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Mandy’s big dream had always been to backpack across Australia. The outback called to her, somehow, as cliche as it seemed. Finding out that she was a witch - that all the strangeness she experienced was magic - didn’t put a damper on the plans she had already made, and did in fact mostly serve to make her feel more secure that she’d be safe, all alone in the outback. If anything happened, she could just apparate away.
Her Hogwarts years were incredibly peaceful, something she knew she had the older generations to thank for - she had been born several years after the war ended, not that a lot of the fighters from the Battle of Hogwarts were still around to talk about it. The Headmistress had apparently been involved, otherwise, it seemed to Mandy like everyone seemed to think it best forgotten and left behind.
While Mandy loved being a witch, she loved learning and using magic, the Wizarding World felt fake, like the cheerfulness and geniality were all just veneers, skin-deep rather than genuine. It felt, she’d reflected when speaking to her granddad on more than one occasion, like it was all just a county fair, and everyone was pretending to forget their everyday worries - worries that nevertheless loomed around the corner.
It was a relief, to graduate from Hogwarts. As much as she’d loved it, she’d never felt at home. That, and graduating also meant that she could finally fulfil her dream.
Six weeks after Amanda ‘Mandy’ Thorne graduated Hogwarts, her plane set down in Melbourne. With some clever budgeting and a working holiday visa, she was looking at staying for at least a year. With not much left for her back home in the U.K., since her grandfather died, she wouldn’t mind staying for longer.
She had a vague itinerary, with no set dates and only things she wanted to see and experience. From Melbourne she made her meandering way up the east coast, reaching Sydney after several weeks. It was supposed to take about a week and a half, non-stop walking, but the sea called more than Sydney did. It was springtime, and not the warmest spring either, but compared to the Scottish highlands everything was a nice moderate temperature. She did cheat, sometimes - warming charms were a true blessing to have mastered.
Mandy spent two weeks in the magical district of Sydney before the wanderlust gripped her again, but she was sadder to leave Sydney’s network of magic avenues than she’d been to leave Hogwarts behind.
The one thing she had clear in her mind was her next destination - Adelaide - via Canberra and Wagga Wagga. The time it would take her to get there, and how many detours she’d take on the way, weren’t important. Her travels were the goal, and even though she was all alone in a huge, foreign country, Mandy couldn’t remember the last time she’d been as happy and as at peace as she was then.
Divination had never been one of Mandy’s strong subjects - she had in fact dropped it halfway through her fourth year - but later, much, much later, she would wonder - had she felt a niggle? Had she felt fate prod her along? Or had it been her magic, pushing her into an adventure unlike any she’d ever imagined? No matter what it was, something made her look at the road sign and that something made her notice it. Lockhart, New South Wales - that’s where she was supposed to go.
When she reached Lockhart, it was late and she was covered in dust. The first order of business would be a room, preferably one with a private bath, and then food. Luckily, it seemed like the local would be able to provide both, so it was toward The Lock and Hart she headed. The sign, swinging from its post over the door, depicted a stag with a padlock hanging around his neck, and it reminded her quite a lot of the pubs she’d gone to back home.
“I’ll be right with you, miss,” someone said when she let the door swing shut behind her. The voice was male, with the kind of posh, upper-class intonation that made her acutely homesick for a home that wasn’t there to go home to. She headed towards the bar and was startled when a pale blond head suddenly popped up from behind it. “What can I do for you, miss?”
“Do you…” she stuttered, for some reason brought off of balance by his appearance. She almost forcibly shook it off. “Do you have a room available? With an en-suite?”
“Oh now, that right there is an accent I haven’t heard in a hot minute!” the barkeep, or so she assumed, drawled at her. It was an almost cheerful drawl, which felt like an oxymoron even to her mind. “You’re in luck, miss, we’re still in the off-season - not that there’s ever much of an on-season in Lockhart - so we have most of the rooms available. I’ll put you in number eleven, I think, that’s the room with the best water pressure - do come along!”
The barkeep kept chatting with her, all while picking out a key, scrawling something in a ledger and then leading her towards a set of stairs in the back.
Room eleven turned out to be of a decent size, with a four-poster queen bed - the only thing she cared about was the bathroom, where there was both a shower and a separate bathtub or, as she liked to call it, heaven on Earth.
“Right then Amanda - Mandy? Can I call you Mandy? - what do you want for dinner? Chef’s grumpy but he’s heaven incarnate in the kitchen, so he’ll whip you up whatever you feel like.”
“Oh, uh…” she stuttered, blindsided by the hunger the sudden question reminded her of. “I wouldn’t mind a chicken parmi if that’s okay? Chips and a lager?”
“Of course, of course, the chef’ll have that done for you when you’ve bathed, just come on down when you feel up to it!” He swept into an elaborate bow before turning on his heel and heading back downstairs.
It wasn’t until much later, once she’d had a good long soak in the absolutely heavenly bathtub, that she realised that she’d never told him her name.
Quite hesitantly, she walked down the stairs and took a seat at the bar. It wasn’t the most comfortable she’d ever been, had in fact considered apparating out of her room immediately instead of taking the barkeep up on his offer of food, but… the bathtub was far too heavenly to leave after a single bath, and where would she find another place to sleep at the time of day in Lockhart? The whole city had less than 900 inhabitants, and Mandy had to be brutally honest - she’d been incredibly surprised to even find a pub.
Once she’d sat down at the bar, dark and oaken in appearance, she took a moment to look around. It felt familiar, in the same way she thought every British pub felt familiar, but there was something about this particular one that brought on the deja vu properly - maybe it was the layout, or how the circular tables were clustered…
The barkeep popped up again, put a plate down and pushed it in her direction, something that gave clear indications of why the bartop was scratched seven ways to Sunday. The plate contained a neat pile of crisps, and she was so hungry it took everything in her to not descend on it like a pack of starving dogs.
“So, miss Mandy Thorne, how come you’re all the way out here, in the middle of nowhere, Australia?” he said, and that time she was proper creeped out by him knowing her name.
“Did I tell you my name?” She’d often been accused of being blunt and too straightforward, but sometimes that was the best course of action. She’d been sorted Hufflepuff, way back when, and the hard work and loyalty had always rung a bell with her - but the ‘no putting on airs’ was even more so her motto.
“Didn’t have to,” the blond man said, a superior smirk on his face. She wondered if anyone had ever tried to wipe it off forcibly because it gave her the vibe he could use it. “We have an identification ward on the doorway - I thought you would’ve felt it, actually, but you did seem pretty knackered.”
Mandy offered him a none-too-flattering view of her half-chewed crisps, mouth hanging open as she stared at him.
“Well, that…” she started before she closed her mouth and remembered to keep chewing. With that information fresh in mind, she looked around the bar room again. “That’s why! This place reminds me of the Leaky!”
“Yes, we couldn’t resist bringing a slice of home with us when we moved - we’re the only ex-pats in quite a few miles radius, and the ward identifies if any other join us, so we’re prepared if there are any… questions.” He looked around, pale blue eyes not catching on anything, just letting his gaze roam over his bar room.
“Chicken parmi, and Merlin help ya if I can’t let the stove go out now!” The words came from the kitchen, carried on a voice that felt almost like coming home to Mandy. The Surrey accent she was so familiar with from her grandfather, and the Scottish burr so many of the Hogwarts students picked up during their years there, it all combined to something that sounded so much like home that she was brought almost to tears.
“Oh now, I know he sounds gruff but he’s a big teddy bear, really!” the barkeep said as he put the plate down in front of her, not looking too comfortable with having a young witch crying in his barroom.
She just shook her head and picked up a couple of chips to nibble while she tried to gather herself, and around her, the barroom started to clean itself, all while watched over by the barkeep. As Mandy tasted the chicken, she couldn’t suppress the sob that broke through.
“Hey now, I can’t imagine the food is that bad, miss Mandy!”
“I just - it tastes like the one my grandfather made in his pub, and you all sound like home and I don’t have a home to go to anymore,” she absently realised that sometime during her tirade, she had started wailing, and clearly thrown herself at the poor barkeep. Detachedly, she wondered just how long she had bottled this up.
As she had her breakdown in an Australian pub, the barkeep of said pub only held her, shushing her and trying his best to calm her down. Crying women had never been his strong suit, but he knew his husband was even worse off - and his husband had to be awake even earlier to start breakfast preparations, so he’d take this bludger for the team.
“Shh, shh, why don’t you wipe those tears, try to eat as much as you can of the chicken and the crisps, and then we’ll all try to sleep on this, yes? Chef’ll be up early to cook breakfast for us.”
She nodded against his shoulder, murmuring apologies as she drew away to rub at her eyes. He kept an arm around her as she ate, chattering away - not that she heard much of it, but it was a much-needed distraction.
When she headed to bed, after eating most of what was probably the best chicken parmi she’d ever eaten, her head barely hit the pillow before she was asleep. She dreamt of hummingbirds, flittering around, and bears, growling in the night, all of it surrounded by the smell of her grandfather’s kitchen.
The next morning she woke up to the sound of birds, and the smell of breakfast cooking. After the quickest freshen-up she’d ever done, she followed her nose downstairs, only to again be greeted by an empty barroom.
“Miss Mandy!” suddenly came from behind her and, badly startled, she spun on her heel only to lose her balance and tumble right into the barkeep. He laughed as he put her back on her feet, the sound of it seeming almost foreign to him. “Good morning! Slept well?”
“Oh, ever so well, mister…?” she asked leadingly, having realised come morning that she never got his name, and she didn’t have the cheat of an identification ward to help her along.
“Oh dear, I do apologise for that - Draco, miss Mandy, no need for any ‘mister’ here!” That said, Draco ushered her onto one of the barstools, himself rounding the bar to take a seat on the opposite side. “And the chef is Harry, not that you’ll see him much out of the kitchen - help me, Merlin, I love that man, but he’s not much for socialising. Cooking, that’s his call in life it seems.”
Somewhere, deep inside of her, something relaxed a little bit more at the confirmation that the extravagant barkeep had, as her grandfather would have put it, a gentleman friend. Not that the chef seemed like a gentleman from what she’d heard of him.
It was as she opened her mouth to ask just how they’d ended up here, two British ex-pats, not too long ago graduated from Hogwarts, that the door to the kitchen swung open, and a bear of a man stepped through, carrying three overflowing plates.
As he put the plates down on the bar where she and Draco were sitting, she realised that yes, a bear of a man was what he most looked like. He had the kind of beard she’d previously only seen on Hagrid, arms that bodybuilders would be jealous of, and a chest like a barrel. Next to him, the tall and lanky Draco seemed petite at most.
“Eep,” was all she could say, her planned gratitude expiring somewhere between her brain and her mouth. The chef - Harry, she remembered Draco had said his name was - seemed amused by it, and smiled a smile that transformed his entire face. The way the green eyes crinkled together above the wild, black beard made him look happy and approachable, and she felt more at ease than she’d done for who knows how long. “I meant to say thank you and maybe hello I’m Mandy.”
“Well, Mandy, I’m Harry, and I don’t know if my husband told you, but welcome to the Lock and Hart,” the big man chortled, sounding as delighted as a kid on Christmas. Mandy decided she’d walked into the weirdest pub in all of Australia, and she had probably entered the Twilight Zone the moment she left Wagga Wagga or something.
“He didn’t, no, but I’ve felt very welcomed, so it all evens out.” She’d always rolled with the punches before, why stop now?
As the two men on the other side of the bar started squabbling over something, both of them looking at each other like they were soppily in love and newly married, Mandy ate and as she chewed, she thought. Several of the thoughts were verbalised as groans of amazement since the breakfast platter she’d been served contained the best Full English she’d ever had, but some of them stayed silent as she watched them.
“You’re Harry Potter, aren’t you?” she finally voiced the thought that had struck her when she caught sight of the faded scar on his face. The way the two of them froze in their seats only confirmed her assumption. “And you’re Draco Malfoy.”
They didn’t say anything, just watched her as she kept eating.
“I’m not going to go home and spill the beans, obviously,” she said, spearing the last sausage on her fork, brandishing it in their direction. “I’m just curious why two war heroes are hiding out in the middle of nowhere, Australia.”
“Because of that,” Harry said, voice low. He grabbed Draco’s hand, holding it tight, but looked more like he tried to comfort Draco than himself. “We’re not heroes - yea, I know we ended the war, but we’re not heroes. When the war ended we were your age, two traumatised school kids who pulled wands at every single unexpected noise.”
“You don’t - you don’t have to tell me, and you don’t owe me an explanation,” Mandy rushed to say, feeling horrible that she’d forced them into giving up something that was clearly hidden deep within.
“He wouldn’t talk about it if he didn’t want to,” Draco said quietly, looking down at his lap. When he looked up at her, she was distraught to see the tear tracks on his face.
“We were too central to the efforts to be able to fade into obscurity, even if everyone tried to forget the wars ever happened. I think you’d be surprised at several familiar names and their importance in ending the war. As for us - all we wanted was a quiet cottage where we could live in peace. Somehow that cottage ended up being a pub in a town with the same name as our most incompetent teacher, which yes, we did pick it ironically.” Harry shrugged, still holding tight to Draco’s hand. His gaze had never left Mandy, and she wasn’t sure how there’d ever been a war. She thought it should have been enough to have him look at someone, and they’d put their wand down and surrender.
“We never would have had any peace back in Britain, you know,” Draco mused after several minutes of silence. “Longbottom could fade into obscurity, so could the Weasleys - there’s so many of them - but there’s only one Boy-Who-Lived and there’s only one defecting Death Eater.”
“Longbottom? Like my Herbology Professor, Neville Longbottom?” She almost spat out her tea at the name, so unexpected in the context.
“That very same man,” Harry continued, laugh lines once again appearing as his eyes crinkled above his beard. “Without him, the war wouldn’t have been won.”
“I just… don’t see it.”
“Neither did we,” Draco scoffed quietly. He glared at Harry as the larger man bumped his shoulder, companionably jostling him and almost spilling his espresso. “He was an oaf, growing up, but - I am thankful he did grow up.”
“But that’s why we’re here, we’re just hiding from, well, pretty much everyone, because who would look here? I still haven’t heard about you, Miss Mandy,” Harry said, clearly changing the subject - but Mandy had heard all she needed to.
“Not much to say - mum died in childbirth, my deadbeat dad didn’t want anything to do with me, so at seven my mum’s dad, my grandfather, managed to adopt me. At eleven I found out I was a witch, and off to Hogwarts, I went! At fifteen…” she choked on the words, a sob almost breaking free. She’d thought that if she talked fast enough, she would be able to avoid the waterworks. “At fifteen my gramps died, and I was emancipated - my bio father was useless but his parents didn’t want anything to do with a freak like me, so I stayed alone or with mates every summer until I graduated. Australia’s been my dream forever, and here I am.”
Harry looked at her, and once again she was reminded of the fact that she was sitting opposite someone who had once won a war.
“What did you say your father’s name was, again?” he asked, and from the corner of her eye, she saw Draco raising an eyebrow at him.
“I don’t think I did,” Mandy said, shrugging. She tried not to think of her father or her paternal grandparents. Their biggest regret in life seemed to be allowing their son to do whatever he wanted, even if that whatever happened to be a black barmaid. She told Harry and Draco as much.
“Yes, yes, they’re all arseholes - but what are their names?”
“Dursley. My dad’s Dudley Dursley,” she relented and told them.