Chapter 48 - 47

Chapter 47:

– Harry Sitri –

The rest of the vacation in Japan went a lot more smoothly after that first chaotic week.

We hunted the stray devil, which turned out to be some unhinged woman named Viser who had gone completely feral in the warehouse district. She had mutated into this grotesque centaur-like abomination with the upper body of a woman and the lower half of something that looked like a spider mated with a horse, and I genuinely wish I was exaggerating when I say her primary ranged attack was shooting concentrated streams of acid from her exposed breasts. Like, actual corrosive fluid that melted through concrete on contact, fired from her nipples with the force of a pressure washer. 

But nothing in that clinical explanation prepared me for dodging weaponized breast milk at two in the morning while Lilja screamed in Old Norse and Marlene cackled like she was having the time of her life.

Crom, to his credit, had been the one to land the finishing blow. The little guy might have looked like a porcelain doll in his human form, but when he opened his mouth and unleashed a concentrated beam of black and crimson dragonfire that reduced Viser's lower half to ash in under a second, every single one of us remembered exactly what was living inside that delicate frame. Rias had clapped politely from the sidelines and said "Good boy, Crom" in that warm big sister voice she used exclusively for him, and the ancient evil dragon clone had beamed like a puppy who just learned to fetch.

I still couldn't believe that was the same creature that nearly killed me at the Triwizard Tournament. 

Life was strange.

Sona assured me she had dealt with Saji and that he would never be a problem again. I believed her. Not because she told me to, but because of the way she said it. There was a finality in her voice that went beyond reassurance. 

She never mentioned his name again after that conversation. Not once. And I never brought him up either. Some things just didn't need to be revisited. 

The days after the stray devil hunt settled into a rhythm that I hadn't experienced since before I discovered magic existed. Peace. Actual, genuine, boring, wonderful peace. No assassination attempts. No basilisks. No fallen angels raining lightspears from the sky. No mutant Voldemort biting chunks out of my shoulder. Just a month of warm Japanese summer with the people I loved most in the world, living in a mansion that my mother had conjured into existence through sheer force of wealth and questionable architectural taste.

I spent my mornings training with Lilja in the mansion's basement dojo, which Serafall had outfitted with reinforced walls capable of absorbing high class devil attacks. My Queen was a relentless instructor. She drilled footwork into me until my calves burned, corrected my sword grip until my fingers ached, and sparred with me at half speed that still felt like fighting a hurricane. But she was also warm about it. She would stop mid drill to brush sweat soaked hair from my forehead. She would press her lips to a bruise she'd given me and murmur an apology in Old Norse before immediately resuming and giving me another one. And afterward, when we were both breathing hard and slick with effort, she would lean against my chest and listen to my heartbeat and tell me in that quiet, fierce way of hers that I was getting stronger. That she was proud.

We hadn't slept together yet. That unspoken promise of "soon" hung between us still.

Afternoons were for exploring. Hermione had compiled an absurdly detailed itinerary of Japanese historical and cultural sites that she updated daily based on weather forecasts and estimated crowd density, because of course she did. We visited ancient Shinto shrines where I could feel residual divine energy humming in the foundations and had to pretend my demonic blood wasn't itching. 

We wandered through the electric chaos of Akihabara, where Lyra and Lyna went absolutely feral buying maid cafe merchandise and limited edition figurines of characters who looked suspiciously like Serafall's magical girl persona. We ate ramen in a tiny Shinjuku shop where the broth was so good that Fleur, who had spent our entire relationship insisting French cuisine was superior to all others, went completely silent for a full minute, stared at her empty bowl, and then quietly asked for seconds without making eye contact with anyone. Gabrielle had taken a photo of her sister's face in that moment and declared it her new phone wallpaper.

Ginny sent letters every few days, updating me on the Weasley family. They were coping. Barely, but coping. Arthur's funeral had been held the week after we arrived in Japan, and I'd sent the largest, most beautiful arrangement of enchanted white lilies I could find, along with a personal letter to Molly telling her that her husband had been a good man and that his family would never want for anything as long as I drew breath. Fred and George had written back on behalf of the family, their usual humor dimmed but not extinguished, thanking me and joking that if I kept throwing money at them they'd have to start calling me "daddy." I'd laughed at that for about ten seconds before realizing several of the women in my life would find that joke far too appealing and promptly burned the letter.

Rias came by the mansion almost every day. Sometimes she brought her whole peerage. Akeno would immediately find the kitchen and start cooking, producing these elaborate Japanese dishes that made even Lyra and Lyna's excellent cooking look pedestrian, while simultaneously making suggestive comments about every utensil she touched. 

And Crom. He wasn't that bad once you got to know him better. He was curious about everything, asked questions with the earnest intensity of a child who had never been allowed to be curious before, and followed Rias around like a duckling imprinted on a very busty, very patient mother hen. He also, on one memorable occasion, caught a fly in midair with his tongue from across the room, realized what he'd done, turned bright red, and then hid behind Rias for the rest of the afternoon while she patted his head and told everyone to stop laughing. Koneko, who had witnessed the entire thing, had simply said "relatable" and gone back to her third helping of gyudon.

Asia was fitting in beautifully, which honestly surprised me given how fragile she'd seemed when Jasmine and I found her starving in that alley. The first few days had been rough. She flinched at loud noises, ate like she expected someone to take her plate away, and apologized for existing approximately forty times per hour. But Fleur and Gabrielle had taken to her with a fierceness that went beyond simple kindness. They had effectively adopted her. Fleur would sit with Asia for hours, brushing her hair and speaking to her in soft French, teaching her phrases and idioms and occasionally slipping in spectacularly vulgar curse words just to see Asia's scandalized blush when she later learned what they meant. Gabrielle was more direct. She dragged Asia shopping, bought her new clothes, insisted she try on outfits that showed off the figure she was slowly regaining with proper nutrition, and aggressively complimented her until Asia stopped reflexively denying that she was pretty.

The two Veela sisters had become genuine older sister figures to Asia, which was both heartwarming and slightly absurd given that Gabrielle was the same age as Asia at eighteen. But Gabrielle had lived a very different eighteen years. She'd fought in a magical tournament, survived a fallen angel attack, killed enemies in aerial combat, and regularly had sex with a half devil in ways that would make seasoned courtesans take notes. Asia had been raised in a convent where holding hands required a permission slip from God. 

The experience gap was astronomical.

Still, they made it work. Asia had started smiling without looking like she was asking permission to do so. She laughed at Gabrielle's jokes. She let Fleur dress her up. She even started joining in on group activities without being explicitly invited, which was a bigger milestone than anyone outside the situation would understand. Her Twilight Healing had also proven invaluable. When Tonks had twisted her ankle during a particularly ambitious diving board trick, Asia had healed her in seconds, green light flowing from her palms with the ease of breathing. When Marlene had gotten a nasty sunburn because she refused to wear sunscreen on principle, Asia had mended the damage so quickly that Marlene had declared her "the most useful person in this entire building, and yes that includes you, Harry." 

I hadn't even been offended. She was probably right.

Which brought me to right now.

'The land of the rising sun indeed…' I thought to myself.

The afternoon sun hung fat and golden over the mansion's back garden, and the pool glittered like someone had dissolved sapphires into the water. I floated on my back in the deep end, arms spread, letting the warmth soak into muscles still sore from morning training with Lilja. The water felt alive against my skin the way it always did, responding to my Sitri magic like an extension of my own body, carrying me without effort, adjusting its temperature to exactly what I wanted without me having to consciously ask. Swimming had always been my sanctuary, even before I knew what I was. Now, knowing that water was literally my birthright, it felt less like a hobby and more like coming home.

The mansion's backyard was a sprawling thing of manicured grass, stone paths, flowering cherry trees that had no business blooming in late November but apparently didn't care about seasons when devil magic was involved, and the pool itself, which was Olympic sized, heated, and connected to a smaller hot tub section off to the left that bubbled invitingly. Serafall had designed the outdoor area personally, which explained why there were also three decorative fountains shaped like magical girls in various action poses and a mosaic on the pool floor that depicted the Sitri clan crest surrounded by cartoon hearts. 

Every woman I cared about was here, and the collective sight of them in swimwear was frankly an assault on my ability to form coherent thoughts.

Hermione lay on a cushioned lounge chair near the pool's edge, wearing a modest navy one piece that somehow managed to be incredibly sexy because of the way it hugged her curves. Her hair was pulled back in a messy bun that kept threatening to collapse, and her nose was buried in a thick book propped against her knees. It was, I noted with amusement, not an academic text. The cover showed a muscular shirtless man holding a woman in a dramatic dip, and the title was something like "The Pirate Lord's Forbidden Conquest." She had a manga bookmark sticking out from a later chapter. My beautiful, brilliant Bishop was reading smutty romance novels poolside and pretending they were literature, and I loved her so much it physically hurt sometimes.

I scooped a handful of water and flicked it at her with a little push of Sitri magic so the droplets arced perfectly and splattered right across the page she was reading.

Hermione gasped and yanked the book to her chest protectively, glaring at me over the edge with those gorgeous brown eyes.

"Harry James Sitri, that is a library book!"

"It's a romance novel about a pirate."

"It's a library book about a pirate, and the pages are now wet, and I will hex you."

"You love me."

"I love the version of you that doesn't splash water on first edition prints of critically acclaimed maritime fiction."

"It has a shirtless man on the cover, Hermione."

"Maritime. Fiction." She flipped the book back open with a huff, angling it pointedly away from the pool. A small smile tugged at her lips though, the one she always tried to hide when I was being annoying in a way she secretly enjoyed. "Go bother someone who isn't busy."

"You're reading about a pirate named Rodrigo ravishing a duchess in a crow's nest."

"How do you know what chapter I'm on?"

"Devil eyes, love. I can read the text from here."

She slammed the book flat against her chest and turned scarlet. "You are the worst boyfriend in the history of all supernatural beings."

"Mmhmm. Chapter twelve looked interesting though. Does the duchess ever escape the island or..."

"HARRY."

I laughed and dove under the surface, letting the water swallow the sound of her exasperated groan and the thwap of her book hitting the lounger. Beneath the surface, everything was blue and gold and quiet. I hung there for a moment, breathing water as easily as air, watching the sunlight fracture into dancing patterns on the pool floor. Fish didn't know how good they had it. Nothing was complicated underwater. No politics, no tournaments, no assassination attempts. Just pressure and light and silence.

I surfaced at the far end just in time to see Tonks climb the diving board ladder with the determined expression of someone who had made a very bad decision and was fully committed to it.

Tonks was wearing a bikini that could charitably be described as "aggressive." It was hot pink, string tied, and covered approximately the same surface area as two postage stamps and some dental floss. Her hair matched the bikini, cycling through shades of magenta and fuchsia as she walked, and her curves were very much on display. She had been shy about her body in the outfit exactly once, the first day she wore the bikini, and then Narcissa and I had both told her she looked stunning and Fleur had nodded approvingly and that had been the end of that particular insecurity forever.

"Cannonball!" she shouted from the top of the board.

"Tonks, please don't..." Jasmine was close to the diving board. Her eyes widened and she quickly started swimming away, knowing what was coming next.

Tonks launched herself off the board with entirely too much force, pulled her knees to her chest, and then, in the half second before impact, used her Metamorphmagus ability to temporarily increase her body mass. She hit the water like a small meteorite, and a tidal wave of chlorinated pool water exploded outward in every direction. It cleared the pool's edge by several feet, sending Jasmine across the pool with a yelp, drenching Hermione and her pirate book, soaking the towels, flooding the grass, and somehow managing to reach Narcissa, who was sitting a good fifteen feet away in a lounge chair with her long legs crossed and a glass of chilled white wine in one hand.

Narcissa did not flinch. She simply looked down at the water dripping from her hair, then at the pool, then at the spot where Tonks was resurfacing with a massive grin.

"Nymphadora."

"Don't call me that!"

"Nymphadora, darling, you have gotten pool water in my wine."

"Think of it as a spritzer."

"I am going to think of it as grounds for making you grade all the homework once Hogwarts starts again…."

Tonks's grin turned to a look of fear. "I'm sorry…? Please don't make me grade the Slytherin papers… those teenagers are SO DUMB!"

Narcissa, catching my eye, allowed herself the smallest, most elegant smirk before delicately pouring out her contaminated wine and refilling her glass from the bottle beside her. She was wearing a black bikini that looked like it had been painted on by an artist who understood exactly how devastating a mature woman's body could be when presented correctly. The top was a halter style that pushed her breasts up and together into a deep line of cleavage that caught the light, and the bottoms were high cut in a way that made her legs look like they went on for miles. 

She caught me staring and arched one perfect eyebrow.

"See something you like?"

"Several things."

"Mmm. Good boy."

My cock twitched under the water and I had to look away before the situation became visibly obvious, which was a losing battle in swim trunks. That woman knew exactly what she was doing to me at all times. It was one of the things I loved most about her.

In the shallow end, Fleur was waist deep in the water, holding Asia's hands and gently guiding her through a basic backstroke. Fleur wore a white bikini so small and sheer that it became functionally translucent when wet, which it very much was. Her silver blonde hair floated around her shoulders like silk on the surface, and water droplets clung to the swell of her breasts and the flat plane of her stomach in a way that made me think the universe had a very specific type and it was "French Veela in minimal swimwear." Her body was art. Long limbed, gracefully muscled from years of magical combat training, with curves that managed to be both athletic and impossibly feminine.

"Non, non, Asia, do not tense your shoulders," Fleur murmured, adjusting the younger girl's arm position with patient hands. "Let the water do the work. Relax into it. You are fighting the pool and the pool is not your enemy."

"B-but what if I sink?" Asia's voice was small and nervous, her green eyes wide as she floated on her back with Fleur's hands supporting her lower back.

"Then I will catch you. I always catch you. Now, straighten your legs. Good. Kick gently. Gently, Asia, you are not punting a football."

Asia kicked. Water splashed. Fleur got a face full of chlorine and blinked it away with the patience of a saint.

"That was... a strong effort."

"I'm so sorry!"

"Do not apologize for having powerful legs, chérie. Many women would kill for your thighs."

Asia turned the color of a ripe tomato and Gabrielle, who was floating nearby on an inflatable flamingo with a cocktail balanced on her stomach, cackled.

"She is right, Asia! Your legs are very nice. Harry, tell Asia her legs are nice."

I looked at Asia, who seemed like she was trying to vibrate out of existence from embarrassment. She was wearing a sky blue bikini that Fleur had picked out for her, and honestly, a month of good food and rest had done wonders. She had filled out from the gaunt, hollow cheeked girl I'd found digging through a dumpster into a genuinely pretty young woman with a soft, gentle figure and bright green eyes that looked much more alive than they had when she first arrived. She was still petite, still delicate looking, but in a way that spoke of natural build rather than starvation.

"Your legs are very nice, Asia."

"Eeep." She sank a little in the water and Fleur caught her immediately, tutting.

"See? He agrees. Now. Backstroke. Again. And this time, pretend the water is a bed and you are lying down to sleep."

"I don't think I can pretend anything right now."

"Try."

Gabrielle sipped her drink and watched the lesson with lazy, catlike satisfaction, her body stretched out on the inflatable in a way that showed off every inch of tanned Veela skin. Her bikini was cobalt blue, barely more than strings and triangles, and she wore it with the absolute confidence of someone who had spent her entire life knowing she was devastating and saw no reason to pretend otherwise. Her silver blonde hair, a shade darker than Fleur's, was piled in a wet knot on top of her head, and her blue eyes tracked me through dark lashes with an expression that was equal parts affection and undisguised hunger.

"You are staring at my sister's ass again," she called out to me.

"I was staring at your sister teaching Asia to swim."

"While looking at her ass."

"I'm a multitasker."

Gabrielle's laugh was bright and filthy and completely unapologetic. She raised her glass to me. "To multitasking!"

Lyra and Lyna were set up at a small table near the pool's edge under a large umbrella, wearing matching white bikinis with the Sitri crest embroidered on the hip in blue thread. They had appointed themselves the afternoon's bartenders and were mixing drinks with the same focused intensity they brought to everything they did for me. Lyra was shaking a cocktail mixer with aggressive precision while Lyna sliced limes with a knife she probably could have used to kill someone. Between them sat a spread of snacks: fruit plates, small sandwiches with the crusts removed, bowls of Japanese rice crackers, and a truly absurd number of chilled bottles of various drinks.

"Young Master," Lyra called out, lifting a freshly made drink in a frosted glass. "Lychee and elderflower sour. Your favorite."

"I didn't know that was my favorite."

"It is now. We decided."

"Lyna and I taste tested seven variations this morning," Lyna added, not looking up from her lime surgery. "This one made us moan. Therefore it is worthy of you."

"You can't just decide what my favorite drink is."

"We can and we did. It is a maid's prerogative to know their master's preferences better than he knows them himself."

I swam to the edge and took the glass from Lyra's outstretched hand. The drink was cold and sweet and floral with a tart bite at the finish that made my tongue tingle.

"Okay. That's actually incredible."

Both twins beamed simultaneously, which was always a little unsettling in the best possible way. ""We know,"" they said in unison.

My Queen was getting some exercise in, as the most active member of my peerage. Lilja was doing laps. She was wearing a dark green one piece that looked military in its simplicity but clung to her athletic curves in a way that made "simple" feel like an understatement. Every time she reached the wall and flipped for another lap, the muscles in her legs flexed visibly, and I had to remind myself that staring at my own Queen's body while she exercised was probably rude. 

Probably.

She caught me looking on her next flip turn and paused, treading water at the wall.

"Stop watching me and go train your water blade forms if you're just gonna float there like a handsome sponge."

"I'm on vacation."

"Warriors do not vacation."

"I'm on vacation from being a warrior."

She narrowed her green eyes at me. Those eyes. My mother's eyes, technically, from a life she'd already lived and died and been reborn from. Lily Evans's eyes in a Valkyrie's face, and every time they looked at me with that particular mix of exasperation and adoration, something in my chest clenched in a way I still hadn't fully learned to name.

"You are cheeky," she said.

"And you love me."

Her expression softened. The hard Valkyrie angles smoothed into something warmer, more vulnerable, and she reached out of the water to touch my cheek with wet fingers. "I do. More than I have the words for, and I am fluent in nine languages." She leaned forward and kissed me. Soft. Brief. Tasting of pool water and promise. "But you are still training tonight."

"Yes, my Queen."

"Do not 'yes my Queen' me in that tone. That tone leads to things we have agreed to save for the right moment."

"What if tonight is the right moment?"

She paused. Her breath caught, just barely, a tiny hitch that someone without devil hearing would have missed entirely. Her pupils dilated. Then she schooled her features and pushed off the wall. "Ask me again tonight. Without an audience." She dove under and resumed her laps. My heartbeat didn't settle for a full minute.

On the opposite side of the pool, tucked into the elevated hot tub that was separated from the main pool by a short stone wall and a cascade of decoratively warm water, Sona sat with her legs crossed beneath the surface and her glasses slightly fogged from the steam. She was wearing a dark violet bikini that she had initially refused to put on, insisting that a simple one-piece was perfectly adequate for recreational swimming, until Serafall had sent a photo from the Underworld of herself in a bikini so small it could have been classified as dental floss with delusions of grandeur, along with a text that read "If you don't wear the cute one I bought you, I'll come to Japan and put it on you myself, So-tan~ ♡." Sona had put on the bikini. It fit her slender, athletic body beautifully, the purple a striking contrast against her pale skin, and the way the water lapped at the edges of the fabric as she shifted made it very difficult to focus on anything else when I looked in her direction. Which she knew. Because she caught me looking and gave me a look over the top of her fogged glasses that was equal parts "stop staring" and "don't you dare stop staring."

Luna sat beside her, submerged up to her chin, her dirty-blonde hair floating around her in the water like seaweed. She was wearing a bikini patterned with tiny dirigible plums, because of course she was. Her silvery eyes were half-lidded and dreamy, and she appeared to be having a conversation with the hot tub's jets.

"They're saying the water pressure is too high," Luna announced to no one in particular. "The bubbles are stressed."

Tsubaki, Sona's Queen and eternal right hand, sat on Luna's other side with her arms draped along the tub's edge. She was in a sleek black bikini that matched her straight black hair, and her expression behind her glasses was one of practiced tolerance for the eccentricities of her fellow Ravenclaw. She had a drink in one hand, something tropical with a little umbrella in it that Lyna had made her, and was sipping it with the quiet satisfaction of a woman who understood that sometimes the best strategy was to sit in hot water and let other people handle the chaos.

"Luna," Tsubaki said patiently, "the bubbles are not sentient."

"Not with that attitude, they aren't."

Sona pinched the bridge of her nose. "Luna, I say this with genuine affection. Please stop talking to the plumbing."

"I'm not talking to the plumbing. I'm talking to the water spirits that live in the plumbing. There's a difference, Sona. You of all people should appreciate the distinction, given your family's elemental affinity."

Sona opened her mouth. Closed it. Turned to Tsubaki.

"She has a point," Tsubaki said mildly, sipping her drink.

"Traitor."

Jasmine had gotten out of the water after Tonks almost accidentally drowned her. Marlene and Jasmine were on the grass beyond the pool, spread out on towels in the dappled shade of a cherry tree. Marlene wore a frankly scandalous red bikini that showed off the kind of body that made you understand why she'd seduced James Potter in her youth and apparently half of Order of the Phoenix headquarters after that. She was lying on her stomach with her chin propped on her hands, sunglasses pushed up into her dark hair, her toned back and the curve of her ass on full display. She looked like a woman who had never once in her life been concerned about what anyone thought of her body and never would be.

Jasmine was next to her in a more modest green bikini, lying on her back with a hand shading her eyes. She had her mother's athletic build, softer and younger but with the same easy confidence in her own skin. Her brown hair fanned out on the towel, and freckles dusted her shoulders and the bridge of her nose from the past month of Japanese sun. She looked relaxed and happy.

"Mum, stop staring at Harry's abs," Jasmine muttered without opening her eyes.

"I'm not staring, I'm appreciating. There's a difference. Your mother is a connoisseur of the male form."

"You're literally licking your lips."

"The air is very dry."

"We're sitting next to a pool."

"The pool air is very dry."

Jasmine groaned and threw an arm over her face. "I hate you."

"You love me. Harry! Come over here and let me put sunscreen on your back!"

"He has devil skin, Mum. He doesn't burn."

"Then let me put sunscreen on your back. For safety."

"MUM!"

I grinned and waved at them. Marlene blew me a kiss. Jasmine lifted one hand just enough to flip me off affectionately before dropping it back over her eyes.

This. All of this. The splashing and the laughter and the half arguments and the bikinis and the way the light hit the water and scattered gold across everyone's skin. This was what I was fighting for. The family I always dreamed of.

If anyone tried to take this from me, I would destroy them. 

I was in the middle of that thought, floating on my back again and watching a cloud shaped vaguely like Serafall's magical girl wand drift across the sky, when a shadow crossed the sun and something feathery collided with the lounge chair next to Narcissa with all the grace of a drunk owl falling out of a tree.

Because that was exactly what it was. Or, more accurately, a Hogwarts school owl that had been flying for so long and across such an absurd distance that it had apparently entered a state of avian delirium equivalent to drunkenness. 

The bird, a tawny screech owl with ruffled feathers, glazed eyes, and what I could only describe as a "done with this shit" expression, had crash landed on the cushioned chair, bounced once, and then flopped sideways with its wings spread like a tiny feathered starfish. A letter was clutched in one talon. Its beak opened and closed silently, as if it was trying to hoot but had simply run out of hoots.

Narcissa set down her wine glass immediately, her expression shifting from languid relaxation to genuine concern.

"Oh, you poor dear." She reached over and gently stroked the owl's head with one finger. The bird leaned into the touch pathetically. "You didn't fly all the way from Britain, did you? Even for magical owls, that's... that must be nearly six thousand miles over open ocean."

The owl blinked at her with the hollow, traumatized eyes of a creature that had seen the vast Pacific from above and wanted no further part in the postal service industry.

"Lyra, fresh water and some of the fresh ham from the kitchen, please. Quickly."

"Yes, Lady Narcissa."

I swam to the pool's edge and pulled myself out. I walked over to where Narcissa was already carefully untying the letter from the owl's talon. The parchment was sealed with the Hogwarts crest in dark red wax, thick and official looking.

"Is that what I think it is?" I asked, crouching beside her chair.

Narcissa broke the seal and unfolded the letter, her blue eyes scanning the contents rapidly.

"Well?" Hermione had materialized behind us with the speed and stealth of someone who could smell important correspondence from across a garden. "What does it say?"

– Lilja –

Lilja had been pushing through her thirty-second lap when Narcissa's voice carried across the pool. "Everyone. Come here, please. We have a letter from the Headmaster."

Lilja's fingers touched the far wall on the flip turn and she pushed off the tile hard, gliding through the warm water. She surfaced at the pool's edge closest to Narcissa's lounge chair and folded her arms on the sun-warmed stone, lifting herself halfway out of the water.

The others were already converging. Hermione had abandoned her pirate romance without protest, which told Lilja everything she needed to know about how seriously the girl took official Hogwarts correspondence. The brunette was already standing behind Narcissa's chair with her arms folded and her expression sharpened into that particular look of focused intelligence that Lilja had come to recognize as Hermione's default mode when information was being presented. Tonks had hauled herself out of the pool and was wringing water from her currently magenta hair with both hands, leaving a puddle on the grass that expanded with every squeeze. The twins, Lyra and Lyna, had stopped their cocktail preparations and stood at perfect, mirror-image attention on either side of their drink station, their matching white bikinis pristine despite the splashing chaos of the past hour. Fleur had waded to the shallow end with Asia still in tow, one hand resting protectively on the younger girl's lower back as they found their footing on the submerged steps. Gabrielle abandoned her inflatable flamingo entirely, rolling sideways off it into the water with a splash and a muttered French curse before swimming to the edge and propping her chin on her folded arms, blue eyes bright and curious.

Harry pulled himself out of the deep end in one smooth motion, muscles in his arms and shoulders flexing as he lifted his weight clear of the water and swung his legs over the edge. Water still ran in thin lines down the grooves of his abdominals and the ridges of his obliques, and Lilja watched those lines with the kind of quiet, possessive appreciation that she had stopped pretending she didn't feel about three weeks ago. She knew every muscle in that torso now. She had put bruises on half of them during morning training and kissed the other half better afterward. The geography of his body was becoming as familiar to her as the grip of her sword, and the thought made warmth bloom low in her belly that had nothing to do with the heated pool.

She pushed the feeling aside. There would be time for that later. Tonight, maybe, if she was brave enough to finally answer the question he kept asking with his eyes.

"Go ahead," Harry said, nodding at the letter in Narcissa's fingers.

"It's from Dumbledore," Narcissa said, confirming what the Hogwarts seal had already told them. Her blue eyes moved across the parchment with careful precision, and she began to read aloud.

"'Dear Mr. Sitri and honored members of House Sitri. I write to you with immense gratitude and, for once, genuinely good news, which as you know has been in somewhat short supply this academic year.'" 

Lilja caught the faintest flicker of amusement at the corner of Narcissa's lips. Dumbledore's self-deprecating humor, even in formal correspondence, was distinctly his.

"'The reconstruction of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is, as of the writing of this letter, functionally complete. The generous financial contributions of the Sitri family have proven invaluable in this effort, and I say that without exaggeration or diplomatic embellishment. The funds you provided allowed us to not merely repair the damage sustained during the attack on the Triwizard Tournament, but to fundamentally redesign the school's defensive architecture from the ground up. The outer wards have been expanded to encompass the entirety of the Forbidden Forest within a secondary perimeter. The castle's internal ward matrix has been overhauled to include redundant barrier layers, anti-teleportation locks calibrated to hostile magical signatures, and several particularly creative additions suggested by your mother, Lady Serafall, which I confess I do not entirely understand but which our ward specialists assure me are centuries ahead of anything currently in use in the wizarding world.'"

"Mum probably snuck in a few surveillance enchantments while she was at it," Harry muttered.

Lilja bit back a smile. He was almost certainly right.

Narcissa continued, her tone shifting to reflect the more solemn passage that followed.

"'I must also express, in the most personal terms I am capable of, my thanks for the role you and your family played during the attack itself. Six students lost their lives that day. Six children whose names I will carry with me for the rest of my own life, however long that may be. But without the intervention of yourself, Lady Sona, Lady Rias, and the remarkable individuals who fought alongside you, that number would have been in the hundreds. Hogwarts stands because of you. I will not forget that. Nor will the families of every student who came home alive because of what you did.'"

In her first life, as Lily Evans, she had watched people die during a different war. She had thought, in those last desperate moments in Godric's Hollow with green light filling her vision and the sound of her baby crying behind her, that she had paid the full price for the privilege of loving people in a world that wanted them dead. She had been wrong. There was always more to pay. Always more names to carry. But she would make sure they were avenged and the monsters that caused their deaths were put down.

Narcissa cleared her throat softly and continued.

"'On a more practical note, I am pleased to inform you that Hogwarts will officially reopen and classes will resume on the first of December. All students, including those from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang who wish to continue their studies at Hogwarts as exchange participants, are welcome to return. The Triwizard Tournament itself has been formally cancelled, as I believe I communicated previously, but the inter-school academic and social exchange will continue through the end of the academic year. I have spoken with Madame Maxime and what remains of the Durmstrang administrative body, and both have agreed that the continued mixing of our student populations is, despite the tragedy, a net positive for international magical cooperation.'"

"Diplomatic way of saying Durmstrang is a mess and Beauxbatons doesn't want to look like cowards by pulling out," Hermione observed quietly.

"Exactly what it means," Narcissa agreed with a small nod. She scanned ahead on the parchment, then continued reading.

"'I look forward to welcoming you all back to what I hope will be a calmer and more academically focused remainder of the year. Though, knowing you, Mr. Sitri, I suspect that is a vain hope at best. Please give my warmest regards to your mother. Yours in continued collaboration and cautious optimism, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. Headmaster.'"

A beat of silence. Then Harry let out a slow breath and sat back, running one hand through his wet hair. "December first," he said. "That's... what, four days from now?"

"Three," Hermione corrected automatically.

"Three days." He looked out across the pool, across the shimmering water and the cherry trees that bloomed out of season and the women scattered across towels and loungers and inflatables like a painter's study in beauty and comfort and peace. His expression was one Lilja had come to know well over these past weeks. It was the expression he wore when he was memorizing something. Cataloguing every detail of a moment he expected to lose. "Vacation's coming to an end, then."

Fleur sighed from the shallow end, one hand still resting on Asia's shoulder. "It was too beautiful to last, non?"

"All good things, darling," Gabrielle murmured, sipping her cocktail with the resigned elegance of a French woman accepting an unpleasant inevitability.

"We'll need to start packing," Tonks said, hauling herself out of the pool and reaching for a towel. Her pink hair was plastered flat against her head and she looked like a drowned cat, but a cheerful one. "And by 'we' I mean someone who is not me, because last time I packed a suitcase I accidentally Transfigured all my socks into hamsters."

"That was yesterday, Nymphadora. They are still hamsters. They are living in the bathroom cabinet."

"Don't call me Nymphadora, and I'm working on it. Those hamsters are very content."

Lyra and Lyna were already on their feet, twin expressions of focused determination settling over their matching faces.

"We will begin coordinating the packing schedule immediately, Young Master," Lyra announced.

"All personal belongings, wardrobe items, training equipment, and gifts purchased during the trip Lilja watched all of this from her position at the pool's edge, her chin resting on her folded arms, water lapping gently at her shoulders. She was already running logistics in her head. As Queen, the organizational burden of the peerage fell on her shoulders. 

Hermione handled the academic and research coordination. Narcissa managed the political and professional elements. The twins handled domestic operations with terrifying competence. But the overall framework, the making sure that all of these brilliant, complicated, powerful women were where they needed to be and had what they needed to function, that was Lilja's responsibility. 

She took it seriously. She was a former Valkyrie after all. Coordinating the travel logistics of a devil peerage returning to a magical school in Scotland was, objectively, less complicated than routing a cavalry charge through the branches of Yggdrasil during a frost giant incursion.

It just involved a lot more bikinis and a lot less screaming. Or less screaming outside Harry's bedroom at the very least. Yes, Harry had been very busy keeping his women happy this month and Lilja was a bit jealous despite herself not wanting to rush things between them.

She was running through a mental checklist of who needed what when her gaze drifted, almost without conscious direction, toward the shallow end of the pool.

Asia Argento was standing very still in waist-deep water.

Fleur had moved away from her, drawn into a rapid-fire French conversation with Gabrielle about something to do with their Beauxbatons uniforms and whether they should still wear them or maybe just enroll in Hogwarts. 

Asia had become very quiet and very still in a way that Lilja recognized instantly.

Asia's hands were beneath the surface of the water, gripping each other. Her lower lip was caught between her teeth. It was the face of someone who had just realized that the good thing was ending and that they were not sure they were included in whatever came next.

Asia was terrified. And she was trying very, very hard not to show it.

Lilja's chest tightened.

She looked at Harry. He was talking to Hermione about the timeline, about what they needed to coordinate with Dumbledore before arrival, about whether Serafall would insist on another dramatic entrance. His eyes were bright and his smile was easy and he was surrounded by people who loved him. He had not noticed Asia's expression. He would have, eventually. 

Harry always noticed. 

It was one of the things she loved about him, but in this moment, he was looking the other direction.

So Lilja noticed for him.

That was what a Queen was for.

…The mansion settled into a comfortable hum of activity as the afternoon bled into evening. 

Asia's room was at the end of the hall. Fleur had insisted on it when they first moved in, arguing that Asia needed a room with a window that faced the garden rather than the street, because waking up to cherry blossoms was better medicine than anything a pharmacy could provide. Gabrielle had contributed by filling the room with soft things. Stuffed animals from Akihabara shops, a pile of extra blankets in varying textures, a collection of scented candles that smelled like lavender and vanilla, and a truly enormous body pillow shaped like a cartoon cat that Asia had fallen asleep clutching on her second night and had not slept without since.

Lilja stood outside the closed door for a moment, composing herself.

She was a Valkyrie. She was a Queen. She had fought giant spiders and Fallen Angels and the reanimated corpse of a dark wizard in the bowels of a magic school. She had killed centaurs with her bare hands and kissed a half-devil prince in a sewer tunnel and sworn eternal fealty to a boy she had given birth to in another life.

And right now, her palms were sweating because she was about to have a conversation with a teenager about feelings, and there was no sword technique in any realm that prepared you for that.

She knocked. 

The door opened a few inches. Asia Argento peered through the gap with red rimmed eyes that she was trying very hard to pretend were not red rimmed. She had changed out of her blue bikini and into a set of pajamas that Gabrielle had bought her during one of their shopping excursions: a matching top and bottom in pale pink cotton, printed with a pattern of tiny sleeping rabbits. 

"Miss Lilja?" Asia's voice was barely above a whisper. She blinked and Lilja caught the faint shimmer of moisture on her lower lashes. "Did you need something? I was just... I was reading. Or, I was trying to read. The book is in Japanese and I do not speak Japanese very well yet, so mostly I was looking at the pictures and pretending I understood the words, which is not really reading at all, but Gabrielle says that looking at pictures is still a valid form of..." She trailed off, the ramble dying in her throat as she seemed to realize she was filling silence with noise because the silence scared her more.

"May I come in?" Lilja asked. Her voice was gentle but not fragile.

Asia's eyes darted to the hallway behind Lilja. She was checking to see if anyone else was there. The hallway was empty. Just Lilja. Something in Asia's shoulders released by a fraction of an inch. She opened the door wider and stepped back.

"Please come in. I am sorry it is messy. I have not... I did not clean today. I am sorry." The room was not messy. It was, in fact, almost painfully neat. The bed was made with hospital corners, the desk was organized, the stuffed animals were arranged in a precise row along the windowsill as if Asia had lined them up by height and then second guessed the order and rearranged them and then second guessed the rearrangement. The only sign of disorder was a box of tissues on the nightstand that had been significantly depleted, several crumpled tissues in the small wastebasket beside the bed, and the manga that Asia had mentioned, lying face down and open on the pillow next to the massive cartoon cat body pillow.

Lilja stepped inside and closed the door behind her with a soft click. She did not sit immediately. Instead, she walked to the window and looked out at the garden below, where the last purple remnants of twilight were giving way to the blue black of early night. The cherry trees were silhouettes now, their branches dark calligraphy against the fading sky.

"I love this view," Lilja said quietly. "Fleur chose well for you."

"She did." Asia's voice came from behind her, still small but slightly steadier now that the door was closed and the world had been reduced to just the two of them and the sleeping rabbits on her pajamas. "Miss Fleur has been very kind. She and Miss Gabrielle both have been. Everyone has been. I keep thinking I will wake up and discover it was all a dream and I will be back in the alley behind the convenience store, and the nice boy with the blue eyes will not have found me, and I will still be hungry and alone and wondering what I did wrong to make God stop loving me."

The last words made Lilja flinch a bit, but she was tough enough to ignore someone using the G-word around her.

Lilja turned from the window. Asia was standing in the center of the room with her arms wrapped around herself, fingers digging into the soft pink cotton of her pajama sleeves, and she looked so young and so afraid that something in Lilja's chest tightened with a ferocity that surprised her even now. 

"Asia," she said, and she made her voice the thing she wanted it to be: steady, warm, unshakable. "Come sit with me. I want to talk to you about something, and I want you to know before I say a single word that nothing I am about to tell you is a goodbye."

Asia flinched at the word 'goodbye' as if Lilja had thrown it at her. Then, slowly, carefully, with the cautious movements of a creature that had been trapped too many times to trust open doors easily, she crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed. She pulled the cartoon cat pillow into her lap and wrapped her arms around it, hugging it to her chest like a shield.

Lilja sat beside her. Not too close. Close enough that Asia could feel her warmth without feeling crowded. The mattress dipped under their combined weight, and the room settled into a stillness that felt deliberate, as if the walls themselves understood that this moment required care.

"You heard the letter," Lilja said. It was not a question.

Asia nodded. Her chin dipped into the top of the cat pillow. "Hogwarts is opening again. December first. Everyone is going back." A pause. Her fingers tightened on the pillow's plush surface. "Everyone who belongs there."

"And you think that does not include you?"

Asia did not answer immediately. She stared at the cat pillow's stitched face, its embroidered smile frozen in permanent, uncomplicated happiness. When she spoke, her voice was so quiet that even Lilja's enhanced devil hearing had to strain.

"I do not belong anywhere, Miss Lilja. I have never belonged anywhere. The Church told me I belonged to God, but then they took God away from me. They said I was a heretic. They said my gift was corrupted because I used it to heal a devil. God tested me and I failed, and now I am being punished." She inhaled shakily and hugged the pillow tighter, burying her face in it.

"And now you are all leaving. Going back to your school, your world, your beautiful and terrifying magical life where you fight monsters and attend tournaments and have adventures that I cannot even imagine."

"Asia." Lilja's voice was firm. Not harsh. Firm, in the way that bedrock was firm, in the way that a hand on your shoulder in a storm was firm. "Look at me."

Asia lifted her face from the pillow. Her eyes were swollen and red and so green and so full of pain that Lilja felt the stone in her chest get heavier. She met those eyes and held them and did not look away.

"I need you to listen to me very carefully," Lilja said. "Because what I am about to tell you is the truth, and I am a woman who does not waste truth on people she does not care about. Can you do that for me? Can you listen?"

Asia sniffled and nodded, a small, jerky motion.

"Good." Lilja folded her hands in her lap. "First, the practical matter: you are not being left behind. When we leave Japan, you are coming with us. That was never in question. It was never discussed, debated, voted on, or treated as anything other than an obvious fact by every single person in this household. You are coming to Hogwarts. Even if you choose to not accept my next offer, even if you can't use magic like we can, we would still take you…"

Asia's lower lip trembled. 

"Now," Lilja continued, softening her tone by a degree. "I want to talk to you about something else. Something bigger. And I need you to understand that what I am about to tell you is not a demand. It is not a requirement. It is not a condition of staying with us. Whether you say yes or no or 'I need to think about it for six months,' you are still coming to Hogwarts. You are still part of this family. That does not change. Nothing I say in this room changes that. Do you understand?"

Asia nodded slowly, her brow furrowed with confusion and cautious attention.

Lilja exhaled. She reached for the right words, the careful ones, the ones that would open a door without pushing Asia through it.

"You know that Harry is not... ordinary. You know that he is a half devil, that his mother is Serafall Sitri, one of the four Devil Kings of the Underworld. You know that the women around him, myself included, are not simply his friends or his girlfriends or his school companions. We are his peerage. His family, bound to him by magic and choice and love in equal measure. We are his devil servants, though 'servant' is a poor word for what we actually are. Partners is closer. The people who stand beside him, behind him, and in front of him depending on what the moment requires."

"I know," Asia said quietly. "Gabrielle explained some of it to me. She said... she said that becoming a devil is like being reborn. That you give up your old life and receive a new one, with new power and new bonds and a new family that will never leave you."

"That is a good summary. Gabrielle is smarter than she lets people think."

"She said the pajamas would help me sleep better too, and she was right about that."

"She was right about several things." Lilja paused. "Asia, I want to ask you something, and I want you to be honest. Not polite. Not grateful. Honest. Can you do that?"

"I can try."

"What do you think of Harry?"

The question landed in the quiet room like a pebble in a pond, and Lilja watched the ripples cross Asia's face. The girl's cheeks, already blotchy from crying, turned a shade of pink that had nothing to do with tears and everything to do with the kind of question that forced you to articulate feelings you had been carefully not examining.

"Harry," Asia repeated, as if saying his name out loud was itself a confession.

"Harry," Lilja confirmed.

Asia hugged the cat pillow tighter. She looked down at its stitched face, then at the window where the garden was now fully dark, then at her own bare toes curling against the wooden floor. Anywhere but at Lilja.

"He found me in a garbage alley," she said at last, very softly. "I was covered in dirt and I smelled terrible and I had not eaten in days and I was so ashamed that I wanted to disappear. And he knelt down in front of me and spoke to me in Italian, which nobody in Japan speaks, and he did not wrinkle his nose or look at me with pity or ask me how I ended up there. He just... asked me if I was hungry. Like it was the most natural question in the world. Like the only thing that mattered in that moment was whether I had eaten."

She paused. Swallowed. Her fingers picked at a loose thread on the cat pillow's ear.

"And then he brought me here. To this beautiful house full of beautiful women who love him. And not once, not one single time, has he asked me for anything in return. He has not asked me to heal anyone. He has not asked me to be useful. He has not asked me to justify my presence. He just... lets me exist. He lets me eat his food and wear the clothes his family buys and sleep in this bed with this ridiculous pillow and he never, never makes me feel like I owe him for it." Asia looked up, finally, and her green eyes were luminous with unshed tears that she was fighting with everything she had. "Nobody has ever done that for me, Miss Lilja. Nobody in my entire life has ever given me something and not wanted something back. And sometimes I look at him and I think... I think he is the kindest person I have ever met. And then he smiles and I think... other things. Things I should not think about because I was raised to believe those thoughts were sinful. But I was also raised to believe healing people was sinful if they were the wrong kind of people, and I know now that was a lie. So maybe the other things are lies too. Maybe it is not a sin to think a kind, brave, beautiful boy is... is..."

She trailed off, crimson to the tips of her ears, and buried her face in the pillow again.

"Attractive?" Lilja offered, with the gentlest hint of a smile.

Asia made a sound into the pillow that was somewhere between a squeak and a confirmation.

"Asia." Lilja reached over and placed her hand on the girl's back, between her shoulder blades, and rubbed slow, soothing circles through the pink cotton. "Finding someone attractive is not a sin. Wanting to be close to someone who is kind to you is not a sin. Wanting to be part of a family that cares about you is not a sin. The people who taught you those things were wrong. They were controlling you. They dressed their control in the language of love and divinity and virtue, but it was control. And you are free of it now."

Asia lifted her face just enough to peek at Lilja over the top of the pillow with one eye.

"If I joined Harry's peerage," she said, barely audible, "would I have to... would he want me to..."

She could not finish the sentence. But Lilja understood what she was asking. The girl had spent a month in a house where the nature of Harry's relationships was impossible to miss. She had seen Fleur emerge from his room in the morning wearing nothing but one of his shirts. She had heard Hermione laughing behind closed doors in a way that was distinctly not about books. She had watched Gabrielle casually sit in his lap at dinner and kiss his neck while asking him to pass the soy sauce. 

"Not until you are ready," Lilja said firmly. "He would not want you to do anything you are not ready for. He would not ask. He would not pressure. He would not imply. Harry Sitri is many things, Asia. He is reckless and stubborn and he attracts danger the way a magnet attracts iron filings. He has the self preservation instincts of a lemming with a death wish. He once punched a Dementor in the face because it was looking at him funny. He is, in many ways, an absolute disaster of a human being who happens to be half devil. But the one thing he is not, the one thing he will never be, is someone who takes advantage of a person who cannot freely say yes." She paused, letting the words settle. "If you joined his peerage, you would become a devil. You would gain power, longevity, a family that is bound to you as tightly as you are bound to them. You would also gain responsibilities. You would train. You would learn magic. You would stand beside us in whatever battles come next, because battles always come next when you are part of Harry Sitri's life. That is not a warning. It is simply a fact. We live in a world where people try to kill us with upsetting regularity, and joining means accepting that danger with open eyes."

"And the... other parts?" Asia's voice was a thread.

"The other parts happen if and when you want them to. At your pace. On your terms. Some of us came to Harry's bed quickly because that is who we are and what we wanted. Some of us took months. I have not slept with him yet, and I am his Queen. The most important person in his peerage by rank and position. There is no timeline, Asia. There is no expectation. There is only what you feel, and what you choose, and a man who will wait as long as you need him to wait because he respects you more than he wants you, and believe me, that boy wants everything."

Asia was silent for a long time. The sounds of the house filled the gap between them. Pots and pans downstairs. The faint thread of classical music from Sona's room. A burst of laughter from somewhere that sounded like Tonks imitating someone badly. The wind in the cherry trees outside the window.

"I am scared that I will say yes because I am grateful and not because I actually want it, and that I will confuse the two because I have never had either." Asia said finally, and it was the most honest she had been all night.

"That is an incredibly self aware thing to say, and the fact that you can identify that fear means you are already further along than you think you are."

"I am scared that I will wake up tomorrow and the offer will be gone."

"It will not be gone tomorrow. It will not be gone next week or next month or next year. This is not a limited time offer, Asia. This is a door that stays open until you walk through it or decide you do not want to."

Asia looked at her, really looked at her, with those luminous green eyes that were so like the eyes Lilja had carried in her first body, in her first life, when she was a red haired girl named Lily who believed in love and bravery and the fundamental goodness of people.

"Can I think about it?" Asia whispered.

"You can think about it for as long as you need."

"And I can still come to Hogwarts?"

"You are coming to Hogwarts regardless. However, you can't officially be a student unless you can use magic…." Lilja was forced to tell Asia that part. If Asia wasn't a devil, the most she'd be able to do was work as an assistant for madam Pomfrey. 

"I'll sleep on it tonight and tell you and Harry in the morning," Asia finally said and Lilja smiled before leaving the room. Asia had a lot to think about.

The hallway was quiet.

The kind that settled over a house when everyone had found where they wanted to be for the night and stopped moving. The kind that meant doors were closed, lights were dimming, and the day was finally, fully done.

Lilja Nornas walked through it slowly.

Her bare feet made almost no sound on the polished hardwood floor. She had changed out of her green one-piece swimsuit hours ago, showered the chlorine from her hair, and dressed in something she had spent an embarrassing amount of time selecting from the wardrobe Gabrielle had helped her assemble during a shopping trip in Akihabara two weeks prior. It was a silk camisole and matching shorts in a deep wine red, the fabric thin enough to show the faint shadow of her nipples beneath it and short enough that the hem of the shorts barely covered the curve of her ass. She wore nothing underneath. No bra. No panties. Just silk against clean skin and the steady, accelerating drumbeat of her own pulse in her throat.

She felt ridiculous. She felt terrified. She felt like a woman walking toward the edge of a cliff she had been circling for months, and the wind at her back was warm and smelled like him.

Tonight.

The word had been sitting in her chest all day, ever since that moment in the pool when she had told him to ask her again without an audience and his eyes had gone dark and liquid in a way that made the muscles in her lower belly clench. She had meant it. Every syllable. She had been meaning it for weeks, maybe longer, but the Valkyrie in her demanded that the moment be chosen, not stumbled into. That it be deliberate. That when she finally gave herself to him, it was not because her body had overruled her mind during a sparring session or because the proximity of his naked chest in the shower had eroded her discipline past the breaking point. She wanted to walk to him. Eyes open. Heart first.

And she wanted him to know that when she lay down beside him tonight, it was not because she was his Queen and owed him service, and not because she was Lily Evans reborn and tangled in a web of cosmic irony so dense it would take a theologian and a therapist working in tandem to unravel it. She wanted to lie down beside him because she was Lilja. Just Lilja. And Lilja loved him in a way that made the word feel too small and too common for what it actually contained.

Her thighs pressed together as she walked and she bit the inside of her lower lip. The friction of silk against bare skin with every step was doing things to her that she could have blamed on devil physiology but honestly had much more to do with the fact that she had been watching him in a swimsuit all afternoon.

She turned the corner into the east wing hallway where Harry's master bedroom occupied the entire end of the corridor…

– Harry –

A few days later…

…The morning we left Japan, the sky over Kuoh was the color of faded denim, and the air had that particular crispness to it that made you feel like the season was changing whether you wanted it to or not.

Rias and her peerage had already gone. I had watched them teleport out of the mansion's living room an hour earlier in a flash of Gremory crimson, Rias giving me one last lingering hug that pressed her entire body against mine in a way that was both comforting and distracting, Akeno blowing me a kiss that crackled with actual electricity at the tips of her fingers.

Sona's group had followed shortly after. Sona herself had stood in the center of the Sitri teleportation circle with Tsubaki at her side, looking perfectly composed in her traveling clothes, her violet eyes sharp behind her glasses. She had not kissed me goodbye in front of the others. That was not her way. But she had held my gaze for a long, still moment and said, "Do not be late, Harry," in a voice that carried an entire vocabulary of things she would say later when we were alone. 

My peerage was gathered in the living room for the final departure. 

Hermione had her enchanted bag slung over one shoulder, packed with a precision that bordered on obsessive. I knew without looking that every book she had acquired in Japan was catalogued, every potion ingredient was sealed and labeled, and every piece of clothing was folded with mathematical exactness. She had probably packed three days ago and then unpacked and repacked twice to optimize space allocation. She stood near the teleportation circle with her arms folded, watching the others with the patient expression of a woman who had long ago accepted that she was the only person in any room who was fully prepared for anything.

Narcissa stood beside her. She held a leather portfolio under one arm that I knew contained her revised lesson plans for Defense Against the Dark Arts. She had spent the last week of our vacation refining her curriculum with the same ruthless focus she brought to everything, and I had caught her and Tonks debating combat pedagogy over wine at two in the morning on more than one occasion.

Tonks was wearing ripped jeans, combat boots, and a t-shirt that read "I PUT THE 'FUN' IN FUNERAL" in block letters, which she claimed she had bought in Harajuku as a joke and which I suspected she intended to wear to actual classes. Her hair was cycling slowly through shades of electric blue, which meant she was relaxed and happy, and she had her arm looped through Narcissa's in a way that would have been unthinkable a few months ago but now looked completely natural. The aunt and niece had found their rhythm during our time in Japan, and it suited them both.

Fleur and Gabrielle flanked the teleportation circle. They were both watching me with matching expressions of fond impatience, the kind of look that said "we love you but please hurry up so we can go home."

Lyra and Lyna stood at perfect attention beside the circle, their maid uniforms pressed and pristine despite the fact that they had spent the morning dismantling the mansion's kitchen with the efficiency of a military extraction team. Every pot, pan, spice rack, and cooking implement had been packed into enchanted storage containers and would be waiting for them at Hogwarts by the time they arrived. The twins took their domestic responsibilities with a seriousness that bordered on religious devotion, and I had learned early on that questioning their methods was both futile and inadvisable.

Lilja was the last of my peerage members standing near the circle. My Queen. She wore a simple dark green sweater over black jeans and boots, her red hair pulled back in a loose braid that fell over one shoulder. She looked beautiful in the way that a well forged sword looked beautiful. Functional, elegant, and capable of killing you if you forgot what it was. 

Her green eyes found mine across the room and held.

We had not discussed it publicly. We did not need to. But Hermione had given me a knowing smile at breakfast the following morning, and Narcissa had arched one perfectly sculpted eyebrow, and Tonks had taken one look at Lilja's face and said "about bloody time" loud enough for the entire table to hear, and Lilja had turned the color of a ripe strawberry and threatened to stab anyone who commented further with a butter knife.

I loved her. I loved all of them. And I was about to send most of them through a teleportation circle to the Underworld while I took a thirteen hour commercial flight to London, because some things required the scenic route.

"All right," I said, looking around the room at the collected faces of the women who made up my world. "You all know the plan. Teleport to Sitri Manor, check in with Mum, and then take the circle to Hogwarts from there. Narcissa, you and Tonks should coordinate with Dumbledore on arrival about the new ward configurations. Hermione, I know you already have a list."

"Three lists," Hermione corrected. "Organized by priority, timeline, and department."

"Lyra, Lyna. Make sure my room is set up and that the Gryffindor common room has not been vandalized by Peeves in our absence."

"Already accounted for, Young Master," Lyra said with crisp efficiency. "We sent advance instructions via enchanted letter three days ago. If the poltergeist has caused damage, it will be rectified before your arrival."

"And if the poltergeist has NOT caused damage," Lyna added, "we will be deeply suspicious and investigate accordingly… It won't be able to pull one over on us!"

I smiled. "Good. I will be there in..." I did the math. Flight time, layover logistics, ground transport from Heathrow. "Call it fifteen hours, give or take. Hermione, stop doing the math in your head."

"Fourteen hours and forty three minutes assuming no delays, accounting for current jet stream patterns and a thirty minute buffer for passport control at Heathrow," she said without hesitation. "Fifteen hours is a reasonable estimate with a margin of error."

"I love you."

"I know. Come home soon." She stepped forward and kissed me. It was brief and soft when she pulled back her brown eyes were bright with the particular warmth she reserved for moments when she was letting herself be a girlfriend instead of a strategist.

What followed was the inevitable gauntlet of goodbye kisses that had become standard operating procedure whenever I was separated from my peerage for more than a few hours. Narcissa cupped my jaw and kissed me with slow, deliberate authority that made my pulse jump. Tonks grabbed the front of my shirt, hauled me down to her height, and kissed me with enthusiastic sloppiness that left my lips tingling. Fleur kissed both my cheeks in the French style and then kissed my mouth with considerably more tongue than the French style traditionally involved. Gabrielle kissed me hard and fast and then grabbed my ass with both hands before Fleur pulled her away by the back of her sweater. Lyra and Lyna each kissed one of my cheeks simultaneously with synchronized precision that was both endearing and slightly creepy in the way that only they could manage.

And then Lilja.

She stepped close. Close enough that I could smell her shampoo and the faint, clean scent of her skin beneath it. She placed one hand flat against my chest, over my heart, and looked up at me with those green eyes that had seen two lifetimes and chosen me in both of them.

"Come back to me," she said quietly. Just that. Nothing fancy. Nothing dramatic. Just four words that carried the weight of everything we had said to each other in the dark two nights ago, everything we had promised with our bodies and our breath and the way she had held my face in her hands and told me she loved me while I was still inside her.

"Always," I said.

She kissed me. And it was different from the others. Not better or worse, but different. It was slow and careful and thorough, the kind of kiss that mapped every contour and memorized the pressure and filed away the exact angle of contact for later reference. A Valkyrie's kiss. A Queen's kiss. When she pulled back, her eyes were suspiciously bright and she blinked twice, hard, before composing herself.

"Fourteen hours and forty three minutes," she said, and the ghost of a smile crossed her face. "Hermione counted for me."

Then the circle flared, and they were gone, and the mansion felt enormous and hollow and wrong without them in it.

I stood there for about five seconds, letting the silence settle, and then turned to face the three women and one former nun who were still very much present and staring at me with varying expressions.

Marlene McKinnon leaned against the foyer's doorframe with her arms crossed, one eyebrow raised, wearing a fitted black leather jacket over a white tank top and jeans that looked like they had been painted on by someone with excellent spatial reasoning skills. Her dark hair was loose around her shoulders and her lips were curved in an expression of naked amusement. "Well," she said. "That was quite the send off. I counted seven kisses. Do you always run through the full roster or was that a special occasion?"

"Mum," Jasmine groaned from beside her. She was in a green hoodie and travel leggings, her brown hair in a ponytail, a small backpack slung over one shoulder. "Please. It is eight in the morning."

"Some of us have been awake since six and have already had two cups of coffee and a full existential crisis about the fact that we are about to get on an airplane for thirteen hours with a nineteen year old boy who just had seven women kiss him goodbye and somehow none of them were me."

"Oh my god."

"I'm just saying, Jasmine. Seven women. In my day, we called that a harem. Actually, no, in my day we called that a Saturday. Lily and I once..."

"DO NOT finish that sentence."

I cleared my throat. "The car should be here in ten minutes. Everyone have their passports?"

"I have mine." Jasmine held up a burgundy British passport with visible relief at the subject change.

"I have mine as well." The quiet voice came from my left, and I turned to look at Asia Argento.

My newest Pawn stood a half step behind me, almost but not quite hiding in my peripheral vision in the way I had noticed she defaulted to when she was in a group larger than two. Her blonde hair was brushed smooth and fell past her shoulders, and her green eyes were wide and bright and darting between me and Marlene.

She had joined my peerage yesterday. Less than twenty four hours ago, Lilja had placed the two Pawn pieces against Asia's chest.

She was family now. My Pawn. My responsibility. And despite living under the same roof for a month, I realized with a pang of guilt that I had not spent nearly enough one on one time with her. There had always been something. Training. Politics. Sex. More training. More sex. Asia had slipped through the cracks of my attention because she was quiet and polite and never demanded anything, and I was determined to correct that starting today.

"The flight is about thirteen hours," I told her. "London Heathrow, with a short layover in Dubai. We'll have plenty of time to talk, eat terrible airplane food, and I can fill you in on everything you need to know about Hogwarts before we get there."

Asia's face lit up with a smile so genuine and unguarded that it made the guilt sharper. "I would like that very much, Harry. I have so many questions. Gabrielle told me the castle has moving staircases and talking paintings and a ceiling that looks like the sky and a giant squid in the lake and..."

"All true. Also the school nurse can regrow bones overnight and one of the professors is a ghost and the caretaker's cat may or may not be a former human who was cursed into feline form. Hogwarts is an experience."

"It sounds terrifying."

"It is. You will love it."

She giggled. It was a sound like a small bell, and the fact that she was capable of making it after the life she had lived made me irrationally happy.

The limousine arrived precisely on schedule, because Lyra and Lyna had booked it three days in advance and included a personal note to the driver that failing to be punctual would result in "consequences" that they did not elaborate on but which had apparently been sufficiently motivating. It was a sleek black Mercedes with tinted windows and leather seats that smelled like money, and the driver held the door open with the kind of professional deference that suggested he had received and internalized the twins' message.

Marlene slid in first with the practiced ease of a woman who had been getting into expensive cars since before I was born. She crossed her long legs, leaned back against the leather, and produced a pair of sunglasses from somewhere that she pushed up into her hair despite the overcast sky. "God, I missed leather seats. The mansion was gorgeous but the transportation situation in this town is criminally lacking for a supernatural territory. I had to take a taxi to the convenience store last week and the driver tried to charge me three thousand yen for a five minute ride."

"That is because you got in the car wearing that top and he thought you were a hostess, Mum."

"I was wearing a perfectly respectable blouse."

"It was see through."

"It was sheer. There is a difference. Sheer is fashion. See through is intent. I was being fashionable."

"You were not wearing a bra."

"Bras are a conspiracy invented by men who were afraid of nipples, Jasmine. Real feminists go unsupported."

"You are not a feminist. You once told me the suffragettes had the right idea but needed better shoes."

"I stand by that assessment. Have you seen photographs of their marches? Those heels were completely impractical for cobblestone."

I got in after Jasmine and settled into the seat opposite them. Asia climbed in last, carefully, as though she was afraid of scuffing the leather with her shoes. She sat beside me and immediately folded her hands in her lap in that precise, contained way that spoke of years of convent training, her back straight and her knees together and her eyes taking in the interior of the limousine with quiet wonder.

"This is very nice," she said softly, touching the armrest with one finger like she was confirming it was real.

"Get used to it," I told her. "This is the kind of thing that comes standard when you are part of my family. No more sleeping in alleys. No more going hungry. You are a Sitri Pawn now, Asia. That means you fly and drive first class, you eat whatever you want, and if anyone ever tries to make you feel like you do not deserve those things, you tell them to take it up with me."

She blushed. A deep, rosy pink that spread from her cheeks to the tips of her ears. "Harry, you do not have to..."

"I know I do not have to. I want to. There is a difference."

"A very important difference," Marlene murmured from across the car, and for once her tone was not teasing. She was watching the exchange with an expression I could not quite read. Something thoughtful and warm and maybe a little sad, like she was remembering what it felt like to be young and terrified and have someone reach out and say you are safe now.

The drive to the airport took about forty five minutes through light traffic. I spent most of it pointing out landmarks to Asia through the tinted windows while Marlene and Jasmine bickered amiably about everything from Japanese convenience store snacks to the structural integrity of Jasmine's ponytail. 

Narita Airport. 

A private escort met us at the car and led us through a series of tastefully appointed lounges and expedited security checkpoints that treated us less like passengers and more like visiting dignitaries. Passports were stamped with brisk efficiency. Bags were handled by staff who looked personally offended at the suggestion that we might carry our own luggage. At one point, a uniformed attendant offered us champagne at nine in the morning and Marlene accepted with the enthusiasm of a woman who had been waiting for exactly that invitation since she woke up.

"Do not judge me," she said, taking a long sip. "I survived a war, raised a daughter alone, and just spent a month sleeping in a room directly below a half-devil prince who was having extremely loud sex with at least four different women on a rotating nightly basis. I have earned this champagne."

"You could have asked for a room on a different floor," Jasmine said through her teeth.

"I could have.."

Asia was watching this exchange with the wide eyed fascination of someone observing an alien species interact for the first time. Her mouth kept opening and closing slightly, as though she wanted to contribute but could not quite figure out the rules of engagement for a conversation that moved this fast and this shamelessly.

I leaned down to her ear. "They do this constantly. You get used to it."

"Miss Marlene is very... bold. But I like her… I wish I had a mother like her…" Asia mumbled.

That made Marlene stop teasing her daughter, and give Asia a fond smile.

We boarded the plane through a private jetway that led directly to the first class cabin, which was less a section of an airplane and more a flying hotel that happened to have wings. The seats were pods, really, each one a self contained cocoon of leather and polished wood with a lie flat bed option, a personal entertainment screen the size of a small television, and enough legroom to comfortably seat a small horse. Privacy screens could be raised between pods, turning each one into a miniature private room.

Asia stopped dead at the entrance to the cabin and stared.

"Harry."

"Yeah?"

"This is... these are the airplane seats?"

"First class seats, yes."

"But they are... they are like small bedrooms. With televisions. And blankets. And... is that a pillow made of actual silk?"

"Probably. Lyra and Lyna may have called ahead. They tend to do that. Nothing but the best for their young master!" I told Asia with a chuckle. The Dursley's weren't poor or anything, but they certainly didn't raise me with wealth like this either…

She took three steps forward and then turned back to me with an expression that was halfway between disbelief and the specific kind of joy that comes from encountering luxury after a lifetime of deprivation. Her eyes were glistening and her lower lip was doing that trembling thing it did when she was fighting tears.

"The last time I flew," she said, and her voice was very small, "I was in the very back of the plane. In a middle seat. Between two men who were both very large and both fell asleep on my shoulders and I could not move for seven hours. I did not have a blanket. The screen on the seat in front of me was broken. And the meal was a sandwich that I think had been made several days before the flight because the bread was..." she searched for the word, "...crunchy. In a bad way."

"Asia."

"And I cried a little but very quietly because I did not want to wake the men up and I was afraid that if I asked the flight attendant for help she would be annoyed because I did not have enough money for a proper ticket and the seat was charity from the Church and I did not want to seem ungrateful for charity even if the charity was a terrible seat with a broken screen and stale bread and..."

"Asia." I took her by the shoulders and turned her gently to face me. Her green eyes were swimming now, and a single tear had escaped down her left cheek. I wiped it away with my thumb. "You are never sitting in a middle seat again. You are never eating a stale sandwich again. You are never crying quietly so you do not bother someone again. That part of your life is over. Permanently. You are mine now, and what is mine gets the best of everything. Understand?"

She nodded. Sniffled. Wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and then looked down at the silk pillow on her assigned seat like it was a holy relic.

"Can I... can I keep the pillow?"

"You can keep the entire airplane if you want. I will buy it."

"Harry, no, that is too..."

"I am kidding. Mostly. Sit down and enjoy the seat, Asia."

She sat. She touched the leather. She pressed the button that reclined the pod and made a soft "ohhh" sound when the footrest extended. She discovered the complimentary blanket, which was thick and warm and monogrammed with the airline's logo, and pulled it up to her chin with the satisfied expression of a cat who had found the sunniest spot on the bed. Then she found the entertainment screen remote, turned on the movie selection, and gasped with delight at the number of options.

"There are hundreds of movies!"

"Welcome to first class."

"And the screen works!"

"It does."

"And there are SNACKS." She was pointing at the small compartment built into the armrest that contained a selection of chocolate, dried fruit, and mixed nuts. "Harry. There are free snacks."

"Asia, the ticket for this seat cost more than some people's cars. The snacks are not free. They are incredibly expensive snacks that have been included in the price."

"But they feel free. And that is the best kind of snack."

I could not argue with that logic!

Marlene and Jasmine settled into their pods across the aisle. Marlene immediately flagged down a flight attendant and ordered another champagne with the authority of someone who believed that air travel without alcohol was simply walking in a pressurized tube, which honestly was not wrong. Jasmine pulled out a pair of headphones, plugged them into her entertainment system, and began scrolling through the movie options with the single minded focus of someone who was determined to watch at least four films in thirteen hours and had already planned a schedule.

I was adjusting my own pod's settings, trying to find a position that accommodated my height without my feet hanging off the end of the bed, when something prickled at the edge of my senses.

Magic. Faint but unmistakable. The specific flavor of it that I had come to associate with human wizards and witches, that warm, slightly wild energy that felt like static electricity mixed with woodsmoke. 

It was not hostile. You could not miss it if you knew what you were looking for, and after months of living among wizards and devils and Valkyries and Veela, I knew exactly what I was looking for.

I turned my head slowly to the right. Across the aisle and one row forward, an older man was settling into his first class pod. 

He was tall and thin, with a slight stoop to his shoulders that spoke of decades spent bending over workbenches and peering into cages and crawling through underbrush. His hair was a wild tangle of gray and silver that looked like it had been combed by the wind and given up on. I could see a waistcoat of mustard yellow, a rumpled white shirt, and a bow tie that was either dark green or very dark teal depending on the light. His trousers were slightly too short, revealing mismatched socks, one argyle and one plain brown, both of which disappeared into a pair of scuffed leather boots that looked like they had walked across every continent and possibly a few places that were not continents.

His face was what held me. I knew that face.

Not personally. Not from any interaction. But from photographs in books that Hermione had made me read during my crash course in wizarding history, and from the covers of several volumes I had seen in Flourish and Blotts, and from a moving portrait that hung in a rarely visited corner of Hogwarts near the Care of Magical Creatures classroom that most students walked past without a second glance.

Newton Artemis Fido Scamander.

Newt bloody Scamander!

The most famous magizoologist in the history of the wizarding world. Author of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which was a required textbook at Hogwarts and had been in continuous print for over seventy years. 

He was fussing with his carry on bag, which appeared to be an old fashioned leather case covered in travel stickers from places like "Mongolian Magical Menagerie" and "Brazilian Bowtruckle Sanctuary" and one that simply said "HERE BE ACTUAL DRAGONS." As I watched, the case shifted on its own. Subtly, barely perceptibly, the kind of movement that a Muggle would dismiss as turbulence or vibration from the plane's engines. But I could see the latch rattle and I could feel, with the enhanced senses of a half devil, the distinct pulse of living magical creatures emanating from inside the case.

As if sensing my attention, Newt Scamander looked up from his case and directly at me.

Our eyes met across the first class cabin of a commercial aircraft at thirty thousand feet above the Pacific Ocean, and the greatest magizoologist alive studied me with that luminous blue green gaze for approximately three seconds before a small, slightly crooked smile crossed his face.

"Ah," he said, in a voice that was soft and accented and unhurried and contained the particular warmth of a man who had spent his life talking to things that could not talk back and had gotten very good at making his tone say more than his words. "What a coincidence for the famous Boy-Who-Lived to be on my flight!"

I blinked. "You know who I am?"

"My dear young man, you are on the cover of every wizarding newspaper from London to Tokyo. You have been for months. If I did not know who you were, I would have to be significantly more senile than my wife already accuses me of being, and I assure you I am not nearly that far gone yet." His smile widened by a fraction. 

I wondered what on earth Newt Scamander was doing on a seemingly ordinary Muggle commercial airliner, flying across the Atlantic. 

It was, after all, a rather unusual place to encounter such a figure.

Newt, adjusting his slightly askew bow tie and clutching a worn leather suitcase, seemed to sense my curiosity and leaned in. "Ah, Mr. Sitri," he began, "A most peculiar and troubling phenomenon is afoot." He explained that magical creatures all over the world had been acting strangely for the past month. A vast number of them had experienced sudden, unexplained surges of raw magical power, making them increasingly unpredictable, dangerous, and aggressive seemingly out of nowhere!

Newt had been tirelessly investigating the cause of this global creature anomaly. His current, highly urgent mission involved tracking a particularly large and powerful Thunderbird. This magnificent creature had been spotted dangerously off-course, soaring over the frigid expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. 

The reports Newt had managed to gather were alarming—the Thunderbird was emitting intense bursts of black lightning that Newt had never personally witnessed from one of its species before. "It's highly erratic," Newt emphasized. "And dangerously powerful. I believe it's my best lead to finding out why magical beasts all over the globe are getting this power from..."

It did sound incredibly interesting—a genuinely fascinating, world-threatening magical mystery. I could appreciate the scope and excitement of a global magizoological crisis. However, I would be back in school, so it wasn't my problem…

…A couple of hours later.

"THIS IS YOUR CAPTAIN! WE HAVE LOST THE LEFT ENGINE AND ARE EXPERIENCING CATASTROPHIC FAILURE! WE ARE GOING DOWN! I REPEAT, WE ARE GOING DOWN! EVERYONE PREPARE FOR AN EMERGENCY LANDING! ASSUME THE BRACE POSITION!"

XXX