Chapter Text
It’s done for now.
Harry sighs, leans back on his stool and stretches his arms up behind his head with his eyes screwed shut. He spends hours hunched over this work table every day, yet he never notices how badly his shoulders ache until he stops. They hurt like someone’s been hammering them with a mallet now, and his spine lets out a series of satisfying clicks as the muscles pull out straight, eliciting a rumbling groan deep in his throat.
A deconstructed broom lies on the work table in front of him, parts all neatly set out in rows after a long day of classification. Separating the brush has been a right pain, but that’s par for the course when it comes to the classics. Regardless, he’s thoroughly fed up of squinting at twigs. After three entire days of tedious, repetitive and time-consuming charm identification, he finally has five neat bundles of thin sticks ready for assessment - and little will to actually do it.
Despite himself, he picks up one of the buffer twigs and flexes it in his fingers. He loves his work, loves the natural textures of the wood and the thrum of charms under his skin. It’s like flying sometimes, but with your feet safe on the ground.
Most witches and wizards assume the brush is made up of simple, ordinary sticks - that it’s the charms that “make the broom go” - but it’s Harry’s job to know all the complexities of broomsticks: the differences between brands and years, and the roles of the shaft, the squeezing bands and all the different types of brush twigs. No single part makes a broom fly, and it certainly doesn’t start and end with charms… though admittedly they’d never get off the ground without them.
He looks down at the work in front of him, frowning through thick-lensed glasses. He can already tell a lot of the twigs are going to need replacing, and for the rest there’ll be repair work before he can even think about polishing and putting it all back together again. Days or weeks of work.
And that’s only the brush. The squeezing bands have almost completely rusted away, and this is no Firebolt. He can’t walk into any old garage or garden shed and find replacement parts for a TX-1202. They made so few it’s practically a custom model - but for all its rarity, it isn’t particularly desirable either. The handle is short and twisted, making it both uncomfortable to sit on and almost impossible to steer. Its dull colour and unadorned design mean it’s not much use as a wall piece either. It’s useless and ugly - just a sad old relic of days gone past.
Harry sighs, dropping the twig back into place, and then brushes his fingers over the shaft delicately, sensing the faltering hum of old charms. Luckily for its owner, he just so happens to like ugly, sad old relics the most.
He hops off the stool and gives his back a proper stretch, then rubs his neck for the ache that remains there. Too many days in a row sat hunched over a worktable does that to a man.
He taps the table lamp with the tip of his wand, extinguishing it, and finds his way in the resulting darkness to the corridor. He casts tempus - just gone midnight - and then lumos as he approaches the door to the hallway.
He could dance around his workshop in total darkness if he felt like it, sure that he won’t so much as brush against the perilous racks of brooms, boxes or chests that fill every available inch of space. He built all of it - every table, shelf and rack - with his own hands, and no one else has touched them since. The hallway is a shared space though, and the building’s other occupants aren’t nearly as tidy as he is, what with the ongoing feud about separation of recycling between offices 12a and 12b, often resulting in them leaving rubbish outside of each others’ doors, passive-aggressive notes stuck to the side. The owner of number 4 also has a tendency to use the corridor as extra storage space for bolts of cloth when she gets big orders in. Harry has no idea who would need that many self-cleaning curtains - but he’s also not interested in useless attempts at holding a conversation, so he’s never asked.
Lit wand in hand, he lets his mind wander as he walks towards the apparition point. Apparating is banned and blocked throughout most of the building to make sure no one appears in or under dangerous bits of equipment. Harry understands the reasoning perfectly, and it comforts him to know that no one can simply pop into his private workshop, but it’s also annoying having to walk to the other side of the building every evening.
There’s usually no one else around at this time of night - part of the reason he stays so late - so he’s surprised to see light spilling from an open doorway as he rounds a corner onto the main corridor joining the East and West wings. A shadow moves across it, letting him know that the room is occupied, and he briefly contemplates dipping into the stairwell and detouring along the third floor and back down to avoid being seen.
But he’s curious by nature, so he extinguishes his light and creeps forward carefully instead. There are boxes piled up outside the room. Some are full, neatly stacked along the wall, while others lie empty and half-crushed, strewn messily down the hallway.
Someone moving in.
Harry jumps as a piece of cardboard flies past, bounces off the wall and skids along the floor near his foot. Blue light flashes inside, and Harry steps closer, one arm raised to protect his head from potential projectiles.
The workshop is smaller than his, perhaps two-thirds of the size but with ventilation shafts built in that probably make it twice as dear to rent. Lovely waxed wooden shelves have been built all the way around the room, some with dark doors leaning against them waiting to be attached. A long walnut counter stretches along one wall at about the height kitchen surfaces usually sit. Made for working while standing, it’s clearly a potions laboratory setup. He doesn’t need to see cauldrons or ingredients to know, having spent enough time in laboratories while working for his Potions Intermediary a few years ago.
A shadow falls across the doorway, and Harry jumps back guiltily, trips over a box and falls against the door of the room opposite. He steadies himself on the doorframe, straightening as he looks up to see the silhouette of a man in the doorway. It gestures, something rapid and aggressive, but Harry can’t see the details of the shadowed face.
He casts lumos again.
The wizard has dark blond hair, and Harry doesn’t recognise him - but he seems to recognise Harry. He looks surprised and then angry, and though Harry still occasionally struggles with lip reading unfamiliar people, he easily interprets the word “Potter.”
The lips move again, and Harry frowns trying to follow along. Looks like he’s saying something about a flaming duck? Or a fair maiden…? Practice , they told him at the training course, is your best friend . All he has to do to get better at lipreading, is practice as often as he can - the problem with that being, he has to actually spend time with other people. Weighing it up a year ago, he had quickly decided to stay shit at lip reading.
Harry taps the two fingers of his dominant hand against his ear, the British Sign Language sign for deaf . Not something he often needs to tell people, since everyone knows. It’s also one of the few signs he actually remembers without checking the book lying abandoned somewhere in his bedroom at home - sign language is also one of those things they told him he’d need to practice with others, so naturally he hasn’t bothered.
The man’s eyes widen for a moment, then he looks - inexplicably - even angrier than before. He points at Harry, moves his fingers like a walking pair of legs and points down the hall with a jab. Then, just in case Harry doesn’t get the message, he makes a very rude sign with the same two fingers.
Having had no desire for human company in the first place, Harry returns the gesture with one of his own - hitting his hands between forefinger and thumb together diagonally and pointing at the man, fuck you - and stomps over the mountain of cardboard that lies between him and the apparition point.
Who the fuck does the man think he Is, treating Harry - a perfect stranger - like that? Potter , he’d said, his expression clear enough for Harry to know it was spat like a curse. Yet he can’t think of anyone who dislikes him that badly these days. That’s not to say he’s all that popular or beloved - he stays out of people’s way, and they stay out of his. He’s made few enemies since his infamous school days, none of them meaningful, and Ron would message him if any death eaters got released. He’s sure he’d recognise them if that was the case anyway.
Still, he racks his brains for a hint of recollection. The potioneer had a very boring face apart from the thunderous scowl that looked like it must be permanently stuck to it. His hair was that weird shade between blonde and brown that could be described as either, and Harry can’t remember the colour of his eyes. Maybe blue or green? Even his age is hard to place, though he’s definitely no younger than 30. His manner lent him the feel of an older man though. Nothing about him strikes Harry as memorable other than his temper, but he’s still sure he’s never seen the guy before in all his life.
He feels the tingle of the anti-apparition wards on his skin as he crosses into the inner reception lobby, and smiles. It’s finally home time. Bed time. No point dwelling on some grumpy new business owner - he’ll be gone in a few months anyway. Most new businesses don’t last a year.