Harry breathed in the cool air of spring, full of things that made his nose itch and his eyes water, he breathed in and listened to the bullicious sound of life.
The main street of Diagon Alley was fuller than he had ever seen it. Certainly fuller than it had been for the last two years.
The scars from the war ran deep, and a lot of times in ways that were not obvious. The people were scared, scared that Voldemort may rise again, the thump of his malformed body echoing still along the collective mind of britain.
It had not been easy for him at all, he had tried to get into law enforcement, only to realize that he was tired of fighting, tired of the attention, tired of being faced with the senselessness of greed and pride that moved men to commit atrocities in the name of self gratification.
But even more than that, he was tired of seeing the desperation of good men driven to crime out of necessity, of laws twisted to serve those who didn't need them. The day he had to arrest a man for defending his daughter was the day he dimmited.
After the death of his short career he spent a while doing nothing. He just couldn’t find the drive. He thought about teaching, but his celebrity made that harder than it should be, and his memories of Hogwarts had been tainted by blood and fear.
In the end his answer had been almost obvious. He would volunteer. He had enough money to live by, and he wanted to help. He liked to help. And now he would help the ones that needed it.
He looked at the dingy, disorganized store front across the street and frowned. He checked the adress he’d been given again. It was here.
Shrugging he walked towards it and crossed the threshold, a series of small musical dings answering the creek of the old brass hinges. The store was dim lit and what little light there was came from coloured, floating candles that moves around, doing rounds to illuminate the whole store, casting pale pastel hues over the piles of thin boxes.
“Hello?” he tried, but no answer came, so he moved more into the store.
The feeling it gave off was strange, like organized chaos. He was sure there was some sort of order to the piles of things but he could not find it. He let his fingers run over the piled boxes, unfamiliar pictures and titles fleeting in front of his eyes.
He was not sure what he was looking for. He had asked around the nurses of the magical maladies ward at saint mungos and they had said that most of the people there really missed music, so he thought maybe he could do something nice for them and take some stuff for them next time he visited.
He was however, not a music person himself, and so to him the collection of carefully cut obsidian disks in artistically decorated boxes meant little. He would likely end up buying a few that looked pretty.
He felt more than saw a shadow move behind him. His body tensed, prepared for a fight. He let his weight fall into a wider stance, rocking into the ball of his feet to make a sharpt turn. Just as he did, a blur of shiny colours jumped out of the dim and onto the table where he had been inspecting the disorganized records.
With an elegance born of practice and belied by the baggie sweater from patchwork colours, the woman turned as she jumped so that she landed sitting, her knees tucking into her chest.
He looked at her, or at what he could see of her behind her sock clad legs and massive sweater. The sparkling blue eyes that watched him in outmost curiosity from behind gold glasses was not what he had been expecting.
They were impactful.
Her rosy face was framed by the hair that escaped the messy bun she wore, and she was such a sight that his alert body relaxed subitly, making him stumble. She giggled, her hand lifting to delicately cover her lips, adorable crinkling springing to life in the corner of her eyes, making her eyes even more shocking, their slant steepening.
“Bonjour.” She whispered, airy and light.
It was in that very moment that Harry Potter found the music he would love for the rest of his life, and it came from behind rufous lips that tightened into a small smile every time he came to buy another record.