for agreeing to meet with me. This is quite the interesting office you have here. It almost makes me feel like I’ve been naughty and found myself in one of my Professor’s Offices to explain myself~”

Harry blinks. Even though he knows better than most just how strange Luna is, that statement still manages to catch him off guard. The funny thing is, he puts the odds that she’s actually flirting with him at a good fifty-fifty, rather than the solid certainty he’d have with any other woman who said such a thing to him.

Chuckling, Harry just shakes his head and gestures to the chairs across from him.

“Please have a seat, Lady Lovegood. As far as I know, I have no reason to bend you over my lap for being ‘naughty’. Unless there’s something you’d like to confess?”

Sitting down and smoothing out her skirt, Luna smiles her signature dreamy smile.

“Maybe later~”

Huffing in amusement, Harry arches a brow at the blonde.

“Well… I promised you an interview, didn’t I? And seeing as my schedule is currently free, I should be able to make do on that promise right now if you’d like.”

Luna’s smile grows a bit and she nods, pulling out a notepad and a refilling quill.

“I’d like that very much Lord Hallows. I wasn’t sure if you’d be willing this early, but my daddy always said you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don’t take!”

Harry tilts his head to the side.

“This early?”

Bobbing her head up and down, Luna makes an ‘mm’ noise in the back of her throat.

“Indeed. After all, once you’ve given Lavender and I our interviews, there’s no reason anymore for us to stay quiet about what we saw.”

… From any other woman, Harry wouldn’t quite know what they were playing at, saying something like that. Luna though… he gets the feeling that she means every word earnestly. She’s not signaling her intent to throw Penny to the wolves the instant she has her interview with Harry, rather… she’s pointing out something she feels should be obvious and perhaps warning him about what Lavender might do at the same time.

Smiling fondly, Harry leans back in his chair and laces his fingers together, resting his hands on his stomach.

“I appreciate the warning, Lady Lovegood. I’m not too worried though. I don’t intend on going anywhere… and I should hope that both you and Ms. Brown will be unwilling to get on my bad side so long as I still draw breath. More than that though, setting Lavender aside… I believe you’re a good woman, Luna Lovegood. A moral, upstanding woman. I don’t think you’ll try to ruin Miss Clearwater’s life over one single mistake.”

For the first time since this conversation started, Luna is the one caught off guard and surprised by his words. She also looks a bit embarrassed, growing slightly flustered as she taps her quill against her notepad.

“… Flattery will get you nowhere with me, Lord Hallows. I aim only to report the truth to my loyal readers.”

Harry hums, nodding along.

“Yes, what was it you said the other day? The Quibbler is a source of truth in a world gone sour, no?”

Luna’s eyes flash for just a moment as he quotes her, her gaze growing just a tad more… intense.

“… Indeed. The Quibbler is all about the facts… no matter how much others might not want to believe them.”

Harry can tell that Luna really believes that. Not for the first time, he finds himself pondering the enigma she represents. Across all of his lives, Luna Lovegood has always been… completely and utterly incomprehensible to him. It’s what makes her fun, no matter the circumstances.

Smiling, he gestures to her notepad.

“Well then, shall we begin?”

Again, Luna’s gaze sharpens as she nods and gets down to business.

“Yes, let’s. First and foremost is the obvious… where did you come from, Lord Hallows?”

Harry arches a brow, prompting Luna to elaborate in a lecturing tone.

“At this point it’s fairly common knowledge that you acquired the contents of the Potter and Black Vaults upon entering Gringotts the other day. You consolidated them under a new, single vault. And now you intend to consolidate the Potter and Black Seats into one Seat in the Wizengamot as well later this week. But what nobody can figure out… is where you came from before showing up at Gringotts.”

Well now. Harry isn’t so sure that everything Luna just said is ‘fairly common knowledge’ at all. In fact, he’s pretty sure most of it is only known to certain… movers and shakers within the Ministry and the Wizengamot, more than likely. However, Luna is clearly a consummate professional and has been doing her own research… he’s quite impressed.

In the end, Harry has a choice to make here. But really, it’s no choice at all. He can lie to Luna and tell her a fairly mundane cover story, probably the same cover story that he’ll wind up giving Lavender Brown when they finally have their interview… or Harry can tell Luna mostly the truth and rely on her and the Quibbler’s reputation to obfuscate matters somewhat.

… Yes, really it’s no choice at all. This is Luna, after all.

“Well, it’s quite the story. You see, I’m not actually from this world or this dimension at all.”

Amusingly, his declaration seems less shocking to Luna than his earlier praise of her as a moral, upstanding woman. Indeed, as Luna begins to jot things down on her notepad, she nods in a serious manner.

“I’d speculated as much. Your trail doesn’t lead back to mainland Europe like one might think, nor does it lead across the pond to the Americas. And more than that, House Potter and House Black have no remaining cadet branches in the mainland, so how you would know that you had a claim on their vaults… well, it beggars belief.”

Luna straightens up, shifting in her seat as she smiles at him.

“You’re Harry Potter from another world. A world where you didn’t die the same night as your parents and the Dark Lord all those years ago.”

Harry chuckles just a little nervously. Of course Luna would make that leap. After all, Penny had made a similar leap to his real identity previously…

“Indeed, Lady Lovegood. I come from a world where I survived to adulthood, obviously. Sirius Black was my godfather in my world, and I inherited the Black Fortune after his unfortunate passing. That inheritance in my world, along with my blood, seemed to be enough to make both the Potter and Black Vaults accept me in this world.”

Luna nods along some more, writing this down as well. Harry isn’t too worried about spilling the beans though… it’s the Quibbler, after all. Eventually, she looks up at him again.

“Why come here though? What made you leave your old world behind and arrive in our world?”

Now this… this is where Harry has to obfuscate things, unfortunately. As tempting as it is to tell Luna the whole, unvarnished truth… if he does that, he’ll almost certainly bring a certain type of enemy down upon his head. The Deathly Hallows are a very old legend that only really attracts the notice of very specific monsters. Dumbledore and Grindelwald are both dead in this world, but they aren’t the only ones out there hunting for the Hallows.

If Harry goes as far as to tell Luna that he’s the Master of Death and immortal, and that he’s been world hopping for over a dozen lifetimes… well, it won’t matter if the contents of this interview are published in the Quibbler. Those who are hunting for the Hallows will jump on any lead they can find and come hunting for him the instant they hear about it.

Luckily, he has another reason that has the benefit of being mostly true. It just… skips a few of the intermediary steps.

“I’m here to save Magical Britain, of course.”

Luna blinks at that, pausing for a moment before raising her brow.

“That’s quite the claim, Lord Hallows.”

Harry chuckles, knowing full well how it makes him sound. That’s on purpose, after all.

“I know it is. But I do hope that over time, my actions will prove I’m not just a braggadocious liar. I mean every word, Lady Lovegood. I am here, in this time and place… to solve your troubles. As you put it, the world has gone sour, no? Well, I’m here to put an end to that. I’m going to hunt down the source of the killings and put a stop to them, once and for all.”

Admittedly, he’s not planning on doing so very quickly. He’s not spending every waking moment looking for the killer of all of the Magical World’s wizards. Nor is he using the shortcut he has in the form of Death, who at any moment could just tell him everything he would need to know to stop things.

But he still means every word he’s just said to Luna. He IS going to do his part to save Magical Britain before he leaves this world behind… he’s just going to take the long way around to do so.

“… I see. And you believe the source of the deaths CAN be hunted down? Most seem to think it to be a curse, unthinking and indiscriminatory in who it strikes down.”

This, at least, Harry can offer up a fully honest answer to. It’ll paint even more of a target on his back when Luna writes about it in the Quibbler, but that’s fine by him.

“Yes, I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that the source of the killings is a person, not a curse. Certainly, some of the deaths were probably the result of curses… but the killer themselves is very much an intelligent, thinking being who has made the choice to wipe out the male population of Magical Britain. I will hunt them down and bring them to justice. That is my pledge to the Magical World, Lady Lovegood.”

Nodding along, Luna writes all of that down before tapping her chin with her quill for a moment.

“Huh… I suppose that would explain the survivors…”

Harry blinks, caught off guard. Furrowing his brow, he leans forward.

“Sorry? What survivors?”

Tilting her head to the side, Luna studies him curiously.

“Argus Filch and Rubeus Hagrid, of course. Despite everyone being certain that it was a curse, neither man has died yet… leading to some to wonder why they live when every other male in Magical Britain has perished. It can’t be Hogwarts protecting them, after all… many wizards perished within the castle walls over these past several years.”

Hang on a second. Filch and Hagrid… were still alive? Harry can’t help but be flummoxed by this revelation. He thought he’d known all there was to know about the state of the wizarding world. He was the only Wizard Lord… nay, the only Wizard still standing. Or so he’d thought.

Then again… Filch and Hagrid wouldn’t be considered wizards by the rest of the Magical World, would they?

And yet… how the hell had they lived when every other squib, muggleborn, and even male muggle who was brought into the Magical World had died? What the fuck did it all mean?!

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A/N: Remember to Vote, leave a Like, and let me know what you think!

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Google Doc Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1t42vy6E0mK8wXZoc0uEA4DopE4wDGww31uGJW7sdSYo/edit?tab=t.0