• 1-It Was Wrong, But It was Love
• 2-2

He wasn’t sorry. And therein lay the problem, Harry thought as he reached across the softly snoring body next to him, grabbing his cigarettes off the hotel night table. His companion rustled and cracked open an eye, giving Harry a sleepy smile before rolling to his side and lengthening in a massive stretch. Harry never grew tired of looking at the long, well-built form of the man next to him. Caught staring, not for the first time since they had become lovers, Harry tried to cover by quickly snagging a cigarette from the pack and lighting it, smoke escaping his mouth as he tossed the pack in the center of the bed. He lay back down on the mattress, one arm bent behind his head as the other held his newly lit cigarette.

His bedmate, all limbs and smelling of sex, rolled out of bed and strolled (the man never did anything but stroll in Harry’s opinion) to the bathroom, his nude form on full, unabashed display.

Tall. That was one word that always came to mind when Harry thought about his lover. Strong, confident, level-headed would also fit the man to a ‘T’. Over the last several years Harry had also decided the man was passionate, intense, and most of all, endearingly loyal. Which made their situation all the more complicated.

By the time Harry made it half way through his cigarette, his lover emerged from the bathroom, slipping back beneath the sheets and planting a full-lipped kiss to Harry’s mouth. When the man pulled back he took Harry’s half gone cig with him.

“Thought you said my smoking was a filthy habit,” Harry sniped, mitigating his irritation with a smirk.

“Yes. And I stand by that opinion,” the man replied, slowly bringing the cig to his lips and taking a drag before handing it back to Harry. “Filthy or not, still one of the best things after sex.”

Harry nodded, collecting the cigarette in his far hand before gathering his lover close with the opposite arm. Their bodies came together, their legs twining about one another’s as only long-time lovers could, by rote and memory.

Within minutes Harry heard his lover’s breathing even out. He looked down into the face of the man whose head rested just below his collarbone; noticing the closed eyes and placid face Harry surmised the man had fallen back into light sleep. Good. He needed to think.

They had been together for six years now. And without fail, every time they made love, in the aftermath, after the bliss and euphoria of orgasm, and the pleasure signals in his nerves settled from intense lovemaking, Harry would find himself distracted by his own thoughts. Mostly he just tried to remember how it had all started. Of course he could never actually forget, but each time he and his lover coupled, Harry still found himself recalling the beginning, in hopes it would make sense of the present, shed some light on the current state of their relationship and his own lack of any real remorse about its possible affect on others whom they each loved.

As his lover shifted away briefly, only to resettle, his back flush to Harry’s side, Harry snuffed out his cigarette in a nearby ashtray, casting a wandless spell to vanish the smoke and freshen the room. He then turned on his side, spooning his lover and whispering a “nox” to turn off the lights.

There in the dark, the warm form of his lover in his arms, Harry thought of their wives. He and Ginny had been married just over eight years. Their first child was on the way—a boy. Harry couldn’t be more thrilled with the prospect of fatherhood. However, he was also a bit afraid of that fatherhood would only further complicate things, for soon, in just under three months, he’d have someone more important than himself to worry about; someone whose life and happiness rested in his hands. Not since Voldemort had he felt such pressure. However, this was pressure he actually wanted.

Still, anyone with even an ounce of morals would say what he was doing was wrong. Even if they weren’t big proponents of monogamy, the lie of an extra-marital affair was a hard thing to ignore. But that is not what upset him. Yes, what he was doing was wrong, on the part of both he and his lover. What upset Harry was the fact that he felt no remorse, not an iota of guilt for his actions—and that is what upset him, his lack of feeling shame for engaging in something that if it discovered would rock the very foundation of not only his marriage, but would send a ripple affect of catastrophic magnitude through an entire family. Every time he and his lover met they risked destroying lives.

In the early days of the affair Harry had tried to talk to his lover about how he felt, trying to suss out if he was the only one with this lack of moral quandary. Out for drinks at the Leaky Cauldron one rainy day during the first year of the affair, Harry had even gone so far as to suggest they stop seeing each another, hoping that by making the suggestion the crippled portion of his moral compass would self-correct. His lover had surprisingly replied with a simple but definitive, “No.”

When Harry gave him a questioning look, the man elaborated, “If we stop, let it be because we want to, because we are over; not because you think we should. I, even more than you, should be putting an end to this thing between us, but I can’t. For the life of me, I just can’t.”

That little exchange had quickly deteriorated into yet another round of fucking the likes of which the bathroom in the Leaky had rarely, if ever, seen.

Harry was lost and he knew it. He loved two people, but for vastly different reasons. He could not give one up for the other; he needed them both. Yet, the secrets and the lies were starting to take their toll. Again, he had no strong moral feelings about keeping secrets or lying, but he was just weary of doing it: Coming up with convincing reasons to go off on two or three day trips; sending Ginny off for unexpected “girls’ weekends” with one or two of her friends; faking mission profiles so he could do so under Auror business. They were mostly investigative missions, so when he returned with little to no new intel no one batted an eye. Harry even maintained a Muggle bank account, unbeknownst to Ginny, just so he could spend money on he and his lover without suspicion.

He didn’t know what his lover told his wife. Harry made it a point to never ask. They only had two rules in their relationship: Never speak of their spouses unless absolutely necessary— and no lies. The second rule seemed a little antithetical given the fact that their continued sexual relationship was dependent on each of them deceiving their spouses, but it worked for them.

Oddly, Harry found it easier to be honest with his lover than his wife. Ginny, as loving and darling as she could be, had a nasty ability to pre-judge and criticize. Harry had learned long ago to keep certain things to himself, be they big or small, otherwise he and Ginny would be hexing each other from London to Newcastle and back. In his lover Harry found a gentle, non-judging ear, and a open heart in which to store his deepest thoughts and desires. He could be open in ways with this man that he could never be with Ginny. Still, the svelte redhead had a locked-in place in his heart. Ginny—smart, cunning, witty, sexy, athletic. Who could want more in a wife? Not Harry.

Yet, his attraction to the man in his bed had started long before he had married Ginny. Only then Harry had been too young, too scared, and too distracted and confused to do anything about it. As he lay in the dark, holding the warm, muscular body of his lover tightly against his own, Harry thought back to those times— back to the beginning.