Chapter 1819 - Ch: 12-15

Chapter 12

Potter Manor

Harry appeared in a dense forest, standing in the middle of a path. He slowly glanced around, trying to match the trees and rocks with the landmarks of the Manor's Apparation point. Satisfied he was in the right place, he twisted around at his waist as best he could, taking special care not to move his feet. When he had tried to enter the property for the first time after learning of its existence, he had Apparated in, only to find himself walking down the path he was on towards Nottingham proper. Several hours and too many attempts to count later, he had at last discovered the key to bypassing the avoidance ward.

With a swish and flick, he levitated a seemingly random stone in his immediate surroundings, one that was part of a small cairn. Placing it next to the pile, he cast a Finite into the depression he had revealed and felt the barely noticeable pressure on his shoulders fall off. He smirked as he replaced the rock; this was the perfect example of the strategy the Potters had relied on when they were thieves. Easy to remember, quick to set into motion, and designed to take advantage of the average wizard's lack of common sense.

It also showed their expertise with wards, the reason the Hooded Foxes were so terrifying to the Purebloods in their fancy homes. Accepted fact among wardmasters was that there were open wards and closed wards, but while they could be used on the same area, they could never be joined. Raphael Potter, the man who started the family business, did not take this at face value, however; he had never cared what people told him could or couldn't be done; only what truly could or couldn't be done. With his wife, a Muggleborn spellcrafter, he had created a runic script that used the input from an open ward to trigger a closed ward. It wasn't perfect — it couldn't handle more than two wards, and the script only worked if it was written in a combination of Norse and Sumerian runes — but because it was 'impossible', it provided an excellent defense.

Whistling as he walked, Harry traveled along the overgrown trail; the occasional cutting or vanishing charm flew from his wand as he cleared out the worst of the underbrush. The peaceful path from the Apparation point to the Manor's front gates always calmed him when he was angry or distressed, and it now served as a balm to his war-wounded mind. He arrived at the wrought-iron gates, opened them, and looked in sorrow at the sight in front of him.

Potter Manor was a relatively new building for the mansion of a Pureblood Noble House, completed in the early eighteenth century. It was a three-story home sitting on sixty acres of property and totally inaccessible to Muggles and uninvited guests. The house itself was reminiscent in style of a Gothic cathedral with its high spires and tall windows, delicate reliefs of ivy climbing up the walls. It had its own gargoyles, as well, in the forms of manticores, three-headed hellhounds, and even a winged occamy poised to strike over the front entrance. The only force to ever lay siege to the property — led by a member of the family who was angry over his younger brother being chosen as the family's head — had being given the 'honor' of discovering for themselves that the statues could be animated like Hogwarts' suits of armor.

At least, that was how the Manor had looked. Contrary to popular belief, Voldemort had feared Harry's great-grandfather Timothy almost as much as Dumbledore. The two men were both extremely powerful for their ages and lacked any fashion sense whatsoever, but where Dumbledore fought in the political arena, Timothy preferred to battle with his magic; a professional duelist, his record number of consecutive wins stood unchallenged until the arrival of a young upstart named Filius Flitwick. Even in his late eighties, Timothy Potter had been a force to be reckoned with, so rather than make the mistake of attacking him directly, the Dark Lord had placed one of his friends under the Imperius and ordered the man to carry a large cauldron full of a highly unstable potion into the house and make it explode. The blast had killed Timothy, his friend, and both of Harry's grandparents, as well as destroyed the Manor's second floor. Only James being at school prevented the Potter line from dying out that night.

And then neglect and the elements set in, Harry thought. In 1998, the building was decrepit, taking the reluctant hero five months and twenty thousand galleons to completely restore. He strode up the cobblestone path from gate to entrance and pushed against the tall door; it didn't give an inch.

He sighed. "I forgot, the debris was blocking the door." Withdrawing a couple of yards, he muttered a short apology and pointed his wand at the wooden obstacle. "Confringo." A jet of butter-yellow was shot at the thick wooden slab, blowing away a jagged hole. He repeated the incantation several times, stopping once there was a gap large enough for him crawl through without cutting his clothes or skin to shreds. After doing just that, he stood on a support from the ceiling that had jammed the door and took in the sunlight streaming from the hole in the roof.

A glance about the foyer showed him that he had a great deal of work to do before the building would be comfortable again. The wallpaper was faded where it hadn't separated from the walls, most of the furniture was likely water damaged, and the assorted cloth products, be they table linens, towels, or old clothes, were almost guaranteed to be ruined. Worst of all, however, were the various portraits on the wall; the inhabitants were safe in a group painting in the Vault, but they were also trapped there and would remain so until their normal canvases had been repaired or replaced. He gently prodded one of the portraits and grunted when the fabric tore; replaced, then.

"Dobby, Winky. Would you two come here, please?"

Twin pops heralded the arrival of the elves, and their eyes as they looked about the room was a curious mixture of horror, indignation, and ecstasy. Winky looked much better now than he last remembered; no longer did she wear the burned and stained clothes Crouch Sr. had given her, but instead a dark green sheet, possibly from the Slytherin dorms, that she had twisted into a toga. Dobby had changed his outfit since the morning, as he was now in a child-sized pair of overalls that had been dyed neon green and a hot-pink beret.

"I'm curious, which part of 'your clothes have to complement each other' did you two get confused on?"

Dobby ducked his head, and Winky muttered, "Winky tolds Dobby to makes them darker, but Dobby didn't listen. Now Winky bes in trouble with Master, too."

"Neither of you are in trouble," he said, glancing at the crest sown into the female elf's toga and on the top of her coworker's hat. At least they had followed that part of his instructions. "You two just don't fit together well. Could you not agree on what you should wear?"

This time it was Dobby who spoke. "Winky kepts her sheet too dark, Dobby thought Master Harry wouldn't bes liking Snakey colors. And bright colors looks better with Master Harry's family's crest, they does."

Harry took a moment to consider that statement. The crest itself was a golden shield with a red sword and a black bear's head on the top-left and bottom-right quarters, respectively. A scroll with the family motto, 'Percutiam ubi hostes maxime timore', underneath the shield completed the picture. No, it doesn't work well with those colors, Dobby. Even if it did, it wouldn't matter, since your clothes are blinding me every time I so much as look in your general direction.

"It does look look good on you, Dobby," he lied, "and your sheet is smashing, Winky, but maybe you wouldn't clash so much if you changed the colors and styles to be a bit more alike. Other than that, you look fantastic.

"At the moment, though, I have some work for you to do." If he distracted them, he might just avoid having to comfort a crying elf. "As you can see, this house hasn't had any elves to take care of it. Everything's falling apart, it needs new furniture, and I'm sure there's no food to speak of. Can you take care of all —"

Dobby had been wriggling in place like a tiny Chihuahua that needed to visit a bush, and now he vanished, his normally quiet pop sounding like human Apparation in his excitement. Winky gave him a small curtsey. "It will be done, Master," she said, then she too departed.

"— that?" he asked the still air. Note to self, keep an eye on Dobby for the next few days. Elves absolutely adored cleaning, and the bigger the mess, the better. A manor house that hadn't seen a soul for seventeen years would be practically heaven, hence his worry. Left to his own devices, Dobby was liable to make a life-size statue of him from forks or grow all the shrubs into giant replicas of his head, or something equally embarrassing.

Shaking his head at the trouble his servant and friend could cause in his adoration, Harry crawled around remnants of the two upper floors as made his way to the Head's study in the back of the ground floor. It was as damaged as the rest of house, but thankfully what he was looking for wouldn't have been exposed during the attack. He closed the door and turned the deadbolt, then he tapped his wand to the handle to disengage the first protection on his goal.

The room had a number of broken display cases and bookshelves, as well as a large desk at the other end from the door. He walked over to the right wall with its pair of dirty windows and stood in between them, facing a copy of the crest built into the wall. Again he tapped; thrice on the bear's head, once on the bottom tip of the shield, and twice on the sword, one each on point and pommel. Resting the wandtip on the bear again, he made a circle clockwise inside the shield's boundaries. There was a series of mechanical clinks, then the emblem split vertically and the two halves swung out on hinges.

Staring back at him was a complicated structure of rings floating in a cavity carved into the wall, each piece of silvery metal linked with two or more of its neighbors. He sighed as he reached in and lightly tugged one ring; that little bit of force was enough to set it rotating, and as it did, another cluster on the opposite side shifted outward from its original position. He stopped the spinning ring before it made any further changes to the configuration.

He loved the wards on the Manor, he really did, but he completely and unreservedly despised the Key, as the portraits referred to it. Yes, it gave him control of the ward scheme and allowed him to change which wards were active without the tedious and strenuous process of hauling wardstones around the Ward Room located off the Vault, but the Key was unnecessarily elaborate. None of the rings were directly linked to an individual ward; rather; there were a number of ward schemes that could be called up based on how the device was arranged. His painted ancestors could not tell him what those arrangements were — most of them had never needed to alter it from its default setting, and some unknown magic prevented the ones who had from revealing what they had done — so the trio had been forced to use linked mirrors, the magesight charm, and several afternoons of trial and error to find as many of the different schemes as they could.

The metal surfaces glinted innocently at him as he glared at the contraption once again. Each ring was covered in runes, and while he had taken the easy route and simply memorized the various patterns, his lovers had spent almost two months pouring over it, convinced that they could translate the inscriptions. By the time they gave up, they had isolated eight different languages, three of which they couldn't name or find in any of their books, though Hermione was sure that she had seen one of them in a Muggle manuscript. Harry was already wary of the device by that point; the Manor had been built long after the invention of enchanted portraits, and all of the previous family heads were represented, but none of them knew where the Key had come from or how it had been integrated so thoroughly into the wards. It was a family mystery, one that he still agonized over late at night when he couldn't sleep.

With a growl, he spun several of the rings at once, recalling the configuration he wanted. Luna called it the 'Hide and Seek', and it consisted of every transport ward they had ever heard of, bundled in a Fidelius, wrapped in a mild confounding ward to keep anyone from getting suspicious about why they couldn't remember the magnificent house in the middle of the woods. It even kept out owls who hadn't been told the location!

He felt the Secret settle in his mind and slammed the crest closed. Unlocking the study's door revealed two highly befuddled elves.

"Master Harry, where bes we?"

"Potter Manor is located in Sherwood Forest." Both elves' eyes cleared as the wards no longer rejected their presence. "Continue with whatever you were doing before just now." The elves popped away, and he rolled up his sleeves and began casting spells to lift the wooden beams strewn around back to their proper places. There was no reason he couldn't assist his employees in the repairs, after all.

Hermione raised her head and set down her book as yet another person knocked on the door. No one ever visited the house during the day, so of course everyone and their grandmother would come by the one time she was expecting a guest. She had already chased off several door-to-door evangelists, a squad of Girl Guides, two men who needed directions, and a friend of the people who had lived in the house across the street ten years previously. Stomping over to the door, she jerked it open and screamed, "What now!"

Harry stood there with a bemused look on his face. He slowly twisted to glance behind him, then turned back. "Should I come back later?"

"Get in here," she growled. He closed the door behind him, and then she pounced, wrapping her legs around his waist as she practically shoved her tongue down his throat. His hands immediately came up to support her, and she felt her stress melt away as she relaxed in his arms. When her lungs finally reminded her that they needed air to work, she pulled away slightly and dropped her head on her shoulder. "I missed you."

"I missed you, too, but I thought you wanted time to reconnect with your parents. Did something happen?" He walked down the hall and into the kitchen as he spoke, setting her down on the edge of the table.

She looked down to hide the tears pooling in the corners of her eyes, only for them to spill down her cheeks as he lifted her head. "I told Mum about us, and she didn't take it well."

"That's not surprising, I suppose. If we have a daughter, I wouldn't be happy to find out she's dating someone I had only spoken to twice. I'm guessing she wants me to stay away, then?"

A shake of her head was all she could manage as she recalled the gulf that suddenly existed between the two Granger women. "She doesn't have a problem with you, Harry. Now that she knows I'm bi, she treats me like a virtual stranger, and I don't think Luna will be welcome here anytime soon." She wiped her tears away in a futile gesture. "How long until Dobby and Winky have the Manor ready to live in?"

"Another week at least. Do you remember how we closed off several sections when we were happy with what space we had? It turns out that a few of them are actually so damaged that they could possibly cause more of the house to collapse. Winky said she'd talk to an elf she knows from working for Crouch and see if he'll come by and take a look."

"Are you telling me that elves have building contractors?" Hermione asked with a giggle.

He shrugged. "I guess so; maybe they make sure the house is fit for habitation before elf families move in. Soon we'll find out that we just think they serve wizards when it's really the other way around."

Her laughter spilled out as she thought of Lucius Malfoy bringing drinks to several stuffy female house elves while wearing an enormous pillowcase. She then reached out and pulled off her lover's glasses, putting them next to her as she stared into his eyes. "I love you so much."

"I love you, too," he replied, then bent down and kissed her again. This was looking to be a wonderful day.

Yes, I know it's short and sappy. No, I'm not going to change it. Yes, it's the muse's fault. She's gone and found the champagne, and now she won't quit giggling. The next chapter will be out after she's sobered up, and the trio will finally go out and steal the Gaunt ring. Four Horcruces down, and two Hallows found.

The Potter family motto should read "Strike where the enemy fears most". It gets kind of screwy when I run it through a translator.

So you know, the rune language Hermione recognized was the code used in the Voynich manuscript.

Chapter 13

Going to Work

A grin of amusement danced on Harry's face as he ignored the grumbling and glare coming from the kitchen. Luna didn't mind this task, in fact she considered it a fair division of labor, but Hermione would fight tooth and nail to get out of it. He pulled a sky-blue potion out of his pocket as she stomped back into the dining room and threw a dish towel at him.

"There, done," she growled.

"Good." He saluted her with the vial and choked down the chalky concoction before drinking some water to wash the taste out of his mouth. A flick of his newly unmonitored acacia wand vanished the empty vial to the Manor. Feeling her eyes on him still, he sighed. "Hermione Jane Granger, all I asked was that you do the Merlin-be-damned dishes. We had sandwiches, for crying out loud; it's not like I prepared a ten course meal!"

Strangely, this didn't improve his lover's mood any. "Language! And you know I hate working in the kitchen. If there's one place where Murphy's Law takes over, it's there."

Tell me about it. He had tried numerous times to teach her how to cook, or at least not burn the house down around them when she made another attempt, but she was well and truly hopeless. After six years, she was no more talented than she had been during the Hunt, where she had surprised them with fresh fish that had been burned on the outside and somehow frozen solid on the inside. Even washing dishes resulted in shattered plates and chipped cups; if she ever attempted to learn the Reparo charm wandlessly, he expected she would successfully cast it on her first attempt.

"Now, what was that potion you just drank?" she asked in an attempt to change the subject.

He leaned back in his chair and motioned for her to join him at the table. "That was the Nutrient Potion you suggested I get from Poppy. She only had a few in stock, and we wanted to make sure Dumbledore doesn't catch on to what we were doing, so I picked up a case full yesterday from a brewer she knows. She said I'll never reach my maximum height — too many years of starvation at the Dursleys' hands, even for magic to fix — but we're far enough back in the timeline that I should be able to mostly catch up with the others in our year. At least I won't be mistaken for a second or third year again."

Hermione chortled at that. The last time through this upcoming year, a seventh-year Hufflepuff came across him returning from one of Umbridge's detentions and, not recognizing him immediately, thought some bullies had kicked him out of his dorm. He had been mortified.

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. Did you ask Luna when was the best time to show up at the Rook?"

She caught hold of her laughter and shook her head, then she drew her wand and conjured her Patronus. Setting the tip on her throat, she said, "Luna, is it all right if Harry and I come over now?" The message recorded, her ethereal otter swam a few feet before vanishing in a streak of light.

A matter of seconds later, a hare Patronus arrived from the same direction. "Of course," it said in its master's dreamy voice, "the Rook is always open for you two."

"Well, that takes care of that," Harry said. "Shall we Disapparate from here or go out to the yard?"

"May as well stay inside; not like there are any —"

Hermione's words were cut off as a second rabbit appeared. "Hold on, I need to put my paints up." After about a minute, a third flew in and said, "Okay, now you can come."

He stood. "Shall we?"

The brunette was about to respond when yet another messenger arrived. "WAIT! I need to get Daddy in some pants first."

She glared at the dissipating hare while Harry just laughed. "Only Luna."

"All clear," said the fifth. Knowing that this wasn't the end, both of them waited a moment. Their suspicions were proven correct when the hare appeared yet again; he had never seen a disgruntled Patronus, and he would be happy to never see one again.

"A couple more minutes, please. The bear traps are still out from the party last night."

Mount St. Hermione chose this moment to explode. "Oh, come on! Now she's just making stuff up!"

He summoned Prongs and set his own wand to record a message. "Luna, why don't you send Vivian back when you've finished all the chores you're finding?" he asked, referring to her Patronus by name. Both girls had decided to name their animals after he first called his own by his father's nickname. Where Luna got hers he hadn't a clue, but at least it was more normal than Menelaus, who the brunette eventually explained was the father of the mythological Hermione.

"Well, I suppose you two could come over now," her voice came slowly from the newest hare. "Just make sure you stay out of the basement. That's where all the traps are, and I don't want you to disturb the cuddlepus."

Hermione sighed in resignation, and he smiled weakly at her. He wasn't a believer in many of the creatures Luna and her father wrote about, but he also freely admitted that he knew little about magizoology. Besides, he had spent eleven years of his life thinking there were no such things as unicorns and dragons, only to see them his first year back in the magical world.

"Let's just go," Hermione muttered, and they disappeared from her house with twin cracks.

Harry had never seen Luna's house while it was still standing. During the Hunt, they had traveled there after Yaxley caught ahold of Hermione and was brought to Grimmauld Place, but the Death Eaters had already seen fit to raze it in revenge for all those Xeno had killed. Nevertheless, considering it was called the Rook, he should have expected it to look like it did.

The black, squat tower did resemble a chess piece, though the large window jutting out from the front drew the eye and downplayed a bit of the similarity. None of the other, smaller windows were level with any others, so he could only guess that it had three or four stories in addition to the basement she had mentioned.

Winding their way along the twisted path leading to the edifice, they passed the stumps of Snargaluffs and several trees bearing fruits that looked remarkably like floating orange radishes. "Dirigible plums," he murmured, recalling Luna's distress when she had seen the burned remains of the orchard. According to the blonde, dirigible plums were native only to a small region in eastern Europe, and her mother had gone through great pains to cultivate them in Britain.

They approached the front door and saw Xeno, thankfully wearing pants even if they were crimson waders, tending to one of the two large crabapple trees flanking the entrance. "Ah, Harry, Hermione, you decided to visit after all. Luna's right inside; she has been looking forward to this trip of yours all weekend." His greeting delivered, he turned back to his pruning.

Once they walked inside the Rook, they had to double-take to ensure they had, in fact, walked inside a building. The walls of the ground floor were painted with a rainforest scene so lifelike that Harry was tempted to pluck a piece of fruit hanging from a nearby tree. There were animals included in the scene as well, though they were mostly hidden in the shadows and looked all the more real for it.

"Like it?"

He turned to look at the young woman, a smile growing as he noticed her tie-dyed sundress and rainbow sandals. "I do. Was this what you were painting when Mione called you?"

"No, my newest work is in my bedroom. It's not finished, though, so I'm afraid you'll just have to wait to see it." She cocked her head as she looked behind him. "Since you mentioned her, where is Hermione?"

He turned around in surprise. She was right behind me. A scream rent the air, and both he and Luna ran toward the source: an open trapdoor at the base of a spiraling wrought-iron staircase. Casting the lighting charm with his left hand and holding his wand in his right, he charged down the stairs and nearly collided with Hermione as she fled up them. She rushed behind him and pointed down. "That… that… there's… oh, Merlin!"

"Oh, dear," Luna said softly as she pulled the frightened brunette into her arms, "I was afraid of this."

"Afraid of what?"

"She looked at the cuddlepus."

Now he was worried; merely looking at a creature shouldn't have reduced Hermione almost to tears, especially one that had as silly a name as 'cuddlepus'. He cautiously walked down the staircase into the basement, stepped around the half-dozen iron traps between the stairs and the door, and peered through the sliver of space she had left when her terror overtook her. After only a moment he slammed the door.

If asked to describe what lay inside, he could only describe it as monstrous. It was as if someone had spliced together the foulest attributes of the Whomping Willow and a giant squid into a single unholy abomination, built a fifteen-foot tall living model of bones, teeth, and eyes ripped from a creature found only in a Dementor's nightmare, then slathered it in undulating fluorescent pus. But, he would warn, this no more approximated the thing than a blister did the Black Death.

He staggered back upstairs and collapsed on the floor. A cold touch upon his brow caused him to flinch away before he saw that it was just Luna holding a glass of water. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have left the trapdoor open. Neither of you were ready to see that."

He cautiously took the glass from her, his eyes roving over the walls of the house. After what he had just witnessed, the eyes of the painted animals had taken on an eldritch shine, and he swore he could see the leaves of the trees move eerily. "Luna, where in hell did you get that?"

"One of Daddy's friends from Dunwich sent it to him a week ago. Last time, it broke out of the basement and tried to eat our guests, so we had to banish it back to wherever it originated from. That's why I set out bear traps, you see, to keep it there; we never did get to study it, and his friend refused to send us another one. Between you and me, though, I find it more than a little disturbing."

"And does this friend have a name?"

"Well of course, it would be very awkward to speak to her if she didn't," she jokingly chided. "Now what was it; Whossy? Whitby? Whateley? I wasn't paying much attention, to be honest.

"Drink, it will calm you down. It's probably for the best if we leave and take care of the Horcrux; I don't think you or Mione will be comfortable here for a while."

The trio Apparated to the town of Little Hangleton immediately after the two non-Lovegoods had a chance to regain their equilibria and sanities. Hermione and Luna had never been to the town, so Harry carried them side-along to the only area he knew well. And did he ever know it well, for he had seen it in innumerable dreams.

The graveyard.

"Well, this isn't creepy at all," Luna muttered as she gazed up at the statue of the Angel of Death. Harry had mentioned the role it played in Voldemort's resurrection, and in a fit of pique she transfigured it into a sculpture of butterflies. Harry's light chuckle told her he appreciated the gesture.

Hermione touched her wand to her temple and cast the magesight charm. "I think I see the Gaunt house. It's maybe a half-mile that way," she said, pointing in almost the direct opposite direction from the Riddle mansion. "That's not too bad."

"Any idea what defenses it has?" Harry asked. "I really don't want to wander in blind. We did that enough the times we broke into the Ministry." She took a second look and shook her head. "Wonderful."

"We'll never get anything done if we stand around like this," Luna said. The other two nodded and joined the blonde on her trek to the ramshackle hut.

Ten minutes later saw them casting judicious cutting charms at the brambles that had grown over the path from the main road to the shack. Hermione stopped them once the drab building came into view and reapplied her magesight. "I don't see any wards, but there are plenty of charms all over the walls, and another on the door. The formulae are complex and, if I'm not mistaken, use a base thirteen number system."

Luna groaned. "Parselmagic."

"That's what I think, too. Any chance you had a sudden epiphany and didn't tell us about it, Harry?"

"No such luck," he sighed. There were records of Parselmouths ensorcelling objects with incredibly deadly curses from both the Founders' era and the first Voldemort war, which Harry had poured over during his experiments to piece together the magic involved. He had tried to cast incantations in Parseltongue many times, and each attempt had been an utter failure. "We'll just have to make due with what we have. Any chance you can interpret what the formula on the door means, Luna? You're the one with spell-crafter training."

She shook her head. "We worked with base twelve when we discussed Babylonian magic, but we only looked at some simple examples and even that took us several weeks. I can analyze it if you feel it's simply too dangerous to proceed otherwise, but I'm not sure I'll be finished before August."

"'Now far ahead the Road has gone, and I must follow, if I can,'" Hermione quoted softly. "We've made it this far, and we have an expert at flying by the seat of his pants with us, so we may as well continue. Lead on, love."

Grumbling over her choice of description, he cast the magesight charm on his glasses and stepped forward a few feet, bracing himself for whatever tricks Voldemort left hidden from view. When nothing immediately tried to poison, crush, or dismember him, he moved faster but no less cautiously to the house. The rusted nail on the door was still there, but the snake corpse had long since rotted away. He performed several diagnostic charms on the entrance, but they displayed nonsense, which he expected after listening to Hermione's findings.

Harry hadn't been suicidal since his teens, so rather than grab the handle to open the door, he vanished the hinges and banished the door across the room within and into the wall. He paused for a moment, ready to sprint away at the first sign of danger, then waved the girls towards him; only after all three of them had taken a good look inside the single room dwelling did they enter and split up.

"If I was an egotistical and homicidal school-age psychopath, where would I hide the family heirloom that I used to achieve immortality?" he wondered aloud. The magic from the outside was running through the walls, not over them, so he doubted he would be able see the Withering Curse on the ring if the young Tom Riddle had stuck it there. Deciding to leave them for last, he examined the kitchen area. Hermione was looking over what he presumed was the single 'bedroom' section, and Luna was practicing the immersion technique by sliding on her belly like a snake.

"Mione, Harry, I think I found it," she said a minute or two later, standing and magicking herself clean from the decades worth of dust she had picked up. The other two walked over to her, and she pointed at an unremarkable section of the warped wooden floor. "This spot is slightly more level than the rest of the flooring. Tommy Boy must have used a Reparo when he hid the Horcrux and didn't realize that it would stick out, if you'll excuse the pun." An overpowered levitation charm tore the boards away, revealing a shallow pit containing the Gaunt family ring.

This is it. One quick Killing Curse, and then I'll have the Stone. All I have to do is keep Luna away from it, and I can use it whenever I want. Just a spell and three turns to summon my parents and Sirius —

Harry shook his head. They had traveled back in time; what would be the point of calling Sirius's shade from the afterlife when he was still alive? And he would never be so selfish as to prevent Luna from speaking with her mother. She had memories of her mother, had seen her death, while the only reminder of his own was a Dementor-induced hallucination. Wait a minute! Wasn't there supposed to be a compulsion on the ring to ensure someone put it on and triggered the curse?

A cry cut through the last vestiges of the spell's hold on him, and he saw Hermione struggling to pull Luna away from the hole. "Get off me, Hermione! I want to see my mum again, and no one is going to stop me, not even you! Accio Resurrection Stone!"

A vision of yellow light striking her sprang to the front of his mind, and he reacted in his typical courageous yet self-sacrificing manner. Throwing his wand from his hand, his Seeker reflexes came into play as he reached out and caught the tiny gold object flying through the air. An involuntary shout of triumph morphed into a bellow of pain as he felt the curse seeping into his skin, stabbing him with tongues of flame even as it leached the warmth from his body. He spun on his heel and flung the trinket out the open door.

While doing so broke the compulsion on Luna, it also caused the shack's walls to shake and split the roof with a loud crack. He summoned his wand back to him; grabbed Hermione, who was still holding Luna, with his good hand; and ran outside. They were not a moment too soon, as the house gave one last rumble and collapsed; if that weren't enough, a tower of fire gushed up from the foundation in an attempt to incinerate anyone trapped inside.

"Drama queen," he muttered as Hermione shot to his side and cast a spell on his shriveled, blackened palm.

"Luna, get over here! I need you to keep the wound from advancing while I neutralize the curse."

The blonde stared at them from the ground with unfocused eyes, watching whatever scene was playing in her mind. "I'm sorry, Mum. I didn't mean for this to happen. I should have done something, anything."

Hermione fired a stinging hex at Luna's exposed thighs. The unexpected pain snapped her out of her flashback, and she rushed over when she realized the problem. "What do you need me to do?"

"Stasis charm." With the other girl holding his injury in check, Hermione needed little time to restore his hand to its normal state. "Thank Merlin you only held the ring for a second or two. If you had put it on, I don't know that I could have done anything to help, even with Luna's assistance."

"This is my fault. If I hadn't been fooled by the compulsion, you never would have been hurt," Luna moaned, tears running down her cheeks. He pulled her to him and rubbed her back while Hermione conjured a small wooden box and summoned the ring into it.

"I'll deal with this; you have more important things to worry about," she said when Harry motioned for her to hand it over to him. She drew a small bag from her back pocket, unfolded it, and summoned a pair of dragonhide gloves. Once her hands were protected, she pulled out a large fang. She then scratched the band, and an upwelling of black smoke accompanied a disembodied shriek. A quick counter to the ring's curse followed, and she dropped the fang, ring, and gloves back into the bag and returned it to her pocket.

"We need to hurry. With that bonfire behind us, it won't be long until people come to investigate."

He nodded and lightly shook Luna. As natives to the village trampled through the underbrush, they Disapparated away.

Dunwich and the Whateley family come from the works of H. P. Lovecraft. The Lovegoods dealing with entities from the Cthulhu Mythos is an idea I encountered in MariusDarkwolf's Harry Potter and the Eyes of the Serpent.

The graveyard is going to be one of the only times I use the movies rather than the books as a reference, but that animated statue pinning Harry with the scythe was just too cool to ignore.

Hermione is quoting part of Bilbo Baggins's song from Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring. If you've never read it… well, why are you spending your time on this? Get your priorities straight.

Chapter 14

The Good, the Bad, and the Stupid

The sound of steps pulled Harry's attention from the Charms journal he had been reading. As soon as he saw that the arrival was Miranda Granger, he knew things were about to become very awkward very quickly. He closed the magazine and tapped the convenient 'table' it had rested on. "Luna, it's about time we left."

She raised her eyes from her own material, a sultry romance novel she spotted in Hermione's room. With a nod of agreement she was off her lovers' laps, leaving him to catch the brunette's attention. "Mione," he said while he nudged her. There was no response, not an unusual occurrence, so he covered the pages of her book with one hand.

"I was reading that, Harry!" she snapped before she noticed her mother. "Oh."

"Yes, oh. Mrs. Granger, it was very nice of you to let us come over today, but Luna and I should go and leave you three to your dinner."

The older woman hesitated before shaking her head. "Are you sure you don't want to eat with us? It's no trouble."

"Thank you, but no," Luna said as she smoothed out her sundress, which had risen during her time on the couch. He blamed Hermione and her wandering hands. "Daddy is having some friends over, and he always wants me to meet them. Harry, though, would certainly be more than willing to join you."

"Wonderful, one more won't be a problem."

"Aren't I supposed to get a choice in the matter?" Harry wondered aloud.

The two women spoke simultaneously. "No." Luna leaned over and kissed him, then turned and did the same to Hermione. With her lovers happy and Miranda bemused, she bounded over to the bags of school supplies they had picked up in Diagon after their jaunt to Little Hangleton and Disapparated with a loud crack.

"Well," Miranda said after a few moments, "Hermione, your father's going to be a little late, but could you go ahead and set the table, please? If it's not too much trouble, Harry, would you help me make a quick salad? Hermione told me that you know your way around a kitchen."

"Of course, Mrs. Granger." They walked into the kitchen, and he set out a pair of knives while she pulled several vegetables out of the refrigerator. They worked in silence for a minute or two, the only noise coming from the chopping blades.

"Do you mind my asking a personal question?"

He glanced at the elder Granger. "I don't, so long as you understand I may choose not to answer."

"Hermione told me about the relationship between the three of you, and I was wondering what your views were about it."

So she's going to take an oblique approach. He had expected something like this to happen after the three of them decided to spend the rest of the day here. "It's not easy, not for any of us. Our relationship isn't any more normal to the magicals than it is to Muggles, so we have that to contend with, but we each have personal hurdles as well. Luna's been getting a crash course in Muggle life since both Mione and I grew up in this world, but I don't think she believed us until today when she could actually see what we were talking about. Though I adore both of them, I have two girlfriends who are extremely strong-willed and far more intelligent than I am, which can make it difficult for me to keep up with them when we disagree. Hermione… well, she still has issues occasionally with being in a trio rather than a couple, and it took her a while to accept her orientation.

"It's not all negatives, though. Your daughter is tied to what she reads in books, and sometimes it takes two people to remind her the most important parts of life can't be found in the library. Luna is a free spirit, but she needs us to keep her grounded; if we didn't, she'd disappear on a flight of fancy, with no one knowing where or how she was."

Miranda turned to face him fully. "And what about you? What do you get out of this?"

"Several things, big and little, but the most important is I'm not forced to choose between them. Luna is like the sun, shining brightly on anyone who takes a moment to pay attention to her. I was in a dark place when we first met, and after only a short talk with her, it was as if color had returned to the world." He smiled, remembering how a few minutes here and there in her company had raised his spirits and strengthened him during his atrocious fifth year. And to think he had almost given that up… "Hermione is my rock. She has saved me so many times, both from others and myself. When we first became friends, I knew deep inside that she would always be standing next to me, and though we've had a few snags, the Firebolt debacle in particular, I never doubted that she acted with the best of intentions.

"One leads me onwards, the other ensures I keep my footing. If I had to pick who was more important to me, I'd find it an impossible choice."

"Listening to you, I find it hard to believe you're just a boy of fourteen," she said with a soft smile. "You sound like a grown man, one deeply in love."

"I am. In love, I mean. Luna's a whirlwind; she dropped into my life, and shortly afterward I couldn't remember how I had gone on without her. Hermione, though, I have had feelings for since the end of our second year, when she was petrified. After she was cured, I pushed them down out of fear for our friendship, but that didn't stop them from growing."

"Even during the fight about the broomstick?"

He grimaced. "Neither of us handled that well. She was so certain that she was right — and she was, since Sirius had sent it — that she acted before she considered how to deal with the situation, like telling me that she was acting at all. I, on the other hand, was too busy being an angry prat to even listen to her reasons. In the end, I think we learned from it, and it was better we received that lesson early on with something that didn't really matter."

"A very mature way of looking at it."

They were quiet for a bit longer before Miranda spoke again. "I just don't understand. Hermione was never 'girly', I'll admit, but there weren't any indications that she was gay. Her crush on that Lockhart bloke was so obvious that not even a blind man could miss it, yet she didn't act like that about anyone else until her letters over Christmas about that older boy; Krum, wasn't it?

"So when she told me about Luna and how serious it was, I didn't immediately leap to support her like I should have. The only thing I could think was, 'Who are you, and what have you done with my little girl?'" She sniffed sadly. "I have never been more ashamed of myself, but by then the damage was done."

"Hermione said you've been distant lately, treating her like she's a stranger," he said, keeping his voice gentle.

"I didn't mean for that to happen. I was just preoccupied watching her; if I didn't even know that she might fall in love with another girl, what else did I miss? So I watched, and she is so different from how I thought that it breaks my heart. You don't understand, Harry, but trust me when I say it is a terrible feeling to look at your child, one who is almost a grown woman, and realize that you can't even recognize her. I want to get to know her, but I don't know how, or if she will even let me."

Harry sighed. For the Grangers it had been ten months, but for them it had been ten years. He knew the Dursleys wouldn't care how, or even if, he acted differently, so it hadn't crossed his mind how attentive parents like Jake and Miranda would react to their now 25 year old daughter. Nor did he think about Xeno, but that man was impossible to predict.

"Mrs. Granger, it isn't that you don't know Hermione; it's that a great deal happened this past year, both good and bad. She was in a position where she could either grow or break, and she chose to grow."

"What do you mean?"

"Did she tell you about my name coming out of the Goblet of Fire, even though I never put it in?" At her nod, he spun his tale. He didn't want to deceive her, but there was no other option available. "Only a few people believed me, and Hermione was the only one who defended me from the very start. Unfortunately, when the school treated me terribly, she saw that the professors weren't doing anything to stop it; some even encouraged the students. She lost just about all of her respect for authority and looked at the staff with a critical eye. In doing so, I'm afraid she lost respect for several of them as people as well. She kept analyzing: what she was told, how people acted, why she should follow this rule or that. It was hard enough to keep up with her changes when I was with her every step of the way, so I can't imagine how you must feel looking at her now."

She chewed her lip much like her daughter, pondering everything he had said. "And that's how she found out she's bisexual? By questioning everything?"

"Actually, that's Fleur's fault, though Luna had a hand in it."

"Who is Fleur?"

"Fleur Delacour was the Triwizard competitor for Beauxbatons and a Veela." He grinned at the look of confusion she displayed; if she was anything like her daughter, that expression would soon morph into one of unbridled curiosity. "Veela are an entirely female race that interbreed with human males. They produce an invisible aura that is meant to lure men into their beds, but it has the side-effect of making women incredibly jealous of them. Some people, like myself, are capable of ignoring it; Hermione wasn't so lucky. Care to guess what happened when she found herself in that aura?"

Miranda began to chuckle. "Oh, my. You poor thing."

"Yes, for the first few months her mood swings terrified me. Eventually Luna realized why she was behaving that way and pulled Hermione aside. That was in February, and she and I were tentatively dating." He paused for a moment, continuing to mix his fourth year with the time they spent on the Horcrux Hunt. "I never did get the full story of what happened. The next I knew about it, Luna led us into an empty classroom, kissed me, kissed her, and then said that she would be joining our relationship. It took about a week for that to sink in, and we haven't looked back since."

"And Hermione… she's really happy?"

"Why don't you ask her yourself? She's been listening to us the entire time." He pointed over his shoulder at the hallway, and Hermione stepped out, tears streaming down her face.

"Oh, Hermione, I'm so, so sorry for how I was acting." Miranda choked out, starting cry as well.

"Mum…" In a flash the two Grangers were hugging each other, and Harry walked out to the living room to continue his reading. He had a feeling they would be busy for a while.

Harry flapped his wings to slow down as he entered his room at the Dursleys' and returned to human form. He would prefer to spend his nights at the Manor, but there was so much damage that the bedrooms were a low priority. If repairs continued at their current pace, it would be livable some time in late August or early September, though the Treasure Chest would be accessible shortly.

He walked down the stairs as quietly as he could. It was just about time for the zoo animals' punishments to start, and he was still undecided what he should start off with for each of them. Make the kitchen look dirtier and dirtier the more Petunia cleaned it? Maybe a spell on Vernon's car to make him forget where he was driving, that certainly had potential. Dudley was the most difficult, strangely enough. His first thoughts consisted of simultaneous diarrhea and projectile vomiting, but that was just too pedestrian. No, for all those witch-burnings he had organized and the children he had murdered, ickle Duddikens needed something special.

A bulky blob stood in the hallway between the kitchen and the front door, a golf club hoisted above it. Harry shook his head in disappointment; it appeared Vernon hadn't yet accepted his new place at the bottom of the food chain. He transfigured the bludgeon into a bouquet of wildflowers and stuck the walrus's shoes to the tile floor. After examining his work for a moment, he added a curly pig's tail for a laugh. Like father, like son.

"Who are you waiting for?"

"That no-good, unnatural freak. He wasn't in his room, but he has to come back sometime, and I'll be ready."

He rolled his eyes; he had been dodging frying pans for most of his life in this bloody house, yet Vernon really thought he would miss a fat man swinging that at him? Then again, he didn't realize who he was talking to, either. "What if he uses the back door?"

Vernon shook his head rapidly, which caused his entire mass to quiver like a bowl of pudding. "I locked it. No, this is the only way he can get in."

Not a bad plan, Harry thought, assuming I didn't fly through my window like I did, or use Alohamora to unlock the door, or transfigure it into something else, or simply blow a hole in the wall to make myself a new entrance. Still, I'll give credit where credit is due; he at least put some planing about what he was doing.

Dismissing Vernon from his mind, he disabled the Ministry monitor and began silently casting spells around the small room. An illusion went on the windows to show people looking through their curtains at the house, which would surely drive Petunia around the bend. Since he couldn't get past his uncle, he charmed the car keys to redirect the man's anger towards the higher-ups of Grunning's Drills and constables. A moment later he added a compulsion that would cause Vernon to constantly speed.

All that's left is Dudley's. He needs something serious, not just embarrassing. Too bad I can't make him feel the pain he inflicts on the kids he bullies… He sighed. Never mind. Luna created a spell for that very purpose.

"Libera pena ad eorum qui illud causant," he intoned as he waved his wand at the staircase. I'll cast the other half on his lighter; he always had it on him last time.

Vernon turned his head when he heard the incantation, rapidly purpling when he saw Harry. He spun to swing his weapon, but the immobile shoes refused to comply. Instead, he let out a loud yelp and fell to the ground holding his twisted ankles, his shoes having split open and freeing his feet.

Harry caught the flowers Vernon was still brandishing. "These better be for Petunia and not me. Even then, you couldn't pony up enough money to buy roses? I hope you don't mind sleeping on the couch." He laughed as he left the bewildered man and finished his retributive tasks. Who knew messing with the Dursleys would be so much fun?

"You sure there isn't an easier way to do this?" Harry panted out as he kept a thin beam of magic aimed at the wardtap.

Hermione turned to him, her eyes twinkling from the still-active magesight charm. "Well, I suppose you could trigger the ward if you want, but considering it would melt you from the inside out…"

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. Less complaining, more breaking down Dolohov's wards." The Death Eater's home was first on their list of places to break into and strip down to the bedrock, a list that had increased as they recalled more families who had offered at least tacit support to Voldemort's ideology. Dolohov may not have been as wealthy as, say, the Malfoys, but he was single and in Azkaban, which meant the only defenses would be the wards he had set on the house before his incarceration. Also, he wasn't lending a spare bedroom to the Dark Lord.

"Here, Hermione," Luna said as she passed over what looked like a silver tuning fork holding a quartz lens. "It's a static amplifier. Stick it in the ground with the crystal focusing the beam, and it'll take the brunt off Harry to power the tap."

Hermione did as the blonde ordered, and he immediately felt the drain on his magic drop to a manageable level. The tap was a stone sphere that leached magic from wards and funneled it through a copper spike into the earth, but the runic scripts engraved on it were so delicate they could burn out if two conflicting magical signatures were casting at the same time, hence why he, with his larger core, was the only one charging it. The amplifier, which used wild magic, had no signature and was an absolute godsend for any thieves without the benefit of a power-boosting ritual. Note to self, find that book as soon as we get into the Treasure Chest.

"Thanks, Luna. Where'd you get that?"

"It was one of the things I took from Filch. I haven't finished sorting everything out, but I did find some stored anti-Apparation jinxes, vials of what I think is an untraceable poison, Peruvian Darkness Powder, and a rubber chicken that's cursed to bludgeon people over the head with it's metal beak."

"Dear Merlin, I never believed I would agree with that miserable curmudgeon, but he might have had the right idea after all." After several minutes of silence, Hermione spoke again. "I think that's it. Shut down the tap and Luna will blast the ward."

The Reductor produced a brilliant corona as the third ward fell. "Take a load off, love. We'll handle the rest." He gratefully complied and watched the two girls skillfully deconstruct the remaining two wards. The first couple were standard Apparation and Muggle Repelling and therefore easy to disable using brute force, but the others were rather unusual. Thankfully, a suggestibility ward keyed to the Dark Mark and Occlumency suppression were less likely to rebound on them than the blood to acid ward he had wrestled with.

By the time they were done, he had downed a Pepper Up and recovered enough to no longer be dead on his feet. "Shall we go inside?" he said as he offered them his arms. Luna set the pace with her carefree skipping, not stopping even when Hermione transfigured the door into a pile of leaves and conjuring a wind to blow them into the house. As with the Gaunt shack, they briefly inspected the ground floor before they scattered on a mad dash to test the limits of their space-expanded bags.

They had spent the week after retrieving the Horcrux researching, and it had been he who had the idea to use a little transfiguration to disguise themselves and find second-hand furniture stores and pawnbrokers in a number of cities across the country. Most of what they would be taking they could fence there, and what little was charmed or enchanted could have the magic stripped or be stored in Potter Manor's vault once it was finally accessible. If the Wizarding World was larger, they could sell the items to stores in Diagon, but since store owners would likely ask questions of origin they really didn't have time for, Muggle Britain would have to do.

Harry's first stop was the formal dining room, where he summoned every piece of china and silver, along with the silk place settings and the crystal chandelier. He then miniaturized the table and chairs and waved them into the sack as well. Upon seeing the various portraits frozen in their frames from shock, he extended a whip of fire, the same spell Dumbledore had used in the Ministry at the end of his fifth year, and whirled it around his head a time or two before he spun and set each stretch of canvas alight. The potential witnesses silenced, he rushed to the parlor next door.

Summon, shrink, summon, burn, and repeat. It became a relaxing pattern, and soon he was on the first floor walking into the study. The carpets with the Dolohov crest he left alone, but all the books and their shelves found themselves in his bag. He noticed the desk in one corner, and with a mental shrug unlocked the drawers and peered inside.

"Paperwork, paperwork, invitation to a ball, bill from St. Mungo's… what do we have here?" A jab of his wand vanished the sheets of parchment from the desk's surface where he had tossed them to make room for the small iron box that was hidden in the bottom drawer. The wand's tip glowed white hot as he ran it over hingeless metal and levitated the side he had cut off. His eyes widened.

Inside were a number of rings, each encrusted with precious gems. He dumped the box onto the desk and spread them out, astounded as the variety before he noticed two objects mixed in. The first was a small key, the same size as the one that opened his Gringotts vault. Didn't Goldfinger say that Molly could take whatever she wanted from my trust vault simply because she had my key? He made a mental note to investigate that later.

"Little Tony must have been working overtime," he remarked facetiously as he picked up the second, a tiny hourglass hanging from a golden chain. "As Luna would say in this situation, we will have so much fun together."

"Hey, no stealing my lines!"

"Speak of the devil." He turned to see both Luna and Hermione. "What is it?"

Hermione smiled nervously. "I think I might be hallucinating. Can you come down to the the basement?" They backtracked to the room in question, actually a wine cellar which had been repurposed for the care, feeding, and torture of Muggles, complete with iron maiden and rusted hanging shackles. There was even a cage for Dolohov's 'toys' close by…

"Mione, were you hallucinating that the cell bars are made of solid gold?"

"You see them, too?"

"Yep. Luna, you're the Pureblood; explain this to us."

She chuckled weakly. "We're not exactly known for our common sense?"

One bookworm speaking in defense of another: never cover something while we're reading it. We'll gnaw your hand off.

I'm not a parent, so I, like Harry, don't know what Miranda is going through. I can only imagine how painful it is. Oh, and just in case you missed it, the story he told was a little white lie based on what did happen during the Hunt.

Luna's charm, like the one on Dumbledore's Deluminator, has two parts. The first (on the lighter) "records" how much Dudley hurts people, while the second (on the stairs) relays it to him when the two parts are close to each other. I wasn't sure how clearly I described it in the text.

Chapter 15

Sand Falling through the Hourglass

"All told, how much did the stuff from Dolohov's house make for us?" Harry asked the next week.

Hermione consulted the ledger she had filled with the various receipts. "Let's see… 100,000 pounds?"

"How much in real money?"

The brunette glared at Luna, who responded with a guileless smile. No matter how often they explained it to her, the blonde was not raised in the Muggle world and simply refused to consider anything but coins proper currency. Paper, she had told them, was for printing on, not buying things. "About 4,000 Galleons."

"Oh, that's not bad at all. More than many people earn in a year, certainly." She paused for a moment, then added, "Does that include the gold bars we made from his cell?"

As he had been in charge of that exchange, Harry answered. "No, the goblins refused to buy it all at once, something about 'foolish wizards trying to destroy the economy'. Still, they appraised it at a little more than 25,000." He smirked at their astounded faces. "It was about a hundred thirty-five kilograms of pure gold. Did you think we weren't going to make a killing off that?"

He should have received more for that much gold, but the greedy little beasts were notorious for undervaluing any precious metals wizards wanted to sell them. They considered all that was mined from the ground theirs, whether they had any hand in its extraction or not, which explained why they only 'lent' their smiths' creations to humans and had replaced the gold, silver, and bronze currency with lead and stone spelled to resemble the older coins. Normally he wouldn't have even considered using Gringotts to fence the bars they took from Dolohov, but they had been enchanted unbreakable, which prevented him from melting them down and selling them in the Muggle world. The fact that the goblins didn't care where he had procured them helped.

"On a related note, I discovered an interesting bit of trivia. It turns out that Dolohov didn't have any special security for his family's vault, just the key. The goblins charged a few excessive fees to get everything set up and move the contents around, but we now have our own private account with a starting balance of twenty grand, plus the deposits from the gradual sale of the gold." Laughing, he passed a bronze key to each stupefied girl.

"Wow, Harry," Hermione said. "Just… wow."

Luna was far more animated and hopped into his lap. "And you say you aren't as smart as we are. Silly man, we wouldn't have thought of doing that in a thousand years." She ran her hands through his hair and ground against him, making him groan. "Besides, hasn't anyone told you that using your brain makes you extra sexy?"

"You know, I don't think anyone's ever told me that."

"Well then, I guess I'll be the first." She moved in and kissed him, slowly but passionately. "Will you be my first again, too?"

Hermione cleared her throat, her face clearly showing her regret at what she was doing. "Can we leave that for later, please? My parents are going to be back soon, and I doubt they want to walk into a teenage threesome." With disappointed sighs, they settled down, though Luna refused to leave her new seat. "We did well, but there is always room for improvement. What did you two see that we need to fix before the next heist?"

"Power," he said. "I know we planned to wait for Luna's birthday since there was a really good core-enlargement ritual in one of our books, but until then, we'll need to either space our hits out or get a lot more skill quickly. After October we won't have a problem, but as it's only June…" He trailed off, wishing that they could resolve this issue earlier. There were a number of other rituals meant to raise efficiency of casting or the speed at which cores refilled, but the easiest way to increase the amount of magic available to a wizard was to force the core to grow. Unfortunately, that set of rituals all required the beneficiary to have an unmodified core, so they had to be very selective about which they performed. The one in question used the sacrifice of a witch's virginity as the 'offering', an element common to almost all rituals that necessary to charge it and affect the change, hence the delay.

"Why did you insist we wait until you turned fifteen, Luna? I know you said it was the age of consent, but that can't be the only reason," Hermione asked.

"That is the only reason. Sorry, I sometimes forget that you don't know all the little details that the magical-raised grow up with; when doing things like this, you have to be very careful that the offering meets the requirements specific to that ritual. If it doesn't, like the virginity being from a girl who isn't old enough to have sex, bad things can happen."

Harry winced, not liking the sound of that. "What, exactly, do you mean by 'bad things'?"

"Impotence, hangnails, blisters on the bum, your insides replacing your outsides, things like that."

"Ah. Hermione, I'm siding with Luna on this one. We'll wait until October."

"No arguments from me."

Luna giggled. "Of course, it also means I'm going to have a wonderful birthday present. We'll have to be discreet, obviously; just imagine the trouble us walking into the Great Hall bowlegged and hanging on your arms would cause."

"I'd rather not, thank you," he said. "Getting back on track, did you notice something to work on, Mione?"

"When I brought you two down to the Dolohov's basement, I had to scour the entire house looking for you. We should look into better communication, and soon."

"Oh, that reminds me," the blonde said, then she drew her wand.

He slapped his hand over his left ear where she had struck him with a point-blank piercing hex. "Shite, Luna! Ow. What was that for?"

"Stop whining, you big baby. Here, put this in." 'This' turned out to be a triangular shard of silvered glass hanging from a simple brass hook. Reluctantly, he slid it into the new hole in his ear and waited while she did the same to herself with another. "Harry Potter."

Before he could ask, the earring started to wiggle. He instantly caught on, smiling as he said, "Accepto. Very nice, love; when did you come up with this?"

"The day after the heist." The words echoed from the earring, which he now knew was charmed exactly like two-way mirrors. "Daddy was talking to a friend in Egypt, and it struck me that something like that would be very helpful. I knew we would need our hands free to cast, so I made them like those head-foals Muggles were making before Voldemort came back. There's one for you, too, Mione."

"Headphones, Luna. Still, how did you get them all connected? I thought the talking mirrors only communicated with its partner."

"It does, but that's because both mirrors are charmed the same time. The earrings were small, so it was easy to make them partners for the others."

He spoke the deactivation word — Otium — and pulled it out. "Well, that takes care of the communication issue."

"Mm-hmm. I have something for us to think about. None of us are very skilled at this, and the only reason we succeeded at all was because there wasn't anyone living in Dolohov's mansion anymore. I think we should keep practicing with houses of other Death Eaters who are in Azkaban before we target places where there are people around, maybe even wait until after we've done some rituals in case we're spotted and have to fight our way out."

"That's probably a prudent course of action," he replied, considering all the things that could go wrong with breaking into a building filled with people. "The only problem is that there are more Death Eaters who stayed out of prison than went in. How many places will be left if we only concentrate on empty houses?"

Hermione pulled out a sheet of paper from the ledger and consulted it. "Half a dozen of them are in prison and have large, well-known manors. If we do our research quickly and stockpile our hauls for you to fence later instead of selling them right after we finish with each house, we should be able to visit most of them before Luna and I leave the country. Do either of you have any objections?" Both of them shook their heads, so she continued.

"Alright, let's look at our choices. First is Augustus Rookwood, former Unspeakable. Sentenced to life imprisonment in Azkaban on the fifteenth of November, 1981…"

The next three weeks were busy, and though they didn't manage to hit every manor on the list, they were pleased overall with the four they stripped. Hermione had departed with her parents to Australia for a month, leaving Harry and Luna alone for two weeks before the annual Snorkack expedition. Other than the occasional day dedicated to selling off their purloined goods and transferring money in Gringotts, they spent their time relaxing.

Of course, since Luna was notoriously cuddle-hungry, relaxingoften became quite intimate…

"Daddy and I leave for Siberia tonight."

"Hmm." Harry just pulled her closer to his chest as they lay on her bed in the Rook. This was something he had missed due to their hectic schedules, and while he knew where she was going with this, he didn't want to leave such a comfortable position just yet.

She sighed contentedly and tightened her hold around his waist. "Why were you so adamant about hitting the Lestrange house before the summer ended?"

"We've destroyed the diary, my scar, the diadem, and the ring. The locket will be practically gift-wrapped for me as soon as I get to Sirius's house. All I needed to get into the Death Eaters' vaults were their Gringotts keys, so if the Lestranges are true to form, I can just grab Hufflepuff's chalice and take care of it. Voldemort may not let Nagini out of his sight, but I'd like for the other Horcruces to be nothing more than bad memories by the time we go back to Hogwarts."

"And if the Lestranges were anything like the others, their key should be in their manor," she murmured. "That requires getting up, though."

"That is the dilemma."

They were silent for several more minutes, then Luna said, "I don't want you tackling it alone. It's too dangerous."

"I know, love. We could put off getting the cup until school starts back…"

"But you don't want to leave the job when we're so close to being done." He sighed in response. She grudgingly sat up and got off the bed, leaving Harry to enjoy the view of the blonde wearing nothing more than her midnight-blue knickers. Only after she was completely dressed did he groan and reach for his jeans.

A dual Apparation later, they stood in sight of a blocky and imposing mansion, built from dark stone and emanating a feeling of dread. Luna cast the magesight charm while he pulled the wardtap and amplifier out of his bag, then he reached back in for their new set of wardpicks. The picks were thin pieces of metal, superficially resembling traditional lockpicks, and were carefully crafted foci. Each one had been made with a specific ward in mind, and a runic script engraved on the surface allowing it to produce an 'anti-ward', for lack of a better term; if the pair encountered a ward they had a pick for, they could simply pour magic through it and nullify the defense long enough to slip across the threshold without any ill effects. The tools had limitations — the biggest being that there could be multiple designs for the same ward, which therefore required multiple picks — but using them was far faster than completely dismantling the ward.

"I see an Apparation ward — keyed, obviously — anti-Portkey, anti-broom, anti-Animagus, a nasty skin-rotting ward that's thankfully down, and… that's it? That doesn't make any sense; it's like they're just begging to be robbed."

"Not every place can be ready to kill us," he said as he returned his tools to their pockets. He began walking toward the house. "We had to catch a break some time, even if it's the home of Bellatrix Lestrange."

"STOP!"

He stopped, his foot an inch above the ground. "Something bad is going to happen if I put my foot down, isn't it?"

"Step backwards slowly," she said. "Now stay right there and don't move. The reason they don't have any brutal wards up is that there are Gubraithian fire-pits buried throughout the yard, and you, with your usual bipolar luck, managed to blindly get in the middle of them."

"Oh. What's the plan, then?" 'Gubraithian fire-pits' was a dreadful misnomer; they had absolutely nothing to do with an everlasting flame. Instead, they were the magical equivalent of land mines, if mines could re-arm themselves after ten seconds.

"I'm going to bring down the Animagus ward, then you put magesight on your glasses and turn into a falcon. While you look for a safe place for us to enter the house, I'll knock out the Apparation ward and come to you after you're human again." She turned to the ward scheme as he heard her mutter, "And let's hope these wards aren't tied to the pits."

He gulped and applied the charm to his new lenses. With their influx of money, he hadn't felt bad about going to an optometrist and getting an updated prescription; a minor compulsion had even ensured he was given an appointment that same day. His sharper vision turned out to be a double-edged sword, however, as he could now see just how close he came to losing a leg. A quick glance behind him showed that, incredibly, he had somehow avoided three rows of fire-pits.

Luna worked with frantic energy and finally gave a cheer of triumph. "Animagus is a go. Fly over and search for a safe spot while I keep working."

"Luna, there's an easier way," Harry remarked, carefully not looking at her. He knew she was terrified that he would give into the falcon's instincts whenever they discussed this option. Still, desperate times and all that.

"Er, not that I don't trust you, sweetie, because I do, but things probably aren't that bad just yet. I can knock out the Apparation ward just fine —"

"Which is time and magic we can't waste. As for being 'that bad', need I remind you about the fact that we can't set a foot on the bloody grounds without worrying about being blown up!" His point made, he glared at her, and she grimaced and looked away.

"Okay, just be careful. I'm delicate, and your bird is known for eating my kind as a snack." She pocketed her wand and transformed, her bright coat making her easy to spot on the grass.

He took a deep breath. Time for the reckless Gryffindor to come out to play. He cast a feather-light charm on himself and jumped ten feet up. As he fell back down, he sent a banishing charm at the ground, the slight recoil enough to propel him higher. The spell flew at an angle and set off a chain reaction of the fire-pits, but by then he had already sprouted wings and simply caught the updraft. Flying in a wide arc allowed him to build enough speed and distance for the next maneuver.

His quarry was running perpendicular to the property, careful not to disturb the outermost row of traps. He followed in a shallow dive, wings still to keep him in a straight line, and extended his legs while stretching his toes out as far as he could. Luna leapt as he began his ascent, and he snagged the little red squirrel out of the air.

She chittered angrily at him as they approached their destination, distressed at just how close his sharp talons were to piercing her flesh. Thankfully he was still feather-light, or his weight could have made simply grabbing her at that speed instantly fatal. He circled the house, fruitlessly looking for any opening that wasn't secured by a pit. Not a single one, he thought. They must have Apparated directly into the house. That's the only way for them to avoid their own defenses.

Seeing no better choice, he did something that he would later admit was tremendously stupid. He oriented himself towards the topmost window, likely an attic, which he saw was not charmed unbreakable; Luna abandoned her scolding for squeaks of sheer terror. Once they were close enough, he let her go, moved between her and the house, returned to human form, pulled the airborne squirrel to his chest, Finite'd himself, and crashed through the glass into the house.

Foolish, yes, but he also felt it was one of the most wicked stunts he had ever pulled while flying. If asked, Luna would vehemently disagree.

He bounced and rolled on the floor, shards of glass digging through the skin of his back and arms, but he eventually stopped. Knowing his passenger had been safe from their entrance, he opened his arms and was instantly covered by furious blonde.

"You idiotic, reckless, short-sighted, simple-minded prat!" she screamed, punctuating each insult with a smack to his chest. "You utter bastard! What part of that was careful?!" Her anger expended, she started to sob as she collapsed onto him. "Why would you consider doing something like that? We didn't come back in time and make a fresh start just so you could get yourself killed!"

Her tears were infinitely more painful to him than her swats, and he wrapped his arms tightly around her. "Merlin, Luna, I'm so, so sorry. I didn't even think before I did it."

"That's obvious."

Harry sat up stiffly, glass falling out and allowing his wounds to weep alongside his lover. He knew no words could make up for what he had done, so he offered none; instead, he let her cry herself out while he gently rocked back and forth. After several minutes, she looked up with her eyes red, and he laid soft kisses on her temple.

"That's not going to put you back in my good books any time soon, you know."

"I know." He continued his ministrations anyway; it would cheer her up slightly if nothing else. There was only one thing he hated more than his girls crying, and that was being the cause of it. He would rather rip out his own heart than do that.

She sighed and moved away from him. "Let me see where you've hurt yourself, then we can find that bloody key. When we're done with Gringotts, you owe me a ton of chocolate ice cream."

Harry strolled down the streets of Little Whinging, enjoying the cooler evening air. The past few weeks had been boring with both girls on vacation. He had whiled away most of his free time at the Manor, repairing the damaged rooms or piddling around the Treasure Chest; since elves were without peer when it came to working with houses, it was far more of the latter. He even broke out his long-neglected brewing skills to get back in practice for the next school year!

Still, he would give a great deal for something interesting to happen. It had been a long time since he was away from his loves for more than a week, and he was sorely missing them. Normally, Luna would do something silly that either put a smile on his face or forced him to help her quench the fires she started in the public fountain — which had happened more than once, to his consternation — or Hermione would go off on a research kick that inevitably drew the other two in. This was, of course, in addition to the danger just going outside into a war zone threw at them. All in all, he had been without peaceful alone time for so long that he wasn't entirely sure what to do with it.

He entered the local park and sat on a broken swing. The last few days had been filled with him pondering questions without answers, not an activity he took a great deal of pleasure in. How should he react to Sirius? What could he do to neutralize Dumbledore and Voldemort? Where would be the best places to hide Weasley's and Malfoy's bodies? Actually, the last one isn't too bad to think on.

In addition, he was only now coming to grips with how difficult the upcoming year would be for them. We never considered just how different we would appear once everyone's attention was on us. We don't act like teenagers, we don't cast spells like teenagers, and we're ten years too old to connect with our peers. Before we left Hogwarts two months ago, Seamus's attempt to pressure me was so weak as to be laughable, but it would have worked were we younger. Honestly, we're closer to the professors' level of maturity, but they would never treat students as friends.

Harry sighed as he continued ruminating, not noticing the purpling of the sky or the falling temperature. By the time he pulled himself back to the outside world, night had completely overtaken Surrey. He stood and worked out the stiffness in his legs, then began taking a long route back to the Dursleys'. The crossroad closest to him was one of the most common places for Dudley's gang to hang around, and he would prefer not having to deal with them right now.

After cutting through an alley, he realized that something was wrong. The stars had dimmed, as had the streetlamps, leaving him barely enough light to see his breath fogging in the sudden, biting cold. He looked down Magnolia Crescent just as two shapes, inhumanly tall and wrapped in ragged cloaks, dropped a third, obese figure onto the ground. A hoarse rattle turned the blood rushing through his heart to ice, and he reached into his pocket before the image of a wand lying on his desk came to mind.

"Bugger."

He turned and ran, not wasting time on berating himself for forgetting the Ministry's attempt on his life. He knew Fudge wanted him silenced by any means necessary, though he couldn't prove it, even in the past timeline; he knew Umbridge was such a fanatical Pureblood bigot that the thought of a half-blood with fame filled her with an incomprehensible rage, no matter that his name was currently being dragged through the mud; he knew Lucius Malfoy was likely just waiting for news of his demise to bring back to Voldemort; he knew in these dark times it was beyond foolish to leave his wand at the Dursleys'. None of that mattered at the moment.

What mattered was putting as much distance between himself and the soul-eating demons that followed as he could.

He knocked the front door of Number 4 off its hinges in his haste to get inside. The Dementors had inched closer and closer the entire way back, and he didn't have the time to worry about niceties like opening doors. All he wanted to do was grab the last of his possessions and get away from any location the Ministry could find. He hadn't thought of it in the past, but if they were willing to go so far as to have him Kissed, he was safest out of their sights.

"What the devil are you doing, boy!" Vernon roared.

Harry ducked under the fat arm that reached out to stop him and pounded up the stairs; from the corner of his eye he saw ice spreading on the windows. After entering the room and grabbing his wand, he magically packed everything into his trunk, slammed it shut, and shrank it. He ignored that the monitoring ward over the house was active again and had likely reported his infringement of the underage magic law to the Ministry. Let them come. If it didn't require sticking around, I'd like to see them try to explain away three soulless Muggles.

With his belongings in his pocket, his wand in his hand, and his mind no longer stuck in fight-or-flight mode, he jumped out his still-open window and shifted into a falcon just as Vernon's and Petunia's screams reached his ears.

I almost made Harry see all the mines around him and say "This can't possibly get any worse!", but decided that might tempt my muse a little too much.

Be honest, who thought I was going to take care of the Dursleys like that?