Molly left Harry at the bench and she walked towards the hallway with her escorts following behind her as she was humming in joy with every step that she took.
She was ignorant to her surroundings and only focused to where her feet led her.
But to her surprise she bumped into Andrew already waiting for her by the entrance of the hallway, he looked grim…as if something unpleasant had ticked him off.
Andrew leaned his back against the wall and held his arms looking at Molly as she slowly approached him…well it was more like he was glaring down at her with annoyance.
He wasn’t happy.
And more importantly, the unpleasant gazes were solely directed at Molly and that made her a little uneasy to face him, but she was forced to keep going.
There was no chance to turn back and run, because she was forced to face the devil that was standing right across her.
“A-Andr-..”
“Dear older sis,” Andrew growled, cutting her from speaking as his gaze held back a scorn.
“Are you coveting what’s mine?” He hissed, still glaring the life out of her.
But Molly didn’t back down, instead she took another step closer towards him.
Ready to counter his malice.
“What’s yours is Lucas and the rest of them. Harry was never yours he was just a chance that happened to fall on your lap without even his knowledge.”
Andrew looked down at her neck, right where her fingers were resting as she fiddled the locket she stole from Malfoy.
It was engraved with Harry’s initials and Molly seemed to adorn it beyond understanding, Andrew felt like snapping it away from her neck for a moment.
But he kept his calm, he had no reason to be upset about it just yet, after all he held the most control over Harry, nothing like a mere object like the locket.
The tension between the siblings was a live wire, humming with a frequency that made Molly’s escorts instinctively take a step back.
The hallway, lined with portraits of previous Mayfair generations, suddenly felt like a gallery of witnesses to a civil war.
Andrew’s smirk didn’t falter.
He pulled himself off the wall with a slow, predatory grace, his footsteps silent on the polished marble.
And he stopped just inches from Molly, his height looming over her, though she didn’t flinch.
She was about to, but she had reminded herself that she was the older sibling between them and if one had to be scared of the other, then it was not supposed to be her.
“He fell on my lap by ‘chance’ you say?” Andrew repeated, “You underestimate the science, Molly. I didn’t just stumble upon Harry. He gave himself to me because he was the only one with enough spirit to survive the process. And look at the results, Lolleta is proof that I can create life from nothing but my own will.”
He reached out, his fingers ghosting over the lapel of Molly’s blazer, mirroring the way she had just reached for Harry on the bench.
“You think you’re protecting him,” Andrew whispered, his voice dropping to a dangerous, intimate level.
“Well you are mistaken because you’re just prolonging the ‘entertainment’ for me. Do you really think he’ll run? Harry is a McGuire. He’d never back away from his decisions, and right now he has decided to come back to ‘me’…the father of his child.” The emphasis of his wording rang in Molly’s ear with precise claim for his possession of Harry.
Molly’s eyes flashed with a cold, sapphire fire.
The provocation had hit her where it hurts the most, because she had no idea that Harry was never the father of Lolleta.
Andrew knew that very well, hence he made the provocation to instill insecurity on Molly about the link between him and Harry.
And it worked.
“And what if he does run? What then, Andrew? You’ve already taken his brother. If you break Harry, you lose the only connection you have to that child. Not that he wants to be with you anyway.”
“Then I’ll make him beg to be with me”
“Gerald will never let you near him, that old man doesn’t play with his family.”
“Well is Gerald here now?…No…the Bishop is a broken old man clinging to a dead god. And besides he has long casted Harry out of the family.” Andrew countered, his eyes darkening.
“He’s irrelevant and he won’t do anything to me, he can’t.”
“And besides, my focus is only on Harry, once I get Lolleta back under my thumb, Harry will follow. Blood calls to blood, sister. It’s the one law even a Mayfair can’t rewrite.”
He leaned in closer, his breath cold against her cheek.
“Don’t forget your place, Molly. You may be the eldest grandchild of the family, but I am the sole successor. If you interfere with the plans to reunite with my little family, I might have to remind you that even family can be considered… commoners….if they step out of line.”
Andrew turned on his heel, his servants billowing behind him like a shadow.
“Go get me Lucas!” he barked, his voice echoing down the corridor.
One of the servants appeared from the shadows near the stairs, his head bowed.
“Go fetch Lucas from his dorm. Tell him I’m bored.”
“Yes, my Lord.”
The servant scurried away to proceed with his errand.
Molly watched Andrew as he disappeared away down the hallway.
She scoffed, fiddling the locket in between her fingers.
“He’s become too arrogant for a little brother. Well I suppose it’s time that I fed him some humble pie.” She clicked her tongue also turning on her heel to walk away and her own escorts followed behind her, scurrying all the way with their heads bowed down.
******
Late at night, in the middle of the unknown at the commoner dormitories.
Two figures stood at the shadows, like thieves up to no good in the land of righteousness.
They stood with their backs pressed against opposite sides of a cold stone corner, using the masonry as a shield against the moonlight.
Harry stood deeper in the darkness, immersed in the shadows as if he belonged into the void itself.
”Harry…
why did you call for me?”
The voice resonated calmly from across the wall.
It belonged to Jace, smooth but carrying caution.
Harry didn’t turn.
He kept his eyes on the empty walkway ahead, his hand clasped tightly into a fist until his knuckles ached, silently praying that his gamble tonight would actually pay off.
“I need your help, Jace,” Harry spoke firmly, his voice cutting through the damp night air.
“No. Actually, I need your power and your ability.”
A low, amused hum came from the other side of the stone.
“Mhm, my power and abilities, you say… Then let me guess. Is this desperate middle-of-the-night rendezvous because of Andrew Mayfair?”
”Yes,” Harry admitted, the name alone drawing a bitter taste to his mouth.
Before Jace could voice the immediate objections rising in his throat, Harry cut him off, his tone sharp with urgency.
“—but I promise you, it’s only for my daughter’s sake. Nothing else. No family politics, no revenge. Just her.”
”Harry, you’re asking for a miracle,” Jace replied, his calm demeanor slipping into something heavier.
“You know that my identity could be completely compromised if I intervene. Andrew is not stupid, and more importantly, he has eyes and ears everywhere. If he catches even a whisper of my family’s frequency in your affairs, we are done.”
”He won’t find out if we do things properly,” Harry urged, stepping slightly out of the deeper dark, his voice laced with a sincere desperation he rarely showed to anyone.
Jace let out a long, weary sigh that echoed faintly in the narrow space.
Slowly, he walked around the corner of the wall, stepping into the dim light to face Harry properly.
He looked at the fierce determination burning in Harry’s eyes and felt a reluctant, dangerous pull.
“My family is not as big as the Mayfairs,” Jace murmured, a slow, calculated smile spreading across his face, “but we can definitely do some damage if we strike the right nerve.”
Relief washed over Harry like a sudden wave, the tension in his shoulders instantly dropping.
He looked up at Jace, a genuine, grateful smile breaking through his exhaustion.
”However— ” Jace added, the word dropping like a guillotine.
A sudden silence rushed in between them, heavy and cold.
Harry’s grateful smile melted away, freezing back into a hard, defensive frown.
”Nothing is for free, Harry McGuire, and you know that better than anyone,” Jace said, his tone shifting into something distinctly predatory.
He stepped closer, closing the distance until the heat of his body invaded Harry’s space.
“Especially when Andrew is as toxic as venom. He won’t just harm me if he finds out; he will systematically dismantle my family too. So, your compensation has to align with the absolute danger of the task.”
Harry’s eyes narrowed into slits.
“Jace, what do you want?”
Jace smirked, a dark, opportunistic glint in his eye as he leaned even closer, crowding Harry against the stone until their chests physically touched.
“Well…Since you stubbornly refuse to sleep with me, and you won’t even let me touch you… then how about a different kind of transaction? Make sure that my prospective marriage with your sister, Noelle, falls through.”
Harry’s breath hitched.
”In the sea of elite candidates currently vying for her hand to form a political alliance with your father,” Jace whispered, his breath brushing against Harry’s lips, “make sure my name is the one that prevails.
Guarantee me that union.”
”What?
Jace, that’s—” Harry gasped, shock rippling through him.
”If not,” Jace interrupted, his voice dropping an octave, “then you spend two nights with me.”
”That’s absurd!” Harry panicked, his palms slamming against Jace’s chest to push him back, but Jace didn’t budge.
“Noelle… my baby sister is only fifteen! She has her whole life ahead of her. She can’t get married, least of all to a snake like you!”
”Okay, then I guess it’s settled,” Jace murmured smoothly.
He leaned in even closer, tilting his head, his lips threatening to press against Harry’s in an unwanted, aggressive advance.
“You’ll be sleeping with me instead. Let’s test if it’s really possible to knock you up a second time… or does that miraculous little trait only apply when you’re under Andrew Mayfair?”
Crack.
The sound of the slap was loud and sharp, slicing through the quiet courtyard like a gunshot.
Harry’s hand connected violently with Jace’s cheek, forcing Jace’s head to snap to the side.
Harry was shaking, a toxic mix of fury, disgust, and violated pride boiling over.
”What the fuck do you take me for?” Harry hissed, his voice trembling with pure rage as he pointed a defensive finger at Jace’s face.
“I don’t sleep with men, and don’t you dare ever disrespect me like that again! …Fuck it. It was my damn mistake to think that there were still actual people on my side around here. Fuck off, Jace!”
Harry clicked his tongue in profound disgust, spinning on his heel to storm back into the shadows.
But before he could take two steps, Jace lunged forward.
His fingers clamped around Harry’s wrist like iron manacles, and with a sudden burst of strength, he yanked Harry back and slammed him hard against the concrete wall.
”Jace!
You—” Harry snarled, his hand instantly reaching for the hidden blade beneath his coat.
”Hey, hey, hey!
Calm down!
I was only playing with you, okay?” Jace interrupted frantically, his voice completely stripping itself of its previous arrogance.
“Just calm down… for old time’s sake. Please.”
Harry froze, his back pressed hard against the wall, his eyes fiercely searching Jace’s face for the lie.
But what he saw blew him away.
Jace wasn’t smirk-faced anymore.
In fact, he was trembling, his pupils dilated with a sudden, overwhelming terror.
His complexion had gone entirely pale, like a scared cat that had just realized it was trapped in a cage with a tiger.
Slowly, Harry tracked the direction of Jace’s anxious, petrified gaze.
He turned his head slightly, looking over Jace’s shoulder into the distance of the moonlit courtyard.
A dark silhouette was cutting through the fog, walking with a slow, agonizingly familiar pace.
Andrew Mayfair was approaching.
A dark, breathless chuckle escaped Harry’s throat as the pieces of the puzzle clicked into place.
The sudden panic, the trembling hands, the desperate plea for calm.
It wasn’t remorse that had changed Jace’s tune; it was absolute survival.
”Haaaa…
now I see,” Harry whispered, the disgust in his voice turning into cold amusement.
With a sharp, authoritative jerk of his arm, he yanked his hands completely out of Jace’s loosened grip.
”You’re sorry because of him, isn’t it?” Harry mocked, stepping forward, effectively reversing the power dynamic in an instant.
He leaned toward Jace, watching the boy flinch away.
“You’re terrified that I would run crying to Andrew as the father of his child, and that he would systematically erase your entire bloodline from the face of this earth by morning?”
Jace swallowed hard, taking a involuntary step back, his eyes darting frantically between Harry and the approaching silhouette of the Mayfair Prince.
”Well then…
for old time’s sake, I’ll let it slide,” Harry murmured, his lips curling into a sharp, dangerous smirk.
He had the upper hand now, and he knew exactly how to play it.
”Harry—” Jace whispered, his voice cracking.
”But not for free, nothing is for free in this world after all isn’t it?” Harry countered, his dark eyes locking onto Jace with absolute authority.
He tilted his head toward the approaching danger, giving Jace a front-row seat to his own impending doom if he chose to refuse.
“So… do we have a deal Jace?”
Jace looked at Harry, then at the shadow of Andrew closing the distance, and bitterly, horrifically, he nodded
“Good boy” Harry patted Jace’s shoulder and then he walked past him heading towards the dorms’ entrance at the opposite direction
“Now then, go…go to work and make that bastard’s reputation pummel to the ground.”
With that he eventually walked away and relief suddenly washed over him.
If it hadn’t been for Andrew walking past nothing would have worked out, instead he could’ve been harmed.
Now it was evidently obvious that he couldn’t rely on anyone in the campus, he was still regarded as the defective after all.
******
Harry pulled down his hood and sighed softly as he pushed open the creaking door of the dormitory building.The building was thick with the scent of cheap detergent and stagnant air.
The moment Harry rounded the final corner of the concrete hallway, the heavy atmosphere shifted.
**Alice** was leaning against the peeling paint of his door, her arms crossed, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.
The second her eyes locked onto his silhouette cutting through the dim corridor light, she didn’t waste any time.
“Harry!” She lunged forward, throwing her arms around his neck, and attacked his lips with a kiss full of frantic, unchecked longing.
Harry staggered back half a step, his hands automatically catching her waist to steady them both.
“Whoa, girl… hold on,” he breathed, managing to pull back just an inch, his voice a low chuckle against her jaw.
“What’s with you tonight?, did you miss me much?”
“Harry, just kiss me,” Alice murmured, her fingers tangling into the hair at the nape of his neck, pulling him right back down.
“I really missed you. Ever since we parted ways this morning I couldn’t stop thinking about you. So kiss me, I want you.”
Harry didn’t fight it this time.
He leaned into the heat of her mouth, letting his eyelids fall shut.
It had been far too long.
Between the suffocating weight of the McGuire name, and hiding from the predatory shadow of Andrew Mayfair, and the absolute, consuming reality of fatherhood, he hadn’t had a single second to just breathe, let alone look at a woman.
His life was an endless sequence of strategic moves and defensive walls.
He needed a break.
He needed to relax—but more than anything, he needed to release.
Grunting softly, Harry scooped Alice up, his large hands gripping the underside of her thighs as she wrapped her legs tightly around his waist.
He fumbled with the key behind his back, the metal clicking loudly in the quiet hall.
Technically, the commoner dorm rules were absolute: no guests after hours, and absolutely no women overnight.
But in this forgotten wing of the campus, with the shadows serving as his only witness, who would even know?
He kicked the door shut with the heel of his boot, locking it in the same fluid motion.
They didn’t even make it to the mattress before the friction began.
He pressed her back against the wood of the door, his hands sliding up beneath her top, tracing the warm skin of her ribs, snaking his hand underneath her bra and squeezing her breast.
Just then he swiftly slid his hand in between her thighs multitasking between unzipping his pants and pleasing her.
He carefully penetrated himself inside of her, slightly feeling the resistance and warmth welcoming him with a squeeze.
“Ah, yes… Harry, oh my,” Alice gasped into the hollow of his throat, her nails digging through the fabric of his shirt as their bodies rocked and ground against each other, catching all the rising steam in the dark room.
His insides tingled with pleasure, feeling her warmth wrapped around him and it sent shivers throughout his body, that he tightly held onto her legs as he gradually pounded his torso against her.
But just as the heat was about to boil over, a sharp, rhythmic knocking rattled the wood right behind Alice’s head.
*Knock.
Knock.
Knock.*
Harry froze, his forehead resting against hers, his chest heaving.
“Urgh, fuck,” he growled, a heavy, venomous curse vibrating in his chest.
“Why now, of all times?”
He reluctantly pulled out of the deep kiss, hesitating for a fraction of a second as he caught his ragged breath.
The knocking came again, persistent and loud enough to draw attention if left unanswered.
Muttering a string of hushed curses, he kept Alice hooked around his torso and carried her all the way into the smaller inner bedroom, dropping her gently onto the unmade sheets.
“Stay put,” he whispered, his eyes dark with frustration as he stole one more lingering, aggressive kiss from her lips.
“I’ll get rid of whoever that is and come right back, okay?”
Pulling up his low-slung denim pants but leaving his chest entirely bare, Harry marched back to the front room.
His jaw was clenched, his expression a mask of pure, annoyance as he ripped the door open, ready to take the head off whoever was standing on the threshold.
He yanked the door inward—and stopped.
There stood **Lucas**, looking pale and incredibly small beneath the harsh corridor light, his arms wrapped tightly around a heavy, cardboard box sealed with thick packing tape.
“Lucas,” Harry snapped, his voice dropping into a harsh, warning tone.
“What awful timing. I am kind of busy right now.”
Lucas’s eyes flicked up, taking in the scene in a single, devastating second.
He looked at Harry’s flushed face, the prominent smear of lipstick staining his lips, and the unbuttoned waistband of his jeans.
Lucas swallowed hard, nodding slowly as a mask of quiet, hurt understanding settled over his features.
“I can see that I came at the wrong time,” Lucas said, his voice flat, though there was a slight tremor in his hands as he held the box.
He snarled looking at Harry up down once again.
“That was fast, don’t you think? You’ve just came back to the school, and you’re already—”
“Lucas, state your business, please,” Harry interrupted, his patience entirely spent as he gripped the edge of the doorframe.
“I’m in a rush here.”
“Oh. Yes, yes, I’m sorry,” Lucas hurried to apologize, the flush of embarrassment turning his cheeks a mottled red.
He awkwardly thrust the heavy box forward, pushing it toward Harry’s bare chest.
“This is all Malfoy’s stuff. I cleared out his room and packed all of his personal belongings in here… just in case the instructors decide to saddle me with a new roommate tomorrow.”
Harry didn’t even look inside.
He didn’t want the ghost of Malfoy anywhere near his space, and he certainly didn’t want the reminders of him.
He placed a cold palm against the cardboard, pushing it firmly back into Lucas’s arms.
“Throw it away. I don’t need it,” Harry said, his voice dead and dismissive.
“Or you can just keep it all for yourself, he was your friend after all.”
“But Harry, that’s—”
“Goodnight, Lucas. Go to bed,” Harry cut him off cleanly, his silver eyes flashing with an icy finality.
“You look like you really need it.”
Before Lucas could utter another word, Harry slammed the heavy oak door right in his face.
And the click of the deadbolt echoed like a gunshot in the corridor.
Lucas stood frozen on the concrete walkway, his breath catching in a sharp, disbelieving gasp.
The weight of the box felt ten times heavier in his arms.
“This rude prick…” he whispered to the empty air, his voice shaking with a volatile mix of rejection and sudden, sharp anger.
“Did he just–…?”
He huffed, a bitter, humorless laugh escaping him as he spun on his heel.
He stormed down the hallway, his boots clicking furiously against the floorboards as he mumbled to himself, the heat of his anger finally breaking through his grief.
“That fucking bastard!”
Inside, the sound of Lucas’s retreating footsteps faded into nothing.
Harry didn’t waste a single second staring at the door.
He turned and rushed back into the bedroom, the annoyance melting away, replaced by the heavy, predatory hunger that had been interrupted.
“Baby, where were we?” he smirked, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly purr as he lunged himself onto the mattress, his heavy frame sliding over Alice, pinning her beneath his weight as his hands locked above her head.
Alice let out a soft, pleased laugh, her fingers instantly finding the bare skin of his shoulders, but her eyes darted toward the bedroom door for a split second.
“Who was that at the door?”
“No one important,” Harry whispered, his lips already dragging along the line of her throat, erasing the outside world with every breath.
“For now… just focus on me.” He parted her legs with his knees and positioned himself inbetween her legs.
Ready to pounce on her like a starving wild animal.