Harry had had a very long week. After his impromptu meeting with the woman on the street, he'd gone straight to find his brother. If, in the--ncredibly unlikely, but he supposed theoretically possible--event that Harry had somehow gotten a woman pregnant, there was little question what he would have done about it. Perhaps that was the root of the problem with these sorts of situations. Maybe the sorts of men who would take responsibility for the consequences of their actions were not the sort of men likely to get into this mess in the first place. Harry didn't know.

Needless to say, the conversation with his brother hadn't gone well.

The morning of their scheduled meeting, Harry had mostly spent stress tidying his laboratory. It was possibly the cleanest the space had been since he'd set up shop there, and for once he was grateful that he'd failed to hire an assistant. He felt better doing the work himself, and had cleared the little seating area that he occasionally used to meet with people when they came to visit the lab in person. It was not particularly fancy, at least not by the standards one would expect of someone in his standing, but this was a space meant for practical use more than it was meant for showing off.

By the time the knock finally came at the door, Harry was just about vibrating with nerves. Taking a deep breath, Harry stepped to the door and opened it. "Come in, come in," he said, stepping to the side to let the woman past. "Would you like some tea?" The deep-seated instinct to make tea in the face of crisis was probably less about Harry being stereotypically English and more about desperately needing something to do with his hands.

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