When Hazel began taking longer and longer to come back from her job, I knew that she was off gallivanting around with Brennan. She never told me, but I could see him in the subtle ways: her hair was down, cascading like a white snow around her shoulders; Her eyes sparkled and her cheeks were too pink for her to have been drawing broomsticks all day.

Over and over I told myself that I wasn't jealous of Brennan, that I didn't hate him. But the way my jaw clenched and my fingers transformed into fists said otherwise. I really did hate Brennan, however petty and childish it might seem. I hated how Hazel looked at him like she had never looked at me; how she spent as much time as possible kissing and walking with him; how he would see a part of her when I would never be allowed in.

It was only after two months of their dating when I realized that I was getting obsessed in my hatred. In vain I tried to find new importance in my job at the Ministry, but that was almost as impossible as getting my Dad to remember my name.

As I entered the Auror headquarters, instinctively I looked to the doorway of the head's office. For as long as I could remember, my Dad stood there and spoke with everyone who came into the doors. But that was before. Before the day he forgot who I was, who everyone was.

As I walked to my station, I was wary of other's eyes of me. Ever since my Dad had retired, they were expecting me to suddenly be the new Head of the department. They expected me to be better than all of them, even though I had only been an Auror for barely five years.

They all expected me to be a Potter, something I could never do.

My desk was littered with papers and folders that had been dropped off during the night, stacks of complete idiocy so tall that I could barely see the pictures behind them. I brushed a stack of papers aside so that I could see the faces behind glass.

In one, my Mum and Dad stood waving in front of a Quidditch pitch— Mum's old robes were splattered with mud and she was sporting a black eye from a well-aimed bludger. Dad looked fresh and youthful, almost a different person without the heavy lines that crossed his forehead In another photo, my siblings James and Lily were snuggled with the cat, Cocoa. There was a pang of sadness as I realized that the picture was taken only a month before Lily's death, and a year before James'. Another picture showed Anthony, only a year old and trying to eat a wooden block.

And in the last frame there was a picture of Hazel and I laughing at something. We were holding onto each other for support, and winds from the Hogwarts Lake was blowing our hair in all sorts of crazy directions.

My entire desk was filled with the loss of what I had once had. A little sister, who was taken by cancer. A brother, who I may had hated, but was still cruelly stolen by a train crash. A son who didn't think of me as womanizer. A father who still remembered that I was his son, who still remembered my face. A mother who still smiled, and a friend who had once laughed and hung onto me like I was her lifeboat in a storm.

I sighed loudly.

"There's a lot of paperwork for you to do, Mr. Potter," came a cruelly satisfied voice. "Very important, those files. Make sure that you have it done by the end of today."

I stared at the desk, than looked at Dorcas Chang. Who, as luck would have it, replaced my father as the head of the Auror Department. Than promptly assigned me off of field work and into the dullest section: paperwork.

I would've quit long ago if not for Anthony.

"I can't finish this all today," I told her, trying (and failing) to look relaxed. "Two days, at minimum."

"Really?" Chang's perky voice made me want to hit her on the head with a chair. "Better get to work, then." The sound tapping noise of her heels was oddly goading me to throw something at her.

Mechanically I sat in the chair, and opened the first folder I saw. It was dark blue, meaning that the order came not from the Auror division, but from the Minister herself. My brow creased. For what I had seen and heard, Rose was barely doing any work. Why would she need a team of Aurors, or Auror information?

My eyes ran down the assignment. It was a solo mission, tasked with traveling to America and finding as much as possible about the Gordian Knot. I tapped my hand agains the paper. Why would Rose send someone to America? Ever since the whole President Harold, Scorpius thing, tensions had been very high between both the Muggle and magical populations of Britain and America.

I read more of the report. It was directly issued by Rose, which was the oddest thing I had heard since learning she had basically abandoned her job as Minister.

The Gordian Knot. When one of my fellow Gryffindors, a boy named Ethan Santiago, went to visit the American wizarding school Ilvermorny, he brought back the uniform they wore. Fastening the robes was a gold broach called the Gordian Knot, he told us. It was the symbol the the school and the founder. What did Rose care about the school? Was she trying to get revenge on President Lockwood because the woman didn't know enough about Hogwarts?

My eyes quickly darted from side to side. All of the other Researchers were hunched over their desks, eyes glued to the pages of whatever dusty volume they were reading from. I casually put the dark blue folder inside of my Auror jacket, fitting it inside of the pocket meant for assignment folders just like that one.

Whatever the Gordian Knot meant, I was finding out somewhere where Dorcas Chang's eyes wouldn't be watching and contemplating my every move.