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Chapter Text

James fitted the little bow to Jazmin's head then smiled as she reached up and tried to tug it off while he admired her little Fox costume[1]. She giggled at the sensation then held her arms out. "Dada!"

He grinned and picked her up, kissing her nose then saying, "Let's go show mummy!"

In the children's nursery, Lily was giving Harry a cool bath. He had a minor case of wizard's flu that was defeating the medicines they had in at the moment. In the morning they'd send a house elf to get the supplies she would need to brew the cure.

So now instead of the Potters taking their twins dressed as a Fox and a Hound to the Potter halloween party, James was going to take just their daughter.

Lily took her from James and gave him a soft kiss that addled his brain momentarily when she decided to shove her tongue into his mouth and press herself against him.

"Hello sailor," she said, pulling away, admiring his 'costume,' the actual captain's uniform worn by one of the few wizards of the Potter line that had decided to join the muggle's military in the early nineteenth century. When he had returned to the wizarding world after thirty years at sea the uniform had been placed under stasis wards in the Potter vaults as well as the significant amount of treasure he had taken from the Empire's enemies.

"That's captain, wench!" he finally uttered to her amusement. Her costume was still a secret to her husband but she had related it was very sexy. She had seen an episode of a show from America hosted by a woman named Elvira, Mistress of the Dark and had immediately chosen that idea, watching the show over and over until she had been able to perfectly transfigure one of her gowns into the dress she wore. It would probably have shocked her father-in-law but the man adored her, especially for how she had so mellowed James.

"When you get home, I'll be dressed quite wenchy," she teased, running her free hand across his groin, grinning as she felt it twitch.

She covered Jazmin's face with kisses then handed her back. "Tell your dad I said hello. And say hi to Pupfoot-" Sirius's new nickname due to a small incident with a reverse-aging potion during an arrest "-for me."

He kissed her again then headed for the backyard and the small spot in it where one could apparate out.

---

Albus finished the arithmantic equations upon the fidelius charm-which had required a two month long immersion back into arithmancy with Nicolas Flamel's help as well as the creation of two new runes and disproving one theory and elevating two hypotheses to theories-but he had done it. The fidelius was even more powerful than they had believed. He could hide the Potters and the Longbottoms in plain sight with them being their own secret keepers he now knew, Sirius would no longer need be in danger for the whole world would forget the two families, not just where they lived.

He looked at his calendar. Samhain. For the next twenty-four hours his students would be celebrating the end of the harvest even if they no longer did so. When he was at school, this was the day students would be preparing to return to school having been at home helping with the harvests of their families and villages. World War I and industrialization had changed that.

He decided it could wait one more day.

He pushed his research away and took out his wand, waving it and sending the parchment and etched sheets of tin to his bookshelf.

Standing and stretching, he groaned. This was one of those days where he felt a century old. Which I am, he reminded himself.

Chuckling at his little self-revelation, he tucked his wand away and headed down to see how the preparations were going.

Passing a window he saw the four eternal bonfires were roaring away some twenty feet in the air and moved closer to the window to look. He smiled. Each house of students were out, listening to their heads of house. He pulled his wand and gave a little twirl. He could now hear Minerva telling a story to her Gryffindors and even the house-parents-a young married couple hired to act as advisors-and the handful of staff that had also been in Gryffindor were focused on her tale with rapt attention. As he listened, he realized it was her 25th anniversary of being hired and made a note to have a whip-around with the rest of the staff for a suitable gift.

"-strode through the fire, his robes catching aflame but he cared not," she said, dramatically pausing. "He closed upon his once friend, wand in hand, his heart heavy, knowing that this would likely be the last time they met."

He smiled a little wider though his heart was heavy. While he would have stopped her from telling the tale had he been near, his students hearing of his battle with Gellert Grindlewald-even highly fictionalized-was quite likely a good thing to hear in these dark times. Just this morning he had had to inform a pair of students their father had been murdered and their mother badly injured.

He continued down and stepped out, stopping to look up, smiling at the snow as it lightly fell. Snow on Samhain. Always a sign of good test scores he had found.

His foot touched the ground and he felt a thrum of power from the ley lines that intersected under the school.

---

Sirius had had a strange feeling all day. He had ignored it much too long, he finally decided and abandoned his own plans for the day when he realized it was Samhain-no longer working with James and off the job as an Auror, he had taken to working on his Mastery of Transfiguration when not working as an infiltrator and spy.

His fingers ran across scars on his arm, each line a marking for a dead Death Eater with the lines with barb at the end signifying those he savaged as Padfoot.

Sirius disappeared from where he stood and reappeared outside the small village Wormtail was hiding in, a small hamlet outside of Paris called Chemillé.

He was just outside the other animagus' home when French Aurors appeared. He shifted into Padfoot's form and huddled out of the way. Since Sirius was no longer an active Auror his apparating into France was a fairly significant crime, especially in these dark days, Sirius mused.

The Aurors gave up after an hour and Sirius scowled. There was no more time for looking for Pettigrew if he wasn't at home.

He knocked on the door and waited then gave the Marauders' knock. Nothing. Scowling in annoyance, he disappeared, this time appearing in Nottinghamshire to the apparition point just outside the wards protecting the Potter Manse. He yawned mightily as a pair of centaurs lowered their spears and nodded politely. "Hello Sirius of House Potter. Welcome home."

Sirius smiled at that. While He wasn't technically a Potter as his father hadn't legally disowned him yet-he expected to hear it was done in the will, he was a Potter in all but name.

"Thank you. Where's my bag?"

A house-elf that was also working the apparition point snapped her fingers and a satchel appeared in her hands. "Here Master Sirius."

Sirius went into a small room off to the side and changed into his costume for the Potter Samhain Ball, the 123rd in a row and the 272nd one.

When he stepped out, a handful of guests were arriving, one of the women looking his Billy Idol costume up and down then sending him a very lascivious wink before taking her date's hand and continuing on. Sirius made note of her costume in hopes of cutting her off from her date to find a closet.

---

Clan Chieftain Somerled Potter took his granddaughter from his son and smiled as she tried to shove her fingers up his nose. "Shame Harry's sick, there're a few people here that Lily would have liked to meet."

"I was thinking I would go home in an hour or so and let her come."

"Excellent idea. Looking forward to seeing her costume this year," Sirius said, walking up. He took Jazmin from the man and said, "Hi dad, Prongs. My little Jazzy!"

She giggled and kissed him back when he kissed her cheek. "So what did Lily decide on this year? Last year's costume was very hot."

"My wife," James said mock-angrily.

"your wife, his daughter-in-law, my fantasy," he teased back to Somerled's laughter.

James rolled his eyes then looked around. "Speaking of in-laws, where is Marilee?" His mother-in-law.

"Dame Longbottom-" the mother of the current head of the Longbottom family "-wanted to discuss something with her. I believe it was something about baking."

"Ah Wizards Potter and Black," a wizard said, approaching.

The two Aurors and the Clan Chieftain turned to see who it was and saw Erikard Clancy approaching, a former hit-wizard who had begun working as a wardcrafter when Voldemort had come upon the scene and his Death Eaters proved him not to be a Political Entity only.

"Clancy!" Somerled said. His rank allowed him to be much more familiar than his son would be in greeting. "How are you? Work is good I expect?"

"Very busy. I almost didn't take Samhain off but decided an invitation from you was worth a few lost galleons. Ah, one of the little Potters," he said, stroking her cheek for a moment. "Where's the heir?"

"He's at home with a bit of a case of Wizard's flu."

Sirius and Erichard both looked a little shocked. Though Sirius knew Harry had begun showing signs of using his magic at-will already, to catch wizard's flu before age eight or nine was shocking. Neither had ever heard of a child being that powerful as to catch it before they were even a toddler. "Ah, my heir," Somerled said happily.

"Yes, quite intriguing," Clancy admitted. "Have you attempted to quantify his ability yet?"

"No. I likely will soon though. He's been summoning Lil's cat to him for a couple months now. We usually treat him for a cat scratch or three a week."

They all chuckled at that.

Their little confabulation ended and the Potters and Black went to mingle with their guests.

---

James took Jazmin back from the woman who had been holding her and looked at his pocket watch. A few minutes after ten. He felt terrible about not spelling his wife for the evening but his duties as a Potter had taken more time than he had thought they would. Even with their society in the middle of dealing with terrorist factions other business had to go on.

He was about to pass Jazmin off to her grandmother so the woman could take her to the nursery in Thorseby hall when he felt a trill of pain. His wards on Potter Cottage had just been torn apart.

He dropped to his knees in pain as Sirius rushed over from where he had been standing.

"The wards," he grunted when his father got to them. "They're gone!"

He pulled himself up with Sirius's help, handed his now crying daughter to his mother-in-law, then ripped through the family wards on the Potter Manse, apparating back home.

---

Albus winced in pain. One of his alert wards had been ripped through. He took a small notebook from his pocket and flipped it open to the only black page inside. Written on it in blood-red letters was the name Potter. This ward was designed to specifically inform him of one wizard's magical signature being registered, one Tom Marvolo Riddle's.

Albus stood from where he had been sitting, roasting marshmallows with some of the Aurors stationed at the school and called for Fawkes.

The Phoenix appeared and the old man reached up, grasping the tail feathers, calling out "The Potters's cottage!"

They disappeared in a flare of gold flames.

When Albus appeared outside Potters's cottage, flames were wicking out of the roof above where he knew the nursery was and his face drained of blood, turning his slightly mahogany tan skin tone as pale as a ghost's skin tone.

He was about to walk in when James, Sirius, Remus, and Somerled appeared, wands out in battle stance, a pair of men behind Somerled, the hereditary holders of the Clan Potter sword and shield-While the Potters had come from the Highland Clans and were often some of the best magical warriors, they had also fought as the mundanes did with sword and shield, showing that even with crude steel and wood they were a force to be reckoned with, killing off the men of most other Highland Clans when they began converting to Christianity and had attempted to forcibly convert their clan[2].

"Albus?"

"I just arrived when one of my wards was tripped. One that would inform me that VOldemort had entered. But how? Was not Sirius-"

"No, we used Pettigrew as the secret keeper. No one would think to harm him when Sirius was believed to be it and always out and about," James said woodenly.

Somerled turned to his shield holder. "Go. To the Ministry. Tell the Lord's Wizengamot representative that Pettigrew is a traitor to the Crown[3]."

Albus watched the man nod then turned back and saw James had already entered the house while Fawkes was flying in circles above the flames, faster and faster. He watched in utter fascination as the fire seemed to detach from the building then disappear as the magical bird consumed it. "I always learn something new about you," he said softly.

Inside the building he found ashes in a pair of black robes with the Slytherin crest on them while James held his wife's dead body, crying. Sirius was holding his crying godson and showing the boy's grandfather the wound on his forehead. It had a green glow, the same sickly color of the Avada Kedavra curse. They turned to Albus who moved forward and began some of the more esoteric diagnostic spells he knew. "We must take him to Hogwarts. I will retrieve a specialist I know. Somerled, if you can retrieve Amelia Bones and her partner?" The man nodded and he and his sword carrier disappeared. "Sirius, Remus, if you would alert the other members of the Order? I need them at Hogwarts." They nodded and disappeared. "James, son, let us prepare her for the rites."

James looked at the old man and eventually nodded. "Yes."

"Take your son to Hogwarts, I will wait here for the Aurors and arrange for the preparations."

James nodded and took his son. Harry hugged his neck tightly and cryingly called for "Mama!"

"Mummy's gone on to the next adventure," James whispered, choking on the word next.

---

Aurors Bones[4] and Chilus appeared outside the home, led by Somerled. They couldn't see it but Somerled was able to lead them inside where the two began immediately investigating. Albus gave Amelia his story and the events of the day he had gleaned then cast a lightening charm on his former student's mortal remains and carefully lifted her.

Fawkes flew into the room and the three disappeared in a flash of gold.

Amelia sighed. This was her fifth crime scene of the day and the fourth murder. Be glad it's only one dead, she told herself and turned to see Chilus looking at her with great confusion. "These are-these are HIS robes!"

"I know. He's gone," she said, not adding the for now the Headmaster had quantified it with.

Before she could stop him, Chilus had sent off his Patronus three times with messages.

She growled but he was the senior Auror.

Amelia finished the diagnostic spells. There was, of course, no proof, aside from the body, that the killing curse had been used-twice it seemed, the second completely ineffectively(?!)-but there was proof of two wand signatures used: Voldemort's and someone else's. By the order of the Potters and the Headmaster, Peter Pettigrew was wanted for this crime.

Amelia looked around the home, noting Lily Potter's wand was on her bedside table-she made a note to knock it into her just born niece's head that a wand is always with you-though she didn't fault the woman, she had been living under a spell that made their home invisible. They should have been safe and their son was ill, she would likely have left her own behind if she knew it would do no good while soothing a child, especially a toddler sick with wizard's flu (wizard's flu in a toddler, her mind boggled). The cottage was beautiful, even in its partial destruction.

She felt a little jealous. Her own home was a few rooms in the old Charnel House in Ossuary Cove in Wales, the ancestral home of her family after coming back from privateering in the early nineteenth century. It was large and comfortable but the Potters were very well to do she knew. They owned at least nine homes, the majority of the land upon which Hogsmeade sat, and rumor had it two islands.

---

Albus scowled. He received all three daily papers, the Daily Prophet, the Circadian Soothsayer-which was as nearly a tabloid rag as the Daily Prophet but had interesting daily puzzles like the periodical the Lovegoods put out though not as fiendishly difficult as theirs, and the Albion Astrologer-which was the most competent of papers and owned by the Potters though they didn't have anything to do with its running: all three had variations of the same story. The Daily Prophet was calling Harry the Boy-Who-Lived, the slayer of Voldemort. The Soothsayer had gone with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's-Conqueror. The Albion had gone with something simple: Gotcha!

While they were all basically factual-though the Soothsayer and the Prophet were as usual highly embellished, the information shouldn't have been released. he wanted to know who had released it and as the current vice-warlock on the wizengamot he was going to make sure whoever did lost their jobs and did time in the high security level of Azkaban[5].

Students began to arrive for breakfast and he pushed the papers away, watching them pile in. Though it was a sunday and most students would normally sleep in, the majority of students awoke early and swarmed the dining room the day after Samhain began in hopes of getting first crack at the much anticipated first harvest foods, especially the pumpkin waffles and baked cinnamon-apple pancakes.

His copy of the Sunday Sage-another periodical owned by the Potters which was a harder hitting news magazine-arrived and he flipped through it as Minerva arrived. "What happened last evening?"

He pushed his papers towards her and forked two of the pumpkin waffles onto his plate, covering them with blood orange syrup.

"Oh my gods!" she gasped louder than she meant, causing students and arriving staff to look her way.

"Whe-where're Harry and Jazmin and James?" she asked softly.

"Here, in the parental rooms." For when students were injured badly enough that parents were informed which was rare, even with the war on. If the parents felt the need they could come and stay while their child was healed. Few rarely did though it was quite common for a parent to stop by at least once or twice during an extended healing process. "The Order is dealing with many things that need dealt with. I spoke with the Chief Warlock earlier. He's going to begin arresting every known or suspected Death Eater. But I fear for his will to prosecute."

"What of Lily?"

"We'll have the ceremony today after lunch. Normally it would be done on Thoresby grounds but James is reticent about moving the twins too much for now. I offered them the use of the castle until they're ready to move back to Thoresby.

"As you know, their home was under the fidelius. I spent most of the past two months studying it and have created a number of variants. I am able to cast it on a person's name-which I had planned to do today to protect them but allow them to leave Potter Cottage-allowing someone else to be the secret keeper. Would you be willing to be the secret keeper? For them?"

"Of course I will," she said vehemently.

Students papers began to arrive and the first to get it read it, gasping aloud, yelling out what he had read.

The students began to question him loudly and he stood, drawing his wand, sending out a percussive blast that silenced them all quickly.

"Yes, it is true," he began to lie. "Voldemort is dead." He in fact doubted it due to Riddle's utter fear of death, he would have pressed towards so many of the old methods of extending one's life. "Yes, Lily Potter is dead. And yes, Harry Potter survived the killing curse."

"The Boy-Who-Lived!" whispers began percolating through the crowd of students. Albus hid his scowl at the term.

---

Sirius shifted from his Padfoot form and looked at his godchildren, sleeping then ruffled both their hair and turned to see James was snoring softly. He nodded and moved out of the room to find Remus sleeping on the couch. When Voldemort had been courting the werewolves, Remus had done something fairly dumb. He had made an unbreakable vow to never support Voldemort to his friends.

"Wake up Moony!" he said, kicking the couch he lay on.

He rolled off, groaning. "Ow!"

Sirius chuckled as Moony cursed him.

"The Sword and Shield of Father's are watching this apartment," he told him. "We can go get breakfast."

Moony nodded as he stood, tugging his robes straight. "What the hell are you dressed as?"

"Billy Idol. Lily's favo-he used to be Lily's favorite musician. Sexy look, right? I got two different women in my room during the party and had the Chinese Ambassador's wife give me a handy."

"You're a degenerate sexhound," Moony muttered but smiled. "I actually had an encounter myself," he admitted as they walked. "Merilee Syndrome."

Sirius walked into the wall when he snapped to look at him. "Moony!" She was a disgustingly famous singer who was popular with the younger generations due to her subject matter: she often sang about relationships with Dark Creatures and other magical creatures like Werewolves or Centaurs. "Has-has she really been with a centaur? Did you tell her about your furry little problem?"

"Of course not. And she said no. And the fact she bled when I had her, well, I might have been her first." There were spells and potions to reform the hymen fairly easily though the spells were power intensive and the potions were time intensive. He had his own room at Potter Manse as well but rarely stayed there due to all the silver in the place-silver mines and occamy eggs were the backbone of the Potter wealth.

"I am so proud of you," Sirius said, slapping him on the back.

They were a little shocked to find celebrations happening in the great hall until they saw a paper. The death of Lily, Voldemort, and the survival of Harry had already been reported. Then they heard the term Boy-Who-Lived and both grimaced.

Albus and Minerva gestured them up to join them at the staff table.

"James and the twins still asleep?"

"Poppy gave them a sleeping draught," Remus answered Minerva.

---

Somerled watched his men stream into Hogwarts grounds. Every employee, clansman, or indentured servant-a practice he hated but if someone was willing to do so, he would bring them aboard and try to work them out of his debt as fast as they could handle-numbering greatly beyond the current 11-18 student population of 217 (half what it was when he was a student), 47 taking post-graduate classes[6], and 33 in various stages of pre-ministry training: in total he had 932 men coming in and all 144 house elves that worked for or were owned by the Potters.

He turned and looked at the waiting pyre[8], his daughter-in-law swathed in bandages of purest white, 7,777 galleons[9] worth of items to be sacrificed in her honor, 777 white lilies upon the pyre, the flowers a sign of purity and innocence attained with death.

The students and visitors began to take their places around the pyre silently, watching James Potter and Sirius Black-Potter as they held the Potter twins so that they couldn't see the pyre or their mother's body on it.

When everyone was in place, Albus stepped forward, resplendent in his white robes[10].

James looked over and fought back the urge to smile at his father holding his mother-in-law, patting her back awkwardly as she cried into his robes.

He looked over the sea of white with hues of black and grey[11] then turned his attention back to Albus who had turned to look at his phoenix sitting on a stele the groundsman Hagrid had spent all night carving and crying over. The Potters were some of the nicest people he had ever known after Albus Dumbledore, the giant had informed the Headmaster. Albus had made a mental note to have some monogrammed handkerchiefs made up as this years christmas gift to the half-giant.

He turned back to the crowd and began to speak.

"Today we are gathered to give our final farewells to a hero of the Purity War-" A number of students looked incensed at that, mostly upperclass slytherins and a Ravenclaw or two, Albus noticed. The term Purity War was used by two of the most popular periodicals, mocking those who believed that power grew from the purity of one's blood "-whose sacrifice-"

James tuned out his friend's speech, concentrating on his wife's remains, watching her hair wave due to the wind.

Then he realized a significant amount of time had paused when he saw Fawkes fly towards his wife and settle on the pyre next to her. He watched in bemusement as the bird's color began to lighten to pink then white and then the pyre ignited.

Albus flicked his wand, keeping the smell of burning flesh from actually being smelled by those in attendance. There was no need to traumatize the youngest that had decided to attend.

James watched his wife's body consumed by the white hot flames, returning her to the world.

He hugged Jazmin a little tighter than he meant to and she said "Owie daddy!"

"Sorry little one," he murmured and kissed her nose.

---

A/N: This story takes place in my AU mentioned in Drabbles and occasionally in the orphanage of lost prompts.

---

1: This is their costume choices because Fox and Hound was released the summer before Harry's parents die in canon. it's also now a reference to the hilarious Larceny, Lechery, and Luna Lovegood.
2: In this universe Christianity is very much the big bad. And I don't really get the christian overtones of the Harry Potter series (which if you don't see them, you're just not paying attention. Nor do I understand the christians who hate the series). Nonetheless, the reason Christianity-in fact most Abrahamic religion aside from Judaism-in this series is hated on is due to the witch burnings(I'm going to have power levels of magicals make it impossible for EVERY magical to perform a flame freezing charm so in fact not all could have easily escaped the burning times). Judaism isn't hated on due to Jesus being a wizard and his being the 'king of jews.'
3: Normally I despise how everyone is a lord, they're all part of the wizengamot, and yatta yatta. That's all bullshit. In this series, there are two wizengamots like there are two Houses. The House of Commons and the House of Lords. The magicals have the Common Wizengamot (50 members) and the Lords' Wizengamot (49 members: 42 hereditary, 7 honorary) members. The Lords have no veto power-technically-or law passing powers. Their jobs are to debate the merit of laws that are introduced by the Common court, make suggestive changes, pass it back, then look at it again. Once they're satisfied with the law they send it back with their seal of approval. If they don't approve, it can be passed but only if 49 of the fifty members of the wizengamot-which must include the Chief Warlock-vote for the passing of the law and half the members immediately stepping down and unable to be re-elected for seven years.
As for the crown thing, that is used in a lot of fics as well and makes a lot of sense. Even though they're separate, they had to get permission from the crown at the time to do so. Perhaps there's still a magical advisor to the crown as well? We shall see (it's likely).
4: Usually I hate how every person is interconnected in the past, no one uses OCs unless they're self-inserts or mary-sues or whatev. I think this time it's a bit warranted. Her relatives are members of Dumbledore's Order which he knows she can be trusted.
5: Instead of a castle as most write it as or the fairly cool looking triangular building in the movies or a rectangular tower in one books cover, I envision it as a steppe pyramid with the only entrance being the pinnacle, the stones of the building ancient and blackened, dead vines covering the building, and only a few meters of beaches around the prison itself-perhaps a mile on each side?
6: When I read that JKR said that a magical was fully trained when done at Hogwarts and looked at the classwork available up til sixth year, it showed just how weak their society is. So classes will be greatly changed. NEARLY EVERY job will have a 1-5 year training program, there are three post-graduate training schools, and the ministry maintains a training program for its new employees in a number of buildings in Hogsmeade[7].
7: Hogsmeade will also have some serious changes to it since it's much too much a tourist village and not a student village for relaxing in. The Number of Hogsmeade weekends will change as well, 3 in third, 4 in fourth, and so on until seventh when any seventh year can go into the village after classes or any weekend as they're the ones looking for work or preparing for their new jobs and so on.
8: WHY WOULD ANYONE BURY A BODY WHEN INFERI ARE SO EASY TO MAKE? SERIOUSLY, GRAVEYARDS FULL OF MAGICAL BODIES MAKE NO SENSE. Cremation makes so much more sense when you know some dark wizard or some fucking pervert (Like Severus Snape[actually I'm shocked I've never seen a fic where he brought her back as one for sexy times though i've read a few where he's defiled the Potter graves]) could easily bring the corpse back to do god knows what with it.
9: In this universe, galleons are worth one seventh of an ounce of gold. At the time, I think an ounce was worth about 350 US Dollars so each one is worth 50 USD or 26.75 GBP. There's a website called FXTOP dot com that has a historical currency converter that I expect to use a lot. Five pounds per galleon is such a terrible conversion, it's quite obvious she's terrible with maths(also, why shorten mathematics as math?!). So, yeah, he's sacrificing a LOT of stuff. Dunno what specifically, perhaps it'll be a later plot point.
10: White is the sign of Death in ancient Egypt and contemporary Asia. It's the sign of innocence, rebirth, and purity in Western culture.
11: In the series, student robes(not uniforms like in the movies though I do want to have students have the choice between them, probably starting third year?)start as black and as they move upwards towards seventh year, their robes get progressively lighter until seventh years where white robes or any color they want, though since they're at a funeral, white is the required except for the sixth and younger years, they're just wearing their daily robes.

Chapter Text

James looked around Sirius’s family home in London--Sirius’s mother had sold off their country estate to fund Vodemort’s campaign of terror--and was quite glad he hadn’t brought the twins along. Sirius, Remus, and James were immediately inflicted upon with a harangue by the portrait of his now dead mother.

“Shut up you useless old whore!” Sirius screamed back.

The three spent two hours trying to get it off the wall then James finally suggested, “Forget doing it the magical way, Remus, conjure up some paint thinner!” James knew Remus could handle the distraction better when conjuring, even if James was the transfiguration prodigy.

“Happily!” the werewolf said.

She screeched at them but the conjured and banished glass bottle of paint thinner went to work. Her screams of anger trailed off until there was only a sludgy trail of ruined paint.

There was a scream of anger and they turned to see a maddened house elf flying at them. Sirius’s wand snapped up and he cast a severing charm, slicing off the old house-elf’s head.

“Why did you kill it?” Remus asked, a little shocked.

“I hated that thing. Drove me crazy for years. The house elf dad gave me for my apartment? Now she’s how a house elf should act. In fact,” he snapped his fingers. “Pinky.”

“Yes Master Siri--oh. Snarf.”

James and Sirius smirked at the Low Elf curse word while Remus looked confused until James whispered what it meant.

“Pinky, I need you to start cleaning this place up. James, Remus and I are gonna live here. I’ll use the top floor, Remus will get the second floor, and James and the twins will use the first floor, the ground floor will be the common area. Put anything cursed or dark into the library on the first floor, we’ll deal with it later. Bring in, oh, however many house-elves from the Manse you think we’ll need,” Sirius said. “And deal with Kreacher and the painting. We’ll put Lily’s painting there once it awakes.”

“Yes Master Sirius.” She looked around then snapped her fingers three times, bringing Mizaru, Kikazaru, and Iwazaru, three recently acquired house elves from japan whose master had failed to repay a significant debt to the Potter corporation. She began giving them orders and soon the four house elves were cleaning the place while the three adults sat down to begin planning out the magical refurbishment of the terrace house.

“I wonder if your parents ever found out dad bought up all the houses on this block,” James asked.

“Doubt it. Why did he?”

“He was going to buy the house from the estate sale, he didn’t realize you were going to inherit. I can’t believe your father didn’t actually disinherit you. I think he planned to give them all to you so you could raze the place and build a condo complex or something.”

“Neither can I. He was always doing whatever mum told him to. Fuck them. Anyway, I figure I’ll let Sula design my floor.”

James dropped his wand: Both Remus and James were staring at their best friend. “Sulabha? The Veela girl who left Hogwarts after fifth year?” She was the daughter of a diplomat and not particularly powerful either as a witch or as a veela. Her allure was barely strong enough to tempt most teenage boys, it was her beauty alone that captivated. When she had left hogwarts she had gone to Paris and immediately been snapped up by some modeling agency.

“Yeah, I got an owl from her this morning, she wants to try again. When she had heard that Voldemort was dead she had immediately written the letter, she said.”

“She always was smart,” Remus said. “Even if weak casting wise.”

They all nodded. Sulabha was a wonderful young woman but she had had difficulty even casting cheering charms, even using a wand crafted with a feather from a family member.

“She’ll still be working as a model too,” Sirius said with a dreamy voice. He had done his best to make sure he bought everything she modeled in. “Oh, Remus, she’s bringing her PA along, she thinks you two will hit it off. So we’ll make sure your floor has room for kids too.”

Remus started to protest until James hit him with a silencing charm and Sirius hit him with a sticking charm. “Now, James, how do you want to design your floor?”

He hesitated then softly said, “When Lily’s painting awakes ask her. I’m going back to the Manse, see my kids.”

They both nodded as James disappeared.

---

When James walked into the nursery of the manse, he found Albus holding a sleeping Harry and reading a scroll. “Are you kidnapping my son?” he asked teasingly.

Albus chuckled softly at that. “I’m verifying something. I’m worried about this scar. James, I need your permission to cast legilimens on your son.”

James frowned and took Harry from Albus as the boy woke. “Why?”

“He hasn’t spoken since that night. I think when Voldemort died, well, I think he might have tried to possess Harry. I don’t believe he’s truly dead and if he did attempt to do so, he might have left something behind.”

James shivered in fright but nodded, holding his son and watching as the old man looked into Harry’s eyes.

They both seemed catatonic for nearly a minute then Albus came back, crying.

“I was right. There’s--there’s years of information in there, decades. Perhaps even a century’s worth. It’s likely he got a hold of a time-turner to help expand his knowledge. James, this is dangerous but I think the safest thing we can do is for one of us to go in and carefully compartmentalize the knowledge, locking away the dangerous things, letting the rest get unlocked as your son learns it on his own. It will reinforce his own gained knowledge.”

“Couldn’t we just obliterate it all away?”

“It would be like trying to banish all the sand on the beach save for a handful of specific grains. Impossible. If we don’t, well, I think the knowledge will corrupt him.”

James nodded once more. “Can--how long will it take?”

“The rest of the day easily. Let’s tell Somerled what we’re doing.”

Albus picked up Jazmin as she had just awoken from her nap and they went down to James’s father’s study where he was looking at the month’s figures.

“Jimmy, Albie, what’s going on?”

James explained the problem to his father, successfully resisting the urge to curse him for calling him Jimmy, if only just so.

He took his granddaughter and sat down to watch the two begin.

---

James scratched his beard and decided today was the day to shave. It had been four months since his wife’s death. Three months since his friends’ imprisonment in their own minds when some still free Death Eaters attempted to torture the whereabouts of Voldemort from them. Two since Pettigrew had been caught. And a month since he had learned the truth about Severus Snape. Only Albus’s pleas kept the greasy fuck alive. James and the Marauders had given their word: until true proof of death was achieved, Snivellus would survive. But the day there was proof... Somerled Potter had already initiated the paperwork for a blood feud via the International Magical Convention[1]. The day there was proof was the day that paperwork got filed and that was the day 1000 soldiers strong Clan Potter[3] would scour the world for Snivellus Snape, the betrayer of his only friend thrice over.

After his shower and dressing in clean robes and doing his hair properly like the son of a Chieftain[4]--he chuckled a little bit at the thought of Sirius screwing up his potion to grow out his hair now that he was the head of his family--he walked out to find Minerva and Albus waiting, playing with the twins.

“Today then?”

“Yes,” Albus said. Today was the day the Potters disappeared and a new family called the Xylophones appeared. And the day Somerled Potter adopted a family that if anyone could remember the Potters, they’d think they were exactly the same.

It took nearly an hour to properly cast the modified hex--while the Fidelius on an object was a charm, Albus felt classifying it as a charm when cast on a person’s self/sense of self wasn’t exactly the proper nomenclature--three times to hide the three then Mineva whispered a phrase into a confused looking Somerled’s ear whose face broke into a smile then he was pulling James Xylophone into a hug. “Welcome to the family my boy. It’s kind of frightening I so quickly forgot you,” he muttered.

James chuckled and picked up Evan Xylophone and handed him to his grandfather then picked up Jasmine Xylophone--Harry’s name had been changed to both honor his wife and make sure he wouldn’t be so easily linked.

“Your cheek is bleeding,” Albus said to James.

He turned to look in the mirror and cursed when he realized what was wrong. “Didn’t use a zed when you shaved?” the older man asked and James nodded. On the 23rd of every month, the shaving charm which used a swooping S shape on most days required an inverted Z to properly shave. Otherwise it left the user of the charm with a delayed cutting charm on seven spots on his face. On the 29th of February you couldn’t even use the spell or you would end up blowing up your wand--the spell was why enchanted razors were so popular.

He cast the styptic charm on himself then wiped the blood off and thanked Minerva for being the Secret Keeper.

Once that was taken care of, Sirius, Remus, and James began casting the Fidelius Charm on 12 Grimmauld place.

It was late evening and the Potters and the two Marauders were enjoying their dinner when an owl arrived for James Xylophone and Sirius Black.

After a number of detection charms, they opened it and Sirius almost dropped it. It was a job offer from the elite Auror/Hit-Wizard program, the International Blackguard Aurors.

“Moody suggested you,” Remus said, reading the bottom of the letter.

“I think we should,” Sirius said. “Remus can be my Regent. It’ll be a good paycheck too.”

Remus nodded hesitantly. “And what specifically will I do as Regent?”

Before they could answer, Evan said, “Uh oh.”

Sirius and Remus looked at their friend then each other and apparated away. James cursed them under his breath and picked up his son. “Did someone make a boom boom?” he asked cheerfully.

---

Sirius and Remus were walking down the street, congratulating themselves on escaping diaper duty when they stopped upon seeing one of his cousins, specifically Narcissa. She looked wild-eyed, her clothes a shambles, her hair a fright, and her makeup ruined.

“Sir--Sirius?!” she gasped upon seeing him. “Please--please help!”

He rushed over to catch her. He wasn’t in time and she ripped her skull open on a nail sticking out of a poorly maintained building.

“St. Mungo’s?” Remus asked. Sirius nodded, hefted his cousin, then disappeared.

Remus went to send owls to James and Somerled to let them know what had happened. If it was a trick by the wife of a Death Eater, they needed to start preparing to plan vengeance. If It wasn’t a trick, they needed to find out what had happened to the middle temperament Black daughter.

He moved back in and sent an owl off to Andromeda Tonks as well, the one Black daughter that hadn’t gone all evil.

---

Andromeda appeared in the apparition safe zone at St Mungo’s holding her daughter’s hand then smiled at the girl. “Come this way Nymphadora. Your Cousin Sirius brought your Auntie Narcissa here.”

“Yes mummy,” the girl said, straightening the ribbon and pleats of her dress[5]. “Are the babies going to be here?” she asked hopefully. She had just recently met the twins and adored them both. She had been trying to teach them Candyland.

“Sorry little one but they’re at home. I’ll owl them later--I’m here to see Narcissa Malfoy née Black,” she said imperiously to the wizard at the reception desk. “Tell me where to go.” She had fallen into old ways once she had been reinstated to the family Black by Sirius three months before.

Nymphadora waved to the wizard as her mother led to the private room Narcissa resided in.

“What happened?” she asked when she saw Sirius standing outside, furiously puffing on a cigarette. “And put that out, she’s only seven.”

“Sorry.” He dropped it on the ground and stubbed it out. “Here, there’s a sweet seller just down there,” he told the girl handing her a few knuts. “Go get yourself sick!”

She was off and running before her mother could even say no.

“Sirius!”

“She’s been under the imperius and a few controlling potions. Andi, she was raped constantly until she was pregnant then he began ignoring her.” His voice was beyond anger. “And all I can do is cancel their marriage, I can’t do anything beyond that. I can’t even tell the world he’s a fucking limp wristed, cock sucking, pillow biting, faggot[6]!” he hissed. She could be told because she was a Black as well. “She’s been on that potion to change her mood since at least when you were all at Hogwarts.”

Andi dropped into a chair heavily. “Do--do you think it’s why Bella was like she was?”

“No, Bella’s always been a horrible human being. Remember when you were five and--”

She hissed a yes, glaring at him.

Nymphadora returned and held out a bag of Bertie Bott’s Beans and some Cinnamon Bears that were trying to escape their bag. “Want one mummy? Uncle Sirius[7]?”

“A cinnamon bear would be nice.” he said after a moment.

As soon as it went in his mouth he regretted it. In every bag was one that was firecinnamon. he was now bright red, his hair was flames, he was crying--though the tears were turning to steam as soon as they came out, and his snot was flashing to steam as well.

Nymphadora giggled at his misfortune while Andi grinned as she popped a candy in her mouth. “Mmm, hazelnut toffee.”

---

Marilee picked up Evan and smiled. She had been a little flabbergasted when she forgot her own grandchildren’s names and had harangued Somerled when he brought her the cards that revealed the truth. When she reminded him she was of an age where people like her started having memory issues, he had sent for his private healer.

“Your grandfather says that I should have a sharp mind until I’m a hundred,” she told the boy then kissed his cheek. “I do like your new name,” she admitted. “Named twice for my husband.” Harold had been her husband’s name though little Harry’s name was Harailt James Potter, the Har- for her husband, Harailt for James’s father, and James for James himself.

She put the boy back down with his sister and picked up the book she had started reading them, the Big Book of Big Cats.

“This is a Jaguar. Can you say Jaguar?”

“Shag-gar!” Jasmine said and giggled.

Harry repeated what she said and Marilee smiled. Close enough, she thought. “What are these?” she asked, pointing at the markings on the animal’s coat.

She turned to the next animal and Harry brightened at the large Siberian Tiger[8] kittens rough housing.

---

Albus finished checking his work and nodded softly. With the protection Lily had placed on their children--though only activating it on Harry at her death (he was sure it was due to proximity, even magic had some limitations)--any home they shared with Lily’s blood meant that that home would be protected as well. At least a week with both twins, he figured.

“Ahh, Fawkes, i see you’ve returned,” Albus said as the bird flew in his open window. “Excellent timing, do you feel like taking a message for me or have you filled your belly too full of delicious fish?” Hagrid had been setting snares for fish all morning and had become used to Fawkes stealing his catches if left alone too long.

Fawkes settled on his shoulder and watched Albus write the letter and copy the findings.

He took the letter and disappeared.

Albus stood and went to leave his office to get dinner.

He was just finishing a leisurely dinner with a conversation with Slughorn and Minerva about a new serial on the the Gold station on Wizarding Wireless Network when Fawkes returned with a letter from James.

Albus found it mostly boiled down to This is brilliant.

---

Narcissa awoke to find her son sitting on the end of the bed, playing with some soft blocks while her younger sister and niece sat on chairs, playing a card game it seemed. “Andi?” she asked softly.

“Hello Cissi. How do you feel?”

“Heavy?”

“Not surprising. You’ve been under the imperius and mind control potions since you left Hogwarts.”

She stared at her sister. “W-who?”

“At first Sirius and I thought Malfoy did it but it’s more likely our mum and dad and his parents colluded to do this.”

“Where’s Bella?”

“Azkaban. She was a Death Eater, she was caught torturing a pair of Aurors. She and her husband and brother-in-law are in Azkaban.”

She nodded. “Wher-where’s Lucius?”

“Don’t know. They arrested him as a Death Eater but he bought his way out. He’s at some retreat, allegedly shoring up his mental defenses. And no, you can’t testify. Your mental state over the years makes it difficult to prove you’re telling the truth.”

Narcissa nodded at that.

“Now, you will come stay with us for a while. Sirius is setting up a place for you. probably somewhere off Odic[9]. There’re nice places off there[10].”

“Mummy?” Nymphadora interrupted.

“Yes dear?”

My gift?”

“Oh yes.” She moved aside and picked up little Draco to hand him off to Narcissa while Nymphadora placed a cookie bouquet on the bed next to her aunt.

“Thank you,” Narcissa said softly. “It’s Nymphadora, right?”

“Yes.”

“Your mum named you after our great-aunt. She was a wonderful witch, very powerful, one of the best aurors ever.”

Nymphadora looked to her mother who nodded. Nymphadora had an epiphany.

---

James appeared in his mother-in-law’s backyard and knocked on the door.

There was a squeak then the door opened and Marilee holding a diaper wearing Jasmine smiled at him. “I was just about to give her a bath.”

“Go ahead, i just got a letter from Albus. Lily used a specific spell to protect Harry, I wanted to discuss it with you.”

She nodded and led him in.

He told her about it as he helped out by giving Evan his bath at the same time.

“So, a week here, a week with their granddad, then back home?”

“Well, they can visit you any time you want or have them stay longer than a week but yeah, essentially.”

“Intriguing. So, it’s the blood?”

“Yeah. Blood wards are old magic. Mostly forgotten. Lily--Lily was researching them and had access to a very special resource[14] I can’t discuss.” She nodded at that. She knew about the secrecy statutes of course but she also knew there were some family secrets and the like amongst the older families.

He started to tell her about his new job with the Blackguards.

---

Sirius walked into 12 Grimmauld Place and smiled. It was so very different than the house he had grown up in. Instead of green and silver and dark woods everywhere, now the rooms were bright and airy with large windows and each floor was magically modified with significant amounts of magical extension work to give them two extra floors and a private quidditch field underground. It’s scary how powerful house slash low elves[15] are, he thought.

He walked to the back opened the gate, revealing a beautiful private park surrounded by the rest of the terrace houses on the block, also heavily expanded by magic. He looked to his left and realized there wasn’t another door like there was on his side of the fence. He closed it and opened the other gate and found dozens of plots for communal gardens. He wondered what the idea behind it was and made a mental note to ask Pinky[16] what was up.

He walked back into the garden of his place and noticed four doors on the back of the house then smiled. One had Potter-Black painted above it, the second had Lupin, and the third had Potter. He opened the Potter-Black and found himself looking into the sitting area of the third floor. “Brilliant,” he muttered.

“Master?” said a house elf.

He turned and saw it was one of the triplets from Japan pruning a dittany shrub back--when they got too big, their vapors could overwhelm--into a careful spiral around its main trunk. “Just noticing all the work you all did. Wonderful jobs.”

The house elf looked very please and bounced slightly as it continued working and moved onto a new plant to maintain.

He walked inside then walked down the stairs and saw Remus’s floor was beautifully done. He noticed some silver plates and silverware and pulled his wand, running a diagnostic spell. White gold, he realized.

On the Potter floor he found they had placed all the dark items they couldn’t decurse in the library like he had asked. He cast repelling wards on the room since a significant amount of the items were actual silver. He and James would deal with the items eventually.

He smiled when he saw two bedrooms next to each other with Harry and Jazmin written on them. I wonder if I would see Evan and Jasmine if I didn’t know the secret, he mused as he looked inside. The rooms were enormous round rooms with two pairs of doors between them. He opened the furthest door and saw it was a bathroom for the twins to share. The other door led to a playroom filled with the many toys James and Lily had bought for their children and the obscene amount of toys Sirius had bought his godchildren.

He paused a moment, remembering the children’s godmother and realized they hadn’t told her the secret.

“Oh, fuck!” he gasped.

Sirius ran out and down the stairs, apparating as soon as he cleared the anti-apparition wards[17].

Sirius appeared outside the Ministry and flipped his badge out as he strode past the security imperiously, ignoring one of the Auror trainees request to stop. The other Auror, his training partner, stopped him from continuing to call out to him.

He found his partner in the archives, reading the trials of the Death Eaters who had successfully claimed Imperius and making notes to keep track of them.

“James!”

He looked up and smiled. “Yeah?”

“Did you tell their godmother?”

His smile fell away. “Oh.... FUCK!”

The Archivist looked over at James indignantly and hissed, “Quiet!”

He left the documents where they were.

“She’s insanely powerful,” James said nervously. “The fidelius is probably a minor annoyance to her.”

“Are we going to summon her? It’s winter still, won’t she get annoyed?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t really ever like me.”

He sighed and took out his notebook, flipping to the pages Lily had added to the little book. “I solemnly swear I’m James Evans,” he muttered to Sirius’s snickers and coughed “Whipped.”

James glared him into submission and flipped through until he found the section on the twins’ godmother, the Lady Summer of the Seellie Court of the fae[18].

---

A/N: Faves/Follows are great but reviews are a lot more important. And reviews that are substantive are even better. Single word reviews or ‘wriet moar’ reviews just aren’t helpful for the creative process. Nanettez’s review asking questions? Very useful. Gave me a reason to write more about his mother-in-law and father and their friendship (which will happen next chapter likely).

---

1: The IMC and the ICW are competing international organizations. While the IMC is older and holds a number of presumptive rights such as allowing Honor Duels, Blood Feuds, and authorizing the creations of private armies which are all prohibited by the ICW, the ICW has a broader purview and is where the laws are made that are followed the world around--save for China which refuses to participate due to political indoctrination by Wizards who had been loyal to the Communist party[2].

2: Cho’s and Sue Li’s families will likely be from Hong Kong, the last bastion of noncommunist chinese magicals and both will be the children of ambassadorial staff or they’ll be escapees from the communist hordes.

3: Clan Potter: much like the lordships I so hate in most fics, he’s the head of an old family. The clan chieftain of Clan Potter, one of the few predominantly magical highland clans. Though they now live amongst the Sassenachs and are more Welsh than Scottish, they keep to the old ways.

And like in the fics I so despise, it is mildly important BUT Harry won’t be some mary-sue who all of a sudden knows exactly how to manipulate the wizengamot to get his way. No, the importance of this is only that it gets Somerled onto the Lords’s Wizengamot and makes Harry’s proper title Master Potter or Sir because Harry is the heir-presumptive (Somerled doesn’t expect to die until his grandson is about fortyish which would make him the better choice than his son since he’ll be sixty-ish.

Somerled Potter is also the extant holder of a scottish barony, specifically the one attached to the castle that resides at Glenbogle, one of the family’s vacation homes.

4: Everyone has long hair! At least they do if they’re a head of family. I know it’s a bit cliche but it’s one of those cliches that I like. Does absolutely nothing for the story but I find it amusing.

5: Don’t worry, Tonks will rebel soon enough. Right now she’s seven and still Daddy’s little angel and Mummy’s bestest friend.

6: I am not homophobic. Sirius might be. Haven’t decided yet. He might be for a bit but probably not. he’s just angry about a cousin he used to like having had her personality changed.

7: I’ll use cousin and uncle fairly interchangeably when it comes to how Tonks addresses Sirius but technically, he’s a cousin. Ugh, and I just looked at the Black family tree. Sirius’s parents are a LOT closer related than I assumed they were. Poor Sirius.

8: Ahh, foreshadowing.

9: Instead of there being two alleys connected, I’m redoing Diagon Alley and Knockturn Alley as two of seven alleys in a heptagon shape, each side 7777 feet long.

In order, they’re named:

Diagon

Encaustic

Factic

Runic

Odic

Cabalistic and

Knockturn.

Inside of area created by the alleys is approximate 220 million square feet of building space with increasingly smaller heptagons with a distance of 1000 feet apart until the last heptagon is 777 feet a side. Another heptagon is inside this one, this time a park with 77 feet per side (if someone can do the math on this for me inverting the heptagon each successive one, I’d love to see how much space each block has).

Why DEFROCK? It’s the most amusing word I could find starting with D and ending with K. I will probably redo the alley names.

10: That’s another thing. There’s only one all magical village in all of England? Makes no sense at all. So in this AU there will be one in Scotland(Hogsmeade), possibly two with the second on the border of Scotland|England. One in Ireland (becoming two) that eighty percent of the population will be moving from the north to the south during first/second year of the kids. Wales will have one situated near Southerndown which is near where the Bones live. And England itself will have three. The Potters have one all to themselves, situated in Nottinghamshire. Actually, all of Nottingham is a magical village though there are a number of mundanes in the many villages or cities in Nottinghamshire, the families of magicals who are affiliated with the potters in some way. Nottinghamshire contains the majority of the industry[11] of the Potters though their agricultural fields are worldwide. The second is Diagon Alley’s. And the third will be probably mentioned eventually somewhere, probably on the Isle of Man.

11: The Potter industries (In the series we learn that he inherits a fortune though we only ever see 12 Grimmauld and a significant amount of coinage in his vault(While the trust vault has become a bit of a cliché, I plan to use it myself)) consist of supplying 92% of all foodstuffs grown for the magical community, 87% of all alcohol production, 88% of WORLD silver production, the only captive thestral breeding program (in the series, Hagrid/Hogwarts is the only place to have tame thestrals, in this AU, the Potters are where they get them), breeding of other equines (Magical and mundane), mundane horse racing and breeding, A newspaper, part ownership of the Wireless Network, the eventual visual network, Harry’s eventual occupations, backing hermione’s idea, the moneymen behind the weasley twins, the moneymen behind neville’s and daphne’s venture, and a number of muggle ventures via gringotts[12].

12: In the series, they say Gringotts in Diagon Alley is the only bank[in england?]. Makes no sense at all. Having branches in each of the magical villages with the main branch being in London makes much more sense. Of course, if you factor in the fact that you’re giving creatures you’re constantly fighting beachheads in each of your villages(and why would you give an enemy you DEFEATED control of your economy? The goblins must have WON the last war!), it makes sense to have only one central location for them (especially since in canon EVERYONE can easily apparate[13] to Diagon alley or call for the bus or take the floor or fly there if they can do the disillusionment hex). Nonetheless, branch offices, all connected underground.

13: Magical transportation is going to be different in this. Brooms, the same. Floo, kinda the same, just a different dialing method. Apparition: Very different. Only one in thirteen magical can safely apparate. Most are too weak[mentally but delude themselves into thinking its magical?] to do so. The Knight bus is the same as well only there will be more of them working at a time. Probably three.

14: More foreshadowing!

15: While we only see a few magical creatures which are common in other fantasy settings, i plan to bring the majority to this AU. (Harry and Jazmin’s godmum is hella frightening!)

16: Pinky and the Brain, Pinky and the Brain, one is a genius, the other’s insane!

17: Wards that can block things like apparition or portkeys or whatever are VERY MUCH fanon created but Hermione’s assertion that one can’t apparate out of Hogwarts essentially states that there are wards.

18: This is the first pseudo-crossover. Specifically, into Dresden Files. Harry Dresden likely won’t be joining us in the HP universe but Bianca might, though it is unlikely. As much of a crush as I have on Joanne Kelly, having her character as one of Harry’s conquests is amusing--and prompted upon in the Orphanage with a HP/WH13/DF crossover with Harry/Hermione/Myka/Biance smutfest--but too much trouble reconciling the disparate magics.

Anyway, while their godmother is in the Seellie court or the Summer/Good court, she’s still insanely powerful, mostly despises humans, and only likes Lily because as a young girl, the witch-to-be helped the Fae when she was trapped on the Mortal plane during a snowstorm after being weakened by iron.

She asked the fae to be the godmother of her grandchildren when the fae visited on the day after the summer solstice since she had incredible power even with her weakness of the winter and iron.

 

Chapter Text

A/N: just realized i call lily's mum marigold and marilee. The correct name is marilee. It's a flower name but not a common flower like lily or petunia or rose.

---

Sirius rubbed Jasmine’s back as she hugged his neck tightly.

“This is a wholly new issue,” he muttered, watching Evan.

He drew his wand and cast his patronus, sending it with a message to James.

———

James stared at his son. “This is--wow.”

He drew his wand and cast his patronus, sending it with a message to Minerva and Albus.

———

Minerva blinked. “This isn’t a prank?”

“No.”

“Wow,” Albus breathed.[1]

---

James checked his satchel, making sure the only things in it belonged to the Ministry then turned to Remus. “Sure you’ll be okay watching them?”

“If I can’t handle it, I’ll have the house elves take them to the Manse.”

James nodded and he and Sirius headed out to the backyard.

In the Ministry they breezed past security stations, only barely restraining themselves from killing a Death Eater in chains, being transferred with a Dementor as one of its escorts.

“I’m so glad Moony got us these new jobs,” Sirius muttered. “Fucking Bagnold, fucking wizengamot fucks letting all these fucks claim Imperius without even fucking testing the fucking fucks.”

James nodded, resisting the urge to remind him to watch his mouth. So far he'd yet to curse around the twins. “Guess who’s our boss right now?”

“Who?”

James opened the door to their section and they saw Alistair Moody sitting in the large oval office that looked out at all the desks of Aurors. “Mad-Eye.”

“Holy Merlin!” Sirius whispered. “He fucking took a fucking desk job?”

“Albus made him. Since he’s the Vice-Warlock, he’s the head of the Aurors.”

A fucking simplification but true enough, Sirius thought.

They were walking to the door of his office when he gestured them in.

Inside, Sirius and James set their satchels, badges, and auror issue sheaths on the desk.

“Keep the bags and your sheaths,” Moody told them. “The satchels the ICW uses aren’t as nice as ours. The sheaths were made for you specifically, no one else can use them.”

“Really?” James asked. “Because Jasmine pulled my wand out of my sheath just a day or two ago.”

“She’s related, it would believe she’s an extension of you,” Moody said.

Sirius and James dumped their other items onto the desk and Moody check them then gave them receipts for the items then handed over permanent visitor badges. “How long’s your training? And those’ll get you in without having to give up your wands.”

“Two months. My mother-in-law will be staying at my dad’s with the twins while we’re in Sweden. Speaking of the kids, you wouldn’t believe what Evan did!”

Moody looked up from putting the items away. “What?” he asked, smiling. He liked the twins. They didn't have prejudices like adults.

---

Sirius walked out of the supply store, holding a copy of Apocrypha. “You owe me so fucking big.”

“You get my children if she kills me,” James reminded him. “And you already made Evan your heir.”

“This fucking cost six and six and six.” Six galleons, six sickles, and six knuts.

“That’s all?”

“That’s a lot!”

“Not compared to the black opal dust, liquid gold, and a consecrated goblin made blade. Do you know how few goblins there are willing to part with a blade they know will be destroyed when its used?”[2]

As they walked along, Sirius was reminded of a conversation when they overheard some witches discussing the alleged loss of virginity of a singer.

“That reminds me. When you and Lils got back from the honeymoon, she mentioned how you were her first. And I know the other witch you were with before you got married--but I also know she wasn’t the first, I remember you coming back to the manse during fifth year’s easter break looking all satisfied. So who?! Did you act the little lordling? Fuck the wife of one of your tenant farmers?” he teased.

James hesitated then cast the privacy spell. “You remember me telling you about my coming of age ceremony?”

“Uh--yeah, for your eleventh birthday you cut off your hair, dedicating the locks and their ritual burning to the pegaeae[3] that li--oh Merlin fucking Buddha! You did it with a sexy fucking water nymph?”

His face was burning bright red. “Lily made me introduce them and they spent hours talking about my performance!”

Sirius was so happy to have this new blackmail material then realized something. “Wait, why didn’t you tell me about these water nymphs from which the term nymphomaniac fucking came from?!”

“You had already lost your virginity by the time dad had adopted you. And now you’re gonna be dating a veela. Why would you want to get involved with some fae?”

“Veela are part fae, aren’t they?” he asked after James collapsed the privacy spell.

“I’m not sure. We’ll check the library when we get home.” The constant changing of professors for that class meant they had to self-study the majority of the time and the professor for their fifth year had left Veela off their syllabus since there was a Veela at the school and would have been crass to class her as a Dark Creature with her in the classroom.

“Once we’re done with this summoning, we should probably go through the stuff in the library before we head to Sweden.”

James nodded.

———

“What are you doing?” Somerled asked his sons as he watched the twins drawing on the wall.

“We’re using a modified summoning ritual to call their godmother to this realm so we can inform her of the secret. We kind of forgot about telling her.”

“She’s going to murder both of you.”

“Possible but unlikely. As much as she disliked us,” James said, “she loved Lils and Lil--Lily loved us so....” he trailed off.

“That does seem a little feasible,” Somerled said. “Give her my compliments and thanks if she decides not to kill you. Make sure you invite her for their birthday, it’s going to be the biggest party for a two year old ever thrown! Full Highland Games!”

James wanted to remind his father they were a lot more Welsh than they were Scottish but decided he’d like to possibly inherit something someday.

Somerled stood and hugged the two quickly. “Alright, how long will it take?”

“Forty minutes to draw the circle, two to call, two hours to plead for her not to flay our skin from our bones or turn us into her warhounds. Another couple minutes to inform her.” He was padding it by a lot since he wasn't exactly sure how long it would take.

---

Siusan chuckled as she watched her godchildrens’ father fretting so about her anger. It had dulled her appetite to hurt him to the point that she had decided to give him genital pox for six weeks. The dog-friend would receive a gift for being the one to remind him, though, she decided.

She watched the calling ritual being prepared and grudgingly admitted that the human was skilled enough, a good match for her namesake. She couldn’t wait for the prophecy to be fulfilled so she could take the demonic soul that had been born in Riddle and torture it for the rest of eternity. “Foolish accords,” she muttered aloud, cursing the prehistory war between the Eternals such as herself and the magicals that walked the Mortal Realm and her precursors failure to win against Mortals.

---

Somerled watched Morena--a tenant farmer’s wife who had shoved her way forward to volunteer to be the woman who helped with the twins--as she diapered Evan who was fairly silent.

“Doesn’t Evan talk?” she asked.

“He does but not on his own. He responds. When he was hurt he got a nasty bump on the head, gave him that scar. It looks like it changed him a bit. He’s as smart or smarter than before but a lot quieter now. He also saw Lily die.”

Morena gasped at that. The news about their mother’s murder had of course been told but not that detail.

“Do you want me to take them out for a walk?”

“That sounds good. Pina,” he called.

A house elf appeared. “Please help Witch Morena out, she’s taking the twins out for a walk in the gardens.”

Pina nodded happily, making her ears--pierced so that they were held together above the top of her head--flop back and forth. “Happily great Master Somerled Potter sir!”

Morena felt a little strange as she held the hands of the toddlers as they slowly moved through the beautifully wrought gardens the Potter grounds were famous for.

She walked them past the statue of a Thestral and told them what each plant they passed were--she had been one of the people who had recently redesigned the garden--and how they could be used, making sure they didn’t actually grab any of the plants. Even the beneficial ones were a little too strong for toddlers to mess with.

She led them to the putting green--the Potters were Scottish after all and an ancestor had had a replica of the Old Course made, all 22 of the original holes--and they settled in on the grass, playing with a handful of rubber glass balls the house elf conjured.

She dropped onto the grass and rolled one of the bigger balls back to Evan when he rolled it at her. “What’s this?” she asked.

When he rolled it back, she picked it up and asked again.

“Ball,” Jasmine burbled happily.

Evan nodded, agreeing with his sister.

“Can you say ball?” she asked Evan.

He nodded then said the word, seemingly very reluctantly.

---

James finished filling the concentric heptagons interior with the gold script and powered it by pressing his wand to the ground and pushing out pure magic, watching the ground and his calling circle began to frost over with octarine hued magicite[4], magic itself in crystalline form.

When there was a layer thick enough to be visible but still thin enough to read the runes through he stabbed the prepared blade--runes painted on the blade in gold and black opal dust--into the copy of apocrypha and threw the book and blade into the center of the circle, shattering the magicite, causing an orb of octarine fire that disappeared and then she stood there, tall, beautiful, powerful, vibrant, and radiating fae energy for on the Mortal Realm she was energy in a human shell.

“I’m sorry I had to summon you, Lady Siusan. But there was--”

“I know what happened Mortal. I know of many things surrounding you and my goldchildren. The Dogfather to my godchildren, for you a gift.”

He automatically reached out, accepting the blade of finely wrought mithril and its hilt of electrum and opal. “Thank you Lady Siusan.”

She bowed her head, ignoring the fault he had just made, just this once. “You reminded the father of my godchildren, you deserved a boon. You for forgetting me will reserve a brief reminder.”

James’s teeth clenched when he felt incredible pain between his legs.

“I have little time in this realm, Mortal.”

He nodded and handed her the card. She read it carefully, burning the secret into her mind though it was ultimately unnecessary. It did save her wasting power better set to dealing with renegade Fae.

She nodded and took a step, disappearing as she moved forward. Then she was gone and James grabbed at his groin, trying not to scream in pain.

“What did she do?” Sirius asked, kneeling by his friend.

“Genital Pox[9]!” he said between gasping cries of pain.

“Oh, wow, she’s fucking mad!”

Sirius got his friend back to 12 Grimmauld Place and once he was in bed with a house elf to help him, went to show Remus--there was nothing Sirius could do and he knew James would end his life if he brought in a healer--the new knife and tell him what happened.

“This is a beautiful blade,” Remus said as he handled it. “Have you tested it for whatever enchantments may be on it?”

“Leaving that up to my brilliantest of friends.”

Remus chuckled. “Still getting me to do your homework.”

Sirius grinned. “Anyway, while James is suffering and you’re studying, I’m going to go decurse what items can be then store away the rest. I thought about just tossing it all but some of this stuff has been in my family for centuries and not all of my family were utter fuckwits.”

“Speaking of your family, Narcissa sent an owl--” he had a redirect on him so all owls to him save from a few people went to the house “--thanking you for her place. She says it’s the most beautiful place she’s ever seen.”

“It’s a penthouse with a view of the park,” he told him.

---

Remus sat down across from where Padfoot slept, covered by a sleeping Evan and Jasmine as well. "Narcissa offered to come help out with the twins while you two are in Sweden," he told James, turning to watch as James formed bouquets of magicite, trying to tire himself out.

"Still not ready to trust her," james admitted.

"Understandable. Besides, they'll be so spoiled with their grandparents."

He summoned Bathsheba to him again," James said, turning to look at the cat who was warily watching the Grim[10] and twins but mostly Evzn.

"Poor cat. He loses his mistress, has to deal with a toddler that he literally cannot escape, and he lost half his teeth in the fire." And the injury was magical healing resistant. If she wasn't Lily's he'd have just put the cat down.

Yawning, James called for a house elf and asked her to take the bouquets to Hogwarts and the Manse.

He and Remus picked up the twins then carried them to the nursery across from where their future rooms were.

He returned downstairs to kick Sirius awake then turned to look at the painting of Lily with its dozen of attendant portraits--other portraits linked to hers filled with various things to busy up freetime--behind it embedded in the wall. He cast a spell over it, making it so the twins wouldnt be able to hear or see the painting move unless there was an emergency. The spell would fail on their eighth birthday.

He wondered why she hadn't woken then decided it was probably due to the customization they had gone for. When they had heard the prophecy, they had redone the charms and repainted it, using a somewhat dark spell to copy her aura and soul to make the painting a viable teaching resource so they could properly teach the twins while in hiding.

He thought about how he had learned the spell and decided to speak to his family's mentor.[11]

He touched the runic pattern[12] to dial the manse and waited until he heard a familiar voice ask, "Yes?"

He spoke an old phrase then stepped into the fire.

On the opposite side two house elves and three Potter employees on duty waited for James to properly identify himself. "James Xylophone."

They tested his aura against the one the manse's wards had on file and he was passed.

Walking out onto the grounds, he headed towards the family mausoleum.

Inside, Lily's alcove had a lifesize opal statue of her in a pose she chose after they married, a pensive look yet soft smile visible at the correct angles. Her ashes were in a small urn in between her statue's feet.

He turned to look at his mother's statue--the most recent two to pass had statues of themselves--and chuckled. His mother was dancing alone but looking as she had at his parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary, only a few weeks before she had died near the end of his sixth year.

James continued deeper into the mausoleum, heading to a hidden alcove.

---

Petunia scowled deeply. Once again, the phone call with her mother had gone badly. "Why does she persist in acting as if Lily was human?" she muttered to herself.

She looked over at her son, a roly poly toddler that was at the moment throwing around a toy they had just bought him. She smiled indulgently, cooing over the boy's temper tantrum. Those filthy twins are nothing like my perfect little boy!

Dudley took that moment to shit himself, looking quite pleased with himself.[13]

---

Evan tugged on his grandmother's dress.

"Yes deary?"

He pointed at the bathroom and she picked him up, looking to make sure the house elf was watching Jasmine--she wished she had had one around when Lily was little, perhaps Petunia wouldn't have been such a little pain, she mused.

In the bathroom she helped him out of his clothes then settled him on the little potty, ignoring the wet diaper for the moment.

Finally, the boy began to empty his bowels with a giggle.

"Ooh," she said happily. Maybe i can have them fully potty trained before James returns, she thought happily.

When she took him off to clean him up, the house elf popped into the room, vanished the mess and left it smelling delightful, then popped out.

Marilee smiled. Such useful little beings.

With the boy cleaned up and changed, she took his hand and led him back out to where Jasmine was watching cartoons.

When she noticed her grandmother she said, "Potty."

Jasmine made it without a wet diaper.

---

Somerled looked at the letter from his son. It made a lot of sense. The old wizard crossed the room and tapped the runic array that approximated hogwarts headmaster's office with the rune for voice then a moment later heard "Yes?"

"Albie, it's Somerled. James sent me a letter. Since he's no longer living at a home with the fidelius as his only safety, he realized the twins should have play dates and the like. I have a handful of farmers here with kids near his age but i was hoping you knew some more people, all the kids are either just newborns or a year or so older. Strangely? No births in all of 80 for my people."

"That's a wonderful idea," albus said thoughtfully, filing away the birth comment to investigate that. “Where would they be meeting?”

“Here, but I remember my wife arranging for different mums to bring snacks and stuff when James was little I think. I was fairly busy that decade,” he muttered, thinking back, trying to remember.

“We were all fairly busy then,” Albus reminded his friend, chuckling and showing that laughter was just as infectious as herpes for Somerled began laughing as well. Throughout most of the sixties, Somerled and Albus had both been on a Wizengamot committee to reform their government. A little over a million man hours had gone into the work and every proposal had been ignored due to being ‘too revolutionary.’

“As for likelies, the Greengrasses have a daughter named Daphne and you have a business relationship with them already. The Weasleys have four within a year or so and one right on, a young girl named Ginny.” He had picked up the scroll that recorded magical births. “There is of course Neville Longbottom. A little younger, she’ll go a year after I mean, is the firstborn of the Longbottoms, her name is Luna. And that might lead to some sort of business interests.”

---

James’s eye opened a crack and he looked around the room, a hotel he surmised. Rolling over, he ended up rolling right off the bed and reality sunk in. His wife was dead. She was no longer there to stop him from rolling off the bed and roll her eyes at his morning sex opener of gesturing to his erection and mentioning it was cold and he knew just where he should put it.

Sighing, he got off the floor and went to shower up.

He left his room and found Sirius coming out of his own, twirling his wand.

“Did you hear the bit about new wands at intake?” Sirius asked.

“Not new wands, extra wands. They have a wandmaker come in, check us to see if our wands are still best for us, then either match us or leave as is but also make one or two extras to carry.”

Sirius looked at his, an amber cored Conifer[14] wand. It was his second wand. His first had been a beautiful blackthorn wood one with a core of dragon heartstring but he had just recently acquired his new one after matching with the core though Ollivander had been unhappy with the wood’s match to him.

He looked over at James’s, mahogany though not the one he had started school with. His old one had become too volatile when it came to transfiguration and he had had to get a new one. His parents had been ecstatic about it, most students didn’t require a new wand until they were a year or so out of school.

Sirius ran his hand over his wand lovingly. “I hope he’s good.”

“He should be,” James replied. “The only wandcrafter not trained by Ollivander or his father is in prison for the rest of his life.”

Sirius looked up from polishing his wand. “Who?”

“Grindlewald. He didn’t practice but he had the skills to craft wands, I heard he stole the memories from one of the old masters.”

“Did he ever make any?”

James nodded. “At least nine are known of. Two are in dad’s collection. Yew and Magicite core, and a Yew and his own blood core.”

“Wasn’t Voldemort’s Yew?”

James nodded.

“Huh. So, what’re we doing today?”

“Last of our scrollwork, then psych evals?”

“Psy-fucking what?” Sirius asked.

James sighed, it had been going so well. “Psychological evaluations. Lily mentioned them once. They ask us questions and use our answers to make sure we’re not screwed up in the--oh, Paddy, you’re so screwed.”

Sirius punched his friend. “Right.”

They both laughed and continued on.

---

Remus pushed the last bit of scrollwork away then stood and stretched, hating Sirius with all his heart. Accepting the job of Regent for House Black was more grueling than Binns’s lectures on Goblins. Never should have taken his course[15], he thought.

He was ambling down to the kitchen, debating between the last of the crullers or a buttermilk bar--or one of each--when there was a knock at the front door.

Sighing, he went to see who it was. There was enough people who now knew the address he couldn’t just guess and have it be right.

Then he was being hugged by pale and red and for a moment he thought it was Lily until she pulled back and a french accent with a hint of Indian and British said, “ ‘allo Remy!”

“Sulabha. It’s good to see you.”

“This is my personal assistant, Alexia.” Remus nodded, more absorbed by the witch than the veela was able to do. She had brown eyes so dark they looked black, skin that looked like toffee and made him crave a taste, and cleavage that drew him in like a blackhole.

“Yes, he will do,” Alexia said, pulling him towards the stairs. “Where is your room? Is it true what they say about the stamina[16] of a werewolf?”

“If you two marry, you must name your first child after me,” Sulabha said, beaming as they disappeared up the stairs.

Her matchmaker job done, she went to find Sirius’s house elf to get her help in starting on the decorating job.

---

James waited as the man used an abacus to do some math. He resisted the urge to tell him about curta calculators.

———

Sirius sighed silently. The witch doing his evaluation had wonderful cleavage and smelled of berries and all he could think about was having her spread on the desk, screaming his name as they shagged.

“Please stop staring at my chest.”

“Why would you wear a top cut that low if you didn’t want people to look?” he snarked back.

“I do want people to look. I don’t want people to stare at my breasts like they’re a pair of lussebulles to devour.”

“I don’t know what those are.”

“Oh, they’re delicious,” she replied once he was looking her in the eye. “They’re revel buns,” she said after a bit of thought.

“Oh! Yes, then it’s a fitting comparison,” he said and she blushed a little when he winked.

“Anyway,” she said. “You pass your evaluation but only barely. You have a habit of sleeping with women you barely know, fighting at the drop of a hat, have tattoos[21], curse constantly, and you keep track of those you’ve killed.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“By etching it into your own skin via scarification? It’s a sign of possible disorders. Therefore you will have monthly sessions while retraining and six month evaluations post training.”

He nodded.

———

James accepted the handkerchief from the man and wiped the tears from his face. He had been bottling up the death of his wife for so long now that he had thought he was over it. Then the wizard had asked him to tell him about Lily and James had broken down.

He looked at the clock and realized he must have been crying--sobbing, he barely admitted to himself--for nearly twenty minutes.

“Is--is this going to disqualify me?”

“Because you miss your wife? Of course not,” the wizard said. “Crying is a good thing. It shows you’re still human,” he reminded his patient. “I will want to see you every other week during training and once a month afterwards. Depending on where you’re stationed, we can do it via aura-locked looky-talkies[22].”

---

Narcissa thanked her sister for watching Draco and left the house. While she didn't particularly like the werewolf, she found him to be a fair being and as regent, she needed to speak with him about her allowance. It was still set at the amounts a witch might need when her grandmother was young and a galleon could buy a month’s supplies for a family of four and nibs[17] were the most common coinage[18] instead of it being sickles.

She made her way down the streets, enjoying the chance to stretch her legs instead of having to pace herself to Draco’s steps. She loved her son but his attempts at independence meant she was constantly having to leave earlier and earlier so she could wait for his attempts at things. And picking him up and having him wail in her ear was intolerable.

As she walked along, she surreptitiously admired the looks of the witches who were wearing mundane clothing, especially the short skirts and the strange looking tunics.

For a moment she imagined herself in the same style of clothing and a flush grew on her face.

A witch walked by wearing white boots that went nearly to her knees and a skirt that barely covered her backside and she found herself watching the woman walk on until she turned a corner.

She made her way to the Terpsichorean Tea Room once she shook off her revery and found Remus and two other women waiting, one she was sure was a veela. Few had those flawless good looks without makeup.

Her tea china filled itself then danced across the table to her as she sat down. “Hello Wizard Lupin.”

“Witch Black,” he said. He introduced the two to Narcissa. “This is Witch Lubhasa de Lesseps and her personal assistant Witch Amelié Bellamy. Lubhasa is dating Sirius Black.”

“I remember her from Hogwarts.”

Lubhasa smiled at that. “You were in seventh when we were in third, right?”

Narcissa nodded. “Where did you go, Witch Bellamy?”

“Beauxbaton,” she replied.

“I needed to talk to you about my allowance,” Narcissa said, hoping he would ask them to go away. She didn’t want to be told no in front of them.

“Ah, good, that’s why I wanted to talk to you. I was looking at it, the stipend hasn’t caught up to the inflation of prices over time. I sent Sirius an owl last week, he just authorized an increase of the monthly stipend to fifty galleons a month with a two galleon a week increase every year to account for inflation.”

She smiled. “Oh, that’s much more than I need,” she said softly.

“Sirius is trying to make up for a number of the things we said about you over the years. And the prank on you at graduation.”

“That WAS you!”

Remus grinned. It had been mostly his work but all the professors had believed it was the work of Ravenclaw seventh years. It was that year they had realized indiscriminate pranks were lame when specific targets, especially the Dark Wizard wannabes, were such great victims, especially since it boosted morale of the rest of the houses.

He told Bellamy about the prank as Lubhasa said, “We were about to go shopping in Mundane London. I’m a model and my current campaign is for Halston and they’ve been throwing fashion at me. Want to try a new look?”

Narcissa nodded, a little nervous. “What about what I’m wearing?”

“It looks enough like a maxi dress you’ll be fine,” Amelié said. “Remus sweetie, you free tonight? I plan to finish testing you out.”

He blushed and nodded. “I’ll see you three later then. Witch Black, if you like mundane fashion, we can arrange for a mundane allowance subtracted from your monthly as well.”

She nodded.

As he left, she turned to the other two. “What is a maxi dress?”

“Just a dress that covers the body from neck to ankle. And call me Lubhasa or Lulu,” she said.

“Amelié or Amy,” Amy said.

“Narcissa. But Cissi is fine too. That’s what the twins call me when Sirius tried to teach them my name.”

“Let’s go, there’s a limo waiting for us.”

They exited the tea shop so Narcissa could change some money then headed down the alley until were outside the Leaky Cauldron.

“What’s a limo?” Narcissa asked.

When they got out to Mundane London, Lubhasa pointed at the waiting Rolls Royce. “That is a limo. They add four feet or so to a regular vehicle.”

“Wouldn’t space charms work better?”

“Mundanes,” Amy reminded her.

Narcissa blushed a little bit at the reminder as she got in and accepted the flute of champagne Amy handed her.

“What does a Personal Assistant do?”

“She makes sure I get everywhere I’m supposed to.”

Amy nodded. “She models clothing for a living so there are times we’re in Italy and she’s on the catwalks then four hours after it ends we have to be in France getting some sleep before a cover shoot for a magazine.”

Narcissa nodded. The catwalk part wasn’t understood but the rest made sense and why someone would need help, much like her father’s aide-de-camp. The same job just a different title.

“How did you start doing that?”

“Discovered in Paris a few days after our fifth year ended. I was out amongst the mundanes, doing a bit of shopping since dad just transferred and I needed some new clothes. A woman gave me a business card, told me to call her if I wanted to be famous. I didn’t qualify for sixth year so I gave it a call. Within a year I made over forty thousand galleons just having to wear gorgeous clothing, have my photo taken, and go to incredible parties. Of course there was the significant amount of Pepper Up Potion I was taking every day and timed sleeping draughts to deal with the stress. I do less work now and it’s much easier to handle the stress.”

The three ended up spending the majority of the day trying on clothing and getting Narcissa a wardrobe of mundane fashion, finding that Narcissa was very much a fan of miniskirts, patterned tights, and semi-sheer blouses and the pretty lingerie that was so much briefer than the support garments of the magical world[19].

When she returned to her sister’s home, she showed Andromeda her new wardrobe, shocking her sister with the brief skirts and the brief undergarments.

Andromed admitted she thought Narcissa looked lovely in the clothing but stated she could never wear something that showed off more than her ankle.

She sent the clothes home with her house elf then joined her sister and their children for afternoon tea.

---

Somerled smiled as he read the letters from his sons, chuckling as he saw the twins running after their occamy Judas, the only occamy that had ever been so mild and meek that when they came for her eggs she actually helped by pushing them out of her nest so the handlers could take them. She was also surprisingly long lived. She had been a producer since James was a toddler and had occasionally lived in his room before he had gone to Hogwarts.

He saw the creature pick up one of the twins and was about to go for his wand when Harry’s giggles filled the air and his sister came running after after the serpent settled the boy in front of his grandfather. “He’s hungry!” Evan said.

“Who’s hungry?” Somerled asked.

Evan pointed at the serpent and turned to speak to it.

Somerled dropped his drink when he heard the sibilant hiss from his grandson.

“Nursie!”

A witch rushed out and looked around, trying to see where the twins were hurt.

“I need you to watch the twins, I need to look something up in the library. You will tell no one of what you see.”

She started to nod then her eyes widened when she saw and heard what Evan was doing.

“Yes my chieftain,” she whispered, watching as the twins carefully petted the massive serpent.

———

Somerled closed the lineage book. They weren’t direct descendants of the first known Parselmouth[23], Salazar Slytherin, but they were related. And magical abilities were known to occasionally form in relatives that weren’t blood.

Perhaps, he mused.

Then he remembered what Albus and James had done and went to Floo the headmaster. he was not at the school nor was he at the wizengamot. Somerled tried the ICW office of the wizard and finally got a hold of him.

“Albus, I’d like it very much if you joined me for dinner tonight.”

———

Albus paused at the tone of his friend. “Very well. I shall be there at seven?”

“Excellent.”

Albus was surprised when he hung up without pleasantries.

———

Albus walked into the Manse, slightly apprehensive. He doubted his old friend would attack him but there was a sliver of worry, enough he had brought along the wand he had taken from Gellert that fateful night.

He saw the twins being carried up to the third floor where the apartments were then turned at the clink of ice in crystal.

“Is everything alright?” Albus asked.

“I had a bit of a scare earlier. Evan can speak with serpents. He was talking to Judas, our oldest Occamy. And after I finished talking with you, I learned that Jasmine could understand but not speak to the serpent. I had thought it was something from him but with that....”

Albus nodded and took a drink.

“It may be that it was from him. Twins born to magicals have been known to spontaneously develop the abilities of their sibling. Though we did have a pair of twins try to make use of this in the fifties during Hogwarts. It was ineffective, it only seemed to work when they weren’t trying to do it.”

Somerled nodded after some thought. “So, it might be because of Voldemort?”

“Or it could just be spontaneous. I know of two parselmouths in the country at the moment, one was spontaneous, the second is her son. He’s, oh Merlin, he must be sixty by now. Shall I contact him and ask him to contact you?”

“Please,” he asked. “Also, would you be interested in being the face of our newest mead? My team was looking up potential mascots and they pointed out what your family name means.”

“I shall think about it.”

“Profits of the line would go to Hogwarts,” he said enticingly.

Albus glared at him then smirked. “It is an effective manipulation,” he admitted.

Marilee joined them once she had the twins settled in to go to bed.

When dinner was over, the three settled in the library and tasted the new mead line.

---

A/N: Didn’t realize how long this chapter was getting. Gonna stop here, next chapter will mostly focus on James and Sirius in training and show a magical martial art that I’ve been wanting to use in fics and may be using in an original series of YA novels I’m working on. There will also be a couple other martial arts that the twins will begin learning as they get bigger, specifically krav maga and escrima.

---

1: And this is the last reference to this until likely christmas year one. シ

2: Going to keep the ‘goblins have no sense of commerce/ownership even though they’re bankers’ concept as used in canon just because it’s useful for conflict. I’ll also keep the hatred of wizards things for the most part though a few goblins will be shown as having human friends and the twins will grow up playing with a goblin who works with the Potters as his parents are silversmiths and goblins understand the whole going straight to the supplier. I’ll also likely be introducing Dwarves(stonemasons), High Elves (who will have abandoned us long ago for the fae realm), and a couple others.

I remember reading somewhere that it started due to Gryffindor's sword and the maker deciding he so desired the blade he attempted to defraud Gryffindor and keep the blade for himself and the goblins using this as propaganda to keep a hold of all their products. It's fairly brilliant. Not sure if it's fanon or canon.

3: Pegaeae are naiads living in hot springs. There are a handful of hot springs on the manse grounds, hidden by magic, giving the creatures a safe place to live. There are a handful of other magical creatures of human level intelligence living in other areas as well, including a 40ish large herd of Centaur that will be referenced in year one as well.

4: Magicite is seen as basically pointless in this AU. While it’s crystallized magic, one can’t really do anything with it except ‘feed’ it to buildings that are majorly magical(hogwarts consumes as much of it as it can) until Harry has an epiphany in first or second year when he’s making[5] some on Saturday night.

5: The production of magicite is a major plot point. The majority of students capable of producing it do so once a week until they’re exhausted[6]. By producing it until they’re exhausted, they increase their own magical potential by a small amount[7].

6: In this AU magical exhaustion/drain (which I think is a fanon invention) will be used in a very different manner, more akin to video games but instead of drinking mana potions, someone who’s used a LOT of magic will be starving and just eat like crazy[8] since magic use BURNS through calories. It’s why only weak magicals (Like Fudge or Dolores or Pomona Sprout(who’s a brilliant herbologist, just magically weak)) or those who rarely get to use their magic due to muggle interaction (Molly Weasley will have a job in London in this series(Though I actually think the actress who plays Molly Weasley is a damn good looking woman and I’d totally cuckold Arthur)) are fat/obese in this AU.

7: Not sure what this footnote is for so placeholder + some info: Magic Potential in this story can be enumerated. Most students start at Hogwarts with 67-96 with an avg of 74, Harry will start at 88 (though his magic has been bound numerous times which will happen in a chapter or two though I may not write the scene since it has to do with footnote 1) while Hermione will start at 109. Usually by the end of school they’ve doubled to tripled their potential, usually veering towards triple if they’ve diligently made magicite weekly. Squibs are 41 and below.

8: I’m thinking Ron is going to have a magical parasite (this has been done but I find it amusing to imagine a parasite that looks like the bug from the Matrix inside Ron) that eats away at his magic, causing him to always be hungry that is undiagnosed until sixth year or so.

9: Genital Pox is every nerve in your groin on fire at once, great sores, oozing pustules, and an electric blue discharge that eats away at clothing and is explosive when the clothing is charmed to protect itself from the illness. And it’s only tranferrable from juvenile dragons.

Siusan just made it look like James likes to bumfuck dragons. ｼ

10: magical animagus are a no. Animagus that resemble magical creatures that have mundane analagues are a yes. Therefore Sirius looks like a Grim but is in fact just a very large dog with glowing gold eyes when angry that looks like it has wolf ancestry (I don’t remember exactly how it works but one sex of dogs transmits the size gene while the opposite in wolves transmits it so if the opposing sexes mate, then the pups don’t receive the size regulation gene leading to very large hybrids(THOUGH I MAY BE WRONG, I’M NOT A GENETICIST OR A VET)).

11: not for a few more years. Likely? Sixth year.

12: like a telephone one taps in a sequence of runes to dial a number, a runic approximation of a verbal address which is still usable when calling via a temporary floo point but the dial method meters out a specific amount of floo powder dependent upon which is your last rune, voice or matter transmit. No more of this shoving one's head in (though one can if they want to or toss in a pinch more powder to pass through if you change mind).

13: now, temporarily, only his mother is full of it! (Fiona Shaw is quite a bit prettier than the character is described but the actress that played the younger Petunia was strangely gorgeous. Probably the whole minimal hormones in her system at the time of filming, there’s no info on IMDB but the girl looks preteen?)

14: In canon we see mention of only two cores being used by Ollivander to make most wands and only one reference to not using one potential core due to volatility and from that, people go fucking insane. In some fanfics we see multicore wands or whatever or Harry going to some other wand maker to get some incredible custom made wand done for him--one fic did it well where Harry had so much power he burnt out the core of his wand and had been wandlessly casting all along and the crafter realized he needed specialty runes and a multicore--usually due to time travel.

In this AU, the wood is just an modulator/amplifier/insulator[in reality, this statement is RIDICULOUS! Can I make it not sound so stupid?!], amplifying the will and intent of the user while simultaneously insulating the wielder from his own power erupting from the tip of the wand and modulating the frequency of the magic of the user to match the magic of the core.

Sirius’s second wand had an original body of Holly. It went together beautifully when crafting but it’s not the wand that chooses the magical, it’s the core. And the core, when matching to Sirius felt right but to Ollivander, the wood caused a tone in Sirius’s magic/matching that sounded sour. He knews that Amber is tree sap from before humans existed, therefore he decided to look into woods that were around then. Conifer, when touching the sap, sang to him and let him know it was just what Sirius Black needed for a wand. [how'd i do explanation wise?]

15: The first big change at Hogwarts course load wise. Binns is not the History professor. He is the Goblin history professor, an elective that, even with a monotone drone ghost as professor, is fairly popular, though only with those interested in Ministry jobs like Percy, or overachievers like Hermione and Remus.

The history professor will probably be either a very pretty witch or a devastatingly handsome wizard. Gotta keep ‘em interested somehow. ^_~

16: in so many fics, werewolves are superhuman trackers and insanely strong. If they were in canon, remus would've noticed so much shit in canon. In this AU he'll have better stamina and be able to recognize by scent easier but a dirty diaper harry will just smell like baby shit to him as the human nose melds all scents together whereas the canine nose smells every specific scent in the air. A freshly scourgified harry would be easily recognizable for him but that's it.

Vampires will have this talent. It's extremely unlikely that there will be vampires in it but there will be sparkly cedric jokes because i think those are hilarious. [i have never seen nor read twilight and i never will]

17: Kiting a term for coinage that I remember reading somewhere having to do with clipping(which is the cutting/shaving off of precious metals from coins for profit). I think it’s a Terry Pratchett/Making Money reference.

18: Nibs are a coin below knuts and are worth 1/11 of a knut(which is worth about 5 pence in the current time so nibs were basically a halfpenny) and are no longer used due to it requiring multiples of them for anything, usually more than 11. In the AU, I’ll also be introducing another three coins beyond the galleon, one or two of which are traditionally only financial instruments, much like the 500 and 1000 dollar bills in America, only used by the banks themselves. There will also be numismatists and the like of which James or Sirius will likely be though Remus will mock them while being a philatelist himself which they mock him for since stamps are essentially just paper money with a sticky back(That is a terrible sentence!).

19: So, yeah, the whole “Magical world is stuck in the regency era” cliche though I find it to be very fitting. The only character in the series that dresses normal for the time is Tonks and she’s a half-blood who’s been rebelling against her pureblood family (though I’m fairly sure she loves her mum, just probably annoyed by the woman’s attitudes about what would be proper). So now Narcissa will dress a little different but only in mundane society, in magical society she’s still a pureblood with a penchant for suspenders (british term for garter belts), fishnets, sheer fabrics for her bras, and stiletto heel stretch boots. (is it just me or does Helen McCrory have a vaguely pixieish look when she doesn’t have that hideous film hairstyle they had for Narcissa?) She’ll have a crush on James but also know the Potter curse[20].

20: Unless they’re widowed without children, Potters rarely if ever remarry or even date and rarely have more than three children. There will be a Potter that remarries in the future.

21: I just can’t see victorian england, or any other society, looking well upon the inked. And while other countries are less prudish, they’re still in the mindset. Perhaps America and South Asian countries would be different? We’ll see when the children are older and the family establishes a summer vacation home.

22: This is a reference to another story where they weren’t some custom device but kids toys that anyone could buy(I think the story was a time travel one where Harry (and maybe Hermione?) traveled back mentally?). And since it’s a kid’s toy, I presume the enchantments are simple and fairly easy to copy or break. if they’re aura locked then they would only link up between the two people who’ve been fed into them as it well. [I know these are out of order but the sections got written out of order as well due to me wanting to write narcissa more than PTSD moments]

23: I’m still not sure if I want to have Harry lose the ability like he does in canon or retain it. So far, they’ll retain the abilities.

Chapter Text

A/N: Replies to reviews on FF.n follow chapter and footnotes.

---

James handed over his wand to the wizard and tried not to roll his eyes as the man’s automated tape measure went for his inseam. He resisted the urge to ask if his cock size would be a good metric as well, mostly because when he had asked it of Ollivander, both his wife and the wandcrafter had so verbally cut him to the quick that he wished he had had a vat of metaphorical essence of dittany.

“No, this wand is all wrong for you now, not surprising since you’ve lost someone.”

James’s forehead wrinkled as the wizard haphazardly tossed the wand aside.

The man kept his shop differently than he was used to with Ollivander. Instead, his building was a dodecagon with the twelve major types of woods[1] and the six different types of cores he regularly used that filled the walls while a lower level had a visible work area and the walls filled with wands displayed with little placards, discussing how they were different from his normal crafted wands.

“Yes, downstairs we go. I think Sapient pearwood should be the wood but what core?”

“Sapient pearwood? I’ve never heard of that before.”

“They’re extinct, they were a lovely tree that were the basis for the myths of entmoots since they would find crossed ley lines and dance and sing. Due to the wind blowing their their bark which produced natural whistles with lovely natural whistle peas. In fact, you have two children, yes?”

James nodded and the wizard pressed two ocarinas into his hand. “I make them from the wood that can’t be used for wands. Look at those whorls, beautiful aren’t they?”

James looked down and nodded. They were varnished to accentuate the grain and it looked like each year the hue of the grain shifted slightly.

James put them away carefully. They were a good starting instrument for the two he realized and probably much better than the one he had started on, the zither.

“Thank you. I was wondering about an instrument to start them on soon.”

“Here, try this one.”

James admired the gold and peach hued wood with its surprisingly natural feeling curve to it but it was yanked from his hand almost immediately and replaced.

“I didn’t think thestral hairs would work but they were from your land--try this, a core of ashwinder ash.”

There was a spiral of chocolate light and it was taken from him. “No. Alba spores?”

It did nothing. “Not surprising,” the wandcrafter mused. “It’ll never find anyone. Ah, Atelopus spine.”

The wand looked like a spine but did nothing for James. He barely had time to wonder what atelopus was.

It was three more wands before the next one chimed for him, a pair of spirals coming together and flaring out a bit so the wand had two points. “Ah, Sapient pearwood and liquified occamy silver. I should have realized this was the one for you. Your father gifted me this silver after all.

“Now, for your backup, do you want it to be right hand or left hand? Can you dual cast?”[2]

“I’ve had a bit of training for it. Yeah, I’d like it for my left hand. I could cast fairly well with my old one with my offhand.”

The man nodded and studied the wand carefully, fixing it in his memory. “I’ll have it to you within the week if I’m low on occamy silver. Otherwise it’ll be there to you tomorrow.”

James nodded and left with his new and old wand tucked into his belt sheath.

Sirius held up a spiked Butterbeer to him as he walked into the pub. “New wand?”

James nodded and handed it over.

“Nice design. I’m still good on mine.”

“It has a core of occamy silver. From our hatchery.”

“Not surprising. Your family cornered that market and ruthlessly destroyed the competition then figured out how to violate that law Lily told us about.”

“I think it was conservation of mass? Which she was breaking too when she was becoming a hind[3] animagus,” he said. She had finished her transformation three months after the children were born and weighed three times what she did as a human.

Sirius chuckled, thinking of the children. “When do we start their training to become animagi?”

“Eight?”

Sirius nodded. “Jasmine should take to it well.”

There was no need to discuss Evan’s chances.

---

James rolled out of bed and pulled on the surprisingly comfortable mundane costume their new instructor called a gi.

As he left his room, he saw Sirius come out of his own room and Sirius’s yawn made James yawn as well. “Oi you bastard, don’t do that!” James said, shoving his friend.

Sirius shoved back as they fell into a group of other new Blackguard recruits.

“Good morning recruits,” a witch said walking into the large gymnasium.

“Today we begin your physical training.” An older wizard began bringing out orange and blue sticks of wood and handed them to the recruits, giving them receipts for their wands for those that forgot and brought them.

“Imagine the blue stick is your main wand and the orange your secondary. Pair off, holding the wands in your hands as fitting.”

James and Sirius stood in front of each other as they saw the instructors and the first move was initiated. Sirius copied it, bringing a slow punch to James’s head that he blocked, bringing his own wand up, aiming it at Sirius’s temple. A beam of light marked Sirius’s head where he was hit by it. “Evaluate what you just learned,” the instructor said. “Repeat. This time, primary attacker, bring head forward, attempting to butt your victim.”

Two hours later, soaking wet, marked with dozens of colors, the recruits were passed out vials of pepper up potion and hit with scourgifies by the instructors.

A new pair of instructors began herding them to their first law class, the recruits grabbing nutrient potions and breakfast bars as they passed the breakfast station.

“You ever wonder if Pomfrey[5] and Slughorn made the potions taste so bad so that we did our best not to end up in the hospital wing?”

“I know they did,” Sirius replied. “I had to chop potion ingredients, they add something called essence of miracle berry to our cauldrons during the cleaning phase. But if you eat a miracle berry then eat regular food, everything tastes sweet. Lily told me about them seventh year, they’re from Africa or something. It’s how she was dieting to fit into her dress. She didn’t tell you?”

James looked annoyed. “No, she didn’t.”

“Well, she was planning a wedding, studying for N.E.W.T.s, and resisting my incredible charms, she couldn’t remember everything.”

James rolled his eyes as he tossed the remnants of his meal into the receptacle which chewed it up and burped mightily, doing the same when Sirius threw his in.

“What’s the point of a garbage can that does that?” someone asked.

“Some magical showing off his transfiguration skills,” James said.

“He should know, he was always showing off that he was a prodigy,” Sirius snarked.

The instructor told them to shut up and began passing out their texts.

---

Somerled shook the hands of the last parents leaving then turned to his grandchildren, smiling when he saw they had curled up and fallen asleep already.

The play date was an incredible success, he thought to himself. And those apple cinnamon cupcakes she brought? Incredible!

He mused on how much the little girl the Weasleys had brought looked like Jasmine, and so glad of it. Teasing his son about cuckolding someone else was going to make his day, especially since the Weasleys had noticed it as well and Arthur had had Molly beet purple all afternoon

He ate the last cupcake and made a mental note to ask her if she might be interested in a cake shop. If she could decorate half as well as she baked, she could be a wonderful pâtissière, he decided. And profitable.

His Sword and Shield bearers fought off yawns as Nursie and Marilee picked up the twins and carried them to the waiting carriage, a beautifully appointed road coach they had recently (as much as 1913 can be recent) picked up from an estate sale of a mundane noble.

Pulling the carriage were four heavy, black horses, their manes and tails flickering blue and white flames, their eyes electric blue, their hooves sending off sparks as they crashed against the stones that made up the path. The Potters were the only people to have ever successfully tamed demon steeds and the four Nightmares[6] had served the Potters since before the statute of secrecy had been instituted. Now they were only used to move around the grounds.

With the women seated and his men grabbing onto the back, Somerled got in to the carriage and knocked on the wall, letting the driver know to take them back to the manse--they had had the play date in a building near the grove after they opened up a temporary floo so they could arrive that way.

He held his hands out and took Jasmine, smiling as she snuffled against his neck. He and his wife had tried for a daughter for years after James was born but it had been to no avail--aside from the fun.

Dismounting at Thoresby Hall, he helped the women down then walked inside, yawning and stretching, wishing he could take a nap as well.

Inside his office, he opened the door to the common office and found his eleven secretaries hard at work. “Anything I need to sign?”

All save one quickly had stacks of parchments held up and he sighed as he took out his glasses and settled in to look over contacts.

“Headmaster Dumbledore said yes,” the witch in charge of his spirits correspondence said. “Also, the ghost council wishes to speak with you.” All spirits.

“Really? Why?”

“They heard the rumor of a new spirit using spirits as the selling point and wish to discuss it.”

“Are we?”

“No,” she said. “But it sounds like a good idea,” she admitted.

“It does, doesn’t it. Have the boys at the distilleries and breweries put their heads together and see if they can come up with something, maybe a drink that’s pearlescent white and we’ll charm the bottles to make it like they’re empty? If they can, the shop gets a nice bonus and the person who specifically came up with it gets a week or two at the place in Fiji.” A small island hidden by magic almost directly in the center of the grouping of islands, it had been won in a poker game from a Shacklebolt who had thought his Aces and Eights[7] were going to win him the game. Over the years since then they had expanded upon the small house, building up a large C shaped building with a beautiful garden on the inside and a dozen small guest houses and reshaped the beaches and forests to turn it into a British view of a tropical paradise.

Finally done, he saw it was time to go to the Wizengamot for dinner with some colleagues. Grumbling about keeping up appearances and having to make nice with scum that hated his daughter-in-law, he went to change into his robes and strap on one of the Potter blades--a dagger that when drawn from its sheath expanded to sword length--then placed his wand in its matching sheath. He opened a case made of the same wood as his  and disapparated.

---

Sirius dropped down. “I am too old for homework,” he groaned.

“We’re 21 you git,” James said, idly watching the other students, resisting the urge to hex one of the witches that had been trying to flirt with him. “Mundanes go to university for like four to twelve years after they finish their version of Hogwarts.”

“Yeah but not people like us. We’re heirs.”

“Even they do, to become capable of running their estates and the like. They don’t have tutoring programs like we do.” Somerled had made sure James was capable of running the estate before he had even started Hogwarts and when he had let Sirius move in had arranged for a small inheritance for him as well.

Sirius growled. “Wanna go running in the woods tonight?”

“Yeah.”

They pulled themselves up off the grass and headed for dinner.

------

James shifted and Prongs burst through the undergrowth, followed by Padfoot.

An hour later the two shifted back and made their way to the dorms. “Been a long time since we did that.”

James nodded. “We should have a saddle made for me so I can take the twins for a run occasionally.”

---

Narcissa had to admit that taking her niece shopping was a lot more fun than she had thought it would be. She had thought it would have been like shopping with Draco, dealing with an impatient child. Instead it was Narcissa who was getting impatient though only because she was hungry.

“Dora, dear, the stores will be here after we eat,” she reminded the girl, using a diminutive of the girl’s name since they were shopping in Mundane London.

“Okay,” she agreed, putting away the leather trousers she knew her mother would never let her get.

The two found themselves walking back to the Leaky Cauldron and using the public floo to get to Cabalistic Alley--since she didn’t want to walk a seven year old through Knockturn or take the long way and it was only two knuts for the powder--and were soon seated in Long Jean-Luc Picard’s, the magical world’s equivalent of a fast food restaurant since every meal came with a prize for children and an order was ready within two minutes since the majority were fried dishes.

“I don’t think your mum will let you get those trousers you were looking at. You’d just grow out of them in little time.”

She nodded. “I know. I was just thinking how you looked really nice in the leather trousers you were wearing last week.”

Narcissa smiled at that. “Thank you, I was actually trying them on for a fancy dress party your cousin Sirius’s girlfriend invited me to. She’s a very, very pretty witch who works as a model for the mundanes.

“Your mum told me that you’ve begun developing the Black talent?”

Nymphadora nodded rapidly as her nose began to swell and her eyes turned green. “So far I can change my nose, my eyes, and the length of my hair!”

“Wow. I was so sad when I started school and i still hadn’t developed the talent. I’m quite jealous of you.”

“I’m sorry.” Dora looked a little depressed until Narcissa said “Never be sorry for something you have no control over, sweetie. Besides, I think I’m pretty enough without the ability. I just didn’t want to have to style my hair every morning.”

That made the little girl giggle.

With their meal finished--well, Nymphadora’s, Narcissa only ate a few of the potato wedges, they were just too greasy for her and Nymphadora finished off the rest of her shrimp po’ boy and wedges with Narcissa commenting on how children seemed to be bottomless disposals--the two headed back to London to get the girl her new party dress to go to her cousin on her father’s side’s birthday.

The girl ended up selecting a pretty sage green party dress that matched her hair and complexion well after Narcissa made some selections for her to choose from.

When they arrived back at Tonks’s, her sister thanked her profusely as Nymphadora modeled her new dress for her mother.

---

James dropped down in his seat and flipped open his pad of parchment, looking for his notes from the last class on international restrictions on space charms. He sighed as he read. He had violated the law so many times that he’d be in prison for a century easily if he arrested himself. Undetectable expansion charms were illegal when crossing international borders. Every summer he and his parents had gone to Paris and his school satchel had three such charms on it.

He was making notes on proper search and seizure procedures when working around local governments when an owl arrived. He took the letter from it and thanked the bird, giving it a small bit of bacon from his pocket--he had been expecting letters for the past two days.

Sirius dropped down next to him and recognized Somerled’s handwriting. “What’s dad gotta say?”

“They gave the twins haircuts. Evan’s hair was exactly the same as it had been the next morning.”

“He’s got the Black talent?!” Sirius said excitedly. “I propose an arranged marriage between your heir and my cousin, cementing our alliance and increasing the chance of the talent passing on.”

“Sirius, there’s no way I’m arranging my son’s marriage when he’s not even two! And all he’s done is regrow his hair. it might not be the talent at all.”

“James, it’s Evan. Of course he’s gonna have the talent.”

“Why?” James asked, expecting this to be hilarious.

“Because it would be cool for him to be super powerful, a speaker--” Somerled had written them immediately “--, an animagus, and a metamorphmagus! And Merlin knows what else!”

James felt a headache coming on. Sirius had way too many plans for training his godchildren. Though James liked most of the ideas if Sirius had his way his children would have very little time to actually be children excepting in their four hours a day pranking lessons.

“You know those training wands we use?” James said, having an epiphany.

“Yeah?”

“What if we charmed some so that they know all the spells the kids will learn at school and---” he paused, thinking, sketching on a blank piece of parchment.

Sirius waited, knowing interrupting James would derail his thoughts completely, making whatever he was working on take exponentially longer.

Forty minutes later, James flipped the book around, showing Sirius his sketches and notes.

“‘Fake wand,’” Sirius read. “‘Turns red when word and motion are wrong. Turns yellow when just word is wrong. Turns orange when just motion is wrong. Turns green when both are correct. shocks if three consecutive reds in a row.’ That’s a brilliant idea! These could be huge on the market. Hell, they’d be great for first-gens who can’t practice magic[8] over the summer!”

“I didn’t even think of that,” James said, his eyes going wide. “Be right back.”

James took off to find the martial arts instructor and ask him about the wands.

When he returned, James set down a thick wad of parchment filled with notes on the charms and hexes on how their training wands were made.

“They do a lot more than what we were using them for,” James said as Sirius perused the notes, only getting a few things. Much of it was in runic arrays or arithmantic principles on how certain spells were modified.

“Remus will love this,” Sirius said, pushing it out of the way so he could finish his work.

“Oh, he’s sending us some packages as well,” James said, realizing there was a postscript on the back of the pages.

“Of?”

“Just a care package like the ones mum sent us sixth year.” Before she died was the unspoken addition.

“Think it’ll have porn like the ones from your dad?” In their seventh year Somerled had had one of his male secretaries go into London and get special items for the care packages including the aforementioned porn, mundane liquors, and candies. James had developed a taste for jelly babies and jägermeister.

James shrugged and turned back to his work.

They finished up and went on to the next class.

It was late that evening when James fell onto his bed and grabbed his sheet, balling it up and covering his face with it, soaking the tears as they came. It was his anniversary and he had spent the majority of the day hitting himself with cheering charms just to get through it without AK’ing himself.

Taking the sheet off, he stared at the ceiling.

She would have probably been in labor today too, he mused. Lily had been two months pregnant[9] when she died. They were going to wait and let their parents know at Yule.

---

Somerled plastered a polite look on his face and used a customized spell to immobilize his face that way then cast a silent cheering charm on himself. This session of the Sacred Wizengamot[10] was full of those who had been at least sympathetic if not actual supporters of Voldemort screaming about persecution.

Finally, he snapped. “The winners write the history, you fools. Your little degenerate half-blood--oh, we know who he was and WHAT he was--lost, he died at the hands of a first gen witch--”

The screeches from the Purists drowned out his assertion that she was his much cherished daughter-in-law as they said it was his grandson who was victor, trying to salvage some of their dignity. Losing to a Half-blood was at least tolerable to them.

“QUIET!” bellowed Hyram Wivernchoker, the current Merlin’s Chancellor. “Clan Chieftain Potter, you spoke out of turn. For that, this evening’s refreshments are on your knut. As for the rest of you, quit squabbling like Mundanes,” he hissed the last. “We are disappointed that Wizards and Witches of such excellent breeding are incapable of acting like it.” A fair few looked subdued at the dressing down. “Today’s session, the 14,679th meeting of the Sacred Wizengamot, is now ended.”

They began to file out, a handful stopping to speak with Somerled, some glancing warily at his sword and shield bearers. While they were ostensibly just to carry the items, some recognized the two as champions of Combat Dueling[11].

“Sir?” Chicky Martinet, his sword holder, asked.

“Yeah?”

“Jacoby--” the shield holder “-- and I were wondering, will we be teaching the twins to duel?”

“I had thought to bring in a dueling specialist but if you’d like, we can have you do it.”

They both nodded and fell into step behind him. “We think it’s for the best, my lord[12].” They were one of the few who had been told the secret. “And the Potter Art[13]?”

“They’ll be started in that as soon as they’re four,” Somerled said.

Somerled led them to Drinks Cabinet, a wardrobe on the wall that was actually the door to the bar in the building.

Inside, every member of the Sacred Wizengamot were in small clusters, drinking on the Potter knut.

His Sword and Shield holders settled against the wall, accepting goblets of sparkling water from the scantily clad[14] witch who smiled at them both with a much warmer smile than the fakes given to the leering old men around them.

Somerled accepted his peppered mead and took a sip, smiling slightly. He had formulated this mead himself as a young man just out of Hogwarts, his first job given to him by his grandfather. He had done very well, surprising the old man and developing a dozen more flavored meads, including their most famous, a chocolate orange mead that had taken the magical world--and had done very well in Scotland’s mundane pubs--by storm.

“Ah, Sommy, how are you?” asked Morris Campbell, the only Magical Clan Chieftain from the Lowland Clans.

“I’m good. Once I’m done here, I’ll go home and help my son’s mother-in-law feed the grandchildren then I think I’ll open a bottle of elf-wine the day he was born to toast my son’s anniversary.

“Sixty was a good year,” Campbell said thoughtfully. “Though I prefer 64.” His own firstborn was born that year.

“She’s starting her last year this year, right?”

He smiled happily. “Yes. She just scraped into sixth but she’s tapped to be head girl Minerva told me. Hasn’t told her yet.”

Somerled made a mental note to send a couple bottles of 64 elf-wine to celebrate her being head girl and some fortified butterbeer for her birthday.

“I had a question for you, actually,” Campbell said. “I’ve got a few families in Loch Morar that are looking to relocate to England. Two are good vintners, the others not so sure of. Think you might need some new people?”

“Send them owls with my contact, I’ll have them interviewed.”

They clasped forearms.

---

Albus walked down to the great hall and stood in the doorway, looking in, watching the seventh years doing their theoretical final in Potions. Slughorn saw him and walked along the students, looking at people’s parchments then joined Albus at the rear. “Headmaster,” he said softly.

“Horace. How goes it so far?”

“From what I saw, about 85 percent. I think my change for this year’s syllabus has been a boon.”

“Very good,” Albus said. “As soon as the scores come in, we’ll have tea and look them over.”

Slughorn nodded and went back to walking amongst the students.

Albus continued his walk to the outside of the grounds and looked around. Students finished with their tests were out lazing around under the trees, a handful were on the charmed smaller lake, ice skating, while four were sitting on the dock, paddling their feet, and a number of first and second years were chattering away as they picked berries from the vines that acted as a barrier between the forbidden forest and the greens.

He looked over to the quidditch pitch and smiled. Five students were lined up then they were off, flying towards the first ring in the sequence of 43 rings that were used for broom racing[15] by students.

He smiled as the students barrel rolled over him, flying through the second ring atop the Astrology tower.

Walking along, he soon found himself near the first years as they ate strawberries, blueberries, and white grapes straight from the vines.

“Headmaster?” a voice said after he passed them.

He turned and gave them his patented first year smile with twinkling eyes. It always helped them get over the nervousness.

“We were reading Hogwarts a history--” Albus nodded at that, noticing the girl’s ribbons in her hair were blue and gold, meaning she was likely a Ravenclaw “--and it said you received three Service Meritorious to Hogwarts badges but they’re not in the trophy case. We were wondering what for?”

“Sadly, they seemed to have been stolen sometime in the thirties. I received the first in my third year for finding a lost first year who had a illness that made him unresponsive and in a coma like state. Do you know what a coma is?” They all nodded. “My second was for donating significant time to the restoration of Hogsmeade after a horrible fire. The third was for very good grades. I finished my OWL in potions before beginning school as my mother was a potion mistress and we would sit with her and learn because she hoped we would follow in her steps. Because of that I was able to finish my mastery in Potions while at Hogwarts. It’s why Nicolas Flamel accepted me as research fellow.”

They all nodded excitedly as he asked, “Want to know the thirteenth use for dragon’s blood?”

He leaned down and they all crowded around to hear him whisper, “It keeps the dragon alive.”

The all burst into giggles at that as he chuckled. “Continue on with the berry picking my young charges.”

He continued walking, following along the edge of the forest until he came to Hagrid’s home. He nodded to the half-giant and the man invited him in for a sherry.

Forty minutes later, after a large sherry--Hagrid’s sherry glass held over a pint---that left his cheeks fairly red he continued on, passing the paddocks and hidden breeding field where dragon eggs were raised during seventh year Care of Magical Creatures. He continued past that, nodding to the stonekin guards that watched the entrance to Aglarond, stopping the students attempts to enter the city.

Beyond that, he passed the entrance to the ministry training center higher up the mountain that backdropped the castle. It was where the ministry employees fulfilled their post-Hogwarts two year training and the Aurors had most of their three year training.

He eventually made it to the front gates and resisted the urge to amble down to his brother’s pub for a half. Even having reconciled in the early fifties, they still spent little time together.

Albus sighed softly, thinking about the paintings of Ariana and her etherealness. They had been broken by her early death and hadn’t functioned as they should have due to the painter scamming the Dumbledores. Aberforth had done a number of years in Azkaban’s medium security wing for torturing the painter.

---

James put his anti-cheat quill down and used the curing spell to make the parchment dry faster.

Done, he handed it off to the proctor and left the room, dropping onto a bench to wait for Sirius to finish.

“James Xylophone?”

He stood, coming to attention when he realized it was Vice-Magus Dresdol, the wizard in charge of all Blackguards in Western Europe.

“Yes Sir. May I be of service?”

“Where’s your friend?”

“Still taking his test. He’s a slow writer, bad quillwork so he takes his time.”

“Both of you, my office, tomorrow at zero nine.”

“Yes Sir.”

Dresdol walked off and James slumped down, yawning.

Sirius walked out, yawning as well when he saw the remnant of James’s.

“Tomorrow Dresdol wants us in his office at nine am. What did you do?”

“I haven’t pranked anyone. That didn’t deserve it. And you know all those.”

James chuckled.

------

Sirius folded the parchment and slipped it back into the envelope, shocked at how filthy minded Lubhasa could be. I can’t wait to get home, he thought, looking at his watch. Three more days of tests, a handful of duels over two days, then a week on an island, fighting their way through a lot of very good hit-wizards.

He pushed it aside and went to see what was for breakfast, still unused to the Swedish breakfast of sandwiches.

He found James with a bowl of porridge and jam and got the same for himself. “You remember how we used to talk about doing a Grand Tour when we finished school? Seeing the world?”

“Yeah?”

“Sandwiches for breakfast would have sent me back to Ol’ Blighty immediately.”

James dropped his spoon laughing. “You loved Lily’s breakfast wraps,” he said after he calmed.

“Big difference. She didn’t put fish bait on them.”

“You’ve had caviar at some of dad’s events a number of times,” James reminded him.

“Yeah, on a bit of buttered rye toast that I knew it was there.”

James rolled his eyes and finished his bowl then looked at his watch, a battered, magically customized, Omega Lily had had made for their wedding.

James fingered it as they left and walked to the Vice-Magus’s office, smiling at the memory of waking up to find Lily stripping off his battered and broken watch--he had put a tempus charm on it so he could still tell time even if all the other functions no longer worked--and replacing it with the new one and telling him she had meant to give it to him after their ceremony.

“Come in,” came from the door as they approached.

Inside, Dresdol nodded at them then pointed towards two boxes. “Your dad sent those. Please remind him that some of those items are illegal to send over international lines?

“As for why I needed to see you, we haven’t had a team in the United Kingdom in nearly ninety years. We want to send you back with a senior Blackguard. After two, three years, we’ll advance you up and you’ll be our agents there with an international team. Your Ministry is unhappy about it but sod them.”

“How many?”

“Eventually fifteen, twenty, operating all throughout Europe but based in the UK.”

---

Minerva watched the last of her students file out of the Great Hall then resisted the urge to run up to her own offices.

She made a staid way up to her office on the seventh floor and found one of the house-parents from Gryffindor waiting for her. “Good afternoon Wizard Gaiman. How is your wife?”

“Good. Amanda’s taking our first years and a few others down to the berry patches, teaching them how to make preserves.”

“Ah, we did that when I was in first year too,” Minerva said, musing on her own making of preserves. It was one of the many impromptu lessons taught by the house-parents of the various houses of the school. While there were elective courses and clubs that concentrated on skills like that, not every student took them but most students jumped at the little events like berry picking and preserve making.

“I needed to let you know about some problems in the common room last night.”

She listened as he told her about the party he had broken up where he had found two young witches locked in a closet together.

“It’s not our duty to do anything about that,” Minerva said. “Our job is only to make sure they’re safe and properly educated. Their morality overall is up to their parents. But thank you, anything else?”

He shook his head, surprised she didn’t ask who or have anything else to say about the witches that were witch’s witches.

As soon as he left, she took down her books on the animagus transformation, her own diary on her work on it--four years of her life post-Hogwarts--and some Transfiguration texts that dealt with the transformation in their footnotes or appendices.

It was nearing dinnertime when she found the reference she was looking for. A witch who had finished the transformation the first time when she was seven without any training.

She wrote a note to the census department of the Ministry, checking to see if the witch was still alive. She had been born in 1861 after all.

---

James pulled himself up the shore and groaned in pain. The waves had battered him against the rocks as he had swum for land.

He saw a thick copse of trees and hid under those, drying himself off then transfiguring his robes into thick cotton trousers and a long sleeve turtleneck with dark brownish-green blotches.

He covered his face with some transfigured makeup to break up those outlines and began creeping through the woods, looking for the point where he and Sirius would meet.

------

Padfoot paddled onto the shore, mostly ignoring the rain until he was under the cover of the tree canopy then he shook himself, breathing in deeply, trying to find James’s scent.

When he caught it on the air, he nodded and headed towards the point where they had discussed meeting up if they were separated during the infiltration.

------

James scratched Padfoot’s back and moved away.

Padfoot shifted back into Sirius and James dried him off then transfigured his clothing for him.

“Catch any other scents?” James asked softly.

“At least nine people, two of them likely witches, one of those is I think Instructor Antoinette.” James could hear the smirk in his voice. Antoinette was gorgeous and had already fallen twice for Sirius’s overly flirtatious manner before realizing he was a recruit and not just a random wizard in a pub.

“Anything useful?”

“Sulphur from hot springs, serious amounts of bat shit, and lots of coconuts.”

“After this, we’re going to Fiji for three weeks,” James said. After they finished the training they had three weeks leave before starting their job.

The two shifted back to their animal forms since they were better suited to the environment and began making their way through the forest, Padfoot on point, occasionally scouting ahead to find better paths for the larger frame of Prongs.

------

James had shifted back to his human form once they had gotten within a kilometer of the village while Padfoot remained as is, taking long hard sniffs of the air, using his ears to inform James of potential issues, a skill they had developed post-Hogwarts before the Potters had gone into hiding.

“A boy and his dog,” James whispered teasingly, making Padfoot freeze then lift his left leg as if he was going to urinate on James’s.

James kicked him softly. “Don’t even think it!”

The two moved into the shadows, watching a wizard walk by then James snapped out a whispered “Petrificus totalis” then transfigured him into a hedgehog using Fijian, locking him that way until someone used a Dumbledore level Finite Incantatem or used the same language to unlock it.

James sent up an invisible flare--only the evaluators would be able to see it with custom charmed spectacles--and they continued on, Padfoot still on point, sniffing the trails of the enemies while James shifted in and out of the shadows, wishing he had been able to learn the Shadow Walker ability Potters had once had back when they were thieves and assassins.

Padfoot alerted him to a new scent on the air and they fell back into a shadow, watching a house elf pop into the yard of a house and begin moving the potted plants under the awning of the house.

The house elf looked their way, its eyes going wide, then it snapped its fingers, disappearing.

Padfoot moved in to the yard to investigate while James had a fleeting thought about becoming a thief, using the fidelius charm to hide the homes he wanted to rob from their owners.

Shaking off the thought of becoming a ‘gentleman thief’ as Padfoot returned, signifying nothing of importance had been found, they continued on, stunning and transfiguring the hit-wizards they came across.

Padfoot shifted back into Sirius and grinned. “I never understood the reason for this test,” he said, looking down at Antoinette, the last of the nine. “I mean, we’re Aurors, why are we doing combat simulations?”

“Because occasionally you need to go into combat situations,” one of the evaluators said as she flew down to where they stood.

“You two work well together,” she said. “The animal thing was unexpected.”

“Yeah, we didn’t register because we were in the middle of a war and you don’t require it.”

“Well don’t register now. You’re beyond the petty requirements of the British Ministry of Incompetence. And you’re also in. Go get some sleep, you meet your boss tomorrow.”

---

Minerva opened the letter and read it slowly. The witch was showing signs of dementia but her youngest great-granddaughter had gone to Hogwarts and was more than happy to send along her grandmother’s diaries on the subject once she figured out which ones they were.

Minerva smiled and penned back a short reply, thanking the young witch for her reply and work.

She tucked the envelope into her animagus[16] research and hoped the witch would be able to find it soon.

---

James and Sirius accepted their new robes, dark grey and made of Ukrainian Ironbelly hide, artificially darkened from the shimmery metallic grey of the dragon’s natural hue.

They twitched the hoods into place and the clasps on the front closures, activating the magic of the hood, hiding their face behind the darkness spell that was enchanted into the silk lining of the robes.

All forty three graduating Blackguards were soon enrobed and hidden in shadow as fireworks began to explode above the ceremony, spelling out the graduating class of 1982.

Hoods were pulled back as house elves began circulating with trays of drinks.

“So glad this is done,” James sighed. “I miss my kids.”

“I miss your kids too,” Sirius said. “Especially since they’re probably mine.”

James punched him in the stomach, just hard enough to remind Sirius that cuckold jokes were only funny when they weren’t about him.

Sirius chuckled weakly as he rubbed his stomach.

---

Severus Snape nodded politely to the new house-parents, Pierre and Marie Goethe. Being the new head of the House was disconcerting for him though Professor Slughorn had been happy to finally step aside and concentrate on potions instructing since Potions was too demanding to teach while running a House.

“Is there anything specific you need of me?” he asked the two.

“I don’t believe so,” Marie said. “Pierre?”

“I believe we’ll be okay. Last year we spoke with Ari and Jacob a lot, trying to learn about this because we really wanted this job.”

Severus nodded. Being the house-parents meant that former students would have three to five years of access to the library and a chance to build up funds without having to pay rent or any other expenses. Being the head of house meant much the same though he also had access to subsidized potion supplies and; though the Headmaster had made the majority off-limits to him--rightfully so, Severus would only admit to himself; nearly unlimited access to the Forbidden Section of the library.

“Very well. You were both in NEWT potions were you not?”

They nodded. “Then perhaps you should restart the potions club. I do not have the temperament to run it or teach I have learned.” Slughorn had asked him to help out as an assistant the previous year but he had found himself unable to do the hob.

He finished up the little bit of paperwork they needed to do then Severus left the Slytherin common room to find his constantly moving quarters, sure that the bastard Potter had done it before disappearing[17].

---

James and Sirius were finishing packing Sirius’s stuff when there was a knock on the door then it was pushed open the rest of the way. “Black and Potter?” While Sirius had been unofficially adopted and many knew him as Black-Potter, his legal name was still just Black.

“Yes,” James said, using his wand to make Sirius’s socks dance into his duffle in a conga line, looking the woman over.

“Nice wand-work,” she said. “I’m Auriella Mitzengard, your new boss. Call me Auri in private, Mitzengard in public please.”

“James,” he said. “And this is Sirius. He likes to be called Chunky.”

“I do not like to be called Chunky. He likes to be called Late For Dinner, though.”

She bit back a laugh, her lips twitching. “I read your files. I’d be shocked at all the things you got away with but it makes sense considering how talented you two are. How come your other friend, the werewolf Lupin, right?” The nodded. “Why isn’t he here as well?”

“Our country is a bit too racist towards his type. So I hired him as my regent. It means one of the oldest, darkest families is now run by a Werewolf, voting and acting quite light.”

She nodded. “I’ll spend the next three weeks looking for a place to live in--” She paused when James jumped up and turned to Sirius.

“The houses. We’re gonna have twenty Blackguards eventually. We can have them all living under one huge fidelius with each home charmed with their own.”

“Fidelius?” she asked.

Sirius explained what the charm was. “Merlin, how much power does that take?”

“A lot,” James told her. “Dumbledore did the charm on the block, we could handle the houses together possibly.”

“How does the secret work?” she asked.

James told her.

“And this is the secret you’re living under?”

James and Sirius both nodded. “Interesting. So if I start putting evidence together, I’d forget what I was doing?”

“Yes.”

“This is a criminal’s dream spell.”

Sirius nodded. “James has been musing about using it on homes of people he despises and becoming a gentlewizard thief.”

She raised an eyebrow as James smacked Sirius. “I was not musing, it was just an idle thought.”

She chuckled. “Right then, how do I see this home you’re hiding?”

“Grimmauld Park is the place to be,” Sirius said, giving her the secret once James finished a privacy charm on the room.

---

A/N: I follow the actress who played Lavender on twitter and she does these ultra depressingly amusing cartoons and for some reason, I just can’t help but imagine her sitting in a dark room, furiously typing away, penning the most massive and smuttiest Harry Potter/Lavender Brown Ron-bashing fanfic ever written in between these cartoons.

---

1: JKR used celtic wood significances(which seem to vary wildly depending upon the source), such as available on thegoddesstree dot com or wand_wood on the harry potter wikia. Looking at that page, Bellatrix’s, the Elder Wand, and Riddle’s with it’s bone handle are all especially cool designs but it’s surprisingly Hermione’s and Ron’s first hand-me-down wands that I think are the coolest designs. As for Hermione’s, in this story she along with Harry and Neville will have their wands customized like Sirius’s was as explained last chapter. Their cores love them but the wood resonates at the wrong frequency for them.

2: This isn’t something I see in a lot of fics and i wish I did more. it’ll be a big part of the martial arts in this chapter and the story overall.

3: The doe references to her always annoyed me since female red deer which is the distaff of what a stag, a male red deer, are called hinds(well, I think at a specific age they become hinds, it's been a while since i studied taxonomy), not does. [4]

4: Actually, that she’s a doe/hind is a pet peeve of mine in every fic that mentions her animagus training. Does Hermione’s otter (aside from the Patronus OTTER subconscious choice that JKR made) fit Harry’s stag or Ron’s terrier? No. So why would the animagus form also have her be so linked to someone she’s known after her formative years? I should change it to something else but I’ll leave it at least for now. if I do change it, perhaps she was becoming something like a dinosaur(She’ll have wanted to be an archaeologist before learning about magic and then a mediwitch or a cursebreaker in this AU post riddle)? if so, that’ll be the fuel for one of harry’s ideas later on.

5: Pomfrey will be the head of the hospital wing with 2-3 other healers under her and her title won’t be nurse. Theirs will be but hers will be Mediwitch or something different. She’ll also teach an elective for combat medicine/pre-med kind of class. I always presumed st mungos got thought up after the characterization and she couldn’t easily retcon her title. I’ve always assumed she was a mediwitch who had retired after x years and taken the job at the hogwarts as many people do.

6: Yeah, it’s a reference to Lord of Caer Azkaban. I must have skipped past reading that story a bajillion times until eventually I had read everything else of Rorschach’s Blots multiple times and finally opened it up. The beginning needs some SERIOUS editing and I think it’s he who consistently uses loose instead of lose but he writes some seriously funny stuff. Especially his Agent O(THAT SEDUCTION SCENE!!!!) and Harry Potter/Hellraiser crossover (though the deaths of the Death Eaters were a bit weak, no true artistry). Probably the most cliché bit in the story at the moment but they’re only used on their properly, no one else ever gets to see them being used. If anyone else even knows about the demon steeds and the Potters, they will think it’s just a rumor.

7: Interestingly enough, whenever I pull a pair of aces and a pair of eights in poker games, I usually end up cleaning out at least one other player on that hand instead of getting shot in the back.

8: In canon it’s stated that magic born students can’t be tracked due to the magic around their homes which means only muggleborns are forced to forgo magic all summer. Students like Neville, Draco, and Ron(psshht, as if he would!) could practice their magic all summer if they wished which it’s obvious Draco does, specifically dark magic. Sick, sadistic little sociopath.

9: Another fanon issue. In reality, I think they’d be a lot more careful. I’m fairly sure that Harry in Canon was likely an accident. And if so, they’d be even more careful, probably mixing the rhythm method, pulling out, AND some sort of contraceptive while their world is at war and they’re soldiers in it. (Or anal. It was THE method of birth control for significant periods of time, especially since most religions saw effective and healthy methods of birth control--condoms--as sinful and immoral--yet condemning someone to a slow death of syphilis was just fine.)

10: A minor retcon of name though(I don’t think i need to actually fix it in the other chapters?). It is in reference to the Sacred Twenty-eight, the last pureblood families in the early 20th century(that’s the 1 Jan 1901-31 Dec 2000 for those that don’t know). In canon, the Sacred 28 seem to be darker leaning families or those who believe in pureblood mania and the Potters and Weasleys are left off so there are obviously more than 28 families. And it’s heartening to see Shacklebolt on there since he’s not lily white which can lead readers to assume that while their society is prudish, they’re at least not racist in regards to color. Just who your parents are. Ahh, classism.

11: Dueling: one on one, following set rules. Combat dueling, one on an unknown number of opponents. Without rules save no killing or permanent injuries. People still die nonetheless. There are only a handful of champions since few are able to keep their heads in the heat of battle.

12: Ahh, as much as I HATE the Lord fanfics, the Potters do still have an extant title or three, including a Scottish Barony attached to their old home when the Potters weren’t Potters or Peverell blooded so My Lord is a proper courtesy title for him.

13: A variant of Krav Maga, though it existed LONG before Krav Maga did. While it’s usually fought with sword and shield, its bare hand style is violent and effective at killing.

If you’re wondering about the martial art they’re employing in the earlier scene, watch Equilibrium or Ultraviolet(Kurt Wimmer’s, not the british series) and imagine they’re using wands instead of guns. (Or hit up youtube and search ‘gun kata’ and those movies.)

14: Ahh, just like the majority of politicians. Screaming about being family men and good christians, then off to their mistresses.

15: I imagine broom racing as the magical world’s equivalent of either the tour de france or formula 1 racing. (I imagine Harry’s eventual firebolt would be illegal in racing as its just too high end. Everything would be standardized and it’s all about the talent of the magical(or his juicing which will happen at hogwarts. A subplot of magical steroids is just too good to ignore).)

16: I’m making some minor changes to the Animagus transformation but not a lot. It’s still very difficult. No one will complete it with only a year of training. But it is possible for occasionally some people to be natural animagi which means in a moment of anger or fear they’ll change on their own and be unable to change back without help. People who are weak magically can learn the ability but it often requires them to trust someone else who will help mentally nudge them towards it or be hit with transfiguration spells to the form over and over by someone powerful enough until they finally have it engrained.

It will be a meditation and internal magic, not a potion induced thing.

17: Doesn’t know the secret, doesn’t need to. I might be presenting him apologetically but I despise Snape’s character and am sure I’m going to be so happy with what I do to him in this story (it’s undecided at this point).

He’s still a spy but. . . .

---

Vukk: I went into this in the footnote, though obviously not deep enough.

This is a culture that is stuck in the victorian/regency era due to long lives and little to no reason to innovate(which is mostly why cultures evolve/change)--we see a birthday party for a 600+ year old man in the movie being advertised that isn’t Flamel; the woman overseeing the NEWT/OWL tests oversaw Albus’s and he’s over a century old; and for 115 years old, Albus is incredibly spry.

In that era, only sailors and criminals, both very low classes, would have tattoos and while other magical societies might see body modification as normal--though the chinese foot binding is torture--this is, once again, a bunch of people that are terrified of things that fit outside their worldview. So her views on it? Correct for the society. HELL, i’m fucking shocked that they don’t still believe in phrenology since I recall it being mentioned somehow in relation to Albus’s school years(though that may have been in fanon).

I know body modification is fairly normal. I have acquaintances who are participants in the more extreme versions. BUT scarring yourself to mark how many people you’ve killed? That IS a sign of a disorder.

HappyLady: Hermione will be seen a couple times as she’s growing up to help establish the differences in her life and Harry and Hermione or Hermione and Jazmin will meet at eight or so but it will be brief and quite unmagical. Their substantive meeting will be on the train, much as it was, via Neville.

As for intelligent conversation, he and his sister are good matches for each other intelligence-wise though she leans towards artistry while Harry leans towards languages: both are mathematics oriented(though Harry’s current withdrawn nature will continue until he makes a certain friend I think).

Hermione will be mostly the same as in canon though there may be a major change in why she’s so knowledgeable. Still debating if I want to use it.

Nanettez: I use mundane because its base word means world and one of its synonyms is worldly. It means they are of the world, not an aberration as the earliest magicals saw themselves, created to be shepherds for their magicless brothers. Magicals who prefer this term are honoring those who don’t have magic in their own way. It was really difficult for me to find a term to use and finally capitulated on mundane. had I a better one I might use it instead.

In this AU, muggle’s base word means easily fooled or witless and derived from a spell for changing magicless peoples’ minds.

I can see being offended when being called mundane since some of its synonyms aren’t stellar but sometimes you gotta accept the good with the bad.

Also, imagine you’re a parent taking your child to get her supplies. A wizard bumps into you and calls you a muggle with hatred in his voice. You may not know it’s derivation but you know it’s an insult and you know he doesn’t like you for a reason you don’t know/understand.

This will be referenced when Hermione learns she’s a witch too.

Apocrypha means writings of unknowable authenticity. It has nothing to do with the bible in this case. If it might be related to the bible and I don’t specifically spell out its relation, then it’s not related.

The luna bit is a typo, fixing.

In this AU, he’s a contemporary of ollivander. Both were trained by Ollivander’s father, both hate each other for various reasons. yes, ollivander thinks a lot of himself but it’s warranted. He is as good as he thinks he is, even if he is creepy. He’ll show up more later when the twins become interested in wandcrafting and they visit his shop to ask questions.

Normal names? Like what? Longbottom? Bagshot? Lovegood? Slughorn? And I wanted him to be called last at the sorting ceremony for a fairly specific reason. He basically ruined the sorting for anyone whose name came after Potter since it’s all anyone would have been talking about(Zabini’s still screwed and will likely be neutral in this AU as I think he was in canon?). And i like xylophones. I used to have a gorgeous balo from West Africa.

Chapter Text

H Potter not mine

It would be quite different

JK Rowling owned

 

---

 

James smiled as his toddlers ran towards him, grabbing on to his legs, almost bringing him to the ground.

“Daddy!” Jasmine squealed as he picked them both up, grunting a little bit.

“Were you two good for grandma and grandpa?”

“They were very good,” Marilee said.

“Are you all packed?” he asked.

His grandfather nodded. “I’ve got the drops for the twins and then we can go.”

“Tongues out,” James told them and they stuck them out.

Somerled put a drop of the potion on each of their tongues and Sirius took his goddaughter then picked up the portkey to the island, a string of irregular black pearls.

Marilee was Somerled’s passenger for the trip and she breathlessly said “I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers” when he pulled her close, making James raise an eyebrow.

“We’ve been reading A Streetcar Named Desire,” he told his son. His father had a book club with a number of their employees, dedicated mostly to mundane writing. “And we saw the moving over the weekend.”

“Movie,” Marilee corrected and Somerled nodded. “Right, movie.”

The house elves would follow with the luggage using their own magic which--when not transporting a person--could go nearly anywhere.

“Urrgh,” Marilee said when she finally felt like the world was no longer spinning too fast to stand. She had gone on a portkey before but it had taken seconds, not nearly two minutes like this one had.

“Here, try this,” Somerled said. “Countervertigo potion. Should help you but not sure.”

She took a swallow, grimacing at the flavor but it cleared up the lightheadedness and the spinning motion in her head.

“Oh wow,” she breathed when she saw the patio they stood in and the gorgeous topiaries of red and gold trees and the red and gold marble stone of the paths, benches, and tables surrounding a red stone fountain with a gold thestral being held up by the water and magic.

“We’ve had this place in the family for a good long time,” Somerled said. “Won in a poker game I think dad told me.”

James smiled as the twins awoke and blinked sleepily from the time sleeping draught they had been given.

“Island?” Jasmine asked.

“Yes sweetie. we’re on the island. You remember being here?” They had come here for two weeks the summer before they had had to go into hiding.

She nodded then yawned and hugged her father’s neck tighter.

“Evan, do you remember?”

He nodded as he reached towards the gold thestral. “Fly!”

“Did you pack his toy broom?” he asked his father.

Somerled nodded and James called for the house elf that maintained the compound. “Where’s the twins’ toy broom?”

A minute later the house elf returned and within a few moments Even was sitting on the broom, racing off, followed by Padfoot.

Remus arrived with Sulabha and Amelié while the adults watched, laughing as Padfoot ran into a tree trying to herd his godson away from the water.

Finally Evan slowed and his sister got on the broom, flying around more sedately but enjoying it just as much as her brother. James made a mental note to get a new one since Jasmine’s old broom had been destroyed.

Sirius and Remus went to show their lady friends to their rooms--the two women had decided to share a room since they all doubted the two would be sleeping alone--while Remus and Sirius had their own rooms from previous visits though Remus elected to stay in one of the villas for guests since it was three days from the July full moon.

James went with him to reinforce the walls and windows with strengthening charms then the group ended up on the beach, Marilee laughing as James turned into Prongs and Sirius fitted a saddle designed for the twins to his back.
The twins screamed and cheered as they held on tight--though the sticking charms held them in place best--to their father’s alternate form as he ran along the beach, causing the cool spray to hit the twins, making them cheer even more.

Sirius hit him with a wingardium volans spell and Prongs took to the air, the children’s screams of excitement so loud they carried back to the beach.

“You think an animagus was the basis behind the flying reindeer aspect of the myth?” Marilee asked.

“Possibly,” Remus said.

 

---

 

The end of their island vacation had come and they were having a joint birthday celebration for Neville, Evan, and Jasmine with Nymphadora, Daphne, Susan, Luna, Draco, all the Weasley children, and a number of friends of the adults.

As the twins were opening a joint gift, James walked over to Neville’s grandmother. “Dame Longbottom?” The Longbottoms’s had an extant title as well though nothing like the wealth of the Potters.

“Yes James?” She had known him well enough even though her son was three years ahead of him.

“I made something for Neville but I wanted to get your permission on it.” He held out a box with an orbsessieve[1] in it. “I contacted everyone that knew Frank and Alice and put all their memories in vials.”

She smiled at the gift. “Right now, at two, not the best time for it. Perhaps on his fourth or fifth?”

“You can hold on to it then,” James replied. “Just let him know it’s from his parents’ friends, so he can see what they’re like. But I also want to bring in some specialists from Asia?”

She hesitated then smiled softly. “Thank you James. I’m sure he’ll cherish it when he’s old enough to understand what it means.”

James picked up Jasmine and asked, “You like your birthday gifts?”

She nodded ecstatically.

“Well, it’s time for the cakes!”

He set her back down and the house elves brought out three cakes, each designed differently by Molly. Evan’s had a broom flying in circles, Jasmine’s had a group of tropical fish swimming across it, and Neville’s had a vine that was slowly growing its way across the top and sides of it.

As soon as the three blew them out, the cakes were cut and thin slices of each served to the guests so the could try all three. Evan’s was Chocolate and Mint, Jasmine’s Peach and Vanilla, and Neville’s was Raspberry and Ginger.

James chuckled as he saw the growing vine on his slice begin growing onto the other slices and a flower bloomed. He saw they were doing the same on other plates as well.

He was a little surprised at a child liking ginger so much, then he remembered his mother complaining about how much he liked artichoke as a toddler--it had ended up a part of every meal for nearly a year.

 

---

 

Albus was shown into the sitting room on the ground floor by one of the house elves and he smiled when he heard Remus and Amelié discussing where to have lunch.

“Perhaps you should try the new place outside Inverness?” he suggested, making them both jump slightly.

“Where?”

“Jaycie Morris and her husband opened a restaurant outside Inverness, hiding it from the mundanes, harvesting their own vegetables and fruits from the farm behind the restaurant. They only serve vegetarian or fish dishes freshly caught that day. From Ullapool I believe. Their Cullen Skink is delightfully rich.”

“Sounds good to me,” Amelié said.

“What brings you by?” Remus asked.

“An appointment with James. I’m here to check the twins’ over with legilimency then he’s taking them to their pediatric mediwitch.”

The twins and James came through the floo just then and Remus shot off a cleaning spell at the three, compressing the charcoal dust into a fingernail sized scale that fell back into the fireplace.

“Thanks,” James said to both as Amelié took Evan from him.

“Why are you checking their minds?” she asked. The Marauders had started her on occlumency training as soon as she and Remus had realized they wanted to be serious.

“Evan had some things left behind in his mind by the thing that killed Lily,” Remus whispered and she paled. “They had to lock them away, couldn’t just obliviate since it would be like trying to separate a gallon of seawater from a gallon and an ounce sea.”

Albus’s check was fast, mostly just a surface test.

“Evan doesn’t talk very often,” Amelié said.

Albus nodded. “James and I have discussed it before. So far, while he’s not as verbal as other toddlers, when he is, he’s more... would articulate be a good choice?” James nodded at that and Albus nodded back. “He’s shown he has a fine palate of words, he just doesn’t speak very often. It’s possible it’s my fault,” he admitted. “But it was a calculated risk when he was in much greater danger.”

James nodded at that as the twins happily took the sweet lemon suckers from Albus. he called for a house elf to take them to the playroom and the twins giggled all the way up the stairs as they floated through the air.

“Why did he take them up that way?” Albus asked.

“They love flying,” James said. “Their little brooms? They’d be on them every moment of the day if I let them. Evan’s got a proper speed grip and Jasmine? Intuitively uses the sloth tuck.”

Albus nodded. While as not as much a fanatic as Minerva McGonagall, he had played himself for a year though broom racing was more his sport. He had planned to fly all the greatest courses on his Grand Tour all those years ago. Over the decades he had eventually done so save for the two courses on Antarctica and the underwater course in the Maldives.

“Perhaps when the houses here are filled there will be enough children for a pair of teams for quidditch.”

James nodded. “Hopefully. There will be twenty aurors and their families.”

Albus checked his watch and nodded. “I must be off. Check again over spring break?”

James nodded. “Sounds good.”

“Then I must be off for the Wizengamot calls,” he said loftily then smirked as they chuckled.

Albus left and James went up to see what the twins were doing then write a letter to his mother-in-law, thanking her for finishing the twins’ toilet training already.

 

---

 

Hermione Granger slipped out of her bed and almost fell over her sister who was sleeping on the floor. She smiled and dropped down to kneel beside her, shaking her until she awoke.

“Why’re you sleeping in here, Cassie?”

“The window in my room broke,” she told her little sister. “Mum and daddy told me to sleep here. I didn’t wake you, right?”

“Nope.”

“Time is it?”

Hermione looked at her clock. “Time for breakfast!”

The newly three year old and and her just thirteen sister headed down the stairs.

“Cassiopeia, Hermione, time for--oh, there you are,” their mother said. “Cassie, your window should be repaired today. Hermione, happy birthday!”

Hermione smiled happily as Danielle Granger set down their happy face waffles in front of the girls.

“Where’s Daddy?” Cassie asked.

“Putting stuff in the car. For Hermione’s birthday, we’ll be going to gran’s for lunch then we’ll stop at Blackwell’s on the way home.”

Hermione cheered happily while Cassie tried not to roll her eyes. She loved her little sister and was glad that now she could read on her own so she didn’t have to deal with the boring books the girl was into but she also hated book stores. Even with excellent fashion sections they were still full of gross boys trying to hit on her.

Hermione finished her breakfast before he father even got back into the flat and she was pulling on a dress her mother had set out for her the night before.

When she came back into the sitting room, Cassie took some ribbons out from her purse and began braiding her sister’s unruly hair into something resembling a crown of braids.

Hermione loved it and hugged her sister tightly. “Love you Cassie!”

“I love you too, Mia.” She was the only person who got away with shortening her name.

“Don’t I get some love?” Emmett, her father[2], asked.

Hermione hugged her father and squeeed as he picked her up so he could return it.

Within a half hour the four were piling into Dani’s new Audi 100, an anniversary gift for their fifteenth anniversary from her in-laws.

They arrived at Dani’s mother’s place a few minutes after eleven on the coast in Penarth.

Hermione was out of the car and running to the front door. She flung the door open and yelled out, “Grandma! We’re here!”

An attractive looking woman who looked significantly younger than the 67 she was smiled happily at seeing her granddaughter and swung the girl up into her arms. “You look so beautiful Hermione! Ready for your present?”

“Yes!” she said excitedly and started to squirm as he father walked in. “Hey Maria. Present after lunch princess.”

Hermione pouted then asked, “What’s for lunch?”

“Lots of sweets,” she told her granddaughter, glaring at her son-in-law, cowing him into submission before he could try to object.

The lunch was large, full of Hermione’s favorite foods--which, even as smart as she was, were still the favorites of a three year old--macaroni and cheese, deviled egg canoes, sugary dry cereal, broccoli and ham wedges, and sweet potato fries.

When she was done eating, the cakes were brought out, personal sized chocolate cakes for the rest of the family while a king cake with three candles purple, green, and gold in front of Hermione.

She blew them out and her family clapped once the Beatles’s version of the Birthday song had been sung.

A gold coin was revealed inside the cake and Hermione held it up in wonder. “What’s this?”

“That’s the first coin towards your eventual college time,” Emmett said. “That’s one ounce of pure gold.”

She held it out to her sister. Cassie grinned and wrapped it with a cloth then slipped it into her sister’s rarely carried purse.

The cakes were consumed then presents came out.

The majority were various books but Cassie’s present was much larger. Hermione’s eyes went wide and she hugged her sister tightly. Cassie had picked out the Lego Electric Passenger Train set for her sister, remembering how much Hermione had loved their train ride from Edinburgh to London on their way home from a conference for their parents and a vacation for the children.[3]

 

---

 

James blinked when he saw a third gate on their back fence and walked up to see a small brass plaque that read Blackguard headquarters.

He pressed it open and smiled. Instead of a set of food plots or a park, now there was a beautiful field of gold grass with blue rocks and a number of fountains, their water running to a quartet of black, shimmering fireplaces with green flames already blazing.

“Wow,” he heard and turned to see Sirius walking towards him, holding some jammy toast.

When he got closer, he saw the two nearest fireplaces had brass plaques. One said Blackguard Bog--the name of their new building overlooking Cors Caron. The other said Blackguard Central--the main blackguard building in Sweden.

James moved around and realized the fireplaces were all double side and the four interior fireplaces were for outgoing travel while the ones facing out were for arriving. The other two Fireplaces had dialing apparatuses and reservoirs for floo powder which meant they weren’t always connected like the other two.

“Your house elves are brilliant,” Sirius said, checking over the fireplaces. “I think this is pure obsidian, not clad.”

“I think these chunks of obsidian probably cost more than my apartment did,” Sirius said softly.

“Wouldn’t be surprised,” James replied. “Let’s get to work.”

They stepped through the floo and a waiting house elf cleaned them off then disappeared.

Auriella nodded at them. “Morning. Your new files are on your desks. Also, please inform your house elves they’re not to come here. This place is supposed to be classified.”

James was about to ask what she meant then saw the offices that had their names on them.

“I love those little guys,” Sirius said. Their offices had been redecorated from the drab cubicleesque offices of a Blackguard into looking a lot like Somerled’s office at the Manse, filled with antique furniture and little knick knacks of the two’s time as Aurors and at school.

James took the scroll Sirius held out for him and raised an eyebrow as he looked at it.

It was a new list of things to teach the twins.[5]

“You’re five, aren’t you?” James said and walked into his office.

“I’m six, you prat,” Sirius said, sticking his tongue out and sending a hotfoot spell at James which was caught by his cloak and rebounded at him.

 

---

 

Somerled set down the book he had been reading and looked up to see the twins were rushing towards him from the path that led from the house to the breakfast patio.

“Grandpa!” Jasmine squealed as he caught them both, lifting them up to hug them tightly.

“We’re gonna learn French!” she said excitedly.[7]

Somerled nodded. “I know.  Our family has always learned at least three languages aside from English. I know French, German, and Russian.” He left off that he learned them due to the latter two being their enemy when he was young.[8]

“Will we learn those too?”

“Maybe. Your father speaks Fijian, French, and Japanese. But He’ll likely let you learn what you want to learn. And Evan already speaks a second language. We also will expect you to learn a magical language like Equirius, Gobbledygook, or a dead language like Attic Greek.”

“What’s a dead language?” Evan asked.

Somerled smiled at that as he set the twins down on a bench. They sat down on either side as he dropped onto it as well. “A dead language is like your ability to speak to snakes. It’s a language that no one speaks as their first or native language. Do you understand what I mean?”

They shook their heads hesitantly.

“Okay, imagine there are a hundred people over there.” He used his wand to make a hundred ghostly images appear and the twins clapped at the spell. “Now, of those one hundred, fifteen speak chinese as their first language.” Fifteen turned into vaguely asian stereotypes with old clothing and conical hats. “The next six speak spanish.” The six were now dressed like toreadors. “These five speak english as their first language.” They turned into the stereotypical british wizard in grey robes. He continued on, breaking them down into the various languages around the world, making the twins giggle when he got to the point where the last few were cycling through different costumes due to percentages being less than a whole number. “Now you see how I didn’t list attic greek in those?”

They nodded. “That means it’s not a native or first language. So it’s dead. No one grows up speaking it so we don’t even know if we’re pronouncing the words correctly when we use them.”

“But Evan speaks them perfectly when he talks to snakes!”

“And that’s because it’s a magical language. He instinctively speaks it. I wonder if there are any books in Parseltongue?” he muttered thoughtfully. “Anyway, now, off you go. When you can order lunch in French I’ll take you to Paris for a day, okay?”

They nodded excitedly, slid off the bench and ran for the house to meet with their tutor.

Somerled watched them go, chuckling then poured himself a bit more champagne and opened his book again.

His Monday morning was soon interrupted by business as his secretaries began streaming out, carrying the day’s documents for him to sign and read.

 

---

 

Marilee fed the owl a few bits of steak from her lunch then opened the letter as the owl flew to the windowsill to wait.

From Somerled, she saw. She held it so she could see the hidden mark that was only visible with her glasses and used her knife to slit it open when she saw the broken triangle.

Good day Marilee,

I remember you mentioning thinking about moving, feeling your place at Number 4 Privet Drive is too large for you, alone, even with the twins visiting occasionally. Perhaps you might like one of the places of the Potters along the coast in Mortehoe? We own the lighthouse there(the Potters may have smuggled a few things throughout the years) and are the patrons of the church there as two of the cadaver tombs hold some belongings of ours we never retrieved.

-Somerled

She chuckled at the smuggling bit. It was a fairly common belief in her family that all nobles smuggled, just for the thrill of it, and the Potters were very much of the Noble class.

She took out her atlas and looked at the area, eventually finding the lighthouse and made a guess it was about a mile and 2/3 to the village from it.

I have a car, she thought. And I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a full time house elf there. I’ll go see it. And if I like it, I guess Petunia can get her inheritance early.

She decided to pack a bag and go for a drive up to the Potter Manse. She knew they had just started their lessons and she hoped their tutor might let her sit in. It had been years since she had practice her own French.

It was three hours later when she pulled off the road to open a locket and switch the runes inside to let her see the area, wondering how it got turned off.

Twenty minutes later she found the road she was looking for and drove up it slowly, waving back to the various employees of the Manse who were working whatever jobs they were doing.

She stopped the car to watch as a group of men sitting astride Thestrals herded gleaming white winged horses across the path, waving at her or tipping their hats for those who wore them as they passed when they recognized her.

“Think those are the Abraxan,” she muttered. “Why they became distillers in first place.”[9]

Finally she made it up to the Manse and parked next to the stable which housed their Nightmares, the carriages and carts, and the car that was a gift from James to Lily on their wedding, a Triumph Stag in british racing green with significant magical upgrades to account for their spotty performance. Lily had had them remove the flying, invisibility, and banishing cannons under the vanishing headlights, calling the Marauders irresponsible layabouts before thanking them all with hugs.

She was escorted inside while another house elf began cleaning and detailing her car.

The house elf disappeared then reappeared and opened the door, bowing and gesturing her into the office off the library. Inside Somerled was using a magnifying glass to examine something. “Afternoon. One second, just trying to read this old woodplate in an old book we just had restored.”

He put it aside after a minute and wrote a few notes. Done, he smiled. “What brings you by?”

“I got your owl, thought I’d come by so i could see the place.”

“Oh, excellent. It’s a bit out of the way but we’ll have a house elf check on you hourly if you’d like?”

“Well, hourly is a bit much. Perhaps in the evening?”

He nodded and stood, giving her a brief hug then led her to where the twins were, playing with Nursie, practicing shapes and colors.

Nursie walked over to speak to them when they walked in and took out a notebook she’d been using earlier. “Look at what Evan did.”

Somerled took it and narrowed his eyes. “These are runes. The runes that are in their bedroom here.”

She nodded.

“What’s the significance?” Marilee asked.

“He drew them perfectly. And they were only visible one or two times while the bookcase was being moved in. Perhaps we’ll start him on two languages at once then. Elder Futhark is what your daughter learned in Ancient Runes at Hogwarts. They’re the basis of our enchanting and warding system. Charo!” A house elf appeared and bowed, waiting eagerly for orders. “I want you to pull all the books on runes, the ones for children I mean, and put them in the tutoring room, okay?”[10]

“Yes master! Cuchi cuchi.”

When she was gone, Marilee’s brow crinkled. “Why did she say that at the end?”

“I wish I knew,” he replied. “She just started saying that.”

“So you didn’t name her after the performer?”

“No, we usually allow our house elves to name their own children. Why? Who’s Charo?”

“A Spanish, I think, performer. Cuchi cuchi is her catch phrase? She’s very well built, a fairly good dancer and guitar player. I saw her on a variety show. Can’t stand her accent.”

“So British of you,” he teased, making her laugh.

 

---

 

James and Sirius returned home just in time to join Remus, Amelié, Sulabha, and the twins for dinner, just returned home from their tutoring session at the Manse.

“Did you learn any new words?” James asked.

The twins nodded and Evan said, “Je t’aime mon papa.” His accent was surprisingly good, James thought.

“Je t'aime mon fils,” he said to Evan then changed it for a daughter when saying it to Jasmine.

“Pedo,” mouthed Sirius to an ear flick from Sulabha.

“Huh?” Jasmine asked and James explained what fils and and fille meant.

When the twins were done being picky eaters, James and Emilié--who beat Sulabha to Jasmine--took them up for their baths before bedtime.

When they were done, James got the twins into their new beds with drop down sides so they wouldn’t roll out in the night, then opened up a mundane book that his wife had introduced to him when she read it to the babies in utero. “Danny picked up his pail, grabbed his shovel from the sandpile, and set off to find a dinosaur.”[11]

 

---

 

James checked on the twins then walked to his own room and sat at the small desk inside and took out a roll of parchment and an Ev’rFul quill then licked it and started writing.

Dearest Lily,

It’s been almost ten months now. I still roll over, feeling you not there. I still wake, expecting you to hex the sheets to trap me in the bed so you get the bathroom first.

Today the twins started their French lessons. They can tell me they love me. They should have learned to say it to maman first.

Forty minutes later, he tucked the new letter to his wife, three rolls of parchment, into the drawer with all the others.

Wiping his damp cheeks and eyes dry, he undressed and fell into bed, hating how lonely he felt without her. 

---

A/N: I had an epiphany while I was rereading chapter four (I had forgotten their bosses name and had strayed down to the footnotes on Lily and Animagis). THERE ARE STILL FUCKING DINOSAURS OUT THERE. MAGICAL ONES. HIDDEN SOMEWHERE. ON AN INVISIBLE ISLAND. HARRY AND HIS FRIENDS WILL FUCKING REDISCOVER FUCKING DINOSAURS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THEY’RE GOING TO FUCKING DINOTOPIA!!!

YOU’RE EXCITED, FEEL THESE NIPPLES![12] 

---

1: An orbsessieve in this story is a stopgap in the recreation of the Pensieve whose creator died after oh, let’s say 67 were made, his notes having never been written down.

The Orbsessieve is much like the pensieve in that it uses memories but instead you insert the vial of memory into the vial sized hole of a fist to 21” crystal ball. It then shows the memory inside the orb or projecting it depending on the rune around the hole pressed, only showing from the memory’s point of view, not showing everything like the pensieve does. With an orb, it is quite difficult to distinguish edited from true memories.

Albus’s pensieve cost him his inheritance. The Potters have been trying to buy out the manufacturers of the Orbsessieve for years but they refuse to do so even though they know they’d likely make the same amount off the Potters as they would with their limited 2-3 orbsessieves produced per month.

2: Danielle/a and Emmett are gonna be my new fanon for Hermione’s parents names. I know some people get annoyed by Daniel and Emma as their names but I actually really liked that fanon convention. It showed that it was a Harmony story where as a Romione story had her parents named Rupert and Emma. I’ve also seen them named after their code names--which is a bit dumb for Hermione to do--which was actually kind of crafty in some regards. I’ve seen where some spies used their first name while using new last names, such as James Boldman for Bond in some of the books. I think I’ve seen them named after their actors before which was kinda cool. The one I hate is them BOTH having a name from Shakespeare or her named being Jane/Jean and Hermione is named for her. It’s another dumb convention where EVERYONE has one of their parents name as a middle name.

Now that I think about it, I think the best name for Hermione’s mum was Helen since I’m pretty sure it was a reference to Hermione, daughter of Menelaus.

Heh, Sirius Orion Black is such a great name.

So is Draco Ignatius Malfoy. (Canon it seems to be Lucius so if Neville’s is Frank[lin?], then naming after the father would be some sort of tradition followed fairly closely.)

3: So there we are, our first view of Hermione. She now has a decade older sister, but her parents are still dentists. She’ll still be a little awkward with other children, especially if I go through with my plans to give her a fairly serious mental disorder.[4]

4: This story will not be hermione bashing. I adore hermione. She’s my favorite character. i think the story should have been about her in the first place (though it probably wouldn’t have been such a phenomenon if it was due to patriarchy bs). Hell, Emma Watson’s pouts make me smile. The scene where she’s eating in the first movie? I adore that scene for some reason. [A review on FF.n asked if this story(in a review for this chapter I think) was going to have super Hermione or something akin. I just said I was going to give her a fairly serious mental disorder! So no, not a super!Hermione story but she'll be just as important to Harry as canon!Hermione is, just a few small tweaks and some reconstruction of her personality.]

5: Animagi training

metamorph training (E only(unless J shows talent?))

Potions, prank oriented

Charms, prank oriented

Transfiguration, prank oriented

History of pranking

Martial Arts

Dueling

Combat Dueling

Languages

Music

Dance

sword fighting

Noble etiquette

Spell chaining[6]

[and more crap I can’t think of at the moment]

6: This comes up in a fair few fics. It’s the understanding of how to cast one spell that perhaps uses a Z shape then using another that follows that by utilizing the end of the _ of the Z and going into a 7 for a different spell, then chaining a new spell that uses the downward motion to make the new shape for the next spell. It’s one of the more intelligent tropes/cliches that have developed in the fandom.

7: Start them young. Get them fluent within a year or two, then switch to another language. Have them fluent in three by the time they start middle school and they’ve got some jobs easily before they even finish school.

8: In World War Two, the Nazis were heavily interested in the occult, scouring Europe and possibly the world for relics of old faiths that might have the power to help them win the war, especially those that were significant to ariosophy. There are those that accuse Hitler as having been influenced by or been an actual demon. That completely discounts the fact that humans are vile, disgusting beings that don’t always rise above their baser urges.
But in this world? That will be true. And that demon will be the bitch of Grindlewald. The nazis were just puppets dancing on the strings of one wizard who despised them all.

Why are Russians the enemy as well? Cold War.* By then, Somerled was old enough to perhaps have played Hare and Hound with the Russians and the Germans, perhaps feeding evidence of nonoccult events to the various Military Intelligence offices in UK and doing the same to the Aurors and Hit-Wizards and Albus who, while then unwilling to face his friend in battle, would have been at least an information broker due to his issues with lust for power.

*In The Observer of March 10, 1946, Orwell wrote that "[a]fter the Moscow conference last December, Russia began to make a 'cold war' on Britain and the British Empire."**

**copied directly from Wikipedia’s article on Cold War.

9: In canon, Maxime says her Abraxans require single malt which is fairly picky but not as picky as I am as I require single cask scotch, at least 21 years old. ^_^ Anyway, as I was saying, they require single malt (which means they blend multiple casks that were all from the same malting(allowing it to germinate(poke out some green leaf)then drying it to stop the process) of the barley. Single cask means just the best of that malt not needing blended to even out the flavors before being bottled. Blended whiskey/scotch is different malts, different manufacturers, different grains even. And they started a long time ago before there were regulations or regulators that could test scientifically.

Which means, back then when there were no major lobbies or societies to stop the liars, they couldn’t be assured of it being truthfully single malt. So they started their own distilleries to ensure the health of their animals and soon began to branch out into liquors, liqueurs, and brewing of beers.

Actually, one of my favorite whiskies is Georgia Moon Corn Whiskey, 11 bucks for a 750ml bottle(Pint and a half). Not because it’s good, I just cook with it a lot, especially mushrooms.

10: And thus begins Harry’s major interest. What he wants to do with his life. And completes in his fourth year, a little less spectacularly than he wanted but the clients love it as is.

11: This is a made up line but I might actually make this children’s book about a kid hunting for dinosaurs while a dinosaur is hunting for the mythical people. They’ll meet and become best of friends. Until the military learns about the dinosaur and kills it which then instigates a war between the dinosaurs and humanity and humanity loses. or they become BFFs. One of those.

12: Quote from BASEketball. Hilarious film.

 

Chapter Text

My grandmother broke her hip recently. Sadly, I will try to come back to this but for the immediate future, trying to find a new telecommuting job, making more money, moving out of a hundred year old house(this place was built in 1905), and taking care of her is my main priority.

Should you feel the interest in helping out, we have a charity page at www.fundly.com/marystanley.