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Chapter Text

“ Now there are Snapes on a plane,” Harry told the professor as he insisted on helping the teen get his luggage onto the Parkinson’s plane.  He motioned to Julian. “There are now plural Snapes.”

Severus gave him an unimpressed look.  “Just because this git is stuck in my head does not make us married,” he grumbled, but Julian was giving Harry a thumbs up from behind Severus.

“I can hear you laughing in my head and it’s not funny,” the darker-haired man huffed.

“It’s a little funny,” Pansy piped up as she walked up the steps to the plane, Nagini following her.

“I can’t believe we’re sneaking snakes through customs again, this time knowingly,” Ron sighed, Sapphire perching comfortably on his head, the spiral-shaped scars on his arms vacillating as he picked up his duffel bag, only to have Viktor take it from him and insist on carrying it.

“Oh relax- what is life if you don’t break a few rules?” Hermione batted his ear fondly, which caused the redhead to look at Pansy, aghast.

“You get out of her head- it’s bad enough that I’m getting smarter, but you’re turning ‘Mione into a… a miscreant!    Which is a word I didn’t even know before that comet came along!”

“Ronald,” Hermione looked down her nose at him, raising her eyebrows.  “I set a teacher on fire first year- I was never miss goody-two-shoes.”

“That girl’s been breaking all the house rules since she was a child- hiding a flashlight under her covers to read after bedtime,” Jean Granger said fondly, offering her daughter a scrunchy for her hair, which was bouncing about her face in tight curls.

“I’m so excited to see all the native plant life in Australia,” Neville exclaimed, hand-in-hand with Blaise, mirroring the position of Frank and Alice, who were doing the same thing behind them.

“I still think it’s a bad idea to go to Queensland during magpie swooping season, and renting a house in the suburbs, of all things…” Minerva worried the hem of her blouse as they all boarded and the plane doors shut.

“Mama, millions of Australians live in Australia and stay alive every day… honestly, the white Australians have killed more than anything else on that island- poor aboriginals,” Harry sighed sadly.

“I told you not to watch The Rabbit Proof Fence, but no one listens to me,” Hannah shook her head at her friend in a knowing way.

“ I didn’t even pick the movie last night- blame Hermione for choosing something educational that pertained to our trip,” he defended himself.

“But it was your idea to watch something educational that pertained to our trip- I just happened to know something that fit the bill,” the black girl quipped.

“At least I wasn’t crying as hard as Blaise.”

“Hey- I have to have somewhere to target my emotions, because in real life I just keep them right here,” he motioned to his chest, “and one day I’ll die.”

“Speaking as the person in your head, you are absolutely not as cool as you try to come across as,” Neville rolled his eyes.

“You’re right- I’m cooler.”

“No.”

“Whee!” Cedric cried as the plane took off (for it was a Saturday).

“So, who’s excited for this vacation?” Cho asked calmly, to balance out her boyfriend.

“I’m bloody chuffed,” Bill spoke up from the back, where he was in the middle seat between Fleur and Malala.  “The goblins never give me this much off time.”

“It eez because your friends weeth ‘arry,” Fleur informed him.  “Ze goblins love ‘im.”

“Don’t I know it?” Bill rolled his eyes.  “I spend years trying to earn their trust as an employee and working my way up, and that cute little thing just wins them over in the first hour he’s met them.”

“I am not cute!” Harry shouted from his seat.

“You’re sitting on Draco’s lap, and you’re not even in your animagus form,” Pansy batted at him playfully from her seat behind them.  “You’re fucking precious.”

“You are pretty precious, babe.” Draco smiled adoringly at Harry before kissing his boyfriend’s ear.

“No, you’re precious, you sweet little prat,” Harry mumbled back, crossing his arms over his chest.

[The gentle movement of the plane soon puts Harry to sleep, and he snores gently against Draco’s chest.  Kreacher is flying the plane, because all that free time since Winky started taking Dursley shifts with Dobby enabled him to get his pilot’s license.]

“Wow- for it being winter here, it’s really hot,” Dean complained as he fanned himself with a loose parchment.

“I like it,” Seamus said, looking around.

“Oh my gods, he’s going to burn down the whole country,” Pansy groaned as she put her head in her scarred hands.

“Kreacher’s almost back with the shuttle,” Minerva assured them as they waited on the tarmac.  “Then we’ll head to customs.” She was a little concerned about the heat herself, as Harry had taken his jumper off, which he almost never did.  She ran a thumb anxiously over an old scar on his upper arm, trying to figure out if he was overheating.

“I’m fine mama,” he reassured her, good at knowing what she was worrying about.

Kreacher came with the bus-sized shuttle and snapped his fingers so all the luggage piled into the back.  He took them from the tarmac to the customs office, glamouring himself and the snakes (except for Sapphire, who could turn herself invisible, thank you very much) so that no one would notice them while the humans went into the building.

“So like, I can show this visa and they won’t give me a hard time even if I look completely different than I did when they gave it to me, right?” Tonks asked as they came out about an hour later, piling back in.

“They are rather unlikely to just stop you on the streets and ask you for your visa, luv,” Sarah told her girlfriend as the car started.  “But if they do, confundus charm.”

“And you can also use magic here underage,” Rosmerta added, reading through a tourist brochure.  “Not that it would matter anyway, as it technically isn’t even summer here.”

“Ahhh, technicalities- the Slytherin’s heroin,” Millie took a deep breath in and sighed in satisfaction.

“I’m pretty sure a few of our noble ancestors have done actual heroin,” Regulus chuckled.  “It’s a somewhat muggle thing to do, but they seem to have overlooked that, if Great-Great-Uncle Castor’s portrait is any indication.”

“He really has more of a crack-smoker kind of face,” Sirius disputed.

“Our soulmates are rather eccentric, no?” Remus looked at Cygnus, who just shrugged as though to say ‘aren’t we all?’

When they finally pulled up to the house (which was rather large, although couples, including the teen ones, would still have to share bedrooms- not that they had any complaints), Severus made the mistake of being the first one out of the van.  A mistake because it was magpie swooping season, and there was a magpie nest in a tree in the front yard. The professor ran, screaming in a rather undignified manner as he was chased by the bird.

“Uncle Sev!” Harry quickly jumped out of the van before anyone could stop him, and the bird immediately stopped maliciously swooping on Severus and went to land on Harry’s shoulder, fondly nuzzling his ear.  Hedwig, from the van, hooted indignantly.

“Of fucking course the swoopy death bird loves Harry,” Pansy groaned.  “Why Australia? We’re just dangling adorable cuddle bait for every creature in this damn country.”

Harry ignored her, giving mama magpie one last scritch on the forehead.  “Back to your eggs now, luv- we have to go unpack.” She chirped in agreement before flapping back to her tree.

“Hmm, cozy,” Harry commented when he and Draco reached their little room, painted a cheerful yellow, with a patchwork quilt on the full-sized bed.  “Could use a bit of cleaning, though.” He quickly summoned some non-latex gloves and other cleaning supplies, pouring some fluid in the bucket and dipping a rag in.

“Here, luv- we can just do a few scouring charms,” Draco objected, hating to think of his love cleaning like he had at the Dursleys.

“It’s alright, babe- see, I want to,” he reminded him, tapping his head to remind him to tune into the mental bond.  “I want to move around a bit after the long flight, and Kreacher’s already commandeered the kitchen.  Besides, cleaning with magic just doesn’t give off the same… fresh feeling.”

“If you really want to, I won’t stop you, but that last bit is a bunch of hippogriff dung- there is absolutely no difference,” Draco snickered, swinging his legs as he sat on the bed.

“There totally is to those of us who are good at our craft,” Harry bantered back as he got to work on the baseboards.  

“Uh-huh, sure…”

[Kreacher and Molly Weasley argue a bit about who gets to cook dinner before Sarah, ever the therapist, helpfully suggests they both do it.]

“Um, what’s that?” Susan asked as they all sat down to dinner.

“We’ve made some native Australian foods,” Molly informed her pleasantly.  “We made emu pie- it has emu, feta, red wine, and sundried tomatoes- and the wine is denatured, Pansy, so don’t look so excited about it.  It can’t get you drunk.”

“Why emu?” Ginny asked, wrinkling her nose just a bit.

“The bird is being super high in iron content- much higher than beef,” Kreacher informed them, spooning a large helping of the savoury pastry onto Harry’s plate.  “We also been cooking Macadamia nut bread and ham and split pea soup.”

“It looks delicious, guys,” Harry smiled brightly at Kreacher and Molly.

“It is being super nutritious for little master Harry,” the old elf said dotingly as he patted Harry’s hand.

“It’s emu, though…” Blaise still seemed reluctant.  “I mean, Harry’ll eat anything, so of course he’s fine with it- I mean, he’s never lost a single game of Will Harry Eat This (something they played in the great hall, where they dared Harry to eat weird food combinations like pickles and peanut butter.  It worried Severus to no end, because what if he developed new allergies?! ).”

“Is it because the emu is a close cousin to the ostrich and you don’t want to eat your kin?”  Cho asked him sympathetically. Blaise gave her a dirty look.

“I wasn’t even thinking about my animagus form, but now I am, so thanks for reminding me,” he grumbled at the Ravenclaw.

“Just shut up and eat your emu,” Pansy ordered, forking up a bite.

“How have we been friends for so long?” the other Slytherin sighed, reluctantly poking at the pie with his fork.

“I ask myself that same question- I’m so much cooler than you,” she said, straight-faced (although she would deny anything about her was straight, of course).

“So, Great Barrier reef tomorrow?” Molly deftly changed the subject, knowing when an argument was coming after raising seven kids.

“I can’t wait!” Harry cheered, before Kreacher took it upon himself to shovel another bite into the teen’s mouth.

Chapter Text

“So wait- you just rented out an entire section of the Great Barrier reef for the day, all so we could use Bubblehead charms instead of using muggle dive equipment?” Harry asked Pansy’s parents as they all got in the van the next day (Harry had to go out the door first, because everyone else was afraid they would be attacked by the magpie unless she saw her friend first).

“Yes, of course- we didn’t want you all to carry around all that heavy dive equipment,” Dan said, as if it was the simplest thing in the world.

“Oh, um… thanks,” Harry finished.  He wouldn’t have minded carrying the all the stuff, but it was a sweet gesture.  Although it never would have occurred to him… rich people were just a different breed, he supposed (technically, with the amount in his accounts, he was even richer, but spending his childhood treated like a pauper, he didn’t really have the mentality that so often comes with so much money).

“Of course, luv- some of that stuff weighs more than you,” Petra Parkinson chuckled, ruffling his hair as adults tended to do.

“I… damn, I don’t have a good argument for that,” Harry sighed, resigned to defeat.

You’re so dramatic sometimes- unless it’s actually something worth making a fuss about, Draco snorted fondly in his head.

Yeah, whatever… Harry crossed his arms as he buckled his seatbelt, placing his head on Draco’s chest.

“I can finally make use of my animagus form,” Viktor realised brightly once they’d all pulled up to the beach and piled out into the sand.

“Oh yeah- that’s awesome!” Millie told the soulmate of her soulmate’s soulmate (yeah, a fuck-chain just about described it…).

“Chomp chomp,” Luna added helpfully as Viktor splashed deep enough into the water to transform.  Ron screwed up his face in concentration and, with Hermione’s voice in his head offering helpful advice, managed to perform the bubblehead charm on himself on the first try (which was awesome- it’s a sixth-year spell and it’s pretty hard).  The rest of them also put on their charms or helped their friends that hadn’t been taught the charm put it on before they all stepped carefully into the water. Severus was last in, as he was putting various anti-venoms and potions into his ever-present utility belt (seriously, nevermind the fact that animals loved Harry- why would they bring him to such a dangerous country?!).

Relax, would you? Julian rolled his eyes.   He’s going to be fine.

You don’t know that- what if he picks up strange pathogens and gets sick and then dies? Severus had a mini-panic attack, the latest of several since the magpie incident (imagine if the bird hadn’t liked Harry…)

He’s on immunotherapy, and we’ll notice if he gets sick… and there’s nothing dangerous going around right now, or we wouldn’t have brought him, Julian reminded him before shoving Severus into the water, lest he just stay on shore and worry forever.

Rude, the Slytherin harrumphed, before nearly having a full-blown anxiety attack when he watched Harry making friends with a large barracuda.

“Normally I’d say you were being a worry-wart, but I have to agree with the face you’re making- my heart can’t take this,” Minerva said into her bubble as she clutched her chest and Harry, oblivious, played a game of keep-away with his new toothy pal.  Viktor held himself back from making a snack out of the large fish, since Harry was so clearly fond of it.

“Oh Merlin, now there’s another shark, and a jellyfish.  And oh… a sea snake, which actually worries me least.”

“Oh, that’s a yellow-bellied one, the most venomous one they have.  Lovely,” Minnie commented drily, as Harry had what seemed to be an interesting conversation with the creature, if the way he was moving his hands about was any indication.

“I go with you to your home?” the snake was asking Harry.  “I would very much like to.”

“I’m ssssssorry,” Harry told the creature sympathetically.  “We don’t have a sssssea for you, so I don’t think you’d be very happy there.”

“It’sssss fine- I normally don’t come near the reefsssss, but I left the open ocean and ssssswam here when I sssssensed a sssssspeaker, ssssso assss you can sssssee, I’m very adaptable,” the pelagic serpent bartered.

“I’m sssssure that’ssss true, but we don’t even have any sssssalt water at Hogwartssssss,” Harry explained.  

“No sssssalt water?  How do you ssssssurvive?” the snake sniffed.

“We breath air, so it’sssss not really an isssssue.”

“Well, yessssss, but you have no ocean to sssssswim in.”

“We have a lake, which isssss fun to sssssswim in assss well,” Harry informed them.

“Oh, sssssso you bring me with you and add ssssalt to the lake- problem ssssssolved,” the serpent said, as if that was a very simple thing to do.

“I don’t think it’s quite ssssssso easssssssy,” Harry chuckled a bit.  “But I appreciate the idea.”

“You could make a big tank?”

“I don’t think you would be happy in a big tank,” Harry broke the news gently, and the sea snake let out a hissing sigh.

“I sssssuposssse,” they sighed.  “But it wasssss very nice to meet you- I have to go find sssssome ssssssurface precipitation to drink now, but I enjoyed our chat, little human sssspeaker- if you’re ever in the Pacific, ask for Wigglesssss.” Then Wiggles wiggled away.  

They continued to explore the magnificence of the reef (and Harry continued to make friends with the sea life, including a very large moray eel that gave Draco quote ‘the heebie jeebies’ because it reminded him of Ursula’s in The Little Mermaid).  

“That was really fun,” Ginny exclaimed as they all dried off (and Minnie washed Harry off with an augmenti charm so that his sensitive skin wouldn’t be irritated by the salt).

“Speak for yourself,” Severus grumbled, as Minerva’s heart rate slowly decreased to normal.

“Yeah, I kinda did…”

“Such cheeky little hoodlums I teach,” he sighed.  “And now I’ve signed up for summer duties as well- let it be noted that I’m atoning for my many wrongs, at least.”

“And everyone says I’m dramatic,” Harry rolled his eyes at Severus and laughed.

“Yeah, get some rest, tall child- you’re so cranky,” Regulus snorted.

“Let’s get him some lunch and he’ll feel better,” Minnie reached up to ruffle his wet hair, which of course only made his scowl more pronounced.

“Did you have anything special in mind that you wanted to eat, luv?” the tabby animagus turned to ask her son.

“Actually, I’ve been really craving Thai food for a while now…”

“Oh, little master should have said something earlier,” Kreacher gently chastised Harry as he led them all to the van.  “Kreacher could have had the elves make something for little master.” He turned to Draco- “Why didn’t little master’s bonded be telling Kreacher little master been wanting Thai food?”

“Uh, I don’t know, I guess things have just been so crazy lately…” Draco said, looking guilty now that he thought about it.

“It’s fine, Dray- you don’t have to take care of my every whim just because you’re in my head,” Harry told the blonde with a gentle kiss on the lips as Kreacher sped to the nearest Thai restaurant.

“Mmm, but maybe I want to,” Draco teased as he nuzzled Harry’s neck.

“Ugh, get a room, you two,” Pansy ordered, flicking her hair back off her shoulders indignantly.

“You never do,” Harry pointed out, redirecting a gentle tickling charm she’d sent at him, moving it around with his mage senses until it hit her.

“Did you learn nothing from fake Moody?” Draco taunted, revelling in Pansy’s unusual moment of submission as she begged Harry to take it off in between laughs.

“I’m gonna get you back later,” she vowed when it finally wore off on its own.

“I look forward to the battle of wills.” Harry stuck his tongue out at her.

[Harry realises that they’ve apparently stumbled upon a wizarding hang-out spot as he realises that nearly everyone in the restaurant has a magical core.]

Severus performed a subtle scan on the appetizers to make sure the staff had followed their instructions and omitted any sesame oil from the food so Harry wouldn’t have an allergic reaction.

“I can feel you doing that, you know,” Harry informed him as he bit into a steamed dumpling.

“I know, and you can also smell it, see it, hear it, and taste it, because you have a stupidly impressive level of magical power,” the potions master told his nephew to distract from the fact that he was being overprotective.

“I really don’t make a habit of tasting other people’s magic, you know.  I’m pretty sure yours would clash with the ginger, anyway,” the green-eyed teen quipped as he reached for the dipping sauce.

“Oh, quit being so cheeky, Sparky, and pass me the satay,” Severus ordered, and Harry did so, but only after he’d levitated it just out of reach to tease the man.

They were eating their sweet sticky rice with mango when Harry dropped his spoon in surprise- he felt a magical signature that he’d seen somewhere before… but where?

Hmmm, Draco helped him rifle through his memories, and together they quickly located the one they were looking for.  From the spy museum last summer, a particular deck of tarot cards…

“Jane Seymour?” Harry asked, as the woman passed, and she, too, dropped the pile of dinnerware she’d been carrying to the kitchen.

“I… you must be mistaken…” she deflected, looking at this little green-eyed child like she’d seen a ghost.  And then she saw his scar. “Harry Potter.”

“Yes, that’s me, but I know I’m not mistaken about you- I have mage senses, and…”

“You know what, why don’t we talk in my office?” she asked, not wanting to draw any more attention to herself than necessary.  “I own the restaurant, so we can have a bit more privacy back there.” She led the large party through to a very zen-looking space with floor cushions in place of chairs, and a large statue of the Buddha next to a gentle, trickling waterfall fountain in the corner.

“I know you’re Jane Seymour,” Harry said again.  “Your tarot cards, they were-”

“Oh, those damn cards… of course that would come back to bite me in the arse, and it did, defo,” she groaned, her accent a strange mix of British and Australian.

“So, you’re…”

“Immortal, yeah- got a little recipe off Nicholas Flamel, made some improvements so I only had to take it once, then got rid of it, because I couldn’t have everyone and their mum come askin’ me for immortality like it was a choccy biccy, now could I?”

“Er…”

“So I suppose you have some questions, then… yes, I am Jane Seymour- actress, Queen of England from 1536-1537, but really, those are some of the least exciting things I’ve done, in my own personal opinion.”

“Wait, so the actress and the queen are…” Pansy looked like she was about to burst from excitement- this was clearly an icon in front of her.

“The same person- me, yeah.  Queen was just the beginning of my life- I wasn’t immortal, yet, but I was a lady-in-waiting to dear old Annie.  Rather ironically sad, that she was” here she stopped to make a chopping motion across her neck “when I was the witch, but life’s a bitch, or so they’ve started saying in… what was it, last fifty years?”

“Not quite that long,” Hermione answered.

“Oh, ta- a girl loses track after a few centuries, as I’m sure you can guess.  Anyway, I was a friend of Anne’s, really, but when the king made a move on you, you didn’t say no if you valued your life, and I was young and scared, so I capitulated, and that kind of put a damper in our relationship as gal pals, as I’m sure you can imagine.  But I was still sad to see her go- not least because I wasn’t too keen on being queen as well as mistress, but again, you didn’t say no to Henry VIII, the old wanker. But he was like a horse loose in a hospital, that one, so I went ahead and faked my death and off I went.”

“But wait- you had a child - how could you just abandon him?” Harry cried.

“Oh, Eddy?- just a house elf I hired to play a prince for a few years before faking his own death, that one.  Never actually pregnant, I wasn’t, and it was a clever bit of magic to fake that without getting caught, especially in an age of witch hunts and the like.  But I managed and off I went to explore the world for… what was it, maybe, oh, almost two hundred years or so. Racked up quite the fortune… had a few affairs, took a few bribes, swindled a few men, a bit of extortion here and there- you know the drill.  Around, 1790, 1791 or so, I believe it was, I was in Saint-Domingue, helped financially back the Haitian Revolution, travelled a tad more, settled down with some cool vampires in Albania for a couple hundred years, and then I did some acting, most famously as Solitaire in Live and Let Die.   I was also advocating for Aboriginal rights around that time, but unfortunately… well, you know how that turned out.  But I did fall in love with the landscape down in Straya, so I came back, opened a Thai restaurant, and now I’ll probably just chill here for a couple decades before I’m off to the next thing.”

“Quite a story,” Minnie commented, looking at her interestedly.

“Wow- girl goals,” Pansy breathed, looking up at her in awe.

“Well, I wouldn’t say I’ve been the best feminist- I was chilling with a lady cult of vampires for most of the first and second waves.  Although, we definitely experimented with sexual liberation, but I suppose you’re a bit young for that story.”

“No, please tell me more,” Pansy requested.

Wow, she said ‘please’- she’s really fangirling hard , Harry commented to Draco, who laughed, then breathed a sigh of relief when Jane told Pansy ‘maybe next time.’

“Anyway, it was lovely to meet you all, and it was rather nice to talk to someone honestly again,” the former queen/actress/activist told them.  “Consider your meal on the house- I do hope you enjoyed it. I only spend a decade or so in Thailand, so it was a bit of an adventure opening a restaurant from there instead of Albania or somewhere I know the culture better.  But I hired all Thai staff, so I do my best to make it authentic.”

“It was delicious, thank you, and we are extremely appreciative of your generosity,” Minerva came forward to shake Jane’s hand, which smelled of cloves, while her clothes carried a hint of spiced apple along with the scents the fabric had picked up from the kitchen.

“And you’re Minerva McGonagall, right?  You’ve made quite the impression as a Transfiguration professor, I hear- I was a Ravenclaw, so I can’t comment too much on your capabilities as a head of house without sounding biased.  I remember our Transfig professor when I was in Hogwarts was really rather inexperienced- of course, a lot was different then. The sorting hat was still in decent shape, Nearly-Headless Nick hadn’t even had his centennial deathday, Binns hadn’t even been born yet, so I actually had a wonderful History of Magic teacher- got a NEWT, I did.  But I suppose I’m getting off track,” she laughed. She leaned in a little closer to Minerva and pressed a piece of muggle notebook paper into her hand. “Here’s my floo address, if you ever want to indulge an old woman’s nostalgic rambles,” she whispered into her ear. “Enjoy your day, ta.”

“She was nice,” Harry commented as they left the restaurant.  “I liked how she didn’t stare at me or ask for an autograph or anything.  There were a couple of other people in there who were looking at me all weird.  I hate that.” By ‘a couple people’ he meant that the whole restaurant had been ogling him, but he’d gotten pretty good at ignoring it, and Severus’ glares were wonderful things for getting them to go back to their meals before too long and not even think about coming up to ask for autographs.

“Yes, she was a very interesting person,” Minerva agreed as she ruffled his hair.

“You alright mama?  You seem distracted,” Harry commented as he reached for her hand.

“Oh no, I’m fine darling- now why don’t we go do a bit of souvenir shopping, hmm?”

Chapter Text

“Hmm,” Minerva said, looking at the letter a post owl had dropped at the breakfast table.  

“Poppy’s decided to portkey over and join us- said she’d like a vacation in Australia.”

“Does she want a vacation or does she just wanna come over and watch me like a hawk here too?” Harry put forth perceptively, sprinkling a little more sugar on his oatmeal.

“Probably both,” Minerva conceded, “and oh- my, the post has taken a while to get here, apparently, as her portkey should be arriving soon.”

Soon happened to be right then, as they heard a scream on the front lawn that somehow still sounded rather stern even in its terror.  Madame Pomfrey had met the magpie, apparently. Harry rushed out of his seat and out the front door, at which point the bird quieted down immediately, flew over to Harry, softly pecked his ear as a sign of affection, and flapped back to her nest.

“Phew, thank you dear,” Poppy said with a ruffled harrumph as she cast an eye sideways at the magpie and straightened her clothing.

“Sorry- I would have come out to get you, but we literally just got your letter,” Harry told her as he led her inside.  “We might have to charm the couch into a bed for you- we weren’t planning on the extra person and we haven’t had time to make any arrangements.”

“Oh, that’s quite alright luv, I’m rather happy with the couch.  But for now, it’s time for your monthly check-up,” she said as she ushered him inside.  

“I knew you came to doctor me, Aunt Poppy,” Harry exclaimed as he rolled his eyes at her.

“Oh, I just happened to notice that it was the usual time for it, and since I’m here I might as well do it,” the nurse evaded.

“Uh huh, sure… ” Harry rolled his eyes again as they reached the living room and Poppy set him on the couch.

“Oh, is it Harry’s check-up day?” Regulus asked, a little confused.  “I was planning on doing it tomorrow- I must have my dates wrong.” He scrunched his forehead in thought.

“The plane ride probably threw you off,” Cygnus, ever the scientist, pointed out.  “It was like, 21 hours.”

“I’ll have to account for that when we go back,” the younger Black brother said, looking around for his planner when Kreacher brought it to him, with a pen.  Helpful, wonderful little elf, he was.

Meanwhile, Poppy was performing her diagnostic charms on Harry.  “Still not quite happy with your current weight,” she hummed discontentedly.

“Are you ever?” Harry sighed, swinging his legs.  “I’m eating as much as I can!” he protested, when the medi-witch gave him a stern look.

“I know,” she acknowledged.  “I just wish your appetite was better.”

“Oh my gods!” Severus’ eyes suddenly widened and he grabbed Regulus’ planner away, frantically scribbling something on it.  Over his shoulder, Julian was listening to his thoughts.

“Yes- brilliant, and if we…”

“Added that,” Severus picked up.

“Then we could…”

“Yes- come on- to the basement!” Severus said, dragging his soulmate by the arm as they headed down the stairs to where they’d set up a temporary lab.

“Well that was… something?” Neville watched them go.

“Yes, although it’s probably a good thing for us,” Poppy said hopefully, looking intently at the top of the staircase that the two potions masters disappeared down.

“Kreacher be procuring a new planner for Master Regulus while yous be gone today, as Kreacher does not be thinking that one be coming back to you,” the elf told Reg.

“Thanks buddy,” Regulus patted his head.  “Are you sure you don’t wanna go to the lava tubes?  You could just use an invisibility charm.”

“No thank yous,” Kreacher said.  “Kreacher came along to take care of little master Harry.  And the rest of you, Kreacher supposes,” he added as an afterthought.  “And Kreacher does not want to be being stepped on by muggles who can’t be seeing him.”

“Alright, Mama Kreach, you can do whatever you want.  I’ll leave some money on the table in case you want to go do some shopping in the magical quarter or something,” Sirius rubbed the elf’s long ears fondly as he always did while getting a glare for the nickname.

“Almost done with your checkup, darling,” Poppy told Harry as she took his pulse.  “All your vitals are good, which is wonderful. Now just stand up so I can get your height.”

“What’s the point?” Harry moaned dramatically.  “I’ve been 4’11” for the past six months.”

“Well, let’s just see,” Poppy made an upward flicking motion with her wand as she muttered the height measuring charm.  “Oh, would you look at that. Five feet and half an inch.”

“Yes!” Harry pumped his fist in the air and did a little goofy dance.  “That’s 5’1”- I’m rounding up. Woohoo! I’m five-one!” Draco laughed and didn’t contradict him, even in his thoughts, as he watched his happy dorky boyfriend celebrate his victory.

“Awww, now you’re only three and a half inches behind the next of us,” Ginny teased, talking about Susan, who was the next shortest at five-four.

“Three inches- I’m rounding up!” Harry declared again, his mood slightly dampened.

“Alright Fawn, if you say so,” Pansy capitulated, crumbling in the face of his big green eyes.

“As much as I hate to interrupt your celebration littl- I mean, Harry,” Narcissa corrected, figuring calling Harry her usual pet name of ‘little one’ right as he was celebrating his new height might irk him, “maybe we ought to drag Severus and Julian out of the basement and get going if we want to make the eleven o’clock tour.”

“I have this under control,” Molly informed them, emerging up the stairs a few moments later dragging Severus Snape by the ear as Julian followed sedately with just the slightest smirk on his face.

“You can finish your research later,” the Weasley matriarch ordered, hands on her hips.  “It will still be there- for now, we are on vacation and you are here to have fun.”  

“Potions are fun,” the dark-haired man grumbled.  His scowl only deepened as Poppy tossed a bottle of sunscreen at him.  Harry giggled as all the other pale children were rounded up for forced cream-slathering, until that is he was herded in as well.

“Hey- why do I have to wear sunscreen?  I’m not white enough to burn,” he grumbled as Minerva, helping Poppy with her sunscreen mission, pat some onto Harry’s face, leaving white streaks everywhere that she was trying to rub in.

“Everyone needs to wear sunscreen, Harry James Potter,” Poppy told him sternly.  “Unlike the government, skin cancer isn’t racist.”

“It’s so… sticky,” Draco grumbled.  

“Yes, but, unlike sun-protection potions, it doesn’t smell pungently of Acacia,” Regulus said instructively as Cygnus rubbed the cream into his shoulders.

“Severus, hold still!” Julian ordered as he pushed him down into a chair and held him there while he tried to rub a splotch on his nose.  “Or I will use a sticking charm.”

The only teenager who wasn’t making a fuss about sunscreen was Hermione, who slathered her arms with it while humming pleasantly, the layer of not-yet-blended white cream making her coloring go from ‘coffee’ to ‘coffee with a shot of whipped milk on top.’  She was too cute for melanoma, thank you very much.

[Fred and George have put a Weasley’s Color-Me-Gorgeous in a single one of the bottles of sunscreen, and now Severus, Neville and Blaise have bright pink skin.]

“Oh, how I wish you were still in school so I could give you detention,” Severus grumbled at them as his skin slowly faded back to normal on the drive to the caverns.  Of course, if they were in school, he wouldn’t have been able to go through with it, not with the twins who saved Harry.

“That train’s already left the station,” Fred laughed at his own joke.  

“I’m going to be on it this year, just you watch,” Harry crossed his arms.  Last year there had been the allergy scare, and the year before that, pneumonia, but this year Harry was determined to make the journey from Hogwarts to King’s Cross and back to Hogwarts again (because a circuitous and unnecessary journey was an important social passage, even if he had one of the school’s biggest gossips in his head already- and shut up Draco, you are too a huge gossip).  

“Don’t taunt fate, Harry.  It’s a bad idea, especially when it comes to you,” Seamus put in truthfully, if a bit bluntly.

“Surely the kid’s run out of bad luck by now?” Cygnus, who had only known Harry for the past year, asked them.

“You’re still pretty new here, so let me tell you how it goes- the universe is mean to Harry and whenever you think fate couldn’t possibly be crueler, it is,” Pansy apprised him, right as Harry turned a page of his book and got a papercut.  He calmly put the finger in his mouth (because for some reason that’s just what one does when they’ve cut a finger) while Draco panicked.

“Hasn’t he suffered enough?!” he railed, looking at the sky, while Harry rolled his eyes at him.

“Case in point,” Pansy turned to the muggle physicist again as Poppy healed Harry’s finger, and Harry kept reading, unconcerned.

In what was excellent timing, he turned the last page right as they pulled up into the parking lot of the park, but Severus was unfortunately not so ready to abandon the vehicle, still batting research back and forth with Julian through their bond and frantically scribbling in Regulus’ repurposed planner.

“Later,” Harry instructed his uncle in his best attempt at a stern little voice, excitedly dragging him by the hand towards the entrance.

They paid the entrance fee and got their in time for their tour- they started with the muggle tour, after which they’d planned for a wizarding one, which took them to the more delicate parts of the caves, which radiated magical energy and were supposedly the birthplace of phoenixes.

“G’day mates!  Alright, everyone grab a headlamp,” the tour guide was saying.  Luckily, they were such a large group that they’d managed to reserve a tour just for themselves, so they weren’t fighting with a bunch of strangers for access to the torches.

Harry tried on one of them, only for it to slip down over his eyes.  He tried another one, and another one. He was growing progressively more irritated when the tour guide came up.  “I think you’ll have to take one from the children’s pile, mate,” he said, in his heavy Australian accent. “No need to be ‘avin a blue with the straps.”

Harry sighed- so much for the euphoria from his little growth spurt.  Hermione, who had researched extensively in preparation for their trip, informed her confused friends that ‘blue’ was Aussie slang for ‘fight.’

“Ey, you’ve studied up, eh?” the guide, whose name tag read ‘Greg’ looked at Hermione approvingly.  “If it weren’t for your accent, you could be a real Cane Toad.”

“That’s slang for Queensland Native, as well as an invasive species of amphibian,” Hermione again explained to her friends.

“Yep- we came ‘ere and stole the land, just like the toads,” Greg informed them.  “Now let’s check out these caves, ey?”

“Careful,” the guide ordered as they entered.  “The entrance is very low, so you’ll probably have to duck.”  Harry, upon realising that he was the only one to fit through without crouching in the least, glowered adorably.

“Now these here tubes, or caves, were formed by the lava flow from the Undara volcano about 190,000 years ago, and these patterns here came from lava dribbling down.  These are a lot like those caves with the stalactites and stalagmites that are formed by water,” Greg told them as he led them down the first tube.

”What’s the difference between a stalactite and a stalagmite?” Asked Harry, and before Hermione could jump in with a detailed explanation, Draco, who was watching the specific memory his boyfriend was playing, took up the torch.

”Stalagmites got an ‘m’ in it,” he said, and they both giggled.

“Now I understand that you’re all gettin’ the VIP tour as well (by that he meant the tour that was only given to wizards, they called it the VIP tour and told the muggles it was only for authorised personnel), so that was supposed to be first- usually is, but the tour guide who was on today for that was a bludger and called off work, so you’ll have to wait until the replacement gets here in an hour or two.”

Ron and Viktor looked at each other, perking up at the name of bludger- was this guy magical?  They looked at Harry, who, knowing their question, shook his head- Greg didn’t have a magical core, but then he must be married to or dating a muggle.  Someone new to talk quidditch with!

Before her quidditch-obsessed soulmate and his soulmate could cause an international magical incident, Hermione spoke up.  “A bludger is a lazy or useless person,” she explained forcefully, shooting them a look and telling Ron through the bond to be careful.”

“Ay, you got a smart one on your hands, London to a brick,” Greg told Jean and Dan, standing behind their daughter, as he smiled at Hermione.

“But we live in Cambridge,” Dan informed him.

“That means ‘absolutely certain,’ dad,” Hermione laughed.

They learned more interesting facts as they went along for the next hour, and then Greg gathered them in the middle of a wider cavern.

“Alright, mates- this is where you get some free time to explore, yeah, so just be back here in half an hour so we can get ye to your next tour.”

Harry and Draco were walking with Seamus, Dean, Neville, and Blaise and they stopped to look at a cool drip pattern.

“Gods, I hope we don’t run into any XXXX’s on the wildlife tour,” Dean groaned- keeping Seamus from burning the place down would be enough to deal with.

“Oh, we know that Harry would take care of it if we did, so quit your bellyaching,” Blaise rolled his eyes, and Greg, who was within earshot, scratched his sunburnt neck in confusion.

“Why you expecting to run into a tinny?  And aren’t you a bit young to be drinking, mate?” he asked Harry.

Oh Merlin- a tinny must mean a beer, and they must have a brand called Four X’s, Draco told him.

“Er, he has a bit of an alcohol problem,” Seamus blurted out, right as Harry cried out “I’m almost sixteen.”

“Oh, sorry mate- I too, was a functioning alcoholic at sixteen, ye just looked a bit- well, you look thirteen.”

“I don’t even drink,” Harry informed Greg, smacking Dean.  “He’s just an arse. We were just talking about an inside joke we have- didn’t realise it was Aussie slang.”

“Er, I’ve made a bit of a date of myself, haven’t I? I mean an arse- sorry, new to the job, still trying to work out the kinks with the tourists and using too much strine- ugh, slang.”  He put his head in his hands.

“It’s fine,” Harry chuckled good naturedly.  “As long as we’re clear that I’m not an alcoholic, and he’s a date,” Harry tried the slang, weighing it on his tongue.

“He’s my date,” Seamus said, and by this point they didn’t know if he meant Dean was his date in the normal, romantic sense or if Dean was his asshole in the ‘you suck but I love you’ kind of way.  By this point, however, they were beginning to round back up in the main cavern.

“Right then, I’ll just go get everybody else,” Greg said, still somewhat embarrassed from the previous conversation.  He peeked down branches of the tubes, calling for people. More and more of them gathered by the time they heard the tour guide slip back into his slang.

“Ayy, quit pashing down there and join the rest of us!” he called down, and everyone sidled up to see what the commotion was about.  When they did, wow.

Julian had Severus pinned against a wall of the cavern, and they were snogging - and it was kind of… well, they looked like they were having fun.

“FUCKING FINALLY!” Pansy screamed, her exalted voice echoing around the cavern as the two, caught out, untangled themselves, Severus putting his head down to hide his brilliantly burning cheeks.

“Well it is about damn time,” Minerva said matter-of-factly.  “I was beginning to worry you two were as oblivious as Harry and Draco.”

“Hey!” Harry and Draco said at the same time the other couple gasped in indignation.

“I’ll have you know I was aware of my feelings nearly from the beginning,” Julian protested.  “It was that git who didn’t want to acknowledge them.” He jabbed a thumb at Severus.

“Whatever,” Sirius rolled his eyes, as if he and Moony hadn’t been the same way, back when they were in school.  “We’re very happy for you. Now don’t we have a ma- VIP tour. It’s going to be a magical VIP tour,” he amended, trying to cover his slip.  “Beauty of nature and all that.”

“Reckon you’re right- it’s lovely out here,” Greg agreed, thankfully unaware of the hidden dynamics.

[Severus crosses his arms in front of his chest, blushing brilliantly, and refuses to engage in conversation.]

“Sorry I’m late; traffic was awful and the highway was a bloody cactus,” a familiar voice with a familiar magical signature called out, and as the person that went with it came into view, Harry felt his mama stiffen.

“Jane!” Pansy cried out gleefully, as the woman greeted Minerva with a kiss on the cheek, rendering her completely speechless for a moment.

“How nice to see you all again,” the former queen (like, really former), told them.

“I didn’t know you worked here too,” Minerva eventually cleared her throat and said.

“It’s really just a part time doovalacky,” she replied.  “I enjoy nature and all that.”

“I was actually the one who got this place established as a national park and protected área,” Jane told them after it was just their group.  “So I kind of make sure things are running alright behind the scenes and do some tours from time to time. Only for really special groups, of course.”  She winked at them, most specifically at the head of Gryffindor.

“So you’re an environmental activist too?  That’s so awesome!” Pansy was falling all over herself so much at the excitement of her new female role model that she didn’t even notice that something was clearly there between Jane and Minnie.

“Well, if I can’t protect people who need it, you can be damn sure I’m going to protect everything else,” Jane asserted.  “This is a beautiful country. I’d hate to see people destroy the environment like they destroyed the aboriginal culture. Even now the Great Barrier Reef is showing signs of pollution and decay.”

“It’s so pretty there- they can’t do that!” Harry cried indignantly.  Draco fell a little bit more in love with him in that moment, which he didn’t think was possible- just, the fact that he had seen the worst humanity could offer and still believed in human goodness enough to be shocked when they behaved awfully showed how pure and wonderful he was.

Don’t worry luv- Jane will protect it.  She’s clearly a badass, he told his boyfriend, squeezing his hand.

Yeah- she and people like her are why I still believe people can be good, since you’re always so astonished by it, Harry teased him gently.   You cynical thing.  

They’d reached the opening to the magical section of the caves, and as they stepped in, Harry gasped in awe- this was ancient magic, and it had a very distinct feel.  This was the magic of aboriginal mages, but unlike the crystal skull at the Smithsonian, this had an open, welcoming, natural feel to it.  These wizards had utilised the magic around them, and they hadn’t tried to force it into any other form.

“Legend has it that the first phoenix was born from this lava, here in the Undara volcano, when it was active.  Even I’m not that old, though, so I can’t speak to the truth behind it.  Especially because the phoenix endlessly regenerates, so we don’t have any fossils.  We do, however, have some eggshells that date back to as far as 200,000 years, but we don’t know if there are older ones we haven’t found yet.  If you look here,” she said, pointing at the ground, “you’ll see the embedded remains of some of the fire creatures that lived here- there’s a fire salamander fossil.”  Dean poked Seamus as they looked at it. “But our greatest pride here, besides the phoenix legend, is through here.”  She walked them down the path for another twenty minutes, pointing out various other bits and pieces or providing them with interesting facts, before the reached a concave antechamber, wide and open, with a huge fossil in the middle.

“This is the wizarding world’s first and only discover of a full prehistoric dragon skeleton.  We don’t know exactly what it was, but based on the bone structure and the shape of the wing joints, we believe it to be a precursor to the modern Horntail or Ironbelly.”

Harry shot an image of the skeleton through his bond with Lily.   What do you think- look like it could be a great-great-great ancestor of yours.

The young dragon sniffed.   Far too inferior- just look at the awkward curve of the claws.  That’s an ironbelly thing.

Harry giggled and clapped a hand to his mouth.  “Um, I asked this dragon I’m friends with, and she said it’s an ironbelly.  But she’s young and kind of proud, so it might be that she just has a high opinion of herself in comparison.”  Lily sent him an image of batting him playfully with her tail.

“Wow, seems you’re more than what meets the eye, huh?” Jane quirked an eyebrow at him, and Harry smiled brilliantly back, pleased that she wasn’t equating any of it to his being the Harry Potter like others would have.

“He’s truly amazing,” Minerva bragged about her son, eyes full of affection as she squeezed his shoulder gently.  

“I can see that,” Jane smiled at the tender scene before she turned around.  “Well, we can head back out now and grab dinner before the sunset wildlife tour, where you’ll see a lot of amazing things.”

Dinner was good; there was champagne and meat pies and more macadamia nut bread, finished off with a creamy pavlova. Jane then went into a shed behind the veranda where they’d eaten and came back driving a golf cart with a long wooden trailer on the back.

“There’s room for three more in the cart- Harry, why don’t you and your mum join me, and your boyfriend if you’d like.  You’ve not got a lot of meat on you, so I’m sure you wouldn’t like bouncing about on the hard wooden planks on that old trailer.  Harry blushed but got into the second bench of the cart, while Minnie climbed in next to Jane and the rest of them crawled onto the trailer, more like an old cart than anything.

“As you can see, we’ve got some lovely wildlife here- koalas, some ‘roos- ay, watch, they’ll punch ya good,” she warned a little anxiously as one came up to the cart and nosed Harry, but he merely laughed and patted it.  “I’m gonna go kind of quick through here, because I’m sure you want to see the native magical wildlife and we don’t wanna be out after dark- that’s when the thylacines go hunting.”

“I thought thylacines were extinct,” Draco questioned Jane skeptically.

“The muggles think so, but when they were hunting them to extinction, I managed to round up the last wild pack- only about five of them, and brought them here to breed.  This was before the place was a park, and I had it warded with strong charms to keep out anyone who would do harm to anything living here. The aboriginals who lived here in this specific part of Queensland had all been rounded up or killed by this point, unfortunately.”  There was silence for a moment as they all took that in, the sonorous charm Jane had placed on her throat allowing everyone else in the trailer to hear the sad story as well.

“And here we are,” Jane announced after another few minutes of carting through the park.  “This is the border between the muggle and magical part of the reserve, and also where we keep the microbat houses.”

“Microbats?”  Harry questioned, while under his breath, Severus muttered “annoying little fuckers.”

“They are very small, very cute little bats that are tinier than normal fruit-eating bats, found everywhere except the north and south poles.”

“Uncle Sev, can you please go say hi to them and tell them we want to see them?  I think they’re sleeping,” Harry begged, tuning his beautiful emerald eyes on the professor and accessing his Slytherin side to arrange his face into just the expression that would get him what he wanted.

“Oh, alright,” the man groaned, transforming into his animagus form.  A fruit bat fluttered into the bat houses, and a moment later a swarm of itty-bitty little microchiropterans fluttered out, most converging curiously on Harry, which everyone really expected, by this point.

“Chatty little monsters,” Severus complained as he popped back to his human form.  “I hope you’re enjoying this, brat.” Harry clearly was, smiling as he received little love nibbles from all the tiny creatures.  The professor began to feel a smile form on his face against his will, until a sudden thought panicked him.

Oh Merlin- bats are known carriers of disease- have I just set a plague on him?!

Shh, Julian soothed, calm down- I’m sure it’s no big deal.   But worry began to niggle at him as well, and when the bats eventually left to hunt their breakfast, Harry found himself converged on by two potions masters, both casting cleaning and disinfecting charms until Harry’s skin shown pink from the vigorous scrubbing.

“Hey!” they finally heard Jane’s exasperated voice.  

“What?” Severus snapped at her.

“I was trying to tell you that I scan all my bats for infection regularly and have a number of spells to prevent them from picking up and carrying viruses that could infect humans, since we have so many visitors, but you were too busy practically buffing the poor kid.”  Harry rubbed his cheek, which looked like he’d just stuck his face a little too close to the oven when pulling out a batch of cookies.

“Oh, sorry kiddo,” Julian and Severus both scuffed their feet awkwardly into the dirt, unaware that their positions were mirroring each other.

“It’s alright,” Harry sighed, rolling his eyes at them.

“So, shall we go into the magical wildlife?” Jane asked them.

They followed her, looking around at the plants and small muggle animals (Jane let the muggle animals roam freely between both parts of the park so they’d have more room, and would have done the same for the magical ones if she could have).  Then Harry’s ears picked up on a language that nobody else was speaking, but that he knew quite well.

I’m telling you, one voice said to the other.   He’s here- Asphodel told us.  Asphodel… that was the name of Lily’s mama dragon.

Three Antipodean Opaleye dragons landed in front of Harry, and even Jane gasped- these were rare and almost never seen by humans, especially in herds.

“Found him!” one, the youngest and a female, cheered to the others in a triumphant growls.

“ Yes Amethyst- we can see that,” the oldest, a boy, rolled his great iridescent eyes at her.  

“ You’re so mean,” the other female chided.

“Uh, hi…” Harry began, snapping and growling and hissing fluently.   “What can I do for you?”

“You’re the one- the bonded one,” the oldest told him.   “We’ve been looking for you.”

“Yeah, I kind of got that bit, but why?”

“We wish to join you- we have come from New Zealand when our colony grew too big, but now they grow again, and we wish to begin anew, the three of us.  We pledge you our loyalty, against these dark wizards, if you will consent to grant us permission to your forest.”

“Um, it’s not really my forest,” Harry trailed off, growing confused- it was one thing for nearby animals to gravitate towards him, but for them to come all the way from New Zealand to seek him out…

“ Your bonded- Lily the dragon- she is the most powerful creature in the forest, and her heart and soul belong to you.  Therefore, by the rules of our clan, the forest itself is your domain,” the middle one said.

“But- I’m not even allowed to go in the forest without an adult,” Harry hissed, perplexed.

“We don’t make the rules, my friend.  We just follow them. And we need your permission- no one else’s shall we seek, and no one else can forbid us entry.”

“I mean, it’s fine with me, I guess, and Hagrid would be cool with it.  But wait- what if you breed? Couldn’t that cause- no offence meant here- an invasive species problem?”

“Not with us,” middle dragon explained again.   “That boy gay,” she pointed a claw at the singular male and largest dragon.   “And that one doesn’t do the dirty- I believe you call it,” she scrunched her snout in concentration, and a few sparks flitted out, “a-sex-u-al.  And me- I don’t want eggs- they’re annoying little fuckers, and I like sleep.”

“Um, alright then- have at it, I guess,” Harry told him.  

“Thanks,” the youngest dragon, Amethyst, told him.   “You are a good human- you never know, with horntails- lovely creatures, but not the best judgement at times.  Asphodel is better than most, but she did have four kids, which Citrine over here would say is a fundamental sign of instability.”   Harry was glad Molly Weasley didn’t speak dragon.   “Anyway, we and Agate over here will see you at Hogwarts then, bonded one- or would you prefer another title?  We in the community would traditionally go with ‘your clawiness’ for someone of your significance, but we could use something else, if you’d rather, like homie?”  

Harry stifled a giggle and a snort.   “Harry is fine,” he informed them, and they each gave a nod and an affectionate nose bump before they flew off to continue their journey.

“Someone better owl Hagrid and warn him ahead of time we’re getting three new dragons before he has a stroke and dies of happiness when they just show up,” he told his friends, who just ogled him.  Of all the amazing and unusual things Harry’d done- four loyal dragons just might be the top of the list.

“So, why don’t we just head down to the pond then…” Jane finally broke the silence.  

The pond was no less interesting, as Harry was peering down at the colourful little fish when the most peculiar, terrifying creature came wading up into the shallows.  It had a lupine face on a crocodile-shaped head, onyx fur, flippers, a horse-like tail, and long, sharp tusk-like fangs protruding upward from the bottom part of its mouth.

“Nobody move,” Jane said very quietly, “that’s a bunyip- aboriginal water demon.”

“So it won’t like Harry then?” Severus asked faintly.

“If ever a creature wouldn’t, it would be this one,” Jane whispered back.

“Well, then I’m going to get him,” the professor snarled, taking a quick step forward.  The bunyip lunged his way and snapped angrily, and when Severus reflexively started back, the creature flopped back to the water, rolled over on its belly, and gave Harry puppy eyes.  The teen very tentatively gave his belly a scratch, and the water demon’s flipper started thumping happily.

“Thank Merlin,” Minerva put a hand over her heart.  Then she turned to glare at her colleague. “Honestly, Severus- I never thought I’d have to say this to you of all people, but that was such a Gryffindor thing to do.”

“He’s friendly!” Harry called back.

“Not for us, you bloody lion tamer!” Dean yelled, as they all stayed put.

“Oh, fuck…” Poppy swore as another creature ambled out of a copse of shrubby trees.  Vaguely koala-like, but the size of a grizzly, with large, sharp teeth and a feral-looking face, the supposedly-imaginary drop bear wandered up to Harry and nudged him gently.  Harry reached out to give him a pet as well, but then the bunyip snarled at the bear, and the bear in turn growled at the bunyip.

“Hey!” Harry wagged a finger at him, and while not even the most timid first year would have been cowed by Harry’s efforts at a stern rebuke, the large, nightmare-inducing mythical creatures paused and bowed their heads in shame.  “We have to get along,” the teen continued, and when they both capitulated with vaguely nod-like motions, Harry gave them each a rewarding pat on their scary heads, and the drop bear crouched down so he could do so.

“Good boys,” Harry praised.  “You’re very good boys.” The bunyip, oddly enough, barked like a seal, while the drop bear growled happily.

“It’s almost sunset,” Jane called softly to Harry.  “We should go.”

“Alright guys, it was very nice to meet you.”  He tried to walk away, but the bunyip tugged on one sleeve with his teeth, the drop bear on the other.  Severus, worrying this was an act of aggression and not the act of affection that it was, nervously stepped forward, right into a bush… where he accidentally disturbed a billywig.  It flew up and stung him in the neck, and he pulled it out angrily as he stepped towards Harry, only to sway dizzily.

“Uncle Sev!” Harry cried out, and his new friends followed him as he stepped towards the man, telling the dangerous creatures not to hurt his friends.

“It’s okay- just one billywig sting won’t hurt him, but he’s definitely going to be- how to put this delicately- high off his arse for a while.  We should get him back home.”

“Okay,” Harry agreed quickly, still worried for his uncle.  “Guys, I really gotta go,” he told the drop bear and the bunyip.  They cast sad eyes at him.

“I’m sorry- I can’t keep you.  Even if you promised not to hurt any students, I’ve got no way to get two very large, toothy mythical creatures back, and you can’t fly or anything.”

“Arf!” went the bunyip, making an odd face as the drop bear did the same.  In a moment, there was a little black puppy and a standard koala bear in front of Harry, the only sign anything about them wasn’t normal were their slightly larger fangs and the puppy’s bark, which still sounded like that of a seal.

“Um…” Harry genuinely looked at a loss this point.

“I really hate to do this to you,” Jane sighed, “but bunyips have been known to ravage towns and eat people when they don’t get what they want, and I don’t even want to know what a drop bear would do if I tried to keep him here…”

“We’ll keep them,” Minerva promised Jane Seymour.  “Harry, collect your new pets darling and let’s go before we end up with a herd of thylacines at Hogwarts as well.”

“Narph,” Severus mumbled, and Julian picked him up under the armpits and carried him to the trailer.

“What does narph mean?” Neville scratched his head.

“Mmm… I dunnohowtomakethewordswork,” Severus slurred, barely comprehensible, as an explanation.  “Hard. Like Julian’s arms.” He tipsily patted one of the other potion master’s biceps.

“Uh, thanks babe,” Julian said, not knowing how to handle a compliment from Severus.

“I like your ponytail too,” he mumbled, falling back against the blonde.  “You make it work.”

“Will he… remember this tomorrow?” Minerva asked, and Poppy answered before anyone else could.

“Oh, with billywig venom- every second,” the medi-witch replied, looking absolutely gleeful.  

“Whee!” the normally composed Severus Snape twirled a lock of Julian’s hair and giggled … Severus Tobias Snape actually giggled.  

“And Australian teenagers actually take this shite willingly?” Pansy raised an eyebrow in disbelief.

“I don’t understand teenagers either, but I’ve heard that the euphoria is extreme, and most wizards tend to seek out stings alone,” Jane informed the group, as Severus got up drunkenly and tried to twirl around.  

“Where’s my robes?” he complained, forgetting that they’d worn muggle clothes that day.  “They’re supposed to billow.”

By the time they’d gotten back to the car which Kreacher had brought to pick them up, Severus had sung himself to sleep with several verses of ‘monkey, monkey, monkey man,’ and Julian ended up carrying him to the car (because bro is swol).  He drooled on the American potioneer’s shoulder all the way home, and everyone was taking pictures.

“Surprise!”  Kreacher cried as they walked in, and there was a cake on the table with a banner in the doorway to the living room that said Congratulations on 5’1”!

“Aww, Kreacher- this is so sweet,” Harry said, tamping down on the memories of all the reminders of how short he still was that had been thrown at him in the caves.

“He’s still short- cute n’ short, little bitty,” Severus woke up enough to say drunkenly, before going back to sleep.

“Mama, take more pictures,” Harry ordered, throwing his hands up in frustration.  “Take all the pictures.”   Fred and George loaded up the new muggle video camera they’d had owled to the rental house from a shop in town yesterday, trading devious smiles as Kreacher cut Harry a large slice of cake, which he accepted with a smile and a solemn vow to revive the prank war, Marauder-style.

Chapter Text

“Are your sons ready?” The pale, deathly-bluish man with the egg-shaped face and the radioactive-looking red eyes asked his two squat followers.

“Of course, my liege,” Crabbe and Goyle Senior answered, quaking slightly in their boots.  “Our sons at first were reluctant, but we have… persuaded them to take the dark mark.  They will do as they are told.”

“They aren’t going to take the mark, you idiots!” Voldemort snarled at the two.  “The child has mage senses- he’d suss it out in an instant and your cowardly sons would beg protection from the school.  They will go unmarked, working in the shadows… and if there is any indication they defect, any at all…”

“They have been stubborn, our boys, but they are not good liars, my lord.  They were quite willing to capitulate after a little taste of the cruciatus,” The Goyle patriarch squeaked, quaking as he genuflected by the dork lord’s rubber boots (the Riddle Manor was damp, and Voldemort found that he got sick more frequently when his feet were damp- the poor bastard who commented on Tom Riddle’s squashy silver rain boots was killed immediately).

“Excellent- see that they come home for Christmas, so you may ensure they are behaving; I do not like how you’ve let your children run wild, cavorting with mudbloods and blood traitors.  I was especially disappointed to learn from Crouch that your boys were taking muggle studies,” he snarled.

“We made them drop out as soon as we learned of it, my lord, we swear!” Crabbe Sr. cried.

“And it took two years and a report from my spy for you to learn, which is unacceptable.  How can I trust you to catch it if your sons try to deflect, like they clearly have before?  No,” he hissed. “You must be sssupervissed.”

“But my lord- your commander, she has…”

“DON’T YOU TALK ABOUT MY COMMANDER! CRUCIO!’’ Voldemort held Goyle under the curse until he vomited before dropping his wand arm.  “Bellatrix wasn’t the only competent death eater, although competence may be difficult to imagine for those as stupid as you two.  No, I have a different person in mind for your guardians.” Out of the shadows stepped a guant figure, pale almost to the point of glowing with a malignant luminescence.  Over his emaciated form, there was a set of abrasive, ragged, filthy burlap robes, of the sort worn in Azkaban. His hair was dirty and and knotted, with brambles knotted all throughout, but underneath streaks of dust and soot, a pale, almost white-blonde colour stood out.  Lucius Malfoy had been broken out of Azkaban.

“I shall supervise you,” Lucius’ voice had lost its elegant, postured annunciation, now a deep, rasping vocalization.  

“Malfoy- how’d you get out?  Narcissa surely would have gotten news, now that she’s minister.  She watches everything that happens. We got lucky with Be- the ministry battle, since she was freed only an hour before.”

“Don’t speak of my wife,” Lucius snarled, looking feral.  “We have handled the details- Rodolphus Lestrange was poisoned and polyjuiced when our excellent lord freed me.  My dearest little flower,” his mouth twisted as he spat the words, “should be receiving news of my death very shortly.”

Crabbe and Goyle were crucioed again before their dismissal.  Voldemort turned to Lucius, slanting his sanguine eyes at him.  

“You remember the price of your freedom?” he asked the man, but it was clearly not a question.

“Yes, my lord.  First, I shall take my wife back, in front of her mudblood lover,” he responded.

“And then what will you do, after I have killed the Potter boy in front of the other blood traitor in your family.”

“Then I will…” Lucius hesitated for just the barest hint of a second before he squared his chin.  “Then I will kill my son.”

[Draco casts a very tentative eye at the ‘puppy’ sitting on his and Harry’s bed as the other teen gives a ‘koala’ a bath.]

Kreacher put down the cell phone (yes, the calls were expensive here, but Sirius would pay for it- Mutt Master was rich and, more to the point, fully aware who was the true head of the household) as he ran his knobby fingers along his chin.  Winky had retrieved the Dursleys and finished setting up their new abode: two cupboard sized spaces.  Dudley, it seemed, had left months ago- according to Dobby, he’d taken up residence in a youth shelter and was doing manual labor to pay for a tutor to help with his learning disability.  According to the other elf, however, he’d recently lost his place in the home for beating up another boy. What hadn’t been made known to the manager of the facilities was that the other boy had been cornering another girl, his hand halfway up her skirt before Dudley landed the first punch.  Carefully, Kreacher put ten 100 pound notes and an old key in an envelope before picking up a pen and putting it to parchment.

We are aware of your recent change in behaviour and the subsequent misfortune you have suffered, and as a reward for standing up for someone in need, we offer you this help.  In the envelope with this letter you will find a thousand pounds and an old key. You will clutch the key and make your way to Leadenhall Market. In the square next to the music shop, there is a pub that you would never have seen before- the key enables you to see this, which is invisible to muggles.  DO NOT LOSE IT! In the pub is a man called Tom: I have contacted him, and he will give you a place to board in exchange for work. You will not go beyond the pub, which is called the Leaky Cauldron, into the magical alley behind it, not unless you wish to be overwhelmed by a level of magical exposure you are certainly not ready for.  The money included will pay for schooling at a special institution for children with learning disabilities up until you are ready to take your GCSEs. You will mention to no one in the pub that you know Harry Potter, or there will be consequences.  We understand that, as a child, you were never raised to take responsibility for your reprehensible actions, and we are pleased with your growth thus far. Should you not continue to improve in this fashion, you will lose the privileges we have granted you.  You have potential, Dudley Dursley, so don’t you dare waste it.

Sincerely,

Your guardian elves.

He folded the parchment and placed it in the envelope, snapping his fingers so it disappeared.  Over 15,000 kilometers away, in the jacket pocket of a large teenager sleeping on a bench in an alley in the pouring rain, the same envelope appeared.

“That is one taken care of,” he muttered to himself.  Now for one last correspondence. He picked up the phone again.

“Winky,” he said into the receiver.  “I’ve been doing the maths- for the beasts to have longest, most painful death, you must be giving them 800 calories a day, and from there we be going down.  Twice each day you will open cupboard-space doors and give painful spells, so they feel like little master. You will not be letting them out. We start there and make it be getting harsher after a while.  You must be making careful notes- we must be keeping them alive enough that they don’t die for two or three more years, so they suffer.   They must feel the pain of little master until they are broken; then they must die.”

“Winky understands- Winky has personal experience of barely surviving, and so does Dobby.  We know just what to do,” the little elf spoke back, the phone floating by her head as she helped Hagrid feed Snally and the hippogriffs.  

“Kreacher is proud of Winky- Winky has come far.”

“Yes, Winky has.  Yous be telling the children Winky loves them; it is being time for Doctor Who with Master Hagrid now.”

[Dudley drags his tired feet to The Leaky Cauldron, taking a deep breath before shakily pushing the door open.]

Later that day, at dinner (Severus was eating with Julian in the potions lab; mortified by the experience of the previous day, he had holed himself there to work on his project and would not come out), they were just finishing dessert, and Harry was offering the bunyip and the drop bear, still in their fluffy disguises, Draco’s uneaten asparagus (Draco hated asparagus).

“C’mon Arf, Snarles , you’ll like it,” he prodded, and although Arf and Snarles certainly did not like it, they faked enjoyment of the green for their new master.

“I can’t believe you named your slavering koala grizzly bear and your literal fucking demon Arf and Snarles,” Blaise sighed, looking at Harry as if he were a puzzle he couldn’t solve.

“I have a lot of pets, okay- I’m running out of ideas,” Harry defended, as he patted Arf.  

“Arf!” said Arf, licking Harry’s face pleasantly, as if he didn’t spend his free time dragging unwary swimmers into the depths of the underworld (although now he resolved that he would only maim, kill, condemn, possess, or otherwise harm those who threatened his tiny master).

Snarles snarled, as if in agreement to something Arf said, and stealthily spit the asparagus into a napkin, and then winked at Draco, who stifled a giggle and mentally told Harry to stop feeding their new monster-children awful vegetables.

Kreacher got up to clean the table, sternly shaking a finger at anyone who tried to help him, when the evening post arrived.  He shoo’ed the owl off his clean table and took the letter.

“It is being for Mistress Minister Narcissa,” he said, handing her the letter.  She slit it open with a perfectly manicured nail and just managed to school her reaction to the contents so as not to scare the children.

“Minerva, why don’t you call Jane and take her up on that idea to go night swimming on the beach near her house- and take the children, they’ll enjoy it,” she said, forcing an airy tone and manner.

“It’s too cold for the children, Narcissa, and don’t you think swimming after dark is just a bit too dangerous?” the tabby animagus replied.

“Oh, there are warming charms for that sort of thing, and you’ve got to for a night swim in the ocean at least once in your life, especially here in Australia.  You know Jane said that she lives on Jervis Bay- that’s full of bioluminescent plankton, it’ll be magical. The apparition coordinates are pinned on the fridge, and the water should be warm anyway,” the blonde’s voice was pleasant but her eyes conveyed a different message, and Minerva realised that she needed the children out of the house.

“Alright, but I’m taking Poppy in case there’s a medical emergency,” she deferred.

“Very well, I’d like to see the bay,” the mediwitch agreed.  “And this way I can watch everyone so you can have some alone time with Jane.”  She winked.

“Why, I-” the normally vocal woman didn’t seem to know what to say.

“Yeah mama, go get it,” Harry smiled impishly at her.

“Meddling child,” she sighed, ruffling his hair fondly.

“Like mother, like son,” Bill mumbled.  Minerva cast a glare at him.

“Well it’s true!” the oldest Weasley son defended.  “Remember in my sixth year, when you were so determined to set me up with our Chaser?”

“I wasn’t meddling, I was merely trying to help you with your little crush- for the good of quidditch, of course,” she added.

“You gave Percy the sex talk after mum forgot,” Fred and George piped up.

“Well, Molly’s a busy woman, understandably, and he was making eyes at that Penelope Clearwater…”

“We appreciate it,” Molly told the woman.  “It’s good that the children have someone to help them with these things while they’re away.  And I am not ready to be a grandmother.”

“As if Prudey would ever,” Ginny rolled his eyes, and her mother admonished her half-heartedly.

“At least he got The Talk instead of The Show,” Harry complained, giving Padfoot and Moony a look.

“Wait, pup- do you actually know how straight couples… you know… make a baby, or just how to do it with Draco?” Sirius asked indelicately, as Harry and Draco’s cheeks reddened.

“Er, yeah… I caught my primary school teacher with the janitor on her desk when I was nine when I went back for a book at recess, and then nine months later she had a baby that did not look like her husband, so I put it together,” he mumbled, face still glowing in embarrassment.

“And then the bitch gave you detention, for trying to get a book,” Draco grumbled, having seen the memory.

“I mean, the Dursleys did tell her I was a bad kid, and then I turned her wig blue, so she probably thought I was being a voyeur or something…”

“Don’t you dare defend her,” Pansy ordered, before Sarah could say a word.  “I don’t care what they told her, that’s a bad teacher.”

“Yes, General,” Harry hung his head.

“Good,” Pansy dropped the subject, pleased her friends still remembered the drills from TDT (yes, she made them call her General, because she was fifteen and just a little drunk on power).

“Alright, time to go,” Minerva was watching Narcissa fidget, so she took the group, put each of the seventh years with a couple of the underaged kids who couldn’t apparate, and reluctantly allowed Harry to take her and Draco (since regular apparation made him so dizzy, she put aside her concerns about letting him apparate with so many people, since he was so clearly accomplished at it and she was going with them).  Kreacher rounded up the few stragglers and popped them over before popping back in.

“What’s wrong, Cissy?” Sirius asked, once they were all gone.

“I got a letter… Lucius has died in Azkaban.”

“Oh.” They all traded guarded looks.

“That… that’s a good thing, right?” Cygnus asked eventually.

“I… yes and no,” Narcissa sighed.  “It’s good that we don’t have to worry about where he is anymore, but… well, you have to understand, he spent so many years gaslighting and emotionally manipulating Draco that the news of his death might dredge up some old traumas and maybe cause him some doubts or conflicting feelings.  I… I can’t tell him.”

“He’ll have to find out eventually,” Rosmerta pointed out.

“I… I know.  And I don’t want to keep secrets from my son, but there’s a war going on, and there are enough stressful things going on already- I just don’t think now is the time,” she put her head in her hands as Aralynn softly patted her back.  Everyone looked at Sarah.

“It’s not a bad idea, I suppose- he’s in a good place right now, and there’s really no reason to tell him right away- but if he asks about Lucius, you shouldn’t keep it from him.  And you’ll need to sit him down and have the conversation eventually,” the therapist advised.

“Alright,” Narcissa agreed.  “For now, I’m going to send out an order to keep it quiet- nobody needs to see that in the prophet, and it would only draw unwanted attention to Draco anyways.”

“Yeah, that’d probably be wise,” Remus concurred.  “And at least Lucius won’t ever be able to cause problems again.”

[Dumbledore, taking the opportunity to move about without running into his staff, gathers what he needs and takes a trip to an old cottage just outside of Little Hangleton.]

“Wow!” an entire crowd of teens (and Bill Weasley, who wouldn’t pass up an opportunity for adventure) exclaimed in unison as they caught sight of the water, glowing in the night with the ethereal cerulean light of the special plankton.  Arf, in his puppy form, sniffed the water cautiously before, apparently satisfied, he grew back into a giant water demon and flopped happily into the shallows, barking as he went. Snarles had no desire to get his fur wet, so he plopped himself down in the sand, still in his koala form, with a nice juicy peach (because he had a well-rounded diet formed only in small part by human flesh).

“Pretty, huh?” Jane had come down from her comfortable, modern beach house to greet them.  “A few warming charms and the water is lovely, like taking a bath.”

“Why don’t you ladies enjoy the shallows for a while and I’ll take the kids down?” Bill offered.

“That sounds lovely,” Poppy agreed.  “I’ll just put tracking charms on everyone for safety reasons, and then I believe I see a hot tub and a bar in your yard, Ms. Seymour?”

“Of course,” Jane saw the opportunity the nurse was offering and seized it.  “There’s margarita mix on the top right shelf behind the bar, and the back door is open- grab anything you need from the freezer or the cabinets.”

“Lovely- and don’t worry, Minnie- I’ll only have one drink, in case I’m needed.”  The tabby animagus let out a sigh of relief.

“I’ve baked some fairy cakes recently,” Jane said, holding up a basket.  “Maybe you’d like to just sit in the sand and get to know each other?”

Meanwhile, Draco and Harry were trading a soft kiss before putting up their bubblehead charms (they were already wearing their warming charms), and Arf came up and nudged Harry’s legs as the rest of their friends stepped nervously out of his path (except Pansy, who was already waist-deep into the glowing water).

“Arf,” barked Arf, and Harry patted his head.

“You’re going hunting, buddy?” And Arf arfed in agreement.

“Okay, just no people, alright?”

Arf nodded and bumped Harry’s hand fondly before flopping further into the water, until he reached a depth where he could swim gracefully out.

Snarles finished dismembering his peach and casually reached for a fairy cake from the picnic basket, which Jane and Minerva made no comment on.  They were more here for each other’s company, anyway. Which was good, because Snarles moved on from one cupcakes to all the cupcakes to the basket they came in.

Babe, you’re glowing, Harry thought to Draco, who smiled.

I’d say the same, but you’re always glowing.

You’re so sappy sometimes, Harry rolled his eyes from their bubble.

Fine- you’re always glowing, arseface.

Love you, you prat.

I love me too, Draco laughed.   And you, of course- but that hardly needs clarification.

“Look,” Bill signaled the group, pointing to a cave half-hidden in the sea floor.

Harry poked at it with his mage senses.  “Mermaids!” he squealed excitedly, and the mer seemed to sense his presence as well, as three emerged from their cozy cave home- two mothers, one carrying a baby.

These were ocean sirens, a delicate breed with lovely, shimmering tales with fins that tapered off into lovely, vacillating tentacles like iridescent seaweed.  The plankton on their tales caused them to glow like the water, their long hair a dark violet that gleamed black in the night. The one with the baby nursed it at her breast, her plump arms cradling it gently.

“It is the legged merman- the one we’ve heard about,” the other whispered frantically to her wife.

“Uh, hi,” Harry said, waving at them, and the two mer were immediately charmed.

“You saved the queen of the selkies, did you not?” the one with the baby asked him, already certain of the answer.

“Yes, although it’s just what any decent person would have done if they could have- nothing special,” Harry replied modestly, looking down at his feet.

“On the contrary- it is an act of great kindness that has bonded our community to yours, as you know.  We especially are begotten to you- it was her majesty who found us a merman willing to help us have a child.”  Both mermaids looked fondly at the suckling bundle with the little tiny tail.

“I am Cerula,” the one feeding the baby introduced.  “This is my mate Kekulke.”

“That is very pretty,” Pansy told them.

“It is the Awabakal word for Sweetness,” Kekulke informed them.  “I too, was saved once, by a member of the Darkinjung tribe. She named me, and I kept it in her honour.  This was 70 years ago,” she laughed at their surprised faces. “I know I do not look so old, but my species has a very long lifespan.”

“What happened to the girl who saved you?” Neville dared to ask.

Kekulke’s face darkened.  “What happened to many like her- her lands were reduced, and she was driven away with her tribe, until they had nothing but inhospitable desert.  They were resourceful people, but they faced great obstacles. Her mother and brother were shot by a balanda (white male), and she died of a broken heart.  I watched her father bring her bones back to the rocks nearby, to lay what was left in the place of her birth.”

They were quiet after that, watching as the baby, Kaiyu (Awabakal for powerful) drifted off to sleep.  Kelulke looked at them again, smiling softly.

“There is peace in death, as well as pain, my children.  The Darkinjung believe that the spirit returns to the sky, in death, and what better place for a human soul than a wide open space full of air to breath?”

Chapter Text

After around a week, Severus finally emerged from the basement, glaring at anyone as if daring them to try making fun of him (really he was just sulking embarrassedly).  There were various snickers and whispered verses of ‘monkey, monkey, monkey man,’ but Severus pretended not to hear them.

“Shut up, you little demons,” he grumbled half-heartedly, and Arf gave him a side-eyed look.

“He wasn’t talking to you,” Harry supplied, patting his puppy head.

“So, we have exciting news,” Julian broke in, before Severus could go running back down the stairs.  “We’ve finished our project.”

“What is it?” Harry asked, poking at the vial with his mage senses.

“It’s an appetite stimulant, so you should be able to eat more and gain a little weight without feeling uncomfortably full.  We would have had it done sooner, but our first try had the unfortunate side effects of stimulating… other appetites as well.”  Severus glowed even redder.  “Don’t worry- we’ve fixed it, though.”

“Er, okay…” Harry didn’t even want to open that can of worms.  “So, uh, should I try it, then?”

“Yeah- here, take it now and it should kick in by lunchtime.”  Lunch was in fifteen minutes, so they lost no time in giving the phial to Harry, who drank it as his face scrunched in a revolted expression at the taste.  Draco planted a quick kiss on his scrunched-up nose.

“This could help out a lot of people,” Hermione pointed out.  “Like, with anyone undergoing treatments that suppress appetites or other people having trouble keeping weight on.”

“That’s a good point- when we tried the final thing out last night, we practically finished off half the fridge,” Julian laughed.

By the time Kreacher was setting the table, Harry’s midsection had given off a soft little rumble.  He looked down, bemusement on his face.

“Is this what it’s like to feel hungry?” he asked, almost giggling as his stomach growled again.  “I’d forgotten.” The adults traded dark looks- he’d gotten so little to eat as a child, he’d taught himself not to feel hunger.  They’d known, of course, because of how often they had to remind him about meals- he’d simply forget to eat if they didn’t, but it was still distressing to watch as Harry’s head cocked just slightly to the side like it did when he was thinking, his expression one of detached curiosity as he drummed unconsciously his fingers against his midriff.

“Food time!” Kreacher called out, loading Harry’s plate first, and the messy-haired teen dug into his alfredo with an eagerness that usually applied only to Ron.  However, unlike with the redhead, nobody told Harry to slow down, and Kreacher smiled brilliantly as he patted little master’s head.

“It’s really good,” Harry told the elf in between shovelling bites into his mouth.  It was only when he’d finished his entire plate and looked up that he realised everyone was looking at him with fond and amused expressions.  His cheeks reddened a bit as he realised he was the centre of attention, and Kreacher had to ask him to repeat his what he’d just whispered quietly.

“Er, may I please have some more?” he mumbled, blushing even more.  Kreacher squeaked, looking like he was about to die of happiness as he spooned out another helping.

[Harry finishes the second complete helping and then falls asleep leaning his head back against the dining chair, and Minnie carries him to bed, Draco trailing behind her and wrapping his body protectively around his napping boyfriend as soon as he’s been tucked in.]

Hagrid was making tea and porridge for Maxime, which were the only things she’d been able to keep down since the morning sickness hit full-force as they traded casual conversation across the hut.

“I’d ‘eard a colony a giants ‘as moved into the forest,” Hagrid told his partner as he spooned a bowl of porridge and put a little cream in her tea (just the way she liked it).

“Really?  Well zen, perhaps we ought to go see them after we eat, non?” she suggested as she cautiously put a little sugar on her breakfast.

Hagrid’s face lit up.  “I knew ye were the one fer me, soon as I metcha,” he told her, planting a kiss on her cheeks, and the Frenchwoman chuckled throatily as his whiskers tickled her skin.  

On the pathway to the forest, Hagrid carefully practiced his French, slowly mouthing the strange phrases that fell so heavily on his tongue.

“Jay tame,” he tried, looking at Maxime for aid.

“Non, darleeng- not quite.  Weeth ze French, you must let ze words dance across your tongue- zey do not stay anywhere for long, zey skeep like a stone in ze river.  You must let zhem go, like zhees. Je t’aime. ”

“Zhu tem,” Hagrid tried again, noting how they buzzed around, working their way up from the back of his throat and his nasal passageways and then hopped quickly across his tongue.

“Zhat eez better,” Maxime praised.  “One day, ve veel be a little family walking ze streets een Paris, eating ze crepes and looking for ze Guivere, and no one weel realise you did not grow up speaking eet.”

“And then we will get our little ‘un their first gargoyle,” he rumbled, contented, as he linked the fingers of one hand gently with hers and used the other to gentle stroke the subtle bump where their child grew.

“And zhen, on ze summer nights, ve weel ‘ave pic-a-nicks under ze stars and go chasing ze Bluecaps through ze valley,” Maxime declared as she ran a thumb over the engagement ring Hagrid had made her.  It was sculpted from bronze and far from smooth, the little chinks giving it a multifaceted appearance, but Maxime thought it was the most beautiful thing she had ever owned, and she’d taken all other rings off her left hand so that it would have pride of place.

They eventually heard the harsh, guttural sounds of the giant language, and as they stepped tentatively into the clearing, they each had the unusual experience of being the shortest in the room.  The smallest giant had a good three feet on each of them, and the average height of the others was twelve feet tall.

“‘Ello,” Hagrid yelled up at them.  “We come in peace!”

The chieftess of the giants, a stout, strong woman twice their height with her hair in dreadlocks and her dark skin standing out against the greyness of the day, looked down at them and grunted.

“You from school?” she asked, skeptically.

“Yes,” Hagrid told her.  “We’d like ta make friends.”

An enormous hand came up to stroke her chin, the skin of multiple lynxes that made up her tunic stretching as she moved.

“Maybe,” she grunted.  “First, we want meet little lord of forest.  Then, we talk.”

“Little lord of the forest,” Hagrid looked at his fiancee, puzzled.  “Wha?”

“Oh!” Realisation dawned on Maxime’s face.  “She eez talking about ‘Arry!”

“Yes.” The giantess drummed her fingers against her muscular thigh.  “Harry Potter. We want meet.”

“Why do ya want ter meet Harry?” Hagrid questioned, proceeding carefully since they didn’t yet know their motive.

“He good and nice.  Creatures say many good things for Harry Potter.  We talk to him before we make decide about your friendship.”

“Alright,” Maxime and Hagrid agreed after discussing it in their head.  “If he agrees, we will bring him to meet you.”

“Yes- good.  In time between, we work on English.  It is new- hard to speak.”

“Yes, eet eez,” Maxime agreed, nodding her head in sympathy.  “So many rules zhat make no sense.”

“Well, if we’re bein’ fair,” Hagrid pointed out.  “French is really hard ta count with.”

Maxime kissed him as they walked away, laughing as Hagrid picked her up bridal-style to relieve her aching feet.

[Saturday Night Live plays on the telly of the rental in Australia as the teenagers knit happily.]

By the time Harry’s birthday rolled around, he’d managed to gain enough weight that you could no longer see the outline of his ribs when he stretched, and his stomach now had a tiny little pudge instead of the skin being drawn taught over the organ.  While he was still rather scrawny, he’d begun to look more lanky than woefully thin, and it no longer seemed like a light breeze would knock him over.

He and Draco woke up slowly on the morning of July 31, tired from Neville’s birthday celebration the night before.  Draco was peppering gentle kisses to the new softness of Harry’s stomach, rubbing it softly with one hand as the other carded softly through Harry’s curls.  Arf’s wet tongue licked the side of his face, and a loose curl that laid against his ear came straight up as the dog/demon continued his ministrations. Snarls lay curled up in a soporific ball on Harry’s knees, and Draco moved his lips up to his boyfriend’s ear.

“Happy birthday, my love,” he whispered tenderly, and Harry’s beautiful emerald eyes slowly fluttered all the way open.

“Good morning,” Harry yawned as he turned over, upsetting Snarls, who clambered to the side crankily.  “How did you sleep?”

“Amazingly, after your parents left,” Draco told him, kissing his ear lightly.  “They really know how to party.”

“I never realised how funny my mum was,” Harry agreed.  “People always talk about my dad’s jokes, but mum is hilarious.”

“Playing ‘Cauldron full of Hot Strong Love’ on the juicebox at The Leaky fourteen times in a row is definitely funnier than a wasted deer drinking perfume,” Draco snorted, his sides still sore from laughter.

“Should we go down to breakfast?” Harry asked after a few more minutes.

“Just a minute,” Draco put a hand on his shoulder.  “I wanna give you your present.”

“That- babe, you didn’t have to do anything…”

“Of course I did,” Draco told him sternly.  “Here.” Putting a hand in the pocket of his silk pajamas, he pulled out a silver ring with a little gold snake on it with rubies for eyes.  “I thought you should have a promise ring too. Because you’re the only thing I’ll always be sure of- well, you and ministry incompetence.”

“Don’t forget taxes,” Harry teased.

“Are you hungry yet?” Draco asked, feeling for the soft rumbling of Harry’s stomach, such a pleasant sound, as it always preceded Harry eating like he should.

“Yeah,” Harry giggled as Draco’s fingers poked a ticklish spot in his side.  “I smell bacon, c’mon.”

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” the shouts of friends and family rang out as they reached the table.  Harry smiled at them.

“Thanks guys,” he beamed at them as Kreacher piled his plate with pancakes, bacon, and scrambled eggs.  “This is perfect.”

“We also have another surprise for you,” Tonks said as she handed him a piece of parchment with a design on it.  “If you want to, that is.”

“I love it!” Harry hugged her.  “It’s gorgeous.” They were talking about a tattoo design that incorporated Lily and Harry’s other new pets, and Tonks was pleased he was so happy with the design.  It had been hard to come up with, as she knew from Sarah that the scarring on Harry’s back and chest was too severe to be able to do anything there, which just left his arms.  He had a few scars there (from Dudley and his gang) but those she was able to incorporate into the flames of Lily and the Opaleyes. By lunchtime, a moving design of Snally was curiously poking at the inked version of Hedwig, while above him, Lily flew gracefully in a serpentine curve around Harry’s upper arm, breathing tattooed flames.  On Harry’s other arm, Snarls wrapped around Harry’s wrist like a tree trunk, and Arf splashed happily around in a little ink-blue pond on Harry’s forearm as the three iridescent Antipodean dragons made graceful figure eights, the sparks from their flames fading as they met Arf’s little pond.

“It’s beautiful,” Harry breathed as he watched the mesmerising glinting of Citrine’s, Amythist’s, and Agate’s scales.

“Awww, you’re so cute,” Pansy gushed.

“I have two sleeve tattoos- that is not cute, that is boss!”

“Nope, you’re still adorable,” the Slytherin contradicted.  “You’re like… a tiny little pirate.”

“It is my birthday!  I can be tough if I want to!” Harry flexed his scrawny arms, and Narcissa couldn’t resist picking him up and spinning him around, at which point Draco had to spend fifteen minutes trying to coax a hiding kitten out from under the couch.

[Dudley is finally starting to settle down at The Leaky Cauldron, no longer jumping at shadows, and Tom’s started giving him weekends off so he can study without losing sleep.  During the week, Dudley explains his lessons out loud to the man while they clean and cook and serve customers, which helps him remember them, and additionally fascinates the bartender, who never knew much about muggle school.]

They had just finished cake and ice cream and opened gifts after dinner (Harry had wanted a low-key, relaxed celebration) when a flurry of owls came through, dropping their Hogwarts letters.

“Our OWL results!” Hermione screeched, feeling the envelope, which was much thicker than usual.

The students all ripped into their envelope, although Ron did so with some hesitation.  “I… I passed all the tests,” he gasped, pulling the paper out. “I… I got all E’s, except for History of Magic, but I got even an A on that…”

“Of course you did well, you studied really hard,” Hermione told him in a no-nonsense tone.  “I’m so proud of you.”

“I couldn’t have done it without you in my head,” Ron told her, as Viktor congratulated him with a huge hug and a neck nuzzle.

“What about you, Hermione?” Susan asked, looking at her own results, which were better than she’d been expecting.

“All O’s,” she said, “except for DADA.  I only got an E.” She looked glum.

“Oh come on, Mia, that’s fantastic!” Pansy told her.  “I got an E in Charms, and you don’t see me complaining.

“What about you, Harry?” all eyes turned to the birthday boy as Neville, squeezing Blaise’s hand joyfully over their own good results, asked the question.

“I… I’m kind of afraid to look…”

“You’ll be fine,” Draco told him sternly, as Minerva said, “remember, no matter what, we’ll still be proud of you.”  With a deep sigh, Harry pulled out his results.

“I… I got O’s in everything except for an E in History of Magic,” he gasped, disbelievingly.

“Will you believe me when I tell you you’re smart now?” his boyfriend asked as he threw his arms around him.

“I… I uh…”

“He’s still shocked, for some reason,” Alice laughed.  “Harry dear, we’re so proud of you. You’re just as smart as your mum and dad, if not moreso.”

Harry had to swipe at a tear welling up, smiling shakily at his godmother.  Fortunately, he didn’t get to dwell too long on the emotional situation, as Ron’s face went white and something clattered to the floor.

“I… I’m a prefect,” he whispered, eyes wide with shock.

“Oh, don’t act so surprised, Weasel- you’re a good student,” Pansy told him, rolling her eyes and pulling out her own prefect badge.  “This, though… what were you thinking, Sevvy?”

“The prefects and quidditch captains were selected by the governors this year, for the sake of impartiality.  They don’t know you very well, so they are as yet unaware that they’ve made a grave mistake,” the head of Slytherin told her, deadpan.

“Who else here are prefects?” Draco asked, looking at his own shiny silver badge.

“Oh, I am!” Hermione cheered gleefully as she looked in her envelope.  Harry smiled at his friends, happy for them. Susan and Hannah were the Hufflepuff prefects, and he couldn’t help but think they might spend a lot of their rounds giggling and kissing in hidden corridors.

“Why don’t you look in your envelope, Har?” Neville prompted his friend, looking at a bulge in the envelope that Harry had laid aside when the shock of his OWL results hit.

“Er, okay…” he agreed, his own eyes widening as he saw the Gryffindor Quidditch Captain badge.  “I… whoa…”

“Glad to have you leading us,” Ron clapped Harry on the shoulder, smiling.

“Why couldn’t we have had you as captain?” George sighed in conjunction with Fred.  “It would have been so much nicer than the five years of hell with Oliver.”

“Oh, don’t be so hard on him,” Ginny batted his arm.  “It’s good to wake up early and hate your life sometimes- really puts things in perspective.”

The rest of the evening was devoted to quidditch discussions and strategies as Harry leaned against Draco, sure that life didn’t get better than this.

Chapter Text

Narcissa ended up finalising the negotiations for aid from the Australian ministry in the coming war, and they flew home on August 12, flushed with success (and for a number of the lighter kids, rather sunburnt).

I told you this is why we wear sunscreen, Harry reminded Draco as he rubbed some cool aloe vera onto his red shoulders and neck as they climbed higher into the air.

Oh, stop rubbing it in, arsehole, Draco grumbled at his boyfriend, and Harry’s hands stopped with the aloe.

You know I didn’t mean it like that! The blond pouted, and Harry laughed as his hands resumed their ministrations.

You’re so cranky when you’re not feeling well, my love, he told him fondly as he cast a cooling charm on a soft cloth and put it on his forehead.

Oh, like you’re any better, Draco reminded him, and Harry had to admit he had a point, although his issue was more with being cooped up than the actual pain or illness.

I love you, you great prat, Harry said, but Draco had already drifted off, tired from the heat and the excitement of the vacation, and Harry smiled, popping into his kitten form and curling on his boyfriend’s lap to do the same.

[Narcissa begins to put pressure on the muggle minister to legalise gay marriage in larger Britain.]

“The giants want to meet Harry?” Severus paled- this child was going to be the death of him, which was ironic because he was so generally well behaved.  He just happened to have a penchant for attracting dangerous friends, both creature and human (exhibit A being Pansy Parkinson).

“Relax- he’ll have an entourage of dragons and a literal hell-demon if anything goes wrong,” Sirius rolled his eyes at Severus, like he couldn’t be just as overprotective in his own way.  Arf licked his lips, looking eager at the idea of a giant (pun intended) feast.

“They’re not gonna try to hurt me, buddy, nine chances out of ten,” Harry told his pet.  “And if they do, I think you’ll have to fight the dragons and Snarles for the spoils.”

Arf puffed out his chest, as if to say he thought four dragons were no match for him.  Hedwig, on Harry’s shoulder, hooted in exasperation- men (except for Harry, who was a perfect little boy- and she didn’t care how many times he insisted that he was sixteen and almost grown up- he was her little owlet).

“Yo sssssoy la favorita,” Sapphire hissed, and Harry scolded her.

“Vos quiero todosssss de vossssotrosssss la missssma,” he reminded.

“Bueno,” she said flatly.   “Lo que sea.”

“No, Arf,” he said suddenly, catching the look on the bunyip’s face.  “She may be annoying, but you can’t eat her.”  Arf bent his head in submission, and it was honestly kind of hilarious how the terrifying water demon would cede to nobody but an itty-bitty little teenager with big green eyes.

“Hey Amethyst, Citrine, Agate,” Harry greeted his new dragon friends, as Lily, already bigger than all of them at less than two years old, flitted eagerly around them, asking questions about Australia and New Zealand.

“Harry!” Lily landed in front of her bonded, her forked tongue giving him a sloppy wet kiss.   “Look at my tail spikes- I’ve got a venom sack!”

“Impressive,” Harry told her.   “Isn’t that super rare for a horntail?’

“Yep,” she answered proudly.   “Only the most powerful get them, and I’m the youngest one to ever grow one.  Mama’s so proud.”

“I’m proud of you too,” Harry pet her great black snout, giving it a soft little peck.   “You ready to go see some giants?”

“ They’re not giant, I’m giant!” Lily exclaimed, taking to the air again, and Harry cast a suspicious look at Hagrid.

“Did you give her rock cakes again?” he asked.  “You know they go straight to her head,” he chided.

“Er, she just likes ‘em so much, and look at ‘er lil beggin’ face!” the large wizard shuffled his feet as Lily put on a flame show, already 1000 feet in the air.

“Merlin help you as a father,” Minerva shook her head.  “All that little one is going to have to do is cock their head and they’ll be able to get just about anything out of you.”

“ I will carry you, your clawiness,” Agate said, “since your bonded is so… energetic… today.”

“Thanks, but please call me Harry, remember?”

“Apologies your- Harry,” the male Opaleye corrected.   “It is hard not to call the little lord of the forest by a noble title.”

“S’all good,” Harry chuckled as the dragon knelt for him to mount, and he straightened (physically, not sexually- he said bi to that train a long time ago).  “Here, Draco, c’mon.”

Draco looked skeptically at the large beast, not quite sure.

Come luv- you won’t get hurt, and I’ll hold you.  I can’t meet the giants without my soulmate, and it’s only a short flight.

Ugh, why do you have to be so precious even in my head, his boyfriend sighed, eventually mounting in front of him as Harry wrapped his arms around him.  

“See, this is fun, right?” Harry asked, pulling Draco flush against his chest.

“Y-yeah… I guess,” the blonde capitulated, his sarcastic exterior giving way to a giant puddle of sentimental goo, like it always did when Harry touched him, or looked at him, or just existed, really… Merlin, he was so gay…

“Yeehaw!” Harry whooped in a bad impression of an American accent, as Hagrid looked ecstatic, he and Maxime having been offered rides by Citrine and Amethyst.

“You’re such a dork,” Draco rolled his eyes.

“But I’m your dork,” he kissed Draco’s ear.

“Just through here,” Hagrid pointed to the clearing, and the three dragons landed.  Arf also got there at the same time (he could travel through the underworld or something, Harry figured, seeing how he was always popping up random places.  Snarles, ADHD little creature he was, had gotten distracted and wandered in the other direction, but Harry wasn’t worried- he’d come back when he was ready, and he knew which things he wasn’t allowed to eat.  

“Hello, forest lord,” the giant chieftess came up to him, and holy shit, was she kneeling for him?!

“Er, please call me Harry,” he requested, feeling uncomfortable, as he always did when people showed him reverence, for any reason.

“Very well- if forest lord wishes it,” she agreed, and Hagrid marveled how fast her English had improved (but giants were, in general, incredibly intelligent creatures).  “Harry lord, I am Khari.”

“Very nice to meet you,” he stuck his hand out politely, and Khari, ever so gently, placed her thumb nearby.  It was the length of his legs, put she helped by basically moving it for him as he shook her hand.

“OH- Tiny human lord has come!” Another giant, clearly and heavily pregnant, came bounding up, shaking the the ground as she moved, and every dragon but Lily (newly arrived from working off her sugar high) had to splay their legs to steady themselves.  Harry fell on his arse, although thankfully it has a little more padding since he’d started taking the appetite stimulant.

“BELLAMY- MANNERS!” Khari boomed, forgetting to lower her voice as she scolded the woman.

“I am not able to help it- he so cute and I have mama instincts!” the pregnant giantess declared, softly lifting Harry up to cradle him against her chest, and he was essentially using her baby bump as a chair.

“Er, hi,” he waved (adorably, because he’s frickin Harry) as the baby gave a sudden kick that almost unseated him.  

“Oh- baby likes you!” she squealed, careful to keep her voice down.  “Baby is very lazy and does not kick much- this is biggest one yet.”

“Wow, um, pleased to meet you,” Harry spoke down to her belly, as the baby kicked again.  “Could you maybe be a little quieter in there, though? I really don’t wanna fall off.” The baby immediately quieted down.  

“Little lord must raise child- none of mine ever behave,” Bellamy declared.

“Uh…”

“She jokes,” Khari assured him.  “She thinks she is very funny, but she cannot get the tone right.”

“Best comedy deadpan,” Bellamy insisted.

“I think my Uncle Sev would agree with you,” Harry giggled.

“I must meet Uncle Sev,” Bellamy decided.  “We do stand-up.” Everyone who knew Severus Snape laughed loudly at the mental picture.

“I think my boyfriend is broken,” Harry said eventually, as Draco nearly fell off Agate, still laughing.

“We will call the tinker,” Khari said, but Harry assured her that he too, was kidding.

“See- that is funny,” the chieftess told the other woman.

“Whatever,” Bell rolled her eyes.  “We make plans to stomp on egg-face man now?”

[Voldemort spends the morning over the toilet, after he’s killed the death eater that gave him this awful stomach virus.]

“Double wedding!” Sirius exclaimed as they set up the simple ceremony on the Hogwarts grounds the next day.  “For realsies this time!”

“That’s so gay,” George snickered.

“Would you two please stop saying that all the time- everyone in this fucking school is gay,” Pansy rolled her eyes.  “Even the squid is bi-curious.”

“And I said bi bi bi, don’t wanna be a fool for you,” Harry sang at Draco as he hung flower garlands.

“Only you could pair an NSYNC song with a terrible pun and make it sound good,” he rolled his eyes back at his boyfriend, but pulled him by his midsection off the stepstool he was using and spun him around before kissing him on the lips.

“Babe, you broke the garlands,” Harry complained as flowers floated around them, and he sneezed as Draco kissed his nose.

“Here,” he said, picking up his wand before remembering he couldn’t use it in Britain like he could down under.  “Actually, you do it, wandless wonder,” he laughed sheepishly.

Harry rolled his eyes, but he snapped his fingers and the garland put itself back together before floating up to its proper place.

“What do you think Sev’s wedding will look like?” Draco teased, as Harry felt the ever-present awe Draco felt for everything about him and lit up like a Christmas tree.

“Black decorations with cauldrons steaming for ambiance?” Harry asked, as they both giggled.

“Whatcha guys talking about?” Ginny wandered up to them, trailing Luna by their joint hands.

“Severus’ wedding,” Draco singsonged.

Before Ginny could declare herself the minister of said probably-distant-future-because-Batty-is-emotionally-repressed event, Remus came running up.  “Somebody get Sirius away from the music list- we cannot have another Leaky Cauldron incident!”

“Hey!” the Lord Black complained.  “I was going muggle with this one- WHAT’S NEW PUSSYCAT!”

“No,” Narcissa said flatly, dragging him away by the ear and shoving him down by Harry and Draco.  “Watch your godfather,” she instructed her son’s soulmate, giving the man a stern look.

“Do you have your vows?” Harry asked him.

“Yes- Remus, your arse is fine as hell,” Sirius said theatrically, hand on his heart.

“No,” Narcissa called again, because she had super-hearing (she grew up as the only responsible one amongst all her crazy sisters and  cousins- Andromeda definitely wasn’t as polished as a teen as she liked to pretend).

“Remus, your butt is fine as heck,” Sirius tried again.

“Padfoot,” Harry rolled his eyes and batted his arm.

“Alright, alright- but seriously, we’ve been basically married since we were your age, so this is just to please the establishment.  Personally, I’d rather stick it to the man- live in sin!” he cried. “Anarchy reigns!”

“You jumped on the bed and whimpered when you saw a spider yesterday,” Remus called over loudly, hearing Sirius’ thoughts.  “You wouldn’t survive anarchy.”

“Rude!” Sirius huffed, crossing his arms over his chest.

“You guys all have the same pouting expression,” Harry chuckled, “you pale bunch of Black people.”

“Again with the puns,” Ginny rolled her eyes.

“You can pry my puns out of my cold dead hands,” Harry declared, and Draco tensed at even the idea, even if it was a joke, so Harry reached over and squeezed his hand.

Love you.

Love you too, Draco returned, relaxing.

Speaking of love, it was finally time for the wedding to start.  Since both couples already had the wedding of their dreams and this was just to make it official, they’d decided to do a fun theme- rainbows.  Sirius had charmed an old leather jacket to rainbow colours and splattered multiple colours of paint over a pair of jeans, and Remus stood smart in a nice three piece suit, the colour of the bisexual flag.  Narcissa and Aralynn both wore rainbow-coloured gowns, Narcissa’s a high-low with a ruffled, multi-coloured train and Aralynn's a little cocktail dress, and they both wore rainbow converse. Severus, in exchange for a promise from everyone to stop talking about the ‘billywig incident’ (that no one had any intention of keeping), was officiating, dressed in traditional bishops’ robes, except for the fact that they, too, were brightly coloured.  The only dark thing he wore was his expression, wondering where along the line he’d lost the last teeny-tiny shred of his self-respect.

“We are gathered here today to celebrate the love of two couples that I hate very much,” he began, grouchily.  “Mutt, wolf- I’ve watched your distracting childish friendship lead to a distracting childish courtship and now to what I’m sure will be a distracting childish marriage.”  

“He’s got a point,” Sirius laughed.

“Shh- the Lord is speaking,” Severus said, putting a finger to his lips.

“That’s funny, because to me you look like a bat out of hell,” Narcissa sniggered, and Severus turned to glare at her.

“Do you want to get married or not?” he snarled at her.

“Oh fine- do continue, oh messenger of a religion you are not actually a part of,” she waved him on theatrically.

“Thank you,” he said, not really meaning it.  “Now, the rings.”

“Uh, we have a little bit of a problem,” Harry called, wagging a finger at Sapphire.  “How does the ringbearer lose the rings?” he asked her in English, to which she looked at him blankly and then belched.

“It’s okay,” Sirius called.  “We’re wearing our real ones- those were ring pops.”

“Alright then,” Severus cleared his throat.  “We’ll just speed through this bit then… place the rings, a bunch of sentimental nonsense, eternal love, blah blah blah… do you take each other?”

“I do,” both couples said at once.

“Very well- I now pronounce you married.”

“Wait- what about the vows?” Hannah called from her seat.

“I will not listen to anymore sentimental nonsense today,” the potions master/rainbow minister huffed.

“Okay, no sentiment then,” Sirius agreed, turning to his husband.  “But Remus- your arse is fine as hell.”

Chapter Text

Remus stood staring at the letter he’d just received from the ministry, his jaw dropping.  Sirius stood near him, leaning casually (and sexily, but with the news he’d just received that was only taking up about 40% of his brain compared to the usual 80%) against the wall with a faint smirk on his face, like he had been for the past ten minutes since his husband had received the letter.  

“I told you it was only a matter of time before someone recognised your talent- frankly, it’s insanely incompetent of them to have only just realised how perfect you are,” he said, smirking wider.

“But- I have responsibilities here- I can’t just abandon them,” Remus objected.

“Babe- talk to Minnie.  You’ve been waiting your whole life for an opportunity like this, and you’re the perfect person for it- who better than someone who understands the struggles of facing discrimination and trying to make a living out of nothing with the whole world against you?” he pointed out, wrapping his arms around Remus’ shoulders.

“Alright, I suppose there’s no harm in just broaching the subject- it’s not as if she can’t say no,” the former werewolf capitulated.

“She won’t- and even if she did, you’re not stuck here against your will- this is something you need to do,” Sirius asserted.  “Now come on!” he dragged Remus by the hand towards Minerva’s office.

They’d barely knocked on the door before it swung open, and the head of Gryffindor stood there with her wand in her hand, putting her fingers to her lips in a shhh! motion.  The reason quickly became apparent, as Harry lie asleep on her couch, his hand hanging over the side as Lily the dragon moved up and down the tattooed arm while Hedwig gave her irritated looks and the inked snakes also dozed lethargically.  The real version of Nagini laid across the top of the couch, her head resting on Harry’s forehead, covering his famous lightning scar as he snored softly. Minerva cast a muffliato charm around his napping área before she turned to them.

“We were enjoying some time together when he drifted off.  It’s just about the time for it too.” She pointed at the clock on the wall, which was at 3:00 pm.  “So, what do you need?”

“I… I got a letter from the ministry today,” Remus began, still rather dazed.  “It’s a job offer- they want me to be the head of the new Department for the Rights of Magical Creatures.”

“Oh Remus- that’s wonderful!” she gasped, clapping her hands joyfully.  “You have to take it! If you want to, that is?” she looked at him slyly.

“I… I think I would,” he said, slowly, deliberately.  “But- what about the DADA position- will you be able to find someone for it?”

“We’ll manage,” she responded decisively.  “Worst case scenario, we can just have Harry do it.”  She was joking, of course- she would never put that much work on her little kitten.

“Thank you Minerva- this means a lot to me, you have no idea.”

“I’ve known you since you were eleven, Remus- I think I know you well enough to realise that after marrying Sirius, this is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to you,” she smiled knowingly at him, leaning back in her chair and adopting a ‘well, how brilliant am I?’ posture.

“Okay, so maybe you do know,” he chuckled, running his hand through his sandy brown hair, peppered with just a bit of grey.

“Well,” Sirius prompted, “shall we go celebrate, you naughty wolf?”

“Of course, my devilish lord.” Remus whispered into his ear, and Minerva rolled her eyes and waved them out, adding find new professor to her to do list as Harry let out a slightly louder snore and muttered “Pa’foot, no!” in his sleep.  She spelled another blanket on top of her precious son, her heart melting a little more every second that she looked at him.

[Jane receives another letter from Minerva and drops everything to write back.]

“Alright,” Narcissa began as she convened a meeting between the Hogwarts staff (minus Dumbledore, of course) and the Board of Governors.  “I have called us away from our regularly scheduled activities,” here she cast a quick glance at her wife, whose ‘regularly scheduled activity’ was currently binge-watching Addams Family, “because we clearly need to do something about the Dumbledore… situation,” she pursed her lips in distaste.  “It is clear that he has not been running the school efficiently, and despite Minerva doing an admirable job at picking up his slack all these years, she is only one person, and there have been a number of problems, the assimilation of muggleborns being chief among them.  Although I would also count kidnapping, interfering where he has no business being, and hosting dangerous tournaments without consulting anyone very serious offences as well.” She scoffed- those were some of her babies that had been endangered in that tournament, not to mention all the other madness.

“Some of his defence positions were just ludicrous,” Pomona scowled, looking rather like a cranky mandrake as she crossed her dumpy arms over her chest.  “I mean, an incompetent teacher possessed by Voldetart- really- even Severus at his worst would have been better.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” the aforementioned man quipped sardonically.

“Out of Harry’s first five years at Hogwarts, three professors made a decent effort to kill him, and another might have managed through sheer idiocy if we hadn’t been watching him,” Minerva declared.

“That one would have been a good candidate to feed to the basilisk,” Flitwick said savagely, and the others all laughed and gave knowing head nods.

“I can’t help but wonder, if Harry had gone into the chamber, do you think the basilisk would have bonded to him?” Sinestra asked curiously.

“Oh, most definitely, judging by everything that has happened since then, but dragons and demons are quite enough- a basilisk following him around like a puppy would have been just the thing to do us all in via anxiety attack,” Sev pointed out.

“Well, Albus certainly missed rather a lot in his yearly reports,” the governors looked at each other, slack-jawed.

“Yes- which is why we believe firing him and eliminating the position of headmaster all together will be the solution to our problem,” Minerva continued primly.

“And what is your proposed alternative?” the head governor asked.

“We believe a counsel of the houses run by the four heads shall be the best solution, as it ensures more even and objective representation for the student body.  Important decisions will be decided by a vote of the counsel, and we propose a fifth person, or head of counsel, to be the tie-breaker vote, or, in extreme situations, have veto power.  The head would also be in charge of administrative paperwork and reviewing current policies,” Severus recited smoothly.

“It seems an elegant yet practical system,” a squat little warlock governor mused.  “Obviously we have four/fifths of the new council right here, but who should be the first head?”

“We are proposing my wife, Aralynn,” Narcissa said, and there were some astonished looks traded amongst the eleven governors (after Lucius was arrested, a suitable twelfth was never found).  “Before you say anything, we are obviously aware that this is unprecedented, but we believe that having a muggle on the Hogwarts counsel could usher in a new era of equality and understanding.  She better than anyone will understand the difficulties muggleborns face, and she will be able to initiate policies to help with these hurdles. In addition, it would be nice to have a muggle perspective, as it is no secret that wizards often overlook simple solutions and overly complicate things.”

“Well,” the head governor pushed a stray strand of grey hair back into her neat bun, “you seem to have it all figured out.  We approve these policy changes and would like regular updates as to its progress. Now, there is the small matter of a new defence professor…”

“We have overcome that hurdle as well,” Aralynn spoke up, already settling into her new position as head of council.  “As you may have heard, Gordon Ramsay has recently had his first child and is ready to re-enter the wizarding world. We have contacted him, and he is willing to take up the position of potions professor, which would leave Severus to take up the defence professorship, as he is both qualified and a teacher who won’t try to kill Harry or any other student.”

“Very well- you seem to have everything taken care of,” the governess said.  “Now, I believe I’m going to go home and watch the cooking channel…”

[Dean and Seamus are looking for a place to make out.  Unfortunately, they just happen to choose the same broom closet that Pansy and Mia are half-naked in- what’s the point of hanging out at Hogwarts in the summer if they all seem to wander into the same damn spaces?!]

“Dumbledore’s called a staff meeting,” Severus smirked into his coffee the next day, and Harry, who was the only teen at the castle at the moment, looked over at him.  “You look way too happy about that.”

“That’s the time we’ve chosen to let him know he’s been… let go,” Pomona smiled deviously as she passed Harry the raspberries for his yoghurt.  

“Ah, that explains it,” he nodded, slipping a sausage under the table to Arf, in puppy form, and a rasher of bacon to Du.  Sapphire had snuck into the kitchens again, so she was currently sleeping that off in Harry’s room, and Nagini had made short work of a few baby acromantulas.  Arf had done the dragons the courtesy of taking them to Florida through the shadow realm, and they were currently enjoying a nice rest after taking care of the gator overpopulation problem.  Hedwig was off visiting her new girlfriend in the Hogsmeade post office, but Harry had put aside some bacon and dry toast for her when she came back. Snarles was… well, he wasn’t eating people, and that was all that one could really ask of Snarles.

“Bye Arf,” Harry waved his bunyip off.  “Don’t eat too many grindylows- you know they give you indigestion.”

“Arf,” Arf acknowledged.  And then, “Arf.”

“Love you too buddy,” Harry pat him on the head as he bounded out.

“Only you, Harry- only you.”  Severus shook his head and sprinkled a bit more sugar on Harry’s oatmeal.

“I’m pretty excited about Professor Ramsey coming,” Harry just rolled his eyes and ignored his uncle.

“Ah yes- I ‘ear zhat ‘e eez very good, non?” Maxime was at Hogwarts for the weekend, since she divided her time pretty evenly between Britain and France now.

“He’s… adequate,” Severus sniffed, pouring more black coffee.

“Oh, your opinion doesn’t count- you think your own boyfriend is only adequate,” Minerva lightly batted him on the shoulder.

“I will have you know that my… Julian… is above average.”  The professor stuck his nose in the air.

Geez, thanks babe.

You should be resting, Severus ordered.   The death eater meeting ran late last night.

Oh, relax- at least I wasn’t one of those poor bastards that got crucio’d.  

You’ve never gotten even one- a true record, honestly- what’s your secret?

I’m not stupid nor snarky, and I dare say that he’s rather weaker this time than when he last rose, Julian pointed out, as Severus ignored the jive about his snark.

Ah yes, Severus remarked.   He doesn’t handle his handicap nearly as well as Harry.

Did you expect anything less?

No, but the images in your head I get of his current state still amuse me.

“ Hellooo, Severus,” Pomona waved her hand in front of his face for the third time.  “Staff meeting time.”

“Oh, right…” he curled his lip distastefully at the idea of seeing Dumbledore, but at least it was in a more pleasant capacity this time.

“Well,” Dumbledore began as soon as they’d all taken a seat in the staffroom.  “I’ve gathered us here today to talk about the recently vacated potions professorship- I was thinking that we would hire Horace Slughorn.  He will be reluctant to come out of retirement, of course, but I believe if we use Harry-”

“You are done using Harry!” Minerva cut him off angrily.  “Furthermore, you’re done altogether. Albus, you’re being let go.”

“Why, my dear-”

“Don’t you my dear me!” she ordered.  “We’ve taken it up with the governors- you’ve done far too many stupid things, and it’s long past time you were dismissed from your post.  You can now go enjoy your retirement in that nice little cottage in Little Hangleton you seem so fond of, or wherever it is you want to wander off to, but you must stay out of school affairs- we’ll be keeping an eye on you.”  Dumbledore tried to say more, but Peeves, serving his probation after a very long sentence in the forbidden forest, came to escort the man off of the grounds.

[The staff have a party, because why not?]

Harry was ambling along pleasantly, just wandering around the castle- there was always something to see there that hadn’t been there before- Hogwarts was like a sentient being, and Harry tuned in gently to the energy of the castle, enjoying the warm feeling of her wards and her magic.

“Ninety-nine bottles of butterbeer on the wall,” he sang to himself, doing a little hop everytime he ‘took one down and passed it around.’  All his animal friends were off doing their own thing, and Draco was in his bedroom at the manor working on an essay, but he had Draco in his head and a castle full of wonders for company, so he was quite happy.

You’re so cute, my love, Draco was practically oozing sentiment as he felt his boyfriend’s happiness.

Not as cute as you, Harry countered, to which Draco sent him a feeling of disbelief.

I may be classically handsome, but you’re more precious than a pygmy puff.

Okay, now you sound like a cheesy Valentine’s card, Harry rolled his eyes.

I’m your cheesy Valentine’s card, he gushed, and then, in their typical routine, he added you prat, just so he didn’t seem too mushy.

Arseface.

Perfect Potter with his scar and his broomstick.

Huh, that’s funny- I was under the impression that you quite liked my broomstick, Harry quipped.   Hah hah!   Who’s too immature for sex talk now ? He teased as he felt Draco blush brilliantly.

Still you, Draco gathered himself quickly as he sent Harry a very tantalising image.  Harry squeaked, flushed, and didn’t feel the magic of the vanishing step until it was too late, and he tripped and went tumbling down the entire flight.  He managed to avoid hitting his head, but he felt something in his leg crack as he hit the ground.

Well, that’s a little inconvenient, he thought as Draco went into full panic mode.

Chapter Text

Owww ow ow babe it hurts! Draco cried, panicking as he felt Harry’s pain through the bond.

Babe, it’s not that bad- I’ll be fine.  Kreacher will probably be here any second, and then Aunt Poppy will patch me right up.

But it hurts! Draco, while he couldn’t personally feel the pain in a way that incapacitated his own body, could feel how it affected Harry, and he whimpered on behalf of his soulmate.

Shh, just breathe, Harry instructed as he looked quizzically at the bone piercing through the skin- biology was so interesting.  

Stop being so calm and react like a normal human being! Draco cried as Harry sent him soothing feelings, humming softly.  As he had predicted, Kreacher popped in.

“Hey buddy,” Harry said to him, as Kreacher, too, panicked.  

“LITTLE MASTER HARRY!  LITTLE MASTER HARRY!” he squeaked, frantic.

“Shh, it’s alright- if you could just take me to Aunt Poppy- I think she’s still in the staffroom,” Harry said calmly.

“Kreacher be doing that right now!” the elf declared, putting his little arms gently around  Harry as he aparated him to the adults.

“What in Merlin’s name?!” Professor Sinistra gasped, as Harry suddenly appeared on the staff room table and Charity Burbage fainted.

“I had a little bit of an accident on one of the moving staircases,” he explained serenely as Severus frantically dug through his utility belt for potions and Minerva rushed up to check on him.  “Sorry I’m bleeding on the table.”

“Oh, nevermind that!” Poppy harrumphed as she examined the damage and cradled him to her chest.  “Kreacher, hospital wing!” Kreacher grabbed the four of them and Harry found himself being carried to his usual bed in his little room.

“Oh, you poor thing,” the nurse muttered as she cast a few diagnostic charms and set about putting the bone back in place and knitting it together again.

“It doesn’t really hurt much,” Harry shrugged, ignoring Draco’s hysterical presence in his head, which had basically devolved into incomprehensible screaming by this point.

“Nevertheless,” Poppy sighed, “it is a pretty serious compound fracture, and your bones are weaker than they should be.  You’re going to have to stay in bed for a week.”

“Excuse me!” Harry exclaimed, incredibly displeased.  “But the train leaves in five days!”

Oh sure, that you throw a fit about, Draco finally calmed down enough to huff.

Harry ignored him.  “Aunt Poppy, surely-”

“ Surely nothing,” she scolded.   “Surely you will stay in bed for a week, and wear your cast for two, and use your crutches like a well-behaved little patient.”

“Crutches- come on!  That’s just not fair!”

“It is rather unfortunate that the universe won’t give you a break, child- that I will agree on.  But it is perfectly within not only my right as a physician but my responsibility to assign you these provisions.”

“But Aunt Poppy- It doesn’t even hurt!   I could get up and walk right now!”

“So help me Harry James Potter, I will tie you to that bed!” Severus proclaimed, and Harry crossed his arms and glared at him as Poppy wrapped a cast around the limb from thigh to foot.

[Kreacher goes to get stickers and markers to decorate the cast with so he can try to cheer little master Harry up a little.]

“Get your fingers out of there!” Poppy ordered him for the third time in an hour as he sat on his bed pouting later.

“But Aunt Poppy- it’s itchy!” Harry complained as Severus clutched his head, the PTSD hitting as rivers of oatmeal flooded his overcrowded brain.

“Well then, you’ll just have to try to focus on something else,” she said, handing him the television remote as a hint.

“But I caaaannnn’t!”

“Harry, dear, if you can ignore the bone sticking out of your legs and just stay there, quiet as you please, while the rest of us panic, you can surely manage to put up with the apparatus that is preventing further damage to your body,” Minnie told him, rubbing his hair back off his forehead.

“Mama!”

“Harry,” she deadpanned, giving him a look.

“I’m bored- I wanna go outside- pleeeease!   I’ll even use the stupid crutches…”

“No,” Poppy shut him down.

“But-”

“No.”

“Can I at least have some ice cream?” Harry sighed, defeated.

“Now that I can do,” Poppy booped his nose with her finger.  “Chocolate ice cream with hundreds and thousands?”

“Yes please,” Harry slumped against back against the pillows as Minnie adjusted the ones keeping his leg elevated.

Mums say I can come over and spend the night as soon as I finish my summer homework, Draco informed him, feeling bad for his poor boyfriend.

At least we can cuddle, Harry cheered slightly.

As long as it won’t hurt your leg, Draco reminded him sternly, and Harry sighed again.  Luckily, Kreacher came back with what looked like a whole art studio as he started doodling snakes and bunyips and drop bears on Harry’s cast, before adding dragons and owls and smiling house elves.

“Thanks buddy,” he laughed a little while later as Kreacher proudly signed his name on the finished piece.  “That’s a lot better.”

“Kreacher will always be making things better for little master Harry,” the elf said with a fond pat on his curls as he pulled up a chair and got out his favourite Dr. Seuss book.  Draco came through the floo a moment later, carefully wrapping his body around Harry’s, and the green-eyed teen thought that maybe things just weren’t so bad after all.

Chapter Text

Harry stared morosely out the window on September the first, wishing he were on the train with his friends and his boyfriend.

Sorry babe, Draco sighed into his head, genuinely upset.   If I didn’t have prefect duties, I would have just floo’ed over and kept you company.

It’s okay- I’m super proud of you for being a prefect, Harry smiled.

I’m super proud of you for being quidditch captain.  I love you.

I love you too, prat.

Arse.

Wanker.

I love you so much- I really do, Draco laughed again as he sent Harry the mental sensation of squeezing his hand.

I know, Harry sent him a warm feeling of love.   You’re in my head, remember?

How could I forget- you’re so ADHD, Draco laughed, picking up a muggle expression Hermione used with Ron all the time.

Enjoy your prefect duties- try not to scare the firsties too much, Harry rolled his eyes.

I’ll try not to, Draco rolled his eyes right back.

Harry went back to flipping through his book, Draco’s sarcastic running commentary making him chuckle.  His leg under his cast was itching again, so he sent a cool puff of air out of the end of his wand, which helped a little, enough that he could manage, with some difficulty, to avoid trying to shove his fingers down into it and claw at his leg for some relief.

The cast was still clunky and awkward, though, and kept him from moving around in the bed to relieve some of his pent-up energy, so, giving up on studying ahead for herbology, he put the textbook on the end table and wandlessly summoned a spiderman comic from his bookshelf.

“How’re you doing, darling?” Poppy asked him as she came in to give him his lunchtime medications, and Harry wrinkled his nose- he didn’t think he’d ever get used to the taste of them, no matter how many years he’d been practically drinking an apothecary’s worth three times a day.

“I’m alright,” he forced a smile onto his face as he tried to adjust subtly without knocking his cast off its mountain of pillows, which always sent Poppy into a flurry of anxiety (he’d learned that the hard way).  “It’s only two more days.”

“That’s my Harry- always so positive.”  She ruffled his hair as she prepared his subcutaneous shot of immunoglobulins.  “Professor Ramsey wants to meet you, by the way, so I told him he was welcome to come by with his daughter after lunch.”

“Really?” Harry brightened as the medi-witch gave him his shot.  “I’ve been watching some of his muggle shows on the telly- I think he’s really funny.”

“He’s not that gruff in real life, at least not with kids,” Poppy assured him.  “Although I don’t think he’ll tolerate any messing around in his labs, especially from the older kids.”

“Uncle Sev didn’t either, though- I hope nobody’s expecting Professor Ramsay to be any easier on them, or they’ll be disappointed,” Harry laughed.

“Severus is definitely fair now, though- and there’s something to be said about that.  If I told you your first year that Neville would have chosen to go on for a NEWT in potions, would you have believed me?” Both Harry and Poppy shared an incredulous snort at the idea.

“Thank Merlin Seamus is dropping it, though- I love him, but I’m tired of casting so many protection charms on my cauldron to prevent interference from an impromptu pyrotechnics show,” Harry groaned with a weak chuckle as he remembered all the ruined cauldrons- the thrifty side of him, the kind that was raised and conditioned to hate the smallest bit of waste, protested harshly at the loss of so many class supplies.

Dean isn’t, though, and I wouldn’t put it past Seamus to start fires telepathically, Draco butt in as he patrolled the train cars, and Harry put his head in his hands as he considered the possibility.

“Eat your curry,” Aunt Poppy rolled her eyes at him and set a tray on his lap.  “Silly child.”

“Hey- I’ll come of age in a year!” he cried in indignation, taking a bite.

“You’ll always be our silly child,” the nurse kissed his cheek and carefully adjusted the pillows under his leg.

Harry had just finished his plate, earning a brilliant smile from the strict medi-witch, when Gordon Ramsay entered the hospital wing, carrying a little girl in his arms.

“Hello, you must be Harry,” Professor Ramsay said, and the teen immediately liked him for not staring at his scar.

“And you must be the new potions professor- it’s nice to meet you, Professor Ramsey.”  Harry smiled brilliantly.

“You can call me Gordon when we’re not in class,” the man found himself saying, immediately drawn in by Harry’s easy demeanor and natural charisma.

“Oh, thank you- I’d shake your hand, but you’ve got both of them rather full and I can’t quite bend that way,” Harry remarked, motioning to the cast that imprisoned his entire right leg, leaving only his toes free (there was a warm sock covering the cast, to keep his little piggies warm).

“Quite alright,” the chef/potions master let out a rough chuckle.  The baby in his arms gave a little mew, and Gordon smiled down at the bundle.

“She’s lovely,” Harry complimented.  “What’s her name?”

“Megan,” Professor Ramsay informed him.  “Megan Jane. Would you like to hold her?”

“May I?” Harry lit up.

In answer, the man put the baby gently in the teen’s arms, settling her so Harry would be comfortable, and he looked down at the infant adoringly.

“She’s so beautiful- I can already feel her magic, like a little star.”  Harry adjusted the blankets so she would be more comfortable.

“You’ve got a mage sense, eh?” Gordon raised an eyebrow, impressed.  

“Er, senses, actually… five of them,” Harry blushed, cheeks going as red as Megan’s blanket.

“Bloody hell!” Gordon whistled and slapped his knee.  “You’re quite something, kid, you know that?”

“I must admit I’m rather a big fan of yours, as well… I’ve been watching a lot of Hell’s Kitchen the past few days,” Harry admitted.

“I hope it didn’t scare you too badly,” he laughed.

“Nope- mama wouldn’t hire you if you weren’t good at what you do.  And there’s always the production value, with television.”

“Right you are, kiddo, right you are.  So, anyone I should watch out for?” he gave Harry a sly smile.

“Oh, my boyfriend Draco is a huge troublemaker,” Harry jibed as Draco gave an indignant huff in his head and baby Megan fell asleep in his arms.  

“Bloody hell,” Gordon ignored the joke and looked at his daughter.  “How’d you do that- she’s impossible to get to sleep!” Inside his head, his wife had a similar reaction of disbelief.

“I dunno?” Harry shrugged one arm as he rocked Megan softly.

“Can we keep you?” the professor asked.

“I don’t think my mama would like that very much, but I’d be happy to babysit for you,” Harry answered casually.

Gordon Ramsay had an expression on his face like he could have kissed him as Harry handed him his now thoroughly-sleeping baby so he could go take a nap while she did.

[Harry watches the sorting ceremony through Draco’s eyes.]

“Hello darling,” Minerva came in after she got her new students settled in their houses, carrying a very large box in her arms.

“Hey mama- what’s that?” Harry asked curiously, poking the box with his mage senses, but he felt nothing- she must have put the suppressing potion, because there was definitely something alive in their, snuffling at the air holes of the box.

“So, a while ago Fluffy and his girlfriend had a puppy,” Minerva began (Cerberus only had one child at a time).  “And we decided to send it off to a training programme for wizarding service animals- she’s trained to detect signs of illness long before you do, and hopefully if we catch it early, you won’t have to spend as much time here and you’ll recover more quickly.”

Harry opened the box, and he was immediately inundated with the feeling of snuggles and the smell of flowers from the dog’s magical core (cerberus were magical creatures, so they of course had magical cores).  She was about the size that he was, although probably a little bit larger, to be honest.

“Thank you so much!” Harry squealed, petting her head.

“She just got out of training an hour ago- normally her type of training would take a year or two, but cerberus are incredibly intelligent.  She’s trained to detect signs of illness, come get someone if you faint, keep you from falling if you do, and bring you things you ask her to if you’re in bed,” Minerva said, smiling fondly at her son.

“I love her!” Harry kissed the nose on her middle head, scrunching her ears, and she stood still as she was trained to do, but she was absolutely loving the attention.

“Here’s her manual of commands, as well as instructions for teaching her new things,” his mama handed him a little booklet, and Harry reached up as far as he could to hug her, and she bent down joyfully, patting his back.

“I love you so much- I just want you to be happy,” she whispered into his hair.

“I am happy, mama; I’ve been happy for a long time now.”

Chapter Text

Harry hobbled out of the hospital wing on the accursed crutches, in somewhat of a cranky mood because Madame Pomfrey had to put them on the lowest height setting (and he wasn’t too happy about the crutches in general, and was very vocal in his insistence that he ‘didn’t need them.’).

His new service dog (after some thought, he’d decided to name her ‘Persephone’ because she was a cerberus whose magic smelled like flowers) trotted along beside him, carrying his bag, which even with a feather-light charm would have been annoying to try to balance with the crutches.

“Hey prat,” Draco met him at the end of the hallway outside the hospital wing.

“Morning arseface,” Harry leaned in to kiss him on the lips, feeling slightly cheered.  Until he lost his balance and Draco leaned forward to catch him in a panic, which disrupted their romantic moment significantly.

“I hate these things already,” Harry scuffed the bottom of one against the stone.

“Don’t you dare think of hiding them and going without,” Draco read his mind, and Harry squirmed guiltily and sighed.

“I won’t,” he grumbled.  “Even if I could somehow get it past you, mama, Aunt Poppy and Uncle Sev, this stupid cast covers my whole leg- I can’t balance on it.  I can’t believe I have to hold quidditch tryouts looking like some kind of clumsy chump.”

“You are a clumsy chump- you’re just my clumsy chump,” Draco teased- at first he’d felt terribly bad that Harry had fell down the stairs due to their conversation, but Harry would not put up with that shit, so it had evolved into more of a gentle teasing about how he’d actually fallen down the fucking stairs, for Merlin’s sake.  

“At least I’m good in the air, or I wouldn’t be captain at all,” Harry laughed with his boyfriend, Persephone trotting along beside them, and he thought the day might be looking up for a bit.  Until he and Draco got into the Great Hall and sat down at the Ravenclaw table with the rest of their friends.

“Oh look, it’s our savior.  Great at duelling dark lords, not so great at climbing stairs,” Blaise started in immediately on the ribbing, and Neville half-heartedly chided him but couldn’t help a little giggle from escaping.

“Hey- that’s not true,” Ron said, and Harry turned to smile at him, but he kept talking.  “He was going down the stairs.”

“You’re all terrible people,” Harry carped as he reached for a donut and tossed a piece of bacon to Persephone.

“We are pretty terrible,” Pansy agreed, snickering.

“I can’t believe you told that first year that he has to call you ‘your highness,’” Millie rolled her eyes at her girlfriend.

“Well, he was being a little monster, in my defence.”

“You’re a little monster,” Millie quipped back.

“Hey- I’m still bigger than Harry.”

“Hey!” Harry yelped, indignant.  “I’m not even a part of this conversation!”

“You’re a part of every conversation, because we love you, you tiny little dope,” Ginny tossed a bread roll at him, and Harry’s seeker reflexes kicked in as he deftly caught it and pulled it open to start spreading some jam inside it.

“You’re the worst sister ever,” the green-eyed teen stuck his tongue out at her.

“I’m the best sister.”

“So how’s potions?” Harry asked, knowing the first class had been yesterday.

“You know how it went, you were totally watching the entire thing from a nice comfy spot in Draco’s head,” Dean snorted.

“Oh, like Seamus wasn’t doing the same thing in yours, trying to get you to blow stuff up,” Draco defended Harry’s honour.

“First DADA class today,” Neville reminded them all, grabbing another pancake and putting the syrup on first and then the butter (his dad was currently doing the exact same thing, in his quarters sharing a romantic breakfast-in-bed with Alice).

“Batty doesn’t look too happy about it,” Luna hummed, and unlike everyone else, she used Severus’ marauder nickname unironically.

“He really came to enjoy teaching potions,” Blaise snickered.  “Oh, the irony.”

The head of Slytherin house was currently at the head table shooting a venomous glare at Gordon Ramsay, who was spooning oatmeal into his mouth (which of course only made Severus angrier- he’d had a failed petition to ban the cereal from the head table after Harry’s dragon pox debacle) with one hand and bouncing his baby daughter with the other (she’d kept them up most of the night, and he was keeping her until classes started so his wife could sleep a little longer).

“We have a quick announcement before classes start,” Minnie stood up at the head table, shortly after the mail came (Harry was finishing a letter from his godfathers about Remy’s new job, which he adored so far).

“We’ve noticed that we have a number of staff members with small children, or with one on the way,” she nodded to Gordon and Hagrid.  “Thusly, we have decided to start a daycare on the seventh floor in the room of requirement, and as of next week it will be open for operation under the authority and care of Alice Longbottom.  Her husband, Frank, will also be joining us as a new security advisor.”

“How could you not tell us?!” Ginny turned to Neville, smacking him on the arm.

“Well, I was going to, but then Blaise pointed out it be funnier to watch your jaws job in surprise like that,” the Gryffindor chortled.

“You’re such a bad influence on him,” Ron chided.  “He was so innocent and sweet before you came along.”

“He still is innocent and sweet,” Blaise remarked, looking at Neville with the closest thing to a sappy look he ever gave anyone.  “And the comet chose me for a reason, I’ll have you know.”

“Speaking of the comet, is Theo still refusing to talk to his Gryffindor soulmate?” Hermione asked the Slytherin boys at large.

“He says he is, but he can’t occlude for shit, and I catch him with this dreamy look on his face, staring off into space, so he’s obviously talking to her all the time, and I’ve woken up in the middle of the night a couple times to find his bed empty, so I think he’s sneaking off to meet her so we won’t tease him about it,” Draco answered her.

“I can’t really blame him- you’re all awful,” Harry crossed his arms over his chest.

“That’s not what you said last night,” Draco teased him, and everyone rolled their eyes.

“For the love of Merlin, Harry, stop blushing- we know you were in the hospital wing last night- your blondie couldn’t have snuck in even though he most certainly wanted to,” Ginny sighed- boys were so dumb.

“Where’s Hannah and Susan? - they stick up for me,” Harry ignored the part about how they wanted to (because she was right and he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of watching him blush further).

“Prefect duties, still- them and Ernie and Zacharias,” Ron informed them as he shoved some last-minute bacon into his mouth as they prepared to leave the hall.

“There are so many Hufflepuffs this year that they had to double up on prefects, and yet they still don’t make breakfast?” Pansy was glad that her duties weren’t that labour-intensive.

“Apparently a bunch of them brought cats this year and none of them are well-behaved- it’s kind of a mess, but the house elves are bringing breakfast to them while they fix the scratched furniture.  Oh, by the way, Susan told me to see if anyone wanted a kitten- one of the cats gave birth under her bed last night.” Harry lit up before the words were even out of Neville’s mouth.

“No more pets for you,” various members of the group started to say, as Harry’s bag suddenly gave a little mew.

“Uh, too late,” Harry opened his bag, and a tiny little ball of grey fluff crawled out of it.  “How did it even get here- it’s brand new!”

“It must be part kneazle,” Hermione examined it as it curled up in Harry’s lap, giving a curious scratch at the plaster cast, propped up on a stool under the table.  “They only need to nurse once before their hunting instincts kick in.”

From the head table, Severus got out of his seat with a yelp as a pure black kneazle (the only one in the litter) suddenly started climbing up his pant leg.

“Oh Merlin, this is going to be hilarious,” Pansy’s eyes lit up in anticipation as Severus took the little creature and walked towards their table.

“I don’t know where this came from, but you can take it,” Severus held the kitten out to Harry, and the tiny little creature curiously climbed into Harry’s messy hair, batted a few curls, gave his cheek a tiny little nudge before licking him in a friendly way, and then went right back to Severus.

“No,” the Slytherin ordered the ball of fluff.  “You stay with him.” The kitten repeated the process of giving Harry a bit of affection before hopping back to the potion master’s shoulder.

“Uh, I think he likes you,” Harry was trying not to erupt in a fit of laughter and upset his own kitten as the little black one tangled his paw in Snape’s hair and bopped the man’s ear with his soft little nose.

“Damn little thing,” Severus sighed, but made no move to dislodge the tiny beast as he slunked off towards the exit.  

“We should probably get going too,” Harry said, handing Draco their own new child.  “Here, hold Draconis while I get up.”

“Draconis?” Blaise snorted.

“Yes, because he’s adorable and he matches Draco’s eyes,” Harry confirmed, and his boyfriend’s crossed arms and resigned face clearly showed that he’d already lost their mental argument about it.

[Vernon and Petunia have mentally regressed, thanks to a useful spell Kreacher found in the Black library, to the age of around 4, and Petunia is feeling every grease burn she inflicted on Harry while forcing him to learn to cook for them, and Vernon is experiencing the sensation of being thrown into the wall, like he so often did for no other reason than to get Harry ‘out of his way.’]

“Oh, a practical lesson!” Harry enthused as they stepped into the classroom, where the desks were arranged in a circle around a large, open área of the classroom.

“You will stay in your chair and rest your leg,” Severus announced as he came from his office in a flourish of swishing robes.  Amusingly, his kitten was still on his shoulder, but when it saw Persephone sitting obediently by Harry’s chair, he hopped from his unwitting new owner onto the middle head of the cerberus.

“Hades, get back here!” Severus ordered.

“Aww, you named him already?” Pansy smirked, clearly enjoying every second of this.  “You’re so attached!”

“I am not,” Severus refuted, “I simply needed something to call the damn little thing, and as the irritating beast as apparently decided that it is here to stay despite my objections, I have decided to name it Hades, since it is clearly a demonous little monster from the pits of hell.”

“And it likes Harry’s dog, whose name is Persephone- your life is a study in irony,” Neville snorted along with Blaise, and their laughter eventually escalated to the point they were leaning on each other for support.

“Alright!” Severus ordered as Hades bounced back onto him, just in time to ruin his image as the rest of the class filed in, “apparently I haven’t suffered enough, as now I’ve been ordered to teach you little miscreants a subject where there are wands and spells involved- as if potions weren’t awful enough.”  Harry couldn’t help the giggle that escaped him at Uncle Sev’s dramatics.

“Something funny, Potter?” Severus quirked an eyebrow at him, still trying to display a stern visage and rescue his frightening reputation (aww, so cute that he still believed there was any left…).

“No,” Harry giggled again.

“No sir,” the professor tried and failed to give him a stern look (damn him for being so fond of the adorable little beast).

“There’s no need to call me sir, professor,” Harry quipped, and the entire class gasped before cheers erupted.

“Damn your cutting wit,” Sev couldn’t help but be impressed- that was truly a Slytherin-worthy comeback, and he would have given points if he wasn’t trying to salvage some of his dignity in front of the students.

“I want that written on my gravestone,” Seamus breathed in awe as the entire class turned to Harry, marking him as a hero for an entirely different reason than they usually did.

“Today we will be practicing non-verbal spells,” Severus held up a hand for silence and stalked back and forth as he lectured, and Hades moved from his shoulder to his head, purring pleasantly.  “I will be pairing you all off for a practice duel- and you will stay in your chair,” he turned to Harry as the teen brightened in anticipation, “and rest your leg, as I know you can already cast wandlessly, wordlessly, and with your hands tied behind your back.”

“You don’t even need to move your hands to cast wandlessly,” Harry grumbled under his breath as he deflated and crossed his arms in front of his chest.  “Tying them behind your back would be pointless.”

“Oh relax, you grumpy child- you get to help me evaluate their performances,” he handed Harry a clipboard, and he looked at the friends who had been teasing him all morning- this was going to be fun!

“Everyone else- turn to page 394,” he barked at them.  “You have five minutes to review the reading you were supposed to do for homework.”

[Dudley takes a deep breath and faces the wall behind The Leaky Cauldron- Tom wanted to take him to buy some spell-check quills in Diagon Alley to help with his schoolwork, and the elves had sent a note saying it was okay.  He is both nervous and exhilarated as he prepares to fully enter this world that his parents had conditioned him to think was so unnatural.]

Severus was allowing himself a break from grading as he looked at Harry’s cheeky comments on his friend’s performances in class that day and Hades played with a ball of yard on the desk beside him.  He couldn’t help the smile and the feeling of contentment that came over him, despite his best efforts. Until something of course came in to ruin it.

“Hello Professor Snape,” Gordon greeted cordially.

“Ramsay,” Severus responded tightly.  “To what to I owe the… existence of your presence in my office.”

Gordon ignored the rude tone of the man’s voice and clear insult and cut to the chase.  “I understand that there is a student who needs a lot of medications,” he said, and they both knew they were referring to Harry.  “It is part of my job to brew for the hospital wing and anyone who needs regular medications, so I’ve come for the list of things I need to brew.”

“That is unnecessary- I will continue brewing my nephew’s potions myself, as I trust no one else to do it,” he sniffed condescendingly.   Well, maybe Julian.   He was glad the man was sleeping off a late death eater meeting and thus didn’t hear the concession (he would tease him relentlessly about it, and also probably scold him for his rudeness to Ramsay).

“I will have you know that I too have my potions mastery, as well as a degree in muggle cooking and many commendations on my food.”

“My, quite an ego we’ve got there- I’ll have you know that Harry is a much better cook than you and your ‘world-renown’ cuisine- personally, I think your mashed potatoes are bland.”

“How dare you?!” Gordon began to lose his temper.  “What the bloody hell- I come in to do my job and you start fucking insulting me?!  Might I ask what makes you so much more fucking qualified than I am, anyway- hmm?”

“I’ve had my potions mastery since I was nineteen years old, and I additionally am familiar with Harry’s medical history and all his allergies, as well as the delicate work of modifying dosages for his specific conditions.”

“You’re not the only fucking man who knows how to cater to specific conditions, you know- we all took the medicinal course as part of our mastery!”

“And I bet you were sitting there daydreaming about your bland potatoes during the entire thing, weren’t you?”

“Alright, fuck it!” Gordon yelled, ignoring the warnings of his wife in his head as he launched himself at the other professor, who dropped his wand, pulled his fist back, and gave the chef a good punch on the nose.

“That the best you can do, you bloody wimp?”Gordon taunted, wiping a bit of blood away as he reached out for a handful of Severus’ hair, which, since he hadn’t brewed anything yet that day, didn’t have the grease that would have normally made it more difficult to yank on.

“Your head’s as full of fluff as your bland potatoes if you think you can beat me in a brawl,” the other man grunted as he shoved the other man, and they both landed on top of the mat the students had practiced duelling on earlier as they rolled around, pulling hair and yanking robes and trying to land a hit on each other.

“Hey Uncle Sev, I was wondering if I left my book in he-” Harry began as he hobbled through the doorway before catching sight of the two middle aged men wrestling on the ground like angry children.

“What in Merlin’s name are you two doing?” he chided, tottering forward as quickly as he could and thrusting one of his crutches between the two.

“He’s a git,” Severus pulled away, crossing his arms huffily.

“He insulted my potatoes,” Gordon rubbed his sore knuckles and winced, listening to Tana give him a mental scolding the likes of which he hadn’t heard since he was working such long hours at the restaurant that he fell asleep mid-apparation (that had been an ugly splinching).

“Sit down, both of you,” Harry ordered, and he was trying so hard to be stern without being adorable that they listened out of pity.  “You two are adults- why couldn’t you sit down and talk about your issues like mature, responsible wizards?”

“But he-”

“Save it,” Harry interrupted before they could make more excuses.  “Now, why don’t you tell me what happened- without fighting,” he clarified as they glared at each other.  “I don’t want to hear any whinging or complaining- I have had a long day, I am very small, and I have almost no mobility, so you two need to work this out before I go tell mama and let her handle it.”   This did scare the other two adults, who paled.

“He wanted to make your medications, and got angry when I told him I’d keep doing it,” Severus forced himself to say neutrally, without glaring at the other man.

“Because he insulted my brewing skills,” Gordon clarified, gritting his teeth.

“I am merely saying that because of your split focus, you don’t have the practical experience required for potions of such complexity and importance,” Severus rebutted, even though what he was saying had not been nearly that cordial.

“And did you phrase it like that?” Harry quirked an eyebrow at him in a very Snape-like expression, and the actual Snape sighed, caught out.

“No,” he admitted grudgingly.

“So how about this- why don’t you divide the potions, since you’re both busy and having a little less to deal with would be helpful for each of you?”

“I really don’t think that’s a good idea,” Severus insisted.  “Your condition is very delicate.”

“It is not!” Harry stomped his good foot, showing his first sign of petulance during the discussion.  “And even if I was always on death’s door like you seem to think, Professor Ramsay wouldn’t have his potions certification if he didn’t know what he was doing.  Now you both need to apologise to each other so I can be on my way, because I have a boyfriend going un-snogged and a kitten going un-cuddled.”

“Fine,” Severus sighed.  “Ramsey- I’m… sorry… that I reacted so strongly to your request (Gordon personally thought it had been more of an offer, but whatever…).  Just because your potatoes are bad doesn’t mean your potions are.”

“And Severus,” Gordon clenched his fists as Tana told him to let the insult about his potatoes slide, “I’m sorry I tried to hit you on your giant nose, even if it was a perfect target.”

How come you missed, then? Severus grumbled mentally, as his anger gradually roused Julian to wakefulness, but out loud he only said, “Fine.  I’ll give you easier half of Harry’s potions list, despite my personal doubts.”

“Good enough,” Harry sighed, just glad that nobody had been hexed yet.  “Now I’m going to leave, but any more of this nonsense and I’ll be making a report to mama,” he threatened them, wishing he could put his hands on his hips but, unable to due to the crutches, merely wagged a finger at the two.  “Some on Seph,” he cooed to his service dog, who picked up his bag in her mouth and followed her little master out adoringly.

“We’re in deep shite now, aren’t we?” Gordon sighed as the noise of the tiny little hero’s crutches slowly faded down the hallway.  “Something tells me he’s not a good person to piss off, even if he is cute as a baby bella mushroom.”

“Good luck to you,” Severus snorted.   “I’m still his favourite.”

“Small miracle, that,” Gordon mumbled under his breath as he also turned to leave.  “But then, the kid does collect cantankerous beasts.”

Chapter Text

“Weather looks good for quidditch tryouts today,” Harry looked out the window at lunch, and while it was slightly cloudy outside, the sun was shining through, and the flowers on the hillside seemed bright and cheerful.  

“You look good for quidditch tryouts today,” Draco grinned sappily at him as he nibbled Harry’s ear.

“You’re such a dork,” green eyes rolled at him, but the boyfriend connected to them leaned into his touch.

“But I’m your dork.”

“Oh, would you two stop already- you’re going to upset the foundations of the castle with all this mush,” Blaise huffed at them, and the couple turned to look at them, Draco’s arm still around Harry.

“Oh, like you and Neville are never sappy- you’re just too embarrassed to be like that in public because then it would make you a hypocrite after making fun of us for the past two years,” Draco raised an eyebrow at him, correctly assessing the situation.

“Will Harry eat this?” Pansy interrupted, passing down a club sandwich with various Bertie Bott’s beans added right under the top slice of bread.

“Hmmm… grass and… soap, it tastes like.  Not the best with pastrami, but whatever,” he shrugged, taking another bite.

“You owe me five sickles,” Pansy said to Millie, who raised an eyebrow at Harry, still eating the sandwich, but handed over the money.

“We picked the grossest-looking flavours we could find,” Pansy’s soulmate said.  “You’re a weird little Gryff, aren’t you?”

“You know, pepper beans on a sandwich aren’t that bad,” he shrugged, grabbing a pickle to go along with it.  “Wasn’t too fond of the earwax bite, though.” He shuddered a bit, but as he was still eating, Pansy kept the silver, putting it in her pocket.

“Persephone!” Ron whinged, as her left head distracted him while the middle stole a chicken bone.  

“Oh, you were on your fourth plate- I think she was doing you a favour,” Hermione snickered and put the rest of his plate down in front of the dog.

“For the last time, Mia- it was one night of indigestion- you don’t need to police me, woman!”

“I wouldn’t if I didn’t have to listen to you complain in your head about how much your tummy hurts,” she sighed in exasperation.

“And that’s all the time we have,” Hannah interrupted their impending argument as lunch ended.  “Time for our elective classes.”

“Anyone know why Crabbe and Goyle aren’t in muggle studies this year?” Millicent wondered as she hefted her school bag onto her shoulders.

“Their dumb dads made them drop it,” Draco’s jaw tensed from where he was helping Harry up, and Seph licked his hand reassuringly as one of her other heads picked up her master’s bag.  “They’ve been really withdrawn this year, but I can’t get them to talk to me about it.”

“I’m sure they’ll open up when they’re ready,” Neville put a placating hand on the blonde’s shoulder.  “And hey, at least they have each other to count on until they’re ready to share.”

“I suppose so…” he agreed, and Harry squeezed his hand.  

“Come on, or we’ll be late to runes, luv.”

[Severus chases Hades through the hallways, as the damn little thing loves getting into trouble.]

“Alright,” Harry balanced on his crutches in the middle of the field as Draco brought out the case with the balls in it.  “We’re in need of two new beaters, two new chasers, and a reserve chaser, so that’s five positions and rather a lot of you showed up, which unfortunately means a lot of you are going to leave disappointed.  I’m sorry about that, but there’s not too much to be done. First we’re gonna do a basic flying test- so if you could all do three laps around the pitch, I’ll be able to get an idea of your skills.”

The twelve fliers took to the air, and Harry and Draco were able to rule out three of them immediately by the shaky grip on their brooms and the sloppy way they turned.

They’re pretty small- I think they might be first years who tried to sneak in because they wanted to meet ‘Harry Potter.’

You might have a point- I should have made sure they were all eligible first, Harry, balancing on the crutches, ran a hand through his hair as green eyes tracked the nine remaining contenders.

Eh, I like that you’re still so trusting after everything you’ve been through, Draco put his hand on top of Harry’s, holding the grip of the crutches, and they both simultaneously ruled out another who slipped sideways and nearly fell while pulling to a stop.

Ron thinks it’s crazy that I’m letting ‘the competition’ help with tryouts, but I reminded him that you’d know anyway, because of the soul bond, and that I could also feel if you were trying to cheat.   Harry sighed fondly at his best friend’s dramatics.

He and that boyfriend of his are so much more quidditch-obsessed than is healthy.

They’re like Wood and Flint, but they didn’t start out hating each other.

And they like the same teams, Draco pointed out.

True- if Ollie and Marcus have kids, they’re gonna have to bunker down and hide for the whole world cup, Merlin help them.

What do you mean, if they have kids?  They’re obviously gonna have a whole quidditch team’s worth of babies.

Merlin help them, then- the kids will clearly be running things, Harry snorted.

Hey, Weasel has six siblings, and it wasn’t total chaos.

Can you really see Ollie and Marc running a household as well as Mrs. Weasley, though?   Harry asked, and Draco suddenly had the image of babies being diapered with the rags they used to polish their brooms because both of their dads forgot to go to the store again.

Your mind is so beautifully strange, Harry had to bite back a loud bark of laughter as he looked at the remaining potential players.

“Okay, Dennis- you have a similar flight style to your brother, which could be good for us if we strategize properly- you’re trying out for chaser as well, yes?”  Dennis nodded, and Harry was glad that he wouldn’t have to be the one to tell him that he probably wasn’t big enough to be a beater (he knew because Dennis was only a little bigger than him, and Harry definitely wouldn’t be the best beater).  “And er- what’s your name?” he looked at a southeast-Asian looking girl with her hair in a bob.

“Mayuree, captain- I’m a second year, and I’m going for chaser too.”

“Okay, great.  Who are my beater tryouts, here?”

Two boys of medium build raised their hands.  “Mateo and Sebastian- we’re cousins,” they said.  “We know we’re not that bulky, but we do a lot of yoga, so we’re stronger than we look.”

“Nice,” Harry smiled.  “Anymore beaters?”

“Er, I kind of wanted to try out, but I’m not sure what I should do…” a blonde girl, Harry was pretty sure she was a fourth year, spoke up.  She was more heavy-set with a larger bone structure, and while Harry didn’t want to be too hasty, something in his gut told him he’d just found a new beater.

“You can try for both and see what works for you,” he told her kindly, and she smiled shyly.

“Thanks- I’m Annabeth, by the way, but I go by Beth.”  She was somewhat self-conscious about trying out, and she was worried she’d get made fun of for her weight, but luckily Harry seemed pretty cool so far- she’d never met him, but she’d heard stories from classmates that had grown up in the wizarding world, and she’d been around to see some of the crazy stuff he’d done for herself.

He took the names of the other few kids who had come to try out and then sent them all into the air again, having them kick around the quaffle first, and then having the beaters try with the bludgers and bats.

“Nice!” he shouted as he watched Beth send a bludger flying halfway across the field.  “We’ve definitely found a beater, although you wouldn’t make a bad reserve chaser in a real pinch.  Dennis, you’re our new official reserve chaser, and I’ll bump your brother up to a main chaser position.  Mateo, you’re our other beater. Mayuree, you’re another chaser, and Sebastian- I know you tried out for beater, but I think you’d be better as a chaser, which is one of the reasons I had everyone kicking around the quaffle instead of just prospective chasers.  The rest of you did a great job, and please don’t be discouraged from trying out again next year. Keep flying, even if you don’t plan on doing anything with it, because it’s fun no matter how good you are.” He finished his speech, and even those who hadn’t made the team left in fairly good spirits- Harry was just good like that.

“You did great babe, you really did,” Draco gave him a congratulatory peck on the forehead.

“What, no sarcastic comment?” Harry teased.

“Er, I hope you’re better at staying on your broom this year than you are at staying on the stairs?”

“You weren’t even trying that time- come on Malfoy, you’re going soft on me.”

“Prat,” Draco rolled his eyes and used his greater height to his advantage as he ruffled Harry’s hair, taking it from its usual mess to ‘looked like it just came through a tornado.’

“Your prat,” Harry reminded him, as if Draco could ever forget.

[Mayuree rapidly scribbles a letter in Thai home to her parents- first generation muggle immigrants, this is very new to them, but they are proud of their daughter, who is balancing the addition of wizarding culture on top of being Thai and British and doing it rather well.]

“Why me?” Severus groaned.  “Why is it always me?”

“For Merlin’s sake, you drew the short straw and now you have to go check on Dumbledore- it’s not like we’re sending you off to die,” Minerva rolled her eyes at her over-dramatic colleague.  

“That’s what you think,” he grumbled, gathering up the grocery bag of supplies he was to take to the man.  Dumbledore hadn’t really left the vicinity of Little Hangleton, and for some reason seemed to like staying in this old cottage.  He couldn’t be counted on to take care of himself, as whatever he was doing kept him too occupied to think of anything else (he was more insane than ever, now, always mumbling about something or other that they couldn’t make any sense of), so they took him food when they checked on him, but not too much- Harry, after all, spent most of his childhood on the brink of starvation because of the man’s negligence.

“If I’m not back in two hours, I’ve probably finally lost the last thread of my sanity and run away to México.”

“Oh please, like you could ever survive in México- both Harry and Bea tell me your Spanish is atrocious,” Pomona rolled her eyes while picking dirt out from under her nails.  “Besides- you don’t have the complexion to survive that much sunlight.”

“Everybody’s a critic,” he rolled his eyes as he headed to the gates so he could apparate to the hut.

“Stupid old man, making me wander halfway across this godforsaken village to check on your doddering old arse,” he mumbled under his breath as he kicked at a pebble.

“And look at this,” he grouched as he had to step over a cluster of weeds.  “Nature that has no use in potions- what’s the point?”

“Harry’s baking today, if Minerva eats all the danishes before I get back there’s gonna be trouble,” he spoke into the empty, sunlit meadow, which predictably didn’t respond.

Cranky today, aren’t we?

Oh, look at you, picking up on obvious things- excellent use of your advanced degrees, that, Severus curled his upper lip disdainfully.

You’re impossible- why I fell in love with you, I’ll never know.

Excuse me- why you what now?  

Severus Tobias Snape- we are soulmates, we have kissed and done… other things and shared a bedroom in Australia for three months.  Harry calls me uncle Julian, for Merlin’s sake- is it really such a stretch to imagine I love you?

Severus said nothing- his mind was still sputtering like a backfiring car.

I’ll just give you a moment then, and look, you’re here, Julian said cheekily, taking a backseat in Severus’ mind as he went back to his novel.

Severus pushed open the door, still in a bit of a daze, but all that cleared away when he saw his old boss lying on the ground, unconscious.

“Oh, what have you done, you old fool?” He ran towards him, dropping the bag of groceries on the floor as he knelt to check for a pulse.  It was there, but weak and thready. Looking around for the source of whatever happened, his eyes landed on Dumbledore’s right hand, on which was a small gold ring with a black gemstone and from which a deadly curse was spreading, thick, inky magic threading through his veins.  

“Putting on cursed objects like some kind of dunderhead- I’ve had first year idiots who know better, and they couldn’t even make a boil cure,” he let out a stream of expletives under his breath as he tried to pull the ring off, which only caused the curse to start spreading faster.  He desperately started shooting spells at it, slowing the spread as much as he could. But this wasn’t something he could cure- it was something he could slow for three months, at best.

“Stupid old man,” he snarled, as Julian gave him more suggestions for healing spells and was there as a supportive presence in his mind.

“Severus,” Dumbledore said weakly, half-conscious.  “I found the horcrux- I may have made a mistake, though.”

“Of course you did,” the professor rolled his eyes at the man, but at the same time his mind was reeling- a horcrux- it was another horcrux.  And of fucking course the idiot put it on.

“Wanted to see them again- resurrection stone.”  This caused Severus to start a bit- this was it then.   No, he reminded himself.   That is a bad thing.

“Yes, well- we all have people we’d like to see again, but none of us go around putting on cursed objects,” he scolded as he wrapped the blackened limb with bandages from his utility belt.

“This… second horcrux I’ve found,” Albus rasped, and Severus realised he was so delirious that he probably didn’t even remember he and Severus weren’t on very good terms.  “Diary… chamber diary was the first one… Tom Riddle’s old diary.” So that’s what that had been, then… somehow not surprising.

“There were… he made many.  Helga’s cup, Ravenclaw’s diadem… Slytherin’s locket.  The ring.” They’d already destroyed the locket, but of course Albus didn’t know that.  Still, knowing the others was… useful, at least, as much as Severus hated acknowledging that the man had done something that helped them, even inadvertently.  

“Any others?” he asked, while the man was talkative.

“His snake… Nagini…” That was an interesting bit, as she clearly wasn’t now.  And come to think of it, Harry had mentioned removing some black magic, something that Nagini called ‘voodoo shit.’  So it was possible to remove horcruxes without destroying the vessel, then… at least for Harry, it was. Good to know, as some of those were important historical relics that would be nice to keep around.  But the stone… that was good for nobody, and Severus was thankful that he kept a small vial of basilisk venom in his utility belt.  He wasn’t sure what it would be useful for, but he’d just had a feeling he should have some on hand.   And the forethought paid off, he mused with satisfaction as he poured a few drops on the stone, and it smoked and sizzled and cracked down the middle as the horcrux fled, screaming, from the ring.

“And… there is one more,” Albus had lost conscious briefly, but he’d come around.

“Yes?” Severus hid the broken ring behind his back and looked at the old man again.

“Harry… himself.  He… the parseltongue.  Voldemort must have made him one.  His ability to defeat Voldemort… it’s the only thing that makes sense.  Lily’s love, combined with Voldemort’s accidental displacement of a piece of his soul… Harry must die… sacrifice himself, for the greater good.”  

Severus didn’t want to hear any more- he grabbed a dusty, tarnished candlestick from the mantle and knocked Albus out with it.  To think- Harry as a horcrux, when he and his mage senses would have been able to tell- preposterous!   And the parseltongue- he was descended from the Peverells, for Merlin’s sake!  That Dumbledore had been raising him up like a pig for slaughter- it was… abhorrent, disgusting, putrid… it was downright evil, and Severus was so angry his nails were digging into his palms hard enough to break the skin as he left the sick man lying unconscious in the cabin, throwing some locking charms on the cabin that the man wouldn’t be able to undo in his weakened condition.  He’d put the ring in his pocket, and as soon as he got into the trees behind the cabin, he threw it to the ground and threw borderline-illegal hexes at it until it was blasted into bits, negating any chance it would still work. Then he cast a point-me to the nearest pub; if he tried to apparate while this angry, he would surely splinch himself, so he decided that he’d down a shot of firewhiskey and then take a walk- a long walk.

Fuck old, manipulative wizards and their plans, honestly...

Chapter Text

Severus slammed two whiskeys at the nearest muggle bar before he felt his hands stop shaking in anger, and it was another three miles of walking and a number of blasting hexes at boulders in the forest before he thought he was calm enough to apparate back to Hogwarts without splinching, although he still had to take several deep breaths first and slam up his occlumency shields with a force that gave Julian a headache, back in his flat on Knockturn.

“Emergency order meeting,” he grit out as soon as he’d made it back and stalked up to the staff room, and the other teachers traded concerned looks- the last time they’d seen him looking this outwardly murderous was when Harry’s name came out of the Goblet of Fire.

“Severus- wha-?”

“Shh!” he ordered.  “Not here.” He tossed some powder into the floo with violent, jerky motions as he called out the address.

The rest of the staff followed them, and gradually the rest of the order streamed in, receiving the emergency call.

“Is this more important than the serial arsonist we’re tracking?”  Tonks had dark circles under her eyes as she ran a hand through her electric-blue hair.  They’d been working with Scotland yard, as their perp was clearly magically starting fires in muggle areas, and it made their job even harder when they had to hide the fact that they were magical from the detectives, who believed they were from a secret government agency that operated on a need-to-know basis.

“Yes,” Severus declared firmly, looking at her and Kingsley.  “More heinous as well.”

“Well, don’t hold back- what on earth is going on here?” Minerva demanded, a sickening feeling in her gut telling her it had something to do with her son, or else it wouldn’t be more upsetting to Severus than a serial arsonist.

“I went to check on Dumbledore,” Snape began, his lip curling and the word Dumbledore filled with so much venom that they all shrank back involuntarily.  “I found him wearing a ring with a curse spreading up his arm from the finger he put it on.  For some reason, I took it upon myself to save him- wanted to know what the hell he was thinking and what the ring was, I suppose… turns out it was the Resurrection Stone,” he didn’t even stop to let the effects sink in or enjoy the dramatic effect of all the gasping, like he usually would, “and it was a… it was a horcrux.”  

“And he put it on?” Minerva couldn’t believe she’d ever looked up to that man.

“Yes, well… he’s an idiot.  So I saved his useless fucking life, although he’s got maybe three months to live at most by my calculations, so not a total loss, I suppose.  The real problem came when he was delirious and ranting.”

“It gets worse?” Tonks blanched- made a serial arsonist look tame, then- at least whoever they was looking for wasn’t splitting his fucking soul into pieces (or wearing said pieces, hopefully…).

“He told me what the other horcruxes were.”

“How many?” Remus looked green, feeling the kind of nausea he used to after a bad full moon, when the wolf had eaten something bad (like the furniture in the Shrieking Shack).

“There were six- we’ve already destroyed three, four if you include Nagini- apparently that bit of dark magic Harry pulled out of her in the graveyard was a horcrux.”  Hades interrupted, rubbing up against his leg.

“How’d you even get here, damn little thing?” Severus groused, but he picked him up.  “Anyway, we have destroyed the diary, which belonged to Voldemort before he was, well… Voldemort, and then we have the locket, of course, and the stone, which I have… taken care of.   The remaining ones are Helga Hufflepuff’s cup and Rowena Ravenclaw’s Diadem.”

“Okay, that’s not so bad… they’ll be hard to find, of course, but Harry should be able to remove the soul fragments without destroying the relics, so that won’t be a problem- dare I ask what the problem is?” Andromeda looked at the man.

“Dumbledore wrongly believed that Voldemort accidentally created another horcrux the night James and Lily died- Harry himself, and Albus is convinced that he must sacrifice himself and die for the ‘greater good,’” Severus spat, blasting a hole in the wall in his anger, which nobody complained about, as they all had bigger problems.

“HE FUCKING WHAT?” Minerva’s roar was nearly loud enough to shake the foundations of the house, and everyone was blessedly, infinitely glad that they had never been the target of her rage.  Many of them thought they’d seen it before, but this was worse than every single one of those instances combined…

“I’m going to kill him,” she said suddenly, deathly calm, which was somehow even scarier.  She picked up her wand, standing up to walk to the door, and Arthur stepped forward anxiously, nudged by his wife.

“Er, Minerva- Professor… do you really think that’s such a good idea… I mean, if the muggles see anything…” he began nervously.

“Then I will obliviate them,” she answered, as if that wasn’t highly illegal, to murder people and then obliviate the witnesses.

“I… he’s really not worth it… so many things could go wrong,” Cygnus put forward, trembling.

“I am going whether you like it or not, and… Sirius Orion Black, you let go of me! ”

“Minnie- come on, I of all people know what happens when you do these sorts of things in anger… please just sit down, let’s have some tea…”

“I DON’T WANT YOUR DAMN TEA- THAT… THAT MONSTER IS TRYING TO KILL MY SON, AND I WON’T STAND FOR IT!  HE’S IN DANGER AS LONG AS ALBUS DUMBLEDORE IS BREATHING! ”

Tonks looked at Sarah.  Sarah looked at Rosmerta.  Rosmerta looked at Tonks. Tonks looked at Rosmerta.  Sarah looked at Tonks.

Gods, I really hope this isn’t the last thing I ever do, the therapist thought to her girlfriends, as the three surged forward, pushing Minerva down into a chair and holding her there as she struggled, huffing angrily at them.

“A little help here?” Tonks looked at the rest of the order, at three grown women and Sirius were not enough to contain the wrath of one Minerva McGonagall, even if one of them was a fully qualified auror.

There was a struggle to keep the tabby animagus from running to the floo, and soon they were all being scratched by an angry cat and then again by an angry woman, for hell hath no force like an angry mother.

Blessedly, Harry saved them all.  “Mama!” his sweet tenor voice called through the floo, and he shortly hobbled after it, trying to balance his crutches as he stepped through the gate. “Gordon said you’d be here, and I was wondering if you had time for dinner, just the two of us- it’s been a while, and I thought it’d be nice… oh, am I interrupting something?”

“No, nothing at all, dear… just some boring discussions about routine order business,” she lied smoothly, her voice going sweet and calm as she looked at her son, her anger vanishing as if it was never there.  “Yes, of course we can have dinner, darling- although we ought to pick up Persephone first. You really shouldn’t be going anywhere without her, sweetheart- you have a service dog for a reason, after all…”

“Yes, mama,” he rolled his eyes.  “I was only planning on being gone for a minute, so I didn’t want to have to drag her all the way through the floo, but next time I will, if that’s what you want.  Do you wanna do dinner in your office or in the den?” he asked, as Minerva told him ‘wherever you like, dearest.’

“Thank Merlin for that kid,” Aralynn breathed a sigh of relief, nursing a cut on her arm from one of cat-Minnie’s sharp claws.  Narcissa waved her wand at it, and it disappeared.

“You’re telling me,” Regulus groaned.  “Merlin, I thought I was afraid of Voldemort before, but now I think Minerva McGonagall tops the list…”

“No offence bro, but you were crazy for ever having it any other way,” Sirius shook his head as Kreacher dabbed some bruise balm on his black eye.

“Thank goodness Harry’s resorted a bit to James’ natural state of obliviousness now that he no longer feels like the Dursleys are going try to kill him every other minute, or he’d have noticed that we all look like we just faced off against a troll army,” Severus groaned as two fingers pinched his bleeding nose.

[Draco tries to decide on the best way to arrange the photo-board of Harry he has above his bed.]

“I’m scared, Vin,” Greg Goyle told his soulmate as they sat in the room of requirement.  They mostly communicated mentally these days, which worried their friends, but they had bigger problems at the moment.

“I know, Greg- how’s the pain today?” Vincent asked as he rubbed Greg’s shoulders, trying to ease the lingering agony that came with repeated untreated cruciatus curses, like the kind they’d experience this summer.

“Not as bad as what Lara and Violet must be experiencing,” the burly Slytherin sighed.

“You can’t think like that- we just gotta ignore our worries so they’ll be okay.  Our friends could survive an attack on the school, I hope… but them…” Vincent and Crabbe were talking about their friends, two muggle twin girls their age that lived in the village near their homes.  Their fathers had found out they had muggle friends, and when the torture curses hadn’t been enough to make them cooperate, they’d kidnapped the girls, and they were keeping them in undisclosed locations.  Attempt to discover these locations and rescue their friends had led to more cruciatus curses. They were each in a lot of pain still, even two weeks into the school year.

Lucius Malfoy had also put watches on them, watches that they couldn’t take off, charmed to keep them from being able to talk about their mission with anyone else but each other.  If they did, the watches would send a notification to Lucius, and their friends would be hurt.

“Well, what should we do?” Greg sighed sadly, the physical pain and the impossibility of the task and the dark cloud of depression hanging over them at the terrible thing they were being forced to do weighing him down.

“The only thing we can do- we have to figure out a way to let the death eaters into Hogwarts and just hope they get defeated.  For Lara and Violet,” Vincent tried to inject more confidence into his voice to cheer his boyfriend.

“Yeah, for Lara and Violet- who were unfortunate enough to make friends with us,” Greg felt a tear roll down from his brown eyes and trail over his bulbous nose, and it wasn’t long before they’d both broken down, holding each other, the only comfort they had.

Chapter Text

“Mama?” Harry asked as they were finishing up dinner, “can we please go for a walk- Leaiana is already weeks overdue and I wanna check on her.”

“That’s a lot of walking while your leg’s still hurt,” Minerva expressed her concern as she fed some extra scraps to Nagini and Sapphire, while Du ate a piece of chicken out of Harry’s hands.  “But if you let me charm a chair for you, then I’ll agree to it- I would like to check up on her as well, honestly.”

“There’s no situation where I can bargain my way out of the magic wheelchair, is there?” Harry gave a resigned sigh.

“What do you think?” His mama cocked an eyebrow at him, and he sighed.

“Alright, chair it is then,” he sighed, as Minerva put a levitation charm on a comfortable red armchair and the footstool that went with it.  Then she picked him up, carrying him to the chair as easily as if he were a feather pillow.

“No fair!” Harry cried.  “I’m sixteen years old and I’ve gained ten pounds since my birthday- I should be too heavy for you by now.”

“You’re still my little boy, and I do workout, you know- we do feline yoga together.  Good for bone strength.”

“How did you even find those workout videos?” Harry asked her, while they were on the subject.

“There are some lonely people on the internet who like to do yoga with their cats and sell the workout videos- you can find just about anything on the internet, you know.   So glad I had the twins install that desktop computer in my office,” Minnie looked at the chair, and then rolled her eyes and snorted.

“Wait a minute- we don’t need this,” she realised, and Harry’s face brightened for a moment.

“We don’t?” he asked eagerly.  “I can walk?”

“No, of course not- into your animagus form, now- there we go,” she praised as she picked up the little kitten with a cast on one back leg, shrunk the crutches, and put them in her pocket.

“Here we go, then- less baggage this way,” she mentally congratulated herself on her practicality, especially as Severus liked to go on and on about how Gryffindors supposedly didn’t have any.  “Take that, you old bat,” she muttered to herself, and Harry picked up his little kitten ears at her.

“Oh, nothing, dear,” she answered his unspoken question.  “Just talking to myself, is all.”

Minerva was an excellent hiker, so they reached the forest in no time, and Firenze came galloping out to meet them.

“The stars shine brightly upon us tonight,” he told them without preamble, “for the child to come to visit on the very night that the foal he has blessed is being born.”

“She’s coming?!” Harry cried as he transformed back, and his mother caught him under the armpits and steadied him while she brought out his crutches and enlarged them.

“Yes- the foal comes.  It is a difficult birth, as she is long overdue and larger than is normal for a newborn.  Come- she is through here,” he took them to the dwelling he shared with Leaiana and Peggy (Buce had moved in with his boyfriend upon reaching maturity).  They stepped through, and the sounds of screaming filled their ears as they reached the back room. Leaiana was laying on her side, her large, swollen belly heaving as she sweat and panted, her blonde hair held back from her face by a piece of twine.

“Harry,” she smiled through her pain, her voice surprisingly calm as she spoke to him.  “How nice to see you- shame Peggy’s with her grand-dam, as she’s been waiting to show you how much better she’s gotten at gobstones since you showed her how to play during your last visit.”

“I’ll have to stop by and see her soon,” Harry told her, sitting down near the centaur and putting his leg out to the side.  “But you don’t look so good.”

“Oh, I’ll be fine by tomorrow, as soon as-” she broke out as another painful contraction hit, and she glared at her belly.  “GET OUT!” she screamed, gritting her teeth.

“I try not to yell at my children,” she turned to Harry (who was suddenly very, very glad he wasn’t a woman), “but the birthing process tends to be… an exception.”   Her tail twitched as she bit back another groan.

“Er, is there anything I can do?” he asked anxiously.  “I could conjure some ice chips or…?”

“Oh, that’s very sweet of you, luv, but there’s really not too much to be done.  I envy the human women their epidurals, though, I must admit,” she let out a pained laugh that turned into another aborted scream.

Harry watched her efforts to push another living being out of a very small hole, wincing internally… ouch!  

This is why I believe in evolution, Draco said into his mind.   Because that design… not very intelligent.  

“Um, I could try to ease the pain a little, if that’s okay with you?” Harry offered, and the centaur reached out to touch his arm.

“Do it,” she grit out, and Harry put his hands gently on her horse’s belly, foaming with sweat.

Numb, he thought to his magic, and it responded by spreading a soft, cool film of magic over the woman from where her horse’s body started to the tip of her tail.

“Ah, that’s much better,” Leaiana sighed in relief.  “Now, pardon my French, but… GET OUT, YOU LITTLE FUCKER!”

“She’s crowning!” Minerva cried out as squatted to help the foal along.  “Alright, thank Merlin for Grey’s Anatomy,” she rolled up the sleeves of her robe and got to work.

Fifteen minutes later, and the centaur foal finally slipped out, her coat blonde like her mother’s, but she had Firenze’s bay coat represented in her fuzzy head of baby hair- a deep chestnut colour with black at the tips.

“Never having more,” Leiana declared tiredly, as she pulled the tiny creature up to her human breast to feed her.  “But that being said- welcome to the world, Artemis Harriet.”

Harry and Minerva spent two hours more there, and Harry even got to hold her, and his sort-of namesake fell asleep in his arms.

“Well, I suppose I can add ‘midwife’ to my resumé,” Minerva announced in satisfaction.

“Yeah,” Harry laughed.  “Right between ‘cat yogi’ and ‘total boss.’”

“I think my favourite job will always be ‘your mother,’” she told him as he transformed into his animagus and she picked him up, purring as she scratched his ears.

[Minerva sends Severus a vhs tape of ‘Yoga with Your Cat’ as a belated ‘congrats on the DADA position’ gift.  Severus is not amused, and he gives Hades the tape to chew on.]

“Wow,” Blaise murmured, Neville lying against his chest as they watched the stars from under the transparent roof of Greenhouse 3.  “I never realised I could enjoy the non-sexual part of a date so much.”

“Thanks for the info,” Neville rolled his eyes.  “You know that this doesn’t have to be… exclusive, or anything.  I realise that I’m not as adventurous as you, and that you have needs- I won’t be offended if you want an open relationship.”

“I know,” Blaise acknowledged.  “But this is new, this is… special.  I wanted to take a few months where it’s just us and we can go at your pace and just let things… blossom… between us.”  He laughed at his own pun as Neville handed him a large, singing tropical flower.

“You’re such a dork, you big ostrich,” the Gryffindor snorted.  “You act so cool, with your hyperactive sex drive and your ballet and your ‘mysterious silence,’ but you’re just a big, pun-loving dork.”

“Shhh- don’t ruin the moment,” Blaise pulled Neville a little closer to his chest, tracing patterns of flowers and stars and little hearts along the back of his neck.

“I don’t know if I could… it’s so beautiful out tonight,” Nev sighed, relaxing.  “Who would have thought that you could have an autumn night in Scotland with no rain and no winter coat required?”

“Do you ever wonder what life will be like- after Hogwarts?” the Slytherin asked.

“I don’t know, really- I’d love to have a garden, some dogs, maybe even a kid or two?  I try not to think too much about it, because everything’s so uncertain right now, with the war and everything…”

“Shhh,” Blaise carded his hands through Neville’s hair.  “It’s going to be fine. If you and I can go from being shoved together in the same headspace to two people in love, under the stars, talking about the future, then I just know that everything is going to work out for the best.”

“Thanks- and Blaise?” Neville spoke up.

“Yeah?”

“I love you too.”

“I already knew that.”

[Date night is a bit of an experiment in what Ron has dubbed ‘the fuck chain,’ with all five of them having a picnic in the kitchens together.  Ron still isn’t sure how things are supposed to be between him and Hermione, and Millie and Hermione still like to be physical with each other but are not sure if they should.  But they’re working it out- together.]

Harry and Draco were having a laid-back date night in Harry’s bedroom, and Harry had his head in Draco’s chest, his foot propped up on a pillow.

“Ahh,” Harry melted into his boyfriend’s touch, and life was amazing for a few moments.  Until he squirmed a bit.

“Hey babe,” the Gryffindor pulled himself into a sitting position.  “I’ve got an itch on my back- can you scratch it.”

“Of course- is this a through the robes itch or a take the robes off itch?”

“Robes off itch,” Harry answered, shrugging them off.  Draco raked his nails along Harry’s skin, and he shivered in pleasure.

“Come to think of it, I think I’ve got an itch as well- a robes off itch,” Draco pulled his own clothing off.

“Here, I’ve got it,” Harry manually pulled his leg off its pillow and turned to scratch Draco’s pale back, his fingernails leaving red scratch marks as Draco moaned.

“Oh, that’s good,” he he sighed.  “Oh, keep that up.”

“My back still itches too,” Harry groaned.  “Maybe we got bitten by something in herbology.  Here-” he pulled his hand away from Draco’s back, ignoring his protests as he pressed their skin together.

“Here,” he told him, and started rubbing up against his boyfriend.  “Rub up like this, and then we’re both happy.”

“Oh, yes,” Draco’s eyes glazed over.  “I know we’ve done a fair amount of experimenting, but I think this feels better than anything we’ve ever tried before.”

“I’d be insulted at the insult to my skills if I didn’t agree with you,” Harry grunted, rubbing harder.  “Mother of Merlin, this feels good.”

Persephone, meanwhile, was looking at her two boys, her service dog instincts kicking in.  She shoved her middle head between them, prying them apart.

“Hey!” they both protested, as Harry tried to reach a new itch on his lower back and Draco scrabbled for one on his shoulder.  “What are you doing, Seph?”

She’d nosed them both off the bed, herding them through into the living room and barking for Minnie, who came in, saw the two grumpy boys and the claw marks they’d given each other in the past few minutes, and sighed heavily.

“Oh my- you two can’t seem to avoid trouble for two minutes, can you?”  She started applying glamours quickly to Harry’s scars.  “Well, come on- let’s get you to Poppy and see what’s wrong with you.”

Chapter Text

“Draco, tell me- did your father, by any chance, consider the chickenpox vaccination to be ‘too muggle?’” Poppy groaned as she ran the diagnostic charm.

“Shit!” he swore, staring cross-eyed at a spot that had just popped up on his nose.  “I forgot about that one- but yeah, he did. Sorry babe.” He looked guiltily at Harry, who was having his hands wrapped back up in the Marvel mittens.

“It’s alright, Dray- not your fault.  I mean, I’ve had it twice already anyway, so what’s one more?  Besides, if you were vaccinated, they would have had to seperate us for a while so I didn’t pick it up again anyway, so at least this way we’re itchy and miserable together.”

“Aww, how sweet,” the blonde replied as Poppy pulled his hands away from his stomach.

“Besides,” Harry’s emerald eyes took on a mischievous glint, “you all thought it was so funny when I had dragon pox- who’s laughing now?”

“Neither of us,” Draco groaned.  “My balls itch.”

“Lovely,” Poppy replied, deadpan.  “You can take care of the calamine there all by yourself.  Speaking of which- we’ll need Severus to…”

Speak of the devil, and he shall appear, as the potions master did appear, blissfully unaware and bringing Poppy the standard biweekly restocking of her Pepper Up Potions.  He caught sight of the two shirtless teens, pox blisters spreading up their torsos like a connect-the-dots picture, and keeled over.

“Ugh- so dramatic,” the medi-witch rolled her eyes.  “WAKE UP!” she yelled as her wand squirted ice water all over him.  “I need you to go to the village for calamine and oatmeal.”

“No more oatmeal,” he begged.  “Never again.” But he cared about his students, so he wrung the water out of his hair and marched his arse to the village for emergency supplies.

“I smell funny,” Draco complained the next day, covered in pink gook.  Harry, whose skin was too sensitive for the lotion, which had a tendency to dry it out, stuck his tongue out at him.

“Welcome to the experience,” Harry said, motioning to his hospital wing bedroom, to which and extra bed had been added.  

“You know, you’re enjoying my misery way too much for someone that just got pulled up out of a giant tub of oatmeal,” the blonde gave him a dirty look as he squirmed, trying to pull his mitts off with his teeth.

“That’s not gonna work- I tried everything last time.  Those suckers are spelled on tight enough to make it through a tornado,” Harry informed him.

“It’s so itchy!” Draco railed, his voice ascending to a whinge.

“Hey, at least you don’t have a cast on your leg rubbing against all the spots there,” Harry pointed out, glaring at the plaster prison that wasn’t coming off until the next day.  “Even some air would be a blessing right now.”

“Hang on,” Draco whispered, putting a finger to his lips.  “We shouldn’t be complaining to each other, we should be working together,” he realised.  “Look- Seph is asleep.”  The dog had been left in the room to watch and make sure they didn’t try to scratch.  “If I’m really quiet, I could tiptoe right into your bed and we could-” his mittened hands mimed a rubbing motion, and Harry moaned.

“Oh fuck yes,” he said.  “The last oatmeal bath is already wearing off, and somehow you look hot even though you’re covered in polka dots and pink crayon.”

“I’m your boyfriend, not a child’s art project,” Draco raised his eyebrows at him, but he made it safely into Harry’s pillowtop and they’d just lined their hips up in the perfect position to take care of the itchiest spots (they seemed to share everything, as they both agreed that the worst pox were on the inner thighs) and started with a nice rhythm when Seph’s right head popped up, growling chastisements at the two.

“One more minute,” the blonde begged, but the cerberus gently sank her teeth into the fabric of his open-back hospital gown, pulling him forcefully back to his own little cot.  Then she sat up straight, one head watching each of them and the other staring straight ahead, on guard, as she barked for the adults.

“It was a test,” Harry lamented as Poppy came in with more oatmeal.   “Of course it was a test.”

“You don’t think I’d give my favourite patient a service dog that falls asleep on the job, do you?” the nurse smirked a bit as she filled two tubs.  “No, I was just curious to see if you two could be trusted to behave yourselves, and I was right- you cannot.”

“Oh, the unfairness of it all!” Draco bemoaned as he eyed the tub of breakfast oats distastefully.  “To be bested by a chicken!”

“Wait, babe- you don’t actually think that’s how you get them,” Harry looked at his boyfriend, then collapsed back against the pillows as their mental bond informed them that oh Merlin, it actually was.  

“Are you done yet?” Draco gave him an unimpressed look a few minutes later, as Harry gripped his sides.

“No,” he giggled between gasps.  Turns out laughter really is the best medicine.

[Pansy bribes Winky into sneaking in and taking photos of her two poxy boys- blackmail forever, baby!]

Dear Jane,

Sorry I haven’t written in the past couple of days- Draco and Harry both came down with the chickenpox, but luckily, Harry’d just had his immune treatment, and Draco has a fairly good immune system to begin with, so Poppy says it should only be another week or so before they’re all better.  They think they’re so clever, those two- ‘How are we supposed to work on our assignments with our hands bound up?,’ they asked.  Needless to say, they were not happy when we gave them dictaquills, having seen through their pitiful ruse.  I think Draco might be a crankier patient than Harry, and I wasn’t even sure that was possible - wait, I take it back- if Severus were to be confined to bed, he’d be worse than both of them combined.   But I digress.  

How have you been?  Arf and Snarls are doing well.  I believe I told you two letters ago that the acromantula population was getting a bit out of control, yes?  Well, not anymore- Snarls has really been a blessing, in that respect. Arf is also making headway with our grindylow problem- useless creatures, grindylows.  Glad they’re on the wane. Harry got his cast off, although I do wish he could have made it the entire length of one injury or illness before adding another.  It’s not his fault, of course- thank goodness the elves have taken it upon themselves to step up their long and excruciating revenge campaign against the Dursleys.  Come to think of it, I do believe I heard Dobby mention that they had mysteriously become ill around the same time Harry and Draco did.  House elves are highly underrated creatures, I tell you.

Oh!  I almost forgot to tell you that I did finally get a chance to read that novel you recommended, and I must say it’s been a while since I’ve read one like it- healthy exploration of women’s sexuality aimed at women, instead of that pornographic trash that a man might pick up at a muggle airport.  And no, you’re not alone- I, too, had a certain two women in mind when envisioning the protagonists in my head.  Perhaps you can get a Portkey down over Christmas, and we can catch the live show?

Love,

Minerva

Dear Minerva,

I’m so sorry to hear about Harry and Draco’s recent illness, although I imagine that by the time you receive this letter, their spots will be on the wane.  It unfortunately takes a good four days for an owl to carry a letter across all this distance that spans between us. I’ve already booked my portkey, and I’ll be there Christmas Eve.  It will be nice to see a white Christmas for once- a snowy one, to be clear, and not the sort I’m used to down here, where white people have taken over.  I know, for certain, that I miss you, so far away, but I have a few things to tie up down here before I can move on in the world.  I’ve sold the restaurant already, but I want to make sure the reserve goes into good hands and that it cannot be taken over by residential lands or business tycoons- and when you’re five hundred years old, any legal process is made a million times more complicated, as you have to keep forging new papers every thirty years or so lest people question your apparently-eternal youth.  Then of course I want to finish setting up that scholarship fund for aboriginal students and their descendents. I never planned to stay in Australia this long, to be honest- the weather is brutal for a born Englishwoman- but I’ve found myself drawn into its social issues and the beautiful nature and cultures that are being eradicated due to human greed.  

I realise I probably sound so old when I go on like this, but as you’ve assured me that you find it endearing, I shan’t cross anything out.  I’ve always believed that crossed-out letters are a sign of insincerity. If you truly feel close to someone, you should be able to go with what you have first put to paper, even if it is misspelled- you let someone know the worst and the best of you that way.  In real life, there are no take-backs, so I always try to hold to the same policy when I am corresponding with anyone I feel close to. And believe me, Minerva- I feel close to you.

Yours Sincerely,

Jane

My dearest Jane,

Since I have received your last letter, Harry and Draco have been released from the hospital wing, and besides one small scar on Draco’s elbow where he somehow managed to get a good scratch in, they are otherwise unharmed, playing quidditch and making out in hidden corners and running us ragged, as teenagers do.  A first-year in my transfiguration class somehow managed to turn a mouse into actual snuff instead of a snuff box , and it had to be promptly disposed of before the older Hufflepuffs had a chance to get hold of it.  Cedric and Cho have recently gone into auror training together, and I dare say we could use their talent in the coming war.

Viktor has signed on as Madame Hooch’s assistant- he received many offers for professional teams, of course, but he says he prefers teaching to all the attention that comes with playing professionally.  Ronald is certainly excited that he’s staying close. Ginny and Luna are busy preparing for their OWLs- Hermione is rather good at spreading her own obsessive study habits like a virus, and I rather wish Harry had caught a little less of it during his own OWLs- I told you, of course, how I was worried he was going to run himself to the ground, what with all the studying he’s doing.  I’ve managed to convince him to take it easy this year, but Merlin help me when his NEWTs come- I might have to impose a study limit on both him and Hermione.  As a teacher, I can honestly say I never would have imagined doing such a thing.  Then, of course, I became a mother, although I often felt a bit like a beloved aunt with Harry’s father and his merry band of misfits, I must admit.

Speaking of merry bands of misfits, I had to get Harry a new copy of Robin Hood - he read the old one so much that it was hanging by a thread.  Well, if my child wants to overturn the capitalist agenda, I’ll be alright with that.  I’ll be proud of anything he does, honestly. It’s a strange feeling, being a mother. You think you knew what love felt like, and then you get a child, and the definition is rewritten- the whole world is rewritten, it feels like.  

I was engaged once, to a muggle man, and I thought I loved him- I was devastated when it didn’t work out, when he didn’t want to wait for me while I joined the aurors and went on to get a mastery in Transfiguration and became a professor.  After that, well, I suppose I thought I’d lost my chance to be a mother- Harry has changed my life in so many ways. The wizarding world likes to think of him as their hero, but, as sappy as it sounds, I quite believe him to be my hero.  I was by no means unhappy before, of course, and there is nothing to be said against a childless life, but by Circe’s tits, I love him so much.  He could murder someone and I’d be proud of him, because I would know that they must have deserved it, by Merlin and Morgana.

I always used to look down on grown men who still lived with their mothers, young and naive as I was, but now I realise that it is perhaps it is that their mothers needed them to stay, and not the other way around.  I remember when I first adopted Harry- he was twelve and so, so small and the world had tried so hard to break him yet he was still so strong.  Now he’s even stronger, nearly a man, as much as I hate to think it. Of course, he’s still so full of life and whimsy and joy- all the things he was never allowed to have while he was growing up with those… those… monstrosities who didn’t realise what they had, how blessed they were to get the chance to know Harry.

I’m going on and on about my son again, but as you’ve said you find it endearing, I won’t apologise.  Of course, I think anyone who gets to hear about Harry is blessed, but I’ve been told that’s a common sentiment in parents.  Harry really is wonderful, though- it’s not just my maternal instincts that think such a thing. But again, I digress. How is all that paperwork coming?  As a teacher and a school administrator, I’ve always found paperwork to be the most unpleasant part of the job, but it is my understanding that it is nearly impossible to find a fulfilling career that doesn’t come with paperwork- trust me, I’ve looked, during some of my more unpleasant end-of-term reporting periods.  Being an auror had far too much paperwork as well, with far more oversight by the ministry. Tell me dear, was there much paperwork involved in being queen, back when you graced the throne?

Call me sentimental, but I’ve included in this envelope a rose.  I hope you don’t find it an unpleasant reminder, since after all you chose to leave the throne at the height of your glory as the Rose of Henry Tudor, who was after all head of the house of roses.  But some days I cannot help but think that it was only the house of roses while you were its lady. Merlin, if Severus could see what I am writing, he would sneer for so long his face would get stuck like that, but I don’t care.  It’s been a long time since I have been in love- romantic love, that is- and never have I felt such strong affection for another human being who is not my son. So I ask that you take this rose, inhale its perfume, and count the days until we meet again.

Yours truly,

Minerva.

Chapter Text

    “Yes!”  Harry pumped his fist.  “Finished my makeup work!”  Draco, still scribbling on his Herbology essay, looked up at him with raised eyebrows.

    “Can you celebrate a little more quietly in that pretty head of yours?   Some of us are still trying to finish.”  Harry laughed and kissed his ear.

    “Maybe if some of us hadn’t gotten distracted making faces at Ron, some of us would also be finished, like some others of us.”

    “Condescension doesn’t suit you, and the Weasel was making fun of me, scratching at himself like an ape,” Draco pouted, regretting that their friends had ever visited them in the hospital wing.

    “You all made fun of me about a million and one times when I was sick,” Harry pointed out, reasonably.

    “Yes, but that’s different- it’s just so easy to make fun of you, and, well- you don’t exactly have my air of sophistication, do you darling?”

    “Sophisticated, my arse- I have seen you dance to Fergalicious on repeat for a straight half-hour,” Harry snorted.

    “Nothing he does is straight,” Pansy rolled her eyes.  “Honestly, we should really take that word out of the group vocabulary.”

    “So does the gay just like, spread, or did all the gays just find each other by design?” Hannah asked, and they all thought for a moment.

    “I mean, could be both- you all find me, the cool lesbian, and I spread my awesomeness to you all like a virus, except it’s a good thing and your lives are all better for it,” Pansy said, not-at-all-modestly.

    “To be fair, you found me,” Harry reminded her.  “Practically suffocated me, really.”

    “Oh, you’re overreacting, golden boy- it was a hug .  Not my fault if you’re so itty-bitty you disappear whenever someone embraces you.”

    “I have got two sleeve tattoos- I am not a golden boy and I am not tiny!” Harry objected.

    “Well I guess you’re not completely a golden boy, because you did just lie to me twice in one sentence- you’re like, a golden boy with just a little bit of like, silver or some other inferior-but-still-precious metal,” Pansy replied decisively.

    “Sometimes I don’t understand why I’m friends with you people.”

    “Because you love us,” Blaise teased.

    “Merlin help me, I really do.”  Harry pretended to be frightened by the idea as Hermione playfully batted him on the arm.

[The elves are engaging in their weekly routine of chasing Sapphire away from the treacle tarts; they’ve gotten quite creative with it, and now they’re making an obstacle course of pots and pans, hoping to catch the naughty serpent in one of them.]

    “Why is it always me?” Severus grumbled to himself, conveniently ignoring the fact that he didn’t trust anyone else to check on the man since he’d been the one who performed the healing spell and thus the best person to know what to look for.

    Julian, of course, reminded him of this, and Severus mentally flipped him off.

    That’s not what you said last night.

    You’re so juvenile.

    Of course I am- I am an American, after all.

    Ah yes- I keep forgetting- it’s not like you have an obnoxious New York accent or anything.

    Oh look, you’re here, Julian pointed out, and Severus hated that he always did that right as he was about to win an argument.

    Right, you were about to win the argument- in your dreams.

    We share dreams, you absolute buffoon.

    Love you too, Julian told him, before going back to his book, and Severus hated that the stupid git knew that he loved him back without him having to say it.  Although he didn’t want to say it either- there was really no winning in this situation, damn him.

    “Stupid blonde prat,” he grumbled under his breath, sounding rather like Harry during his first year, talking about Draco.

    “Oh, thank Merlin he’s asleep- I can’t handle more human contact today, especially with that,” he muttered to himself, somehow not sounding very thankful at all.

    He waved his wand to perform a diagnostic charm, frowning- he was doing far better than he should be- he should be on death’s door by this point, but he was hanging on pretty steadily.  The last couple of times had also concerned him, but he’d reasoned that he, Severus, could have just been more magically capable than he’d given himself credit for.  But no- this was definitely not his spell at work.  He was capable, yes, but the stupid git had put a horcrux on, and his own magic shouldn’t be holding it off for that long, especially as he hadn’t used any evil or unethical magic, unlike the object that had cursed the old man.

    “You make my life so incredibly difficult,” he grumbled to the unconscious form, turning on his heel and stalking out.  He replaced the locking charms and wards, dropping a bag with a few cans of food and some half-wilted vegetables at the door.  “Now I have to go talk to people again, because you couldn’t just up and die already!”

    All he got in response was a snore- not even a particularly pained snore, either- and Severus envied him his good sleep when the old git was keeping him from enjoying the same thing.

    “Minerva!” He called, stepping into Order Headquarters/ the mutts’ house (although really Kreacher’s, let’s be honest).  “Mutt man-children! Anyone else in the house!”

    “Ara and Narcisa are upstairs doing research on horcruxes, but they’re probably taking a break and having sex by this point- the frustration of trying to find anything on these damn things tends to make one very tense and horny,” Sirius said.

    “Lovely- although I’m a bit concerned that we’re not finding anything in the Black library, of all places,” Severus tugged at a lock of his hair.

    “Yeah well- my family are crazy monsters, but making six fucking horcruxes is what they would call a ‘Gryffindors plan’ so we’re likely to find too much on making more than one, if we find info on any.  My ‘family’ loved to complain, and they’d probably complain about having to complain too much if they were immortal, anyway,” Sirius rolled his eyes, quite glad that everyone except for his beloved little brother and his two cool cousins were dead.

    “It is rather a Gryffindor plan, rushing off into uncharted territory in a foolish quest for immortality,” Regulus teased.

    “Yeah- some days I think Tom Riddle was sorted wrong, especially as we find out more about him,” Narcisa came down, Aralynn trailing behind her holding her hand, both their hair mussed.

    “What, exactly, was the point of torturing muggle children- he gained nothing from it- it was just that the sick freak found it fun,” Severus added.

    “Okay, we get it,” Sirius put his hands up in surrender.  “Gryffindors can suck too. If you wanna go to a house where no one sucks, go to Hufflepuff.”

    “Oh, Hufflepuffs suck, just a different kind,” Tonks came in through the floo and wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.   “Hey, I think I left a file here- probably top-secret government material- seen it anywhere?”

    “You’re a walking travesty, Nymphadora,” Severus rolled his eyes as he found the folder, sitting in the middle of the table and sporting just a bit of mango chutney on the edges.

    “Don’t call me Nymphadora,” she ordered, grabbing one of Kreacher’s fresh-baked baklava on the table and not seeming at all bothered by the insult.  “And you’re kind of a hot mess yourself, professor- at least I can confront my emotions.”

    “Oh, that was raw,” Reg snorted, and Severus glared at him.

    “Well, wotcher, I guess; gotta go interrogate a couple people and obliviate a street of muggles- honestly, wizards are idiots sometimes.  Ta.”

    “I think the craziest thing she just said was that wizards are only idiots sometimes,” Remus said, stroking Sirius’ hand with his thumb as they linked their fingers together.

    “Yes, well- speaking of that: Dumbledore is not deteriorating as quickly as he should, and I can’t figure out why,” Severus bit his thumbnail angrily, a habit he would never admit that he picked up from Remus as they poured over research while their idiot boyfriends got into debates about their Pokémon cards (Julian may seem like a sophisticate, but it was a bad idea to put him with the other pure blood defectors, as they all got into stupid shit together).

    “Maybe he’s just stubborn,” Regulus shrugged- after all, this was a man who had wiped his memories and sent him off to América rather than admit Fawkes was right and give him a second chance.

    “This isn’t a lifetime movie, noob- stop thinking like your Gryffindor brother,” the other Slytherin sniped.

    “Did you just… did you just call me a noob?” Reg gave him a strange look.

    Severus’ eyes widened and he growled in defeat.  “I’ll be right back- I have to go kill my Julian for filling my mind with this awful American slang.”

    “Meow,” Minerva said as she licked her paw- because honestly, she had to let these idiots figure things out themselves sometimes.

    “Alright, just- send a message to the rest of the order through the journals- let them know to just be on their toes, look out for anything that might explain this Dumbledore issue,” Severus wrapped up.  The journals he was talking about were the order journals- everyone had one, and for non-crucial but still-important messages (because Dumbledore being an idiot really wasn’t an emergency anymore, most of the time at least, since it was rather an everyday occurrence).  Someone wrote in one of them, and the message appeared in all the others.

    “Cool, you got it, noob,” Sirius said, smiling sweetly, and Severus opened his mouth, shut it again, turned around and stalked back through the floo.  He wondered if Harry would want to work on their latest experiment- he needed some mature company at the moment.

Chapter Text

“Ugh, training firsties to be battle-ready is so much work,” Pansy threw herself dramatically over the back of a chair in the Slytherin common room, having just finished with the last meeting of TDT before the holiday break.

“We’re not training them to be battle-ready, we’re just training them to be able to defend themselves,” Harry reminded her.  “They’re not going to go into battle- they’re eleven.”

“And besides our families, the ministry has the brain-capacity of eleven year olds- I say we let them kick some arse,” she shot back.

“Pansy luv- not everyone needs to constantly find an outlet for their murderous rage so they won’t be a danger to society,” Hermione piped up, coming behind her girlfriend and starting to braid her hair.

“How does that even work?” the Slytherin asked as she leaned into Hermione’s touch.

“Why don’t you ask Harry- he’d forgive someone while they were still kicking his arse,” Blaise snorted, and Harry glared from his position laying on the couch, head in Draco’s lap, and shot a lazy tickling charm his way, which Blaise dodged easily.

“You’re gonna have to try harder than that to get a ballerina,” he taunted, as another of Harry’s hexes landed and rendered him a fool.

“Maybe if you spent more time on the ballet bar and less time gloating,” Draco took up for his boyfriend as Blaise fought off the bat bogeys currently attacking him.

“Maybe if he spent more time on the ballet bar and less time snogging Neville in the dance studio,” Ron teased, having walked in on them once.

“Perv.”

“You were in the Room of Requirement, Blasie-boy; you should have asked for a locked door, you exhibitionist.”

“Look, in a group as close as ours, everyone will walk in on everyone at some point,” Pansy butt in.  “How else would I know that Fleur, Bill, and Malala like to do it down by the lake at night?”

“I take it back,” Blaise said, looking at Pansy.   “She’s the perv.”

“Love you too,” Pansy rolled her eyes.

[Crabbe and Goyle, though afraid, know they must go home for Christmas- even if their fathers would let them stay, they need to check on their captive friends.]

“Wotcher- I brought eggnog!”  Tonks declared without preamble, stepping through the fire to the Parkinsons’, where the group was spending Christmas that year.

“Oh, that’s some good stuff,” Sirius said, grabbing the bottle.  “Where’d you get it?”

“Nabbed it off some ‘drunk and disorderlies’ I arrested,” she said as she took it back from her cousin and popped it open.

“Is that even legal?” Millie wondered, as Pansy held up her cup.

“I don’t know, actually,” Tonks shrugged.  “I mean, it was during one of those joint cases with the muggle police, and they beat the shite out of people and don’t get in trouble, so how bad can drinking the confiscated goods be?”

“I’ll stick with butterbeer, thanks,” Severus sniffed disdainfully as he refilled his mug.  “If your drunk and disorderlies were anything like the students I’ve confiscated things from, I wouldn’t drink anything they had on them.”

“Oh, live a little, professor,” Tonks rolled her eyes.  “It’s not like anything you get from muggles can turn you into a fruit bat or something… oh wait.”

“I wish I could still give you detention, Nymphadora, I really do…”

“Hey guys,” Harry came in from playing quidditch outside, a little fairy resting on his shoulder.

“Um…”

“Oh yeah- did you guys know you have a fairy village on the property?” Harry turned to the Parkisons.  “This is Bluebell- she’s fighting with her roommate, so I told her she could hang here for a bit.”

“This is probably not the most pressing question at the moment,” Petra Parkinson began, “but why is she fighting with her roommate, exactly?”

The little creature tugged Harry’s ear and then whispered into it, and the teen nodded understandingly.

“She ripped her favourite daffodil skirt when she wasn’t even supposed to be borrowing it,” he explained.  “Very serious offence, I’m told.”

“Oh… alright then,” they’d all long since stopped questioning anything strange that happened around Harry, as it seemed to be the order of the day.  “So will she need her own chair or…?”

“She says she’s quite comfortable here,” Harry told them.  “Tomorrow I’ll take her back and see if I can fix her skirt and help her and Buttercup make up.”  He tilted his head again as Bluebell whispered something else.

“I understand how you feel, but do you really want her to ‘shove her head up her own arse and die?’” he asked, eyebrows raising a bit- damn, fairies were vicious.  

“I’m just going to go talk to the elves about the menu for tomorrow’s Christmas Eve dinner,” Petra sidled out, a bit awkwardly, reminding herself never to anger one of the small creatures that apparently lived on her property.

[Greg and Vincent sneak Lara and Violet a bit of extra food, even though they are caught and crucio’d for it.]

“Arf, come back!” Ron chased after his best friend’s demon-monster as the bunyip, at his full size, slid happily down the bannister, barking as he went.  “Oy, where’s Harry when you need him?” He’d woken up at 11 a.m. to a giant water demon shoving himself between Ron and Viktor and looking way too gleeful about it.

“Hey,” Harry came through the kitchen doorway, munching on a fruit tart, and he tossed a second one to Arf, who yipped in pleasure as he gobbled it down.  “What’s up?”

“Your bunyip is a demon,” Ron moaned.

“Yeah, that’s kind of the point,” Harry smiled cheekily while Ron tried not to bang his head against the wall.  “What’d he do this time- slobber all over your face, bring you back a damned soul as a present?”

“Those two are nowhere near the same category,” Ron paled, wondering what kind of animal behaviour Harry might consider unusual.

“You’re right- you can always just give the damned souls to Pansy to take care of (boy, did she have a time with Christopher Columbus), but his saliva takes forever to wash off.”

“Oh, did Arf bring back something else from the underworld?” Pansy asked eagerly as she came through the kitchen doorway with her own plateful of treats.  “I’ve been sharpening my knives for Andrew Jackson.”

“Not this time, sorry,” Harry told her, as Ron resolved never ever to go into her room, afraid of what he’d find.

“Oh, relax,” she rolled her eyes at a horrified Ronald.  “They’d be suffering eternal torture anyway- I’m just shaking things up a bit, although from what I gather of their incomprehensible screaming, I’m rather good at it.”

“Shh, it’s better this way,” Harry put a comforting arm on his best friend’s shoulder.  “It sates her bloodlust.”

“So,” Tonks walked in, blissfully unaware of what was going on, “who’s ready to help a procrastinating metamorphmagus do a buttload of Christmas shopping?”

Chapter Text

Flashback: February 1994

Percy Weasley’s mind was churning like his stomach: they’d had him kidnap his little brother last night, and they’d just expected him to go along with it.  It was sickening, and he’d almost walked out right then and there.  But then he realized something: the only other ally they had in the ministry who would put his family’s interests above all else was his father, and although Arthur Weasley had chosen a noble profession when he’d devoted his life to learning about and protecting muggles, it wasn’t exactly something that garnered respect and prestige.  But Percy, with a key assistant position within the Department of International Magical Cooperation, was in the perfect position to look out for his family both at home and abroad. As soon as the hostages had been taken, he’d apparated to an all-night apothecary on Cauldron Cross Avenue and bought enough gillyweed to keep one contestant and all four hostages alive and breathing far beyond the limits of the competition.  It had cost him an entire month’s salary, and he’d have to go hungry for a while to pay his rent, but he’d manage

He felt a sharp pang in his chest by the lake, long before anyone else was up, as he remembered Fred and George making fun of him for learning Mermish, saying he’d never use it.  Well, here he was, in a matter of life and death. He’d called for the village elders, spent the early hours of the night giving them the gillyweed as a case of last resort and convincing them that however fond they were of Harry, they must tell him nothing about what Percy was doing (and it took a great deal of time for him to explain the concept of a double agent).  If he was going to be a good spy within the ministry, to look for people on the side of both the dark lord and the government who might try to hurt his family, the safest way to keep it a secret was to ensure that not even his family knew about it- they would advise against it, for his own safety, and this way, the true betrayal they would feel would only add further to his cover.

With the mer having given a solemn promise to keep his secret, the groundwork was over.  Next came the painful part- the howlers from his mother, the heartbreak of his family as they thought he’d betrayed them, defected from the close-knit family values they’d instilled in him in the pursuit of ambition.

Spying was harder than he’d thought it would be- having suspicions was easy, of course, and he’d known something was off with his boss, as Barty Crouch Senior missed days of work that quickly turned into weeks and months, with the occasional appearance where he came in looking distinctly frazzled and spent only enough time to give Percy a list of orders that were often more nonsensical than helpful.  But he hadn’t been able to trace a cause, and by the time the whole scandal had broken, Harry had nearly died.

He’d almost given up after that, convinced himself that he was useless as a spy and just quit his job, go back to his family, and beg for forgiveness.  But he couldn’t do that- Voldemort was back, and the stakes were higher than ever. He tracked his coworkers, looking for who might have a dark mark or who might be using ministry funds for their own ends, ends that could lead to problem for his brothers, Harry and Draco included.  He spent lonely holidays in bars with people he hated, pretending he liked them so they in their drunken state might let loose some bit of useful information.

What he found was shocking: death eaters working among him, new and unseasoned though most of them were.  So called ‘light wizards’ turning a blind eye to clear signs of his return, blocking any referendum that might make society safer because they profited off of the things Voldemort did: they either had common enemies who they were more than happy to let the evil wizard kill, or they had business interests that benefited from wizards and muggles alike being scared, confused, and ignorant to what was happening.

When Narcissa was elected as Minister near the end of Ron and Harry’s fifth year, Percy thought that perhaps it would be safe to leave.  He would wait two weeks to make sure everything wrapped up nicely and then quit, he decided. But even Narcissa couldn’t clear corruption out of the ministry in a day, especially when her own government was often working against her.  People traded wizengamot votes for lucrative business deals, those in his and other departments buried the poor woman in paperwork that would keep her from accomplishing all the important things she had in mind.  Things were better with her in power, sure, but she was only one, albeit badass, woman.

So he stayed, and monitored, and his files of evidence piled up, and he waited for the day when he could take her enough that she could justify a total overhaul of the current system: clean out the corrupt officials and start again.  Now, in December of 1996, he was getting close. A few more weeks and he could reasonably say he’d done his part; he could wipe his hands of this business and go back to the warm, chaotic embrace of his family and the burrow.

Percy shook his head to clear it and went into the bathroom.  Pulling out a phial from his robes pocket, he took his memories of the day and pulled them out.  Then he spelled them to their usual spot behind the clock at home. Along with the case files he had just duplicated and updated (also in the clock), the memories were hidden in the face of the treasured family furniture, charmed to open if his hand of the clock ever moved to ‘mortal danger,’ so that if he were killed in the line of duty before he were finished with his work, at least his family would have the necessary information, and they would know that he never abandoned them.

Sighing, he mentally prepared for another lonely Christmas Eve in his cramped flat.  As he left the ministry, wrapping his scarf around him, he bypassed the apparation point on an impulse and decided to walk home, wanting to put off spending another holiday alone as long as he could.  As he turned the corner into a crowded alleyway four streets away from his own, he heard a noise up ahead of him.

Fuck- it was his coworker, Owens.  Owens wasn’t a death eater, but he was involved in some shady potions dealings with illegal ingredients that he traded with death eaters for, things like the kidneys of unicorns and the ears of muggle children- things that no decent human being would ever want to work with.  Beside Owens was Stoats, and Percy had caught a flash of Stoats’ dark mark in the loo one day, but he’d turned away and pretended to see nothing- pretending was second nature for him, by this stage in the game.  He took out his wand, seeing the malevolent gleam in their eyes.

“So, Weasley- we’ve been watching you,” Owens began, a cruel smile twisting at the corners of his mouth.  “Funny little things we’ve been picking up on- the disowned son still has some family values, it seems. Knew nothing good could come from your muggle-loving father.”

Percy didn’t bother to say anything- he knew that nothing he could say would get him out of this scenario.  He’d either have to win this battle and give up his mission, incomplete as it was, or he’d go down fighting- neither option was what he’d hoped this would end in, but life doesn’t often turn out how one hopes it does.  He was down in a fighting stance, wand moving and the incantation for Filipendo on his lips, when he was knee-slammed from behind in the kidneys.

Of course, Percy thought as he keeled over.   They’ve brought Bankson.

[Crabbe and Goyle aren’t having the best Christmas either; they’d each been subject to an extended bout of cruciatus, but at least they’d managed to sneak Lara and Violet some extra food].

The Burrow was loud and warm as everyone gathered in the living room, and the atmosphere was cheerful.  Harry had even managed to convince Sev and Julian to wear the matching Christmas jumpers he’d gotten them (one was the front half of a reindeer and one was the back, and of course it was really only Sev that took any convincing at all, even if he had caved in rather quickly to Harry’s brilliant green eyes).  Molly felt that things were lovely, but there was of course a Percy-shaped hole in her heart that had been there for the past two years- if only he were here, then things would be perfect…

No, she shook herself out of her maudlin musings.   He’s made his choice, and you can’t change that.   Before she could really give the matter any further thought or try to pull herself out of thinking about it, there was a sudden clatter as the clock face burst open.

“My,” she said, clucking her tongue.  “It seems something is always breaking around here.”  She went to put it back in place when she noticed a number of phials full of silver memories and a number of rolls of parchment.  The frontmost bottle had a note on it that said “Watch me first” in Percy’s handwriting, and she gasped a little as one hand clutched her heart.

Harry had been taking in the event with wide eyes and had summoned the pensieve and brought it to her before she could even gather herself enough to ask, and the silver mist was poured into it as the entire group shoved in close enough that they could each squeeze in some body part.  They tumbled headfirst into the memory, which was just Percy sitting at a desk in a threadbare flat, his face even more serious than they’d always known it to be.

“Dear family,” he began what was clearly a rehearsed speech.  “I know that you’ve been upset with me lately, and rightly so, and I felt I owed you an explanation.  Two years ago, during the tournament, I was not in fact on board with the idea of kidnapping children, and I very nearly stormed out before I realised I could do more from the inside.  I bought some emergency gillyweed, gave it to the mermaids and convinced them not to tell for the safety of you all, and began to spy on the ministry from the inside.  For the past two years, I’ve been gathering intel on both Death Eaters and civilian employees within the ministry who might wish you harm. I’ve told no one, not even you, dearest family, because I couldn’t risk you trying to talk me out of it, or the mission being compromised.  It was best for your safety that you thought I had truly deflected. When Narcissa became minister, I thought that my mission would be shortened considerably, and as I speak I believe I am getting close to the day where I can go to her with enough evidence to justify a complete overhaul of the staff.  I had hoped to tell you all this in person, but unfortunately if you are seeing this video, it means I am in mortal danger and will probably die before I can make it back to you. I’m sorry things turned out like this, and I want you all to know that I love you more than anything, and that I never stopped caring about you or putting family first, the way you raised me too.  Please use the enclosed memories and scrolls with the evidence I’ve found and put them to good use in fighting this war.  I will see you all beyond the veil. Love, Percy.”

They were all out of the memory as soon as it ended, and when Molly slammed the clock closed she saw that Percy’s hand was indeed pointing to ‘mortal danger.’

“Come on!” Arthur called, for once the loudest voice in the room.  “He’ll probably be near the ministry- the work day’s just ended.” For once, he wished he’d been working instead of had the day off, so he’d be closer to helping his son.

By silent agreement, both Molly and Arthur gathered to take part in the rescue mission, along with Minerva and Remus, so that they were a small enough group to travel quickly but large enough to handle attackers.

“Wait!” Harry called.  “Take me with you- I can find him faster with my mage senses!”

There was no time to disagree, so Minerva merely waved her son over.  “Stay close to me,” she ordered as they all disapparated to the front of the Ministry of Magic building, and Harry immediately spread his senses out so far so quickly that it made him dizzy, but he spotted Percy’s signature in a nearby alley, and soon they had reached him.

The sight wasn’t pretty- Percy was curled into a ball as three wizards beat on him with their feet and their fists.  Harry could feel that he’d been hit with a few cutting curses, but nothing super dark, and the reason quickly became apparent.

“You love your muggle-loving family so much, we’ll kill you like a muggle, you blood traitor!” One of them yelled, and Arthur vaguely recognized him as a ‘Jacob Stoats’ from the obliviation department.  He saw red, more red than his entire family’s hair put together, and the man was hit with a stunning hex strong enough to send him into the back wall, knocked unconscious with a trickle of blood running down his forehead.

Harry, used to functioning in deep despair and obeying his mama’s orders to stay out of the way of the fighting, sent his Patronus to The Burrow to tell them to alert the aurors, and then he sent a ripple of movement cascading along the cobblestones, disorienting Percy’s other two attackers long enough for Remus and Minerva to disable them as well while Molly ran to her son.

“Get him back to house,” Remus ordered the rest of them.  “I’ll stay here and watch our captives until the aurors come.”

“Oh Percy, you brave, foolish child,” Molly was wailing over the body of her unconscious son, and Harry apparated them back, his method of elf-magic transport being the only one that wouldn’t exacerbate Percy’s injuries further with the movement.

“Make some room!” Minerva yelled authoritatively.  Severus was already digging in his utility belt for healing potions, and Poppy had luckily been spending the holiday with them as well, so she was more than ready to jump in and help.

“Some severe lacerations, a concussion bruised ribs, and internal bleeding, but a few days of rest and he’ll be just fine once I’ve healed the worst of it,” she breathed a sigh of relief as she set into working her spells, and Severus closed the cuts littering Percy’s body while Poppy worked on his head and the internal injuries.  Besides one cut on his side that would leave a thin, faded mark, none of the wounds would scar, and Harry was glad for that as he watched Uncle Sev wrap Percy’s torso tightly in bandages and Aunt Poppy tip a potion down his throat.

“It’s just a waiting game now,” the medi-witch announced after a half-hour, wiping sweat off her forehead as Ginny ran to the kitchen to get her a drink.  Julian was in the back corner of the living room, a temporary brewing station set up as he started on the supply of pain potions Percy would no doubt need in the coming days.

That was scary, Harry said into Draco’s mind as his boyfriend tried not to think about all the times he’d had to watch Harry in similar situations.   I don’t think I much like being on this side, and I have to say I thought the other one was bad enough.

Yeah, you’ve given us a right scare way too many times, Draco agreed shakily.   Does it make me a bad person that I’m just glad it isn’t you?

I don’t think so, Dray, Harry sighed, trying to sooth the blonde’s insecurities that Harry was a better person than he.   Don’t think like that- I mean, I’d probably think the same thing if it was you who were always in trouble- no, I definitely would.

I… I don’t wanna think about what would happen, if we ever had to make a choice like that, Draco forcibly pushed the thought out of their shared mental space.

We’ll make sure it never comes to that, Harry swore resolutely as he took Draco’s hand in his and pulled the blond to a cushion in the corner where they could cuddle quietly in front of the fireplace while they all watched Percy anxiously.

[The aurors take the three assailants into custody, and Moony goes back to the burrow as Narcissa floos into the Ministry to address the situation.]

Percy opened his eyes slowly, and he wondered if he’d made it to what the muggles called heaven- after all, for him it would look just like what he was seeing now: the living room of his childhood home.  But then he felt the pain in his whole body and looked up into his mother’s face, which seemed indecisive about whether to scold him or gather him into her arms, and he realized with a bit of a shock that he was most definitely alive.

“How…” he began, and Molly took up the thread.

“We found your memories when the clock opened, and we got their just in time to save your heroic, stupid arse!”  Molly Weasley nee Pruitt only ever cursed when she was in a right state, so Percy knew that he was about to get an earful, and he couldn’t help but groan as the noise aggravated his headache.

His mother’s voice and face softened immediately as she gently took his hand.  “Oh, my baby,” she sniffed, wiping a tear away, and Percy felt bad that he had caused her this much distress.  “I shouldn’t be yelling at you, really- that was a very brave thing you did, but you should know that you didn’t have to make that sacrifice.”

“Everyone in this family makes sacrifices,” Percy croaked, and immediately Ginny responded to the rasping sound of his voice with a glass of cool water that she held up to his lips, and he sipped gratefully, smiling weakly at his sister.

“I’m not a fighter like Bill or Ginny, and I don’t have any of Charlie’s skill at winning people over,” he continued.  “I can’t upend the system like George and Fred, and I’m not a hero like Ron.” Ron practically shot up, surprised by his brother’s choice of description for him.  “I was just doing what I could- the only thing I was good at: sucking up and getting information that way.” He laughed self-deprecatingly and clutched his ribs as pain shot through them.

“Oh Percy…” Everyone could tell that Molly was about to start crying, so the twins did what they did best.

“I say, old chap,” Fred began.

“Wonderful story and all, but where on earth did you learn to act?”  Percy smiled at them.

“Probably by watching you two con your way out of trouble,” he told them, and they shared a chuckle.

“I think we all deserve some hot chocolate,” Aralynn announced, and she could be heard clattering around the kitchen as Harry and Neville went to offer help.  Soon there were a number of trays full of the warm beverage floating out, each worn earthenware mugful topped with a dollop of whipped cream and a handful of crushed peppermint.

“And one for good old James Bond here,” George declared as Molly helped Percy into a sitting position.

Percy rolled his eyes but secretly felt rather proud- James Bond was cool- his brothers thought he, Percy, was cool!

[Hagrid spends Christmas Eve in a comfortable French villa with his very pregnant fiancee calling instructions to him from the armchair as he tries to cook dinner].

Molly spent all night knitting Percy his Weasley sweater, overjoyed to have the chance to do so again, and the next morning his eyes were full of tears as he opened it, not having expected one on such short notice.

“Oh, mum…” he sniffed, trying to pull himself up to hug her.

“Nuh-uh, young man,” she ordered.  “Your bum better stay on that couch until you get clearance from the healers, and Merlin help you if you try to move.”  Percy smiled as his mother instead came over and leaned down to embrace him- he’d missed her bossy but well-meaning way of speaking to him.

“It’s good to have you back, bro,” Ron said, a little awkwardly as he brought forward the old chess set- Percy was the only one who ever put up even half a challenge, and he was more than happy to play with his youngest brother again.

“Three cheers for James Bond!”  Fred cried, and it was slightly less endearing when that’s all they’d called him since he’d gotten home, but Percy wouldn’t trade it for anything- he’d missed this with a painful ferocity many times that of the ache now settled in his muscles, this chaotic affection he’d so taken for granted growing up.

“Wouldn’t a red-headed James Bond stand out a bit, though?” Ginny asked.  “I mean, maybe not so much in Ireland, but everywhere else it’s rather an easy colour to spot.”

“Stop being so practical, you spoil-sport,” George teased, ruffling her hair, and she turned around and smacked him- Luna had spent fifteen minutes braiding all those flowers into her hair.

“We’re sorry we ever doubted you, little brother,” Bill declared as he set another present on Percy’s lap- a lovely warm shawl that Fleur had ordered via overnight express through a company that would ship on holidays if you paid enough.

“You doubting me was kind of an important part of the plan,” Percy said.  “And I know I wasn’t exactly the most involved growing up- but now I know how much this means to me.  How much you all mean to me.”

“There’s only so much you can make mum cry in a day, take it easy Perc,” Charlie laughed as Molly reached for another box of tissues.

“No, no- carry on,” she instructed as she blew her nose again.  “These are happy tears- this family isn’t the same without you, dear, and we never stopped loving you.”

“Oh, hand me one of those too, won’t you?” Percy requested, his own eyes watering.

“We really are glad to have you back, though,” the twins spoke up again.  “We’ve got so many new products we’ve been meaning to try out…”

A few knicknacks fell off their shelves as the two ducked to avoid the pillow their older brother chucked at them, but Molly didn’t even wave her wand to put them back- this, right here, was how things were supposed to be.

Chapter Text

“Percy Weasley, you sit your arse back down on that couch right now, young man!” Molly Weasley ordered her son, who rolled his eyes but gingerly sat back down.

“It’s just a few bruises mum; I could have helped with the dishes.”

“You were severely injured selflessly risking your life for us, and you will stay on that couch until you’re told otherwise, or so help me Merlin…”

“Alright, alright- I get your point…”  Percy sighed in exasperation, but the effect was ruined by the immense smile on his face- he’d missed having his mother fuss over him, even if she didn’t really need to be.

Meanwhile, Harry was holding Draco’s hand, smiling as he watched Minerva greet Jane at the door.  Her portkey had been delayed a day due to a paperwork issue in the ministry, but she was there now.  He’d rarely seen his mama blush before Jane came along, but now her cheeks were flaming.

“Here,” he told her.  “I’ll help you store your bags in the breezeway.”  Before she had a chance to protest, he hefted one of her bags, which even with the extra weight he put on was nearly half his size.

“It’s good to see you again Harry,” the woman told him, and he looked up at her.

“You too,” he replied.  “But we need to have a little talk.”

“Oh?” she quirked an eyebrow at him, noting his serious expression.

“I can see things between you and my mama are getting pretty serious, yes?” he began.

“You could say that, yes,” she responded, trying to hide a smile, seeing that he was trying to have an earnest conversation.

“Well, I need you to know that you’d better be good to her, because she deserves to be cherished.”   The conviction on his face was endearing.

“I will cherish her,” Jane promised.

“Good,” Harry declared.  “Because we’re going to have problems if you don’t.  I could get away with a lot, you know, since I’m the saviour of the wizarding world.”  The speech was all very somber, that is until Harry got to ‘saviour of the wizarding world,’ at which point he broke out in a smile and started chuckling, snorting a bit.

Real scary babe, real scary, Draco offered unhelpfully, which only made Harry laugh more.

“Are you alright there, Harry?” Jane asked, unable to keep back a snicker.

“Yes, of course I am,” Harry replied.  “Now, remember- there will be trouble if you don’t treat her well, because I’m the sav-” he started laughing again as he tried to finish the sentence, “because I’m the saviour of th- saviour of the wizarding wor… I’m sorry,” he said, still chuckling.  “It’s just so stupid, the whole notion of it. Anyway, you’ll be good to her, yeah?”

“I promise,” Jane swore.  “You know, you were seeming pretty scary there for a while- good show.”  She smiled at him fondly.

“Shut up.”  He rolled his eyes at her.  “We both know I’m no good at being scary.”

“You’re right,” she agreed.  “You’re too cute.”

“Now wait a second- I didn’t say that…”

[Greg and Vincent, suffering after another bout of cruciatus curse for sneaking down to give some extra food to Lara and Violet, hold each other and swear that they’re going to figure out how to outsmart the watches so they can warn their friends at school of the incoming attack and free the twins.]

“I know the food’s not too good,” Hagrid apologised to his fiancee as they sat at the table of her quarters at Beauxbatons.  “I thought I could cook, if I gave the elves the day off…”

“No, ‘Agrid, your food eez excellent,” Maxime told him, her voice just barely ghosting over the t in ‘excellent.’  “Eet eez just zhat I am feeling a bit strange tonight.”

“Everythin’ alright, luv?” the male half-giant asked anxiously, and Maxime put her left hand, engagement ring prominent, over his own.

“Oui, mon amour, ze baby eez just being a bit over-actife tonight.”  She put a hand over her stomach. “I zhink I ‘ave to go to ze bathroom again, my dear.”  As she stood up, a splashing sound was heard, and they both looked down.

“Oh dear,” Maxime began, her face clenching as a contraction hit.  “My water ‘as broken.”

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Hagrid began, clearly panicking.  “I can do this- just like birthin’ a hippogriff.”

“‘Agrid, darleeng,” Maxime couldn’t help but roll her eyes, “I can call ze nurse.”  Madame Dubois was in her own quarters and had told the headmistress to contact her if she needed anything.  The birth of a child certainly counted as needing something.  

“Oh goodness,” Maxime grunted an hour later, propped up in a bed with her feet in the stirrups, “zees eez every bit as painful as zhey said it vould be.”

“You’re doin’ great, darlin’,” Hagrid soothed, rubbing her shoulders.  “You’re amazing.”

“Zhank you,” she responded, a wave of tenderness for her fiance surging up to join the pain.  “I am sorry I broke your finger.”

“It’s fine,” Hagrid assured.  “You’re having our baby, and I’m sure it’s a-hurtin’ you a lot more right now.”

“You are too good, mon amour.”

“You deserve the best,” Hagrid replied back simply.

Four hours later, and the baby was born.  Weighing two stone and with a full head of hair and all ten perfect fingers and toes, Hagrid was full-on sobbing into a giant hanky, certain his life couldn’t get any more perfect as Maxime held their new daughter up to nurse for the first time.

“Do you ‘ave a name?” Madame Dubois asked, and Hagrid and Maxime looked at each other.  They hadn’t really gotten that far yet…

“I zhink ve should name ‘er Ruby,” Maxime suggested.  “After Rubeus.”

“I’d rather name her after you,” Hagrid argued.

“Vhat if we gave her two meedle names?” Maxime rebutted.  “She could be sometheeng Ruby Maxime ‘Agrid.”

“Vhat about Edin?” the healer suggested.  “Like een Edinburgh? I ‘ave always vanted to go zhere.”

Hagrid and Maxime looked at each other, having a conversation through their soul bond.  Eventually they looked back at Madame Dubois.

“It’s perfect,” they agreed.  “Edin Ruby Maxime Hagrid.”

And so their family grew.

Chapter Text

“So, the notes idea failed,” Greg sighed into Vince’s chest in the room of requirement, as they half-heartedly puttered around in the vanishing cabinet.

“Yeah,” Vince agreed.  “All we got are shocks for it and people finding gibberish notes in the common room.  I guess it doesn’t make any sense to them.”

“At least the note thing didn’t alert Lucius- I think that’s only if we try to tell someone about it.”

“Yeah,” Vincent mumbled, rubbing his sore wrist where the watch had given them a strong shock when they’d tried to drop notes detailing what was happening.  “Lucius probably thinks we’re too dumb to find a way around it, just wants to keep us from ruining things ‘accidentally.’”

“I miss when our biggest problems were people thinking we were dumb,” Greg said sadly.

“I do too Greg,” Vince agreed.  “I do too.”

[Sapphire and Snarles engage in a vicious game of tug-of-war]

“Hagrid’s coming home today!” Harry sang on the last day of break as he skipped down to the groundskeeper’s hut, hand in hand with Draco.  “And he’s bringing Edin!”

“That’s a really cute name,” Pansy piped up.  “I can’t wait to teach her everything I know.”

“Oh, Merlin help us,” Ron groaned, “we’re going to have a baby assassin.”

“How irresponsible do you think I am?” the Slytherin girl asked, insulted.  “Murder tactics should wait until at least six or seven. But I can’t wait to teach her how to kick some arse… as soon as she can use her legs.”

“Did it ever occur to you that some people might not want you to teach their babies this sort of thing?” Blaise asked, raising an eyebrow at her as he ran his thumb over Neville’s hand from where their fingers were intertwined.

“Hagrid’s going to be letting her tame dragons- I doubt he’ll have a problem with her learning self-defence,” Pansy pointed out.

“Touche,” Neville put in his contribution.

“Oh look,” Hermione pointed eagerly towards the edge of the forest.  “The centaurs are out today.”

“Aww, it’s baby Artemis,” Millie cooed.

“Artemis Harriet,” Draco reminded, ridiculously proud of the fact that his boyfriend had a centaur named after him.

“You’re really not gonna let that go, huh?” Harry rolled his eyes.

“Nope,” Draco agreed, popping the p and leaning down to kiss Harry’s cheek.

“Eet’s a bit odd, seeing a baby’s body on top of a horse’s,” Viktor said, shuddering a bit.

“At least she can hold her human half up,” Pansy defended the little girl.  “That’s more than any of us could do at that age.”

“You mean you weren’t already shooting a bow and arrow when you were a few months old?”  Pansy just rolled her eyes at Blaise’s sarcasm- sometimes he could really be too much, in her not-so-humble opinion.

“‘Arry!” Madame Maxime was the first back on the grounds, followed a moment later by Hagrid, carrying their bundled daughter.  “Eet eez so good to see you, and looking so much ‘ealthier!” The French woman hadn’t seen him in a few months, and since then he’d put on a sorely-needed five pounds.

“I think he’ll need it too, to hold your baby,” Blaise remarked.  “She is… healthy.”

“Ah yes,” Maxime agreed good-naturedly, patting him on the shoulder.  “She is a good size- of course, she is ‘alf-giant, non?”

“She’s pretty like her mum, though, thank Merlin,” Hagrid boomed, looking down into the face of his baby daughter with pure, soft devotion.

“I zhink you are ze most ‘andsome man in ze world, mon amour,” Maxime told him, taking the baby.  “Vould you like to ‘old ‘er, ‘Arry?” she asked, and the teen nodded eagerly. He had to sit down to take her in his lap, so big was she, but she snuggled right in.  Artemis came trotting over as well, placing her little hands on top of Edin’s bumpy head as the newborn gave a little mew and looked at the baby centaur with big, wide eyes.

“Good to see you Harry,” Leaiana greeted, coming up after her youngest daughter.  “How was your Christmas?”

“It was really great,” Harry said, and Ron began relating Percy’s epic tale of bravery (as the twins had taken to calling it, just to fondly annoy their older brother).

“I’m glad you got your kin back,” the palomino responded simply, when he had finished.  “It is a terrible thing to be cut off from family.”

“Quite,” Ron sighed.  “But he’s back now, and we’re just glad to be together again.”  He sat down and slung an arm around Harry. “All of us.”  The shorter teen smiled brilliantly up at his best friend- his brother.  

“She’s so cute,” Hannah sighed dreamily, breaking into the conversation as she watched Edin’s chest flutter under the pile of blankets.  “Oh, I wish I had a little sister.”

“They’re only cute when they’re sleeping,” Ron butt in, speaking from experience.  “Otherwise they’re either screaming or hitting you.” From where she was conversing with Luna off to the side, Ginny broke away to sock her brother in the arm.

“Jeez, do you have super hearing or something?” her brother grumbled, rubbing his arm.  “Not really disproving my point, by the way…”

“Oh, by the way Gin,” Harry jumped in, “quidditch practice has been rescheduled to Thursday- the Creevey boys are going home for a Christening for their cousin on Tuesday, and it’s not really that big of a deal to reschedule anyway, since we don’t have a big match until March.”

“Cool, thanks for letting me know.”

“No problem- I put it up on the notice board in the common room, but I know you spend most of your time up in Ravenclaw tower these days,” he teased gently, but Ginny didn’t blush, only brought Luna in closer to her side.

“Yep- I’m in love and all that.  And unlike Ron, I’m not all dumb and sappy about it.”

“Hey!” Ron took a break from sappily staring at Viktor to be offended.

“Shh, or you’ll wake her up,” Harry scolded as Edin blinked and readjusted in his arms.  Madame Maxime handed harry a bottle, though, and she soon quieted down again as she ate.

After about an hour, it started to get colder as it neared sunset, so the students all went back inside, pulling their scarves tighter around their necks.  As they passed the kitchen, Hannah noticed a loose piece of paper on the ground.

“Huh, that’s strange,” she muttered, showing it to the rest of them as Susan mentally uttered similar sentiments through their bond.

“What is that?” Ginny furrowed her brow.  “Not even Luna knows what this is,” she said, reading through the bond that her girlfriend was as clueless as the rest of them.

“It’s like some sort of code,” Pansy added, chewing her lip, “but nothing I’ve ever seen before- maybe it’s invented?”

“Could be,” Ron agreed.  “Maybe some of the younger years filling up all that free time they have, what with not having a tonne of homework like the rest of us.”

“Shut up Ronald,” Hermione rolled her eyes at him.  “You and Blaise played chess for three hours last night- you have plenty of free time.”

“And you got to see my brilliant strategic mind as I kicked his arse,” Ron chuckled slinging an arm around the other girl fondly.  “Everybody wins.”

Everybody, that is, except poor Greg and Vincent, who were currently being shocked in the room of requirement.