Chapter 18

"So where is this girlfriend of yours?" Tonks asked of her cousin, eager to meet the woman who had managed to put a leash on him.

"She told me she'd be in that section over there…" Sirius replied in a distracted manner, looking over the stadium to spot his paramour. "… Ah! There she is."

"Which one?" Penny asked, just as curius as Tonks.

"The dark skinned one over there, wearing black and white." Sirius specified, pointing his finger in the general direction and hurrying towards her.

The two women had no trouble locating her after that. Indeed, she did rather stand out dressed as she was in close fitting black velvet robes trimmed with white fur.

Tonks and Penny exchanged a look, both wondering if Sirius had run afoul a gold digger of some sort or if the woman was rich in her own right, as the outfit had to be obscenely expensive. That impression was only reinforced as they got closer and noticed that she also had an exquisite dark blue tearstone sapphire necklace around her neck and another couple of similar gems dangling from her ears.

"Sirius, I was beginning to think you had stood me up." The woman said as they approached, a slight smile on her face. She was incredibly beautiful.

Tonks felt her stomach drop slightly as she heard the Italian accented English. She'd heard rumors from the more senior aurors about a certain Italian witch, but surely Sirius' luck wasn't that bad?

"You wound me, I would never stand up such lady." Sirius replied, grinning happily as he took her outstreched hand and pressed a kiss to it. "Now, may I present my cousin, Auror Nymphadora Tonks, and Penelope Clearwater, Potter family steward."

"Just Tonks." Tonks said automatically, her mind still on the potential identity of this woman.

"Call me Penny."

"A pleasure." The woman said with a nod, smile widening sligtly.

"Girls, meet my mysterious lady friend, Adrastia Zabini."

Fuck. Tonks thought eloquently, stomach dropping all the way. Of course Sirius would manage get infatuated with a woman who had 'Black Widow' as an all but formal title, why had she ever expected him to have a normal girl? The pun inherent in the title and Sirius' last name might have been funny in different circumstances.

"Nice to finally meet you." Penny said sincerely and decided to go for a joke to break the ice. "I hope you can keep Sirius in line, he's a bit of a dog."

"Oh, I know and I will." Adrastia purred, smile taking a challenging quality for just a moment as she glanced at the young auror. It was always amusing to see law enforcement trying to find proof of her hobby only to fail and stare helplessly as she got away with murder after murder.

Tonks saw the smile and returned it with a hollow one of her own. She had a horrible feeling that saving her cousin from the trouble he'd dipped his cock into this time would not be as simple as telling him that Zabini was out to kill him. She couldn't cause a scene right here either way.

"Looks like it's starting." Sirius said, pointing down into the arena. "They're bringing out the first dragon."

The sight of the vicious and pissed off looking Hungarian Horntail brought her mind to a different worry. Harry had told her what he planned to do and she had to agree that it was a good plan, but there was no such thing as 'perfectly safe' when you were dealing with dragons.

She hoped he would be alright, she'd gotten quite fond of him in the time that they'd been together and she might need his help to save her fool cousin.

Fleur swallowed nervously as she looked into the dragon's belligerent yellow eyes, staring at her balefully as it crouched over its eggs. It was more intimidating than she had expected it to be.

This was not going to be easy. Her approach would bypass its magic resistant scales, but she could do nothing but hope that it be enough to overcome its foul disposition.

Unfortunately, the crowd would work against her in this and having Bagman screaming out an excited commentary certainly wouldn't help. She hoped that he would at least keep his mouth shut when it counted.

With a final fortifying breath, Fleur started singing a French lullaby that her mother had sung to her when she had been a child.

Veela shared many similarities with each other. The one that was relevant at this point was that they all had a love of song and could easily carry a tune without any need for lessons or practice. It was unheard of for a veela to be a bad singer. Their voices held magic when they were lifted in song.

In the champion's tent.

Harry's head tilted sideways when Fleur's song reached his ears. He didn't understand the words, but he knew the magic.

That's another piece of that puzzle falling into place.

It was working, Fleur saw with relief. The Horntail was looking less agitated and it was blinking slowly. Sometimes it would shake its head as if trying to stay alert.

She continued singing, keeping her voice soft and soothing and repeating the lullaby several times as she ran out of lines. Little by little, the Horntail's eyes drifted shut and it laid its head on the ground, beginning to snore.

Fleur continued singing just in case and slowly approached, struggling to keep her legs from shaking. The dragon was no longer her greatest enemy now. If the crowd started cheering or Bagman started braying, it would wake up, likely even angrier than it had been before.

To her immeasurable relief, everyone stayed quiet as she gently lifted the golden egg from the nest and walked away as fast as she dared, still singing.

The crowd screamed in approval. The dragon snorted and woke up. It saw her with the egg and roared a jet of flame towards her.

Fleur abandoned all pretense of bravery and ran for it. Fortunately she had been far enough away that she wasn't roasted, but if the heat she felt was any indication it had been a near thing.

Task finished, she threw her hair and looked expectantly at the judges. They had better give her a perfect score for this.

Madam Maxime did so, as did Dumbledore. That was where all sense of fairness ended however.

Bagman gave an eight, looking terrible reluctant to do it. Fleur was outraged, but quickly forgot about the unctuous man when the last two judges held up their own scores.

Karkaroff gave her a five and Umbridge a two.

The only thing that stopped her from transforming into avian form and incinerating the both of them was the fact that Madam Maxime and even the crowd were just as outraged at the blatantly unfair scoring.

Viktor scowled at the dragon, mostly out of habit.

Why had he entered himself into this tournament again? Oh yes, because it was expected of him. He had gotten used to doing what was expected of him. Photo sessions and interviews and shaking hands with people, he did it all but he hated it. He just wanted to play quidditch, but he was good and success inevitably drew attention.

When news of this stupid tournament had come, everyone expected him to represent Durmstrang. Even the Bulgarian quidditch team expected him to enter and bring them more publicity. Nobody even bothered to wonder if he wanted to enter.

He wasn't even the best choice for a champion. He was a stronger than most of those around his age, but Durmstrang had stronger. Karkaroff had left those behind to make sure that he was chosen. With the amount of time he invested into quidditch training, he could hardly be expected to keep up with his more studious peers in the study of magic.

Now here he was, staring a dragon in the snout and about to poke it in the eye.

Viktor knew that it wasn't a good plan. Unfortunately, he had never been much of a problem solver. He was fairly good at the direct approach, but lacked the imagination for something more inventive. Karkaroff thought that blinding the dragon was a good plan, but Karkaroff was an idiot. Too bad it was the only plan he had.

There was nothing to do except get to it really. He wasn't in the habit of quitting even if the contract had allowed it.

The Conjunctivitis Curse flew from his wand and struck true, causing the Horntail to roar its fury as it was blinded. It stumbled and smashed two of its real eggs, making Viktor grimace, but he pushed on. He had to get that egg.

A gout of fire missed him by a mile, but the madly stomping legs were more difficult to avoid. More than once he had to abort an attempt to snatch the egg because the Horntail's thrashing was so unpredictable. Worse still, it was starting to use its hearing to track him rather than its eyes.

Deciding to make use of this, Viktor cast a low powered blasting curse as far around the dragon as he could see, hoping to turn its focus away from him.

The speed with which it turned startled him and Viktor's eyes barely had time to widen as the viciously spiked tail came sweeping towards him. Too big to jump over. Too low to slide under. Too long to dodge back.

Harry knew that something had gone wrong when the gasps and cheers of the crowd became a chorus of horrified screaming. It didn't take a genius to guess that Krum had gotten severely injured at the very least.

This was confirmed a few minutes later when Bagman came into the tent, wringing his hands nervously and stuttering out that he would have to wait a bit for his turn while they removed Krum's body from the arena.

"Abso-fucking-lutely beautiful." Harry muttered to himself once Bagman stumbled his way out of the tent. The tournament sure was off to a lovely start.

Sirius' face had an ashen pallor as the dragon handlers carefully lifted Krum's body from the Horntail's tail spikes, where it hung impaled like some kind of macabre trophy.

"That was what I suggested that Harry should do." He whispered, guts twisting with horror. He'd figured that a blinded dragon wouldn't be all that dangerous. It couldn't hurt you if it couldn't see, right? Apparently it could.

"It's a good thing he has his own ideas then." Tonks said tightly, hair slowly regaining color from the bleached white it had been the past several minutes.

"Your cousin is quite right, Sirius. Didn't you always tell me how clever your godson is?" Adrastia said with a pat on Sirius' arm, not even slightly bothered by the sight of death by dragon. One of her ex-husbands had gone a similar way when trying to demonstrate how brave he was. At her prodding.

"Yeah, Harry's smarter than this." Sirius said with a relieved exhale. Tonks and Adrastia were right, Harry would be fine.

It took the better part of an hour before Harry was called out into the arena to face his own dragon. It was a magnificent beast and egregiously magical. He could see the shimmer of it in the black scales.

It was depressing to think of the fact that wizards had reduced this powerful predator to cattle. There were no free dragons left in the world, all of them lived either in preserves or on dragon farms where they were bred only to eventually be slaughtered for the sake of armor, potions ingredients, wand cores and straight out meat. And dung, can't forget that dragon dung was a great fertilizer.

Harry understood the reason for it. Dragons didn't give a shit about the Statute of Secrecy and they were a living violation of it. They certainly wouldn't be able to fly or breathe fire if they obeyed the laws of physics.

It was still depressing even though it made sense. It took away the sense of wonder and nobility about dragons to treat them like that. A stray bit of video game wisdom came to mind at that thought.

There is nothing noble about a dragon. It's ten tons of flaming muscle powered by a brain the size of a gooseberry.

While he wasn't sure about the weight, the rest seemed spot on. It really was just an animal, an impressive animal, but an animal all the same. Considering that he had recently bought the carcasses of two butchered cows, complaining that dragons weren't treated fairly on the basis that they were cooler than cows was just a wee bit hypocritical.

It took little effort to summon the trunk in which said cow carcasses were being held, having placed it nearby in preparation for the task.

A murmur of surprise went through the crowd as the first cow carcass floated out of it under his levitation charm. It was a pretty blatant sign that he'd known about the dragons in advance.

The Horntail stopped glaring at him and began to track the snack through the air with interest. Harry was glad to see that. It would have been the height of irony if it wasn't hungry. He moved the carcass towards it and the dragon only gave it a couple of suspicious sniffs before snatching it in its jaws and gobbling it down.

Harry repeated the exercise with the other carcass and settled down to wait. The dragon looked at him expectantly, obviously hoping for a third, but he had nothing more to give it. Eventually, it snorted a bit of flame towards him and went back to glaring.

He wondered how long it would take for the Draught of Living Death he'd placed into the chest cavities of those carcasses in vacuum sealed plastic bags to take effect.

Not long as it turned out. The Horntail started looking woozy after a few minutes and quickly fell asleep.

After that it was a simple matter of walking up to the nest and grabbing the egg. The crowd seemed more than a bit confused and disappointed at the lack of spectacle, but he'd completed the task with minimal fuss and hadn't been in danger of sharing the fate of Viktor Krum, so Harry was not going to concern himself with their opinion.

Dumbledore and Bagman gave him tens and Madam Maxime a nine. Karkaroff, looking both queasy and furious gave him a four and Umbridge a three with a sickly sweet smile.

The blatant bias wasn't surprising, so Harry did no more than give a mocking little bow in their direction and walked out of the enclosure, smiling at the outraged screams of the audience.

To Harry's surprise he was accosted by another dragon as soon as he was out.

"Dragons!" Madam Pomfrey spat without preamble and tried to drag him into the first aid tent.

Harry irritably pulled his arm free. "I'm fine."

"I'll be the judge of that, Potter." The nurse snapped back irritably. She'd gone through decades of students telling her they were fine when they weren't, this particular boy's father being one of the worst offenders. With this stupid tournament already having claimed one life, she wasn't going to take any chances.

"I'm fine. " Harry repeated in a tone that clearly told her to back off. Insistent people made him angry and he'd never liked doctors. the Sun being up wasn't helping either.

Poppy swelled with indignation but settled for casting a few diagnostic charms, which gave her Potter's usual odd readings paired with perfect health. She deflated slightly upon seeing that he was indeed fine and stomped back into the medical tent.

"Hag." Harry grumbled. He was probably being unfair, but it was hard to give a toss when Pomfrey was so good at getting on his nerves. Would it kill the woman to try being less bossy?

He was distracted from his thoughts when Fleur walked out of the medical tent, looking as irritated as he'd felt.

"She get on your nerves too?" He asked, amused at having it happen to someone else.

" Oui. "

An awkward silence followed as they both realized that Krum should have been scowling right alongside them. Neither of them had been close to the taciturn Bulgarian, hadn't even had a conversation with him in fact, but it felt strange to have shared the champion's tent with him just a short while ago and now realizing that they would be finishing this tournament without him.

They didn't really have time to dwell on it though, as friends and family descended on them soon after.

Harry saw Fleur getting almost tackled into a hug by a miniature clone of her that couldn't be described as anything short of adorable. A younger sister no doubt.

A dark haired man and an older blonde woman followed at a more sedate pace. Well, older in the sense of her being older than Fleur, as she was still utterly gorgeous and could have easily passed for a big sister. They started chattering to each other in rapid French and Harry turned away, not wanting to be caught ogling Fleur's mother.

His own entourage wasn't far behind, though the running hug he received from Sirius was considerably more embarrassing than the one Fleur got from her sister.

"Sirius, get off." Harry grumbled at his overly affectionate godfather.

Sirius let him go, but continued grinning unrepentantly.

"Nice going there, Harry. You handled that dragon like a pro."

"I know, feeding it drugged food is a professional dragon handler's tactic." Harry replied drolly. Though the sleeping potion he'd given it was a far bit more powerful than what normally got used. They might have some trouble waking that Horntail up, but better safe than sorry.

Sirius barked out a laugh while Tonks and Penny came up to him and offered their own congratulations.

There was some awkwardness to that meeting and it occured to Harry that he and Dora had never actually been seen together in the magical world. They hadn't deliberately been keeping their relationship secret, but secret it was. Even the rumors spawned from their first meeting in the DMLE hadn't really amounted to anything, the aurors aware of it having simply assumed that it was just him making an unsuccessful pass at her.

This unexpected conundrum left Harry unsure of how he should act. Should he kiss her? Hug her? Pretend they weren't together?

Many things could be said about Sirius' intelligence, quite a few of them uncomplimentary, but he had a keen sense for a bro in need of a distraction and he was happy to provide one.

"Harry, meet my lovely paramour, Adrastia Zabini. Adrastia, my godson, Harry Potter." He introduced.

Harry was glad of the distraction and exchanged plesantries with the woman. He had to admit that Sirius had really hit the jackpot with this one, as she was incredibly beautiful. Not in the same way that a veela was beautiful, but certainly no less though Harry might be a bit biased given that she was just about the perfect age to trigger his 'hot older woman' fetish.

The name surprised him a bit though, as he was aware of a Slytherin fourth year by the name of Blaise Zabini, a guy who he didn't think had spoken a single word in his presence. They had to be related given their similar coloring. His gut told him that she was dangerous and her presence had the ruthless edge of a killer. This was a woman to be wary of. He was going to have to talk to Sirius about his choice of companionship.

That belief was only excerbated when he shook her hand. He felt her magic creep over his own in a way that was disturbingly familiar, a gentle caress meant to calm and entice. Contrary to its purpose, he was put even further on edge and his grip tightened instinctively, sending his own magic to press against hers in warning. Zabini's eyes widened minutely in surprised alarm before settling into a dangerouly calculating smile. Yes, he would definitely need to talk to Sirius about this woman. And he would probably need to talk to her as well, privately.

"Excuse me for a bit, I see Luna over there." He said and walked off.

"I'll go with you, I want to ask her something too." Tonks chimed in, seeing an opportunity to give Harry a heads up on the Sirius situation.

She leaned over to him as soon as they were out of hearing range of the others. "We need to talk. That woman with Sirius…"

"Is dangerous, I know." He finished softly.

Tonks was happy to hear that he'd picked up on that even if she didn't know how. "Over the mirrors tonight?"

"Yeah." He nodded.

"Congratulations, Harry." Luna congratulated once they reached her. "I'm glad that the potion worked."

"Me too." Harry quipped. He had contingency plans, but they were considerably more risky.

"Oh, here come the nargles." The blonde girl said absently, staring over Harry's shoulder.

"What?" Tonks asked in confusion.

Harry merely turned around and sighed in irritation. "What do you want, Skeeter?"

The reporter was even more of a visual offense than usual today, wearing acid green robes that almost managed to camoflage the Quick-Quotes Quill she was holding.

"Just a small statement about your thoughts on the first task." The reporter said with a ghastly smile. Harry could already imagine her thinking of all the ways she could twist his words around to make him seem like some kind of monster that was delighted by Krum's death.

"No comment." He said firmly.

"The public wants to know, Harry." Skeeter uttered the hated warcry of reporters.

Harry was tempted to tell her that the public could lick his ass while he was busy taking a dump, but knowing Skeeter she would probably be delighted if he did so.

"No. Comment." He said instead. It wasn't as satisfying as insulting her, but stonewalling the woman had its own charm.

"Perhaps one of your friends has something to say then?" The reported attempted, turning to the Metamorphmagus. "I wasn't aware that you had more than a passing aquaintance with Harry, Auror Tonks."

"His godfather is my favorite cousin, of course we know each other." Tonks shot back snidely, knowing exactly what Skeeter was like. She hadn't forgotten the article that the woman had written that insinuated she's only managed to become an auror at her age by abusing her Metamorphmagus ability.

"Hmph." Skeeter huffed and finally turned to Luna as a last resort. "How about a word from the daughter of the late owner of the Quibbler then?"

Harry and Tonks' faces tightened with fury, but Luna only blinked at the woman slowly with her big blue eyes.

"I'm sorry, but I can't hear you over the buzzing of your nargles. You should get that looked at."

Skeeter's lips tightened with irritation and she huffed again, walking away with a angry, jerky gait.

"Bitch." Tonks muttered.

Harry noticed that Skeeter was heading for the Delacour family, no doubt intending to ruin the day for them as much as possible. It was convenient that he already had a curse ready her. It was simpler than the Itching Curse, but a great deal more painful and obvious to the people around her. Skeeter deserved it for what she'd said to Luna.

"Watch this." He said and cast the spell.

Skeeter suddenly shrieked with agony, dropped her quill and parchment and desperately grabbed at her breasts.

Then she turned around and pointed a finger right at Harry. "Potter! You cursed me!"

"What are you on about, you hag?" Tonks demanded. "Nobody saw any spells coming at you and Harry doesn't even have his wand out! Stop causing a scene."

"She'll do anything for a story." One random old man there said, shaking his head in disgust. "Back in my day, the Daily Prophet used to have some integrity."

The furius and humiliated reporter stomped away.

"What did you do?" Tonks asked, barely holding back her wide smile.

"Texas Titty Twister; Magic Edition."

Tonks snickered. "Why Texas though?"

"Hell if I know." Harry shrugged. "Probably because it starts with a 'T' or something."

He looked towards the Delacours again and saw Fleur looking towards him speculatively. Catching his eye, she jerked her head in the direction of Skeeter's exit in an obvious 'did you do that?' gesture.

Harry gave her a surreptitious wink.

That night.

"So Sirius is dating a woman that is probably intending to kill him." Harry said with a sigh. "I should be surprised, but I'm really not."

"I don't think he knows about her reputation, what with the time he'd spent in Azkaban and all. It's not exactly something that you'd find on the front page of the Prophet or anything, but word gets around in certain circles, like the DMLE for example." Tonks replied with a frown.

"I'll have Sirius bring her over to the manor in a few days." Harry said with a frown of his own.

"Why?" Tonks asked with a raised eyebrow.

Harry hesitated, not sure what to say. If his suspicions were correct then this was definitely not something he wanted Dora to know. Certainly not before he could put some serious thought into it.

"You know something." Tonks stated, noticing his hesitation.

"Just a hunch." He evaded.

"It's something to do with one of your secrets, doesn't it?" She asked, voice carefully light.

Harry averted his eyes. Dora hadn't pushed him too much about his secrets even though she clearly wanted to know them. There were no snide remarks or unsubtle hints, but he could tell that she was a bit stung that he didn't trust her to keep it to herself.

He wished he could tell her everything, but the fact remained that a lot of those secrets were illegal and she was law enforcement. If he told her then he would never be able to take it back and he was not sure what she would do with some of that information. The consequences of hasty or poorly thought out decisions had already slapped him in the face too many times to do it again.

"Yeah." He finally said lamely.

"Harry, this is Sirius' life we're talking about." Tonks said neutrally.

"I know." Harry sighed, running a hand through his hair in minor frustration. "I'll have him bring her over to Potter Manor for dinner or something and see what I can do."

"I want to be there." Tonks asserted quickly.

"There's no need, I doubt she'd do anything overt, not with all the suspicion hanging around her already."

"Harry, I am not letting you be alone in a room with a suspected murderer." She said flatly.

"Dora, you're an auror. She'll clam up if you're there." Harry reasoned. It was probably true even, but he also didn't want her there because he had no idea what would be said and he'd prefer not to have that conversation in the presence of his girlfriend.

To his surprise, she didn't try to argue the point further but merely sighed. "I'm not an idiot, Harry, I can see that you don't want me there for your own reasons. I haven't pushed you to tell me everything, but I'm getting pretty damn worried about what you're hiding if you're trying to keep it secret even now."

Harry had no response. What was there to say?

This, he reflected, was the downside of having a relationship. His previous experiences with Zoe, Bryanna and Tiana had misled him into believing that having a steady girlfriend was a simple affair. He hadn't been under the unseen obligation to trust and confide in any of those three the way he now was with Dora.

The Metamorphmagus was fun and Harry liked her a great deal, but he knew that their relationship hadn't progressed much mostly because of him. He didn't let her see his workshop, didn't tell her how he was getting out of Hogwarts to visit her, didn't trust her to keep his more dangerous secrets to herself. How could they possibly get closer when he was so obviously keeping a distance? It was a small miracle that she was as cool about it as she was.

That conversation ended without any proper resolution and Harry spent the next day plagued by a nebulous feeling of low-key guilt. He knew that Dora was just worried about him and Sirius and trying to help, but the situation conspired to put him in the position of having to exclude her because he was certain that his own forays into illegal magic would come up.

Harry's personality leaned towards pragmatism, but he wasn't nearly cold enough to be capable of brushing aside his girlfriend's hurt feelings which he knew was his own doing. So, guilt.

Still, he trudged through the day with little sign of his internal conflict. He visited a seventh year Transfiguration class, a sixth year DADA class, had an Ancient Runes tutoring session with Professor Babbling and talked to Sirius to arrange for Adrastia Zabini to have dinner over at Potter Manor.

Nobody noticed his minor preoccupation until it was time for the evening training session with Luna.

"What's wrong, Harry?" She asked twenty minutes in, not really sounding interested though he knew she was.

Harry sighed, wondering how he should put this. He had no compunction about telling Luna about it because he knew that she wouldn't judge him for it. In fact, he suspected that he could ask her to help him plan how to murder Malfoy and receive only serene agreement.

"I'm in a bit of a… situation with Dora." He finally said. "I'm having to push her away to deal with a problem and I can see that it's hurting her, but I don't really have a choice."

"That does sound unfortunate." Luna agreed. She knew that Nymphadora would hate being sidelined, being the sort to like being involved. She had no advice to offer though, especially with how vague Harry was being.

"Yeah." Harry replied with a humorless chuckle.

"Would you like to work on the egg riddle instead of training then?" Luna offered. There was little point in training if Harry wasn't focused.

Harry scowled at the mention of the egg. "I tried listening to it once already, damn near made my ears bleed."

"I'd like to hear it too."

Shrugging, Harry agreed. If nothing else, Luna's reaction to the horrible screeching should be interesting.

A few minutes later they were back in his private quarters and opening the egg.

As Harry had guessed, Luna's reaction was interesting.

"That's Mermish." She stated with authority.

"What?" Harry said blankly.

"The language of the Merpeople." Luna elaborated.

"No, I got that." Harry quickly waved off. "It's just… what? That's a language?"

"Well it isn't supposed to be spoken above water."

"How could you possibly know that?!" Harry demanded incredulously.

"They came by a few times while I was visiting Mr. Tentacles."

"… Who?"

"The giant squid, Harry. I talk to him sometimes."

Harry palmed his face for a moment, not sure if he should be amused or what. "Alright, so the Merpeople in the lake came to talk to you?"

"Yes. Speaking of which, I'm going to need you to teach me the Bubblehead Charm. It really is quite difficult to hold a conversation with someone if you have to keep coming up for air."

Harry really should not have been surprised by that, but he was. Admittedly it was more at the fact that he hadn't known about Luna's little hobby than at the strangeness of it, but the fact remained that he was surprised.

"Wait a minute, when do you have time to do this? You're either in classes or with me."

"I have trouble sleeping sometimes while you're off visiting Nymphadora, so I borrow your Invisibility Cloak and go talk to Mr. Tentacles. He's a very good listener."

Why am I feeling guilty about this too? Harry wondered. Being a responsible adult was such a chore, especially when you were only fourteen.

"You shouldn't feel bad, Harry." Luna soothed, apparently seeing right through him. "I know that Nymphadora likes your penis too much for me to keep you all to myself. If I hadn't promised daddy to not let any boys put their penis in me until I was sixteen, I would want to play with it too."

Harry had been about to ask how she managed to get past the locked front gate, but that last sentence derailed him quite nicely. "What?"

"You have a very nice penis, Harry." Luna explained matter-of-factly.

"Thanks?" He replied numbly for the sheer lack of any other response. "But I thought…"

"That I wasn't interested in sex?" She asked breezily. "I wouldn't have wanted to watch you having sex with Nymphadora so much if I wasn't. You're being quite silly, girls don't go through puberty any later than boys, a bit sooner actually."

Harry finally shut his mouth and privately admitted to himself that his own accelerated development may have caused him to look at Luna as if she was much younger than him even though the actual age difference was only about four and a half months . She was plenty old enough to have started developing an interest in sex and her particular lack of shyness or societal taboos meant that she had no trouble admitting it to herself. Or anyone else apparently.

"So you… err?" He said awkwardly and vaguely, not really sure what he was trying to say. He'd been thrown so far off balance that he was practically horizontal.

"Yes, I'm planning to ease Nymphadora into the idea of a threeway relationship with you." Luna nodded as if he'd actually asked a sensible question. "I expect it will take me a while since she's less adventurous than I thought a Metamorphmagus would be, but at least I don't have to break her of any pesky homophobia."

Harry had some trouble with the sudden mental shift as his best friend went from 'sexually oblivious' to 'planning out a harem'. It was quite a leap.

So he performed a tactical retreat and changed the subject. "You said this screeching is Mermish?"

"Yes, no doubt we'll be able to understand it under water." Luna said with a smile, looking forward to bathing with Harry again. Daddy really had been quite the meanie when he made her promise to not let anyone put their penis inside her until she was sixteen, but a promise was a promise. Oh well, at least she had plenty of time to set things up the way she wanted them.

The dinner appointment with Sirius' homicidal girlfriend came a bare few days later. Teeny and Kreacher had both been varying levels of excited to cook for a guest so the meal was excellent, even if only three people would eat it since Penny had excused herself in favor of going on a date on the mundane side of things.

Harry honestly felt a bit underdressed in comparison to Adrastia, who was wearing a decidedly untraditional(for Britain at least, he didn't know about other places) shimmering amethyst dress with a plunging neckline and strategically placed slits that showed off her long, smooth legs. There had to be some magic involved as he was pretty sure that her breasts were defying the laws of physics.

Fortunately, it was his house and he wasn't trying to impress anyone.

He went along with the charade and made polite conversation that had nothing to do with her likely plans to murder his godfather.

This lasted about up to the time that Sirius got started on one of his many stories about what awesome prank they had pulled in Hogwarts.

"… so James is just standing there, holding a jar of catnip and a dozen pair of panties stitched together into a makeshift bed with McGonnagal glaring while he tries to explain that it was meant for Filch's cat and not her. Then Lily comes down and-"

" Stupefy! " Harry didn't usually bother with incantations anymore, but that felt distinctly satisfying.

"Interesting method of shutting him up." Adrastia commented placidly, looking at the unconscious Lord Black. "I usually just sleep with him when he gets nostalgic."

"And I'm sure he prefers that to a Stunning Spell, but I needed to talk to you alone and he would have gone on for hours." Harry answered.

Adrastia leaned back into her armchair and switched over how her legs were crossed. "And what will you do now that you have me all to yourself?"

You poor bastard, you never stood a chance. Harry thought as he saw the display. This woman had seduction down to an art form. Even knowing what he knew, Harry still wanted to plow her until she was bowlegged just from that little bit and the sensual insinuation in her tone.

"Kreacher!" He called firmly.

"What does Master want?" The crabby house elf asked, being polite in the presence of a guest as he'd been ordered.

"Take Sirius up to his room, then grab some permanent marker and doodle something rude on his face."

"Kreacher will be happy to." The house elf said gleefully.

He popped away with the unconscious man and left the two of them alone.

"I suppose there's no point in beating around the bush." Harry said with a frown. "What did you do to Sirius?"

"What makes you think I did anything to him?" Adrastia asked back.

Harry got the sense that she wasn't trying to deny anything, but was simply drawing things out. Fine then. if that was how she wanted to play it, then he would go along with it for now.

"Sirius has a crippling fear of commitment." He said bluntly. "He'd never act this besotted with anyone, no matter how beautiful."

"True." Adrastia agreed with a small dip of her head. "It took me longer than expected to overcome that issue."

"And how did you overcome it?" He asked with narrowed eyes.

"Come now, Harry." She said with a laugh, gracefully rising from her seat. "You already know what I did."

"I have my suspicions." He replied, rising as well since he didn't feel comfortable sitting while this dangerous woman was on her feet.

"So modest." She mocked and stepped closer.

Harry tensed but didn't stop her. He didn't feel any immediate threat and she didn't even have her wand on her. Nothing he'd seen so far of Adrastia Zabini indicated that she was a direct combatant, but he was still ready to react with violence at a moment's notice.

She stopped directly in front of him and ran her hands over his chest in a strangely lewd but also gentle manner. Her magic slid along his own but found no purchase.

"So tense and closed off you are." Adrastia murmured, staring up into his green eyes with the deep dark pools of her own. "Wizards and witches differ fundamentally from muggles in many ways, few of them obvious. During intimacy, in the moment of climax, our souls become open to our partner. A practicioner of Sex Magic may use their own soul to… draw on their partner and bring to the fore that which they desire."

"And that's what you did to Sirius?" Harry asked tensely, gently removing her hands from his chest.

"Deep inside him lay a core of emptiness that he seeks to fill with women and humor. It was easy to exploit once I reached past his armor." She shrugged and started pacing the room.

"And what were you going to do to him after you got what you wanted?" He pressed insistently.

"A question I had devoted considerable time to." She replied, actually seeming amused. "I was at a loss until I saw you. The pictures in the paper truly do not do you justice, Harry. You are a magnificent wizard."

Harry simply continued to stare at her until it became clear that he was not going to respond to that.

"I thought to myself, 'would it not be perfect if Sirius Black went mad with jealousy and attacked his famous godson only to die in the attempt?', so I planned to seduce you both and pit you against each other. Once you had killed your godfather, I would have married you and driven you to commit suicide out of guilt before frittering away your family's fortune and moving on to someone else."

Shaking his head in disbelief, Harry had only one thing to say to that. "You're a real piece of work."

"Thank you." She smiled as if paid a great compliment.

"But you are refreshingly honest." He allowed. It was certainly more straightforward than dealing with Dumbledore or any number of Ministry stooges.

"There is little point in subterfuge now." Adrastia shrugged. "I hadn't expected you to be self-aware enough to detect what I was doing. Even wizards of above average strength are usually blind. My plans were abandoned in that very moment."

"Really?" Harry asked skeptically.

"I make it a point to avoid wizards such as yourself." She elaborated. "You are simply too powerful and promise to become stronger still. You would have thwarted me at every turn and would have taken vengeance against me even if I had succeeded in killing Sirius."

"So you're backing off because it's too risky?" Harry asked further, more than a little suprised by that. It was strangely… reasonable, especially coming from what was obviously an unrepentant serial killer.

"Of course." She said, looking at him as if he was the one that had just said something strange. "Surely you must have noticed by now that the more powerful a wizard is, the fewer laws apply to them? Given how powerful you are at your young age, you will likely have people taking your words as if they were orders in a decade or two. I do not want to be your enemy."

"And you'll just leave like nothing happened? After planning to kill my godfather and me?" Harry was understandably somewhat incredulous. The balls on this woman…

"Why not? It's not as if I've done you any real harm." Adrastia said indifferently. "Sirius will likely mope for a while since I've had enough time to make him deeply infatuated with me, but he should otherwise be fine."

"Yes, about that…" Harry said slowly.

"Ah, you want to know more for the sake of that cute auror girlfriend of yours?" Adrastia guessed, smiling wryly. "Perhaps we are not so different after all?"

"That's not why I'm asking!" He ground out, angered by the implication.

"But you are asking." She pointed out, still smiling.

"I've been using Sex Magic to enhance pleasure." He explained tersely. "Could I have unintentionally been influencing her the way you did Sirius?"

"Undoubtedly." Was the immediate reply, making his heart sink. "People are complex creatures with many impulses. By touching her so deeply when she was completely open to you, your hopes and desires would have seeped into her. I could not say how much effect you have had as you were clearly not doing it on purpose, but she would at the very least have been less likely to go against your wishes."

"Wonderful." Harry said flatly and sat back down. That was exactly what he'd been afraid of. His entire relationship with Dora was potentially built on his unintentional manipulation. Fucking hell, even Bryana and Tiana could have been so agreeable because of this, since he'd been doing it to them for at least half a year.

"It is largely the reason that Sex Magic was declared a Dark Art." Adrastia sat down as well, rather amused by the the young wizards obvious consternation, though she personally didn't see what he was upset about. "It is an application of Soul Magic, perhaps one of the first true magics, and can like all magic be put to both great and terrible purpose. Veela and their succubi foremothers have often used the technique in the past to turn wizards, and some witches, into lovesick followers. These days they use it merely to ensure that their chosen mates never want to leave them. The fact that veela do not hold a monopoly on Sex Magic has been conveniently forgotten by most."

Harry had read about that, but the book had, as his interlocutor had said, claimed that only veela could do it because of their Allure. Then again, that book had been written by an obviously prejudiced author so he shouldn't be surprised that the information wasn't 100% correct. He was starting to really hate hindsight.

"What about that thing you tried with me at the first task? Non-sexual, errr, mingling."

"The proper term for it is 'The Joining' and it is the same thing as if you did it during sex, merely less effective." Adrastia chuckled. "Under most circumstances, the effect would be negligible even if done by a master of the art because a guarded soul cannot be influenced. It is however possible to slightly strengthen impulses that are already present. Men's lust for me has always been a convenient opening for example."

Harry thought back to the many moments when he had shared his lust with Dora when he kissed her or wrapped his magic around Luna in a fascimile of a hug when she slept with him. Exactly how much had he influenced them over time? "Fuck."

"Sirius did tell me that you had a bad habit of playing with things you didn't fully understand." Adrastia commented lightly, looking at him out of the corner of her eye.

Harry froze and pinned her with a hostile stare. "What exactly did Sirius tell you?"

"A little of this, a little of that. I was quite curious as to how a fourteen year old could have perceived my actions." She said, smirking openly now and staring pointedly into the center of his forehead, where Aul'El was carved. "Carving runes into your flesh? Tsk, tsk, Harry, such a ghastly practice."

Harry ground his teeth together and thought furiously. This very dangerous woman now knew some very dangerous things. Things that he couldn't afford to have becoming known publically. This was no longer a simple matter of bailing Sirius out of hot water, he couldn't let her walk out of here with that knowledge.

He had to get rid of her quickly, but without leaving enough traces for any investigation into her disappearance to point at foul play. That meant no magic in the killing itself and then a Vanishing Spell on the corpse once she was dead. There was nothing suspicious about Vanishing Spells and everyone knew that they didn't work on living people, too much mental interference to send someone to the Void like that. Nobody would be able to prove anything with that.

He couldn't leave any blood either. I could strangle her. He thought, eyeballing her slender neck and thin arms. She wouldn't be able to fight me off and her wand is stashed in her purse. No suspicious magical traces meant that the DMLE would be useless even if they had cause to suspect him. There was no way to detect a mundane killing with magic in the same way that a pathologist would be baffled if presented with the body of someone hit by a Killing Curse.

"You need to work on your expression, Harry." Adrastia commented idly. "I can see the murder in your eyes."

Harry took a deep breath to calm down, sending a silent curse towards the Void. It was always goading him to feed it. Not so much during the day(he had a different set of problems then), but the Sun had gone down quite a while ago.

He was still left with the problem of what to do with this woman though. But… she was strangely calm for someone that knew she was in danger of being killed for the secrets she held.

"Why did you tell me that?" He asked, frowning. "You could have walked out of here with me being none the wiser."

"To even the playing field, so to speak." Adrastia explained. "You know that I kill my husbands and how and now you know that I know that you've dabbled in illegal magic and are keeping your Animagus form secret."

Harry clenched his jaw again. Of course she'd know that too. For all he knew, she might know about the Horcrux locket as well.

"However, neither one of us can easily prove any of this to the authorities." She went on, ignoring his look. "I could accuse you and you could accuse me and we would both deny it to the ends of the Earth with no amount of investigation being able to prove anything and both of us have enough gold to make the necessary bribes even if they did. Unless of course you were to kill me, in which case I have already arranged for the information to be sent to the Prophet and the DMLE, with a note attached saying that I have cause to suspect that you will kill me for knowing this."

"How clever of you." Harry snarked, reluctantly impressed.

"Thank you." She accepted gracefully. "Out of curiousity, how were you intending to kill me?"

Well, since they were being honest… "Strangulation."

"Ooh, kinky." She teased, apparently not at all bothered by the topic of her near murder.

"Was there a point to all this, or do you just like playing dangerous games?"

"Yes and yes. The point is that we now both know some very ticklish things about each other, so it would behoove us to play nice. I may one day need the help of a wizard such as you and you may need the help of a witch such as me. Nothing too… strenuous of course, at least not until we get more comfortable with each other, but one never knows when they might need some specialized help."

Harry shook his head in disbelief at her audacity. "A giant would go green with envy at the size of the balls on you. You start off planning to kill me and Sirius and now you want an alliance?"

"You were planning to kill me not five minutes ago, so I'd say we're even on that score." She sniffed.

Harry snorted, amused in spite of himself. Her logic was horribly flawed, but it was still funny.

"What did you have in mind?" He asked grudgingly after a moment. There was no harm in hearing her out at least. He could always refuse.

"For starters, Sirius mentioned that you are a man of many interests and many skills." She would certainly not call him a boy despite his age. No killer was ever a boy and he was definitely a killer. "You dabble with spell creation, curse breaking, enchanting and whatever else catches your fancy. I have in my possession several cursed items that could be sold for a great deal of money once those curses were removed and you could remove them without the costs associated with hiring a professional curse-breaker. This is just one example of what you could do for me."

"And what's in it for me?" Harry asked. He would not be opposed to doing something like that. He'd learned a great deal from deconstructing the varius enchanted and cursed objects in Grimmauld Place.

"Sirius also mentioned that you intend to travel the world once this tournament is over. I have residences scattered all over Europe, fully furnished and empty. You could use them at your leisure." Adrastia offered.

"Leftovers from your past conquests?" Harry asked dryly.

"What else?" She shrugged shamelessly. "I certainly don't need that many homes."

"Charming."

The Black Widow ignored his sarcasm and went on with a smouldering invitation in her eyes. "Alternatively, I wouldn't be opposed to giving you a more in depth lesson on the uses of Sex Magic, as you are clearly still a novice. That would be a treat for me as well admittedly. I've never had the opportunity to sleep with someone that could reciprocate and I am curious to see what it would be like. Being self-aware as you are, The Joining would not affect you as it does the sheep of the world and there is no telling what new things we may discover."

"I've got a girlfriend." He reminded her. That offer was so very tempting on multiple levels, but he didn't trust her the slightest bit.

"You could bring her too." She said with a wicked grin. "I've never had a Metamorphmagus either, they're terribly rare. That would be one pet I might actually keep."

"She is not a pet." Harry growled through clenched teeth.

"As you say." Adrastia returned with a smirk.

Harry knew that she was lancing at his worries on purpose. For someone that was cautious enough to abandon a plan as quickly as she had, she had a surprisingly dangerous sense of humor.

"How did you even get this way?" He asked suddenly. "What drives a woman to go around finding husbands to murder?"

The smirk dropped off her face and she leaned back into the armchair, looking at him thoughtfully for a few seconds and grabbed her empty glass. "I am going to need more wine if you want me to share my life story."

Harry shrugged and used wandless magic to levitate the bottle towards her, figuring that she knew about that too.

Going by her lack of surprise, she did.

Only after the bottle was done pouring and she took a sip did she speak again, though not about what he'd asked. "I didn't get to say this before with Sirius reminiscing, but this is very good wine."

"Laid down seventy years ago by my grandfather apparently." Harry went along with the small talk.

"And you opened it just for me? I'm flattered."

"Don't be, I have no appreciation for wine and no idea what's so special about it."

"How uncultured of you, perhaps I could teach you that as well. A man of your station is not well served being ignorant in these matters."

Harry shrugged again.

Adrastia kept on drinking silently for a few minutes and only spoke again once half the wine in her glass was gone.

"I was beautiful even as a child and people noticed. One of my father's prospective business partners to be precise. He was forty years older than me and a pig besides, but my father was an ambitious man and sold me to him in marriage. I was sixteen."

"I'm sorry to hear that." Harry meant it too. Whatever else, she hadn't deserved that.

Adrastia waved the sentiment off and continued. "He wasn't abusive, not physically at least, but he was a pig as I said. I was a different woman then, a timid little weakling that sought any escape. There was none to be found though, so I escaped into myself and eventually became aware enough of my magic to influence him. Over the next two years, I preyed on his appreciation of my beauty and reduced him from an arrogant and self-important lordling into a snivelling wreck desperate for my approval. He would buy me expensive gifts and I would turn my nose up at them solely for the pleasure of seeing his face fall as he realized that his best wasn't good enough. The sight of him groveling for scraps of attention was ambrosia, but eventually I tired of yanking his leash and incited him to attack my father. They killed each other like the tools they were and I have been repeating the experience ever since."

"Huh, that's actually a bit more straightforward than I was expecting." Harry commented, scratching at his chin thoughtfully. The guy got what he deserved in his opinion, but it showcased a truly incredible level of viciousness in the woman before him. "What about your son though? Blaise?"

"The unfortunate spawn of my first husband before I learned to control him." Adrastia said dismissively.

"Not the motherly sort I take it?" Harry asked wryly.

"I didn't dispose of him as I did with the other ugly reminders of the past. That is all the parental affection I have to spare."

"Heh, now I almost feel sorry for the bastard." Harry chuckled.

Adrastia raised an eyebrow, prompting him to elaborate.

"My real parents are dead, the relatives that Dumbledore stuck me with were abusive, the orphanage they stuck me in was run by an overly religious old cunt with certain views on magic and the couple that took me in are about as good at parental affection as you. I have more in common with your son than I thought." He explained, pouring himself some of the wine too.

"Thinking about befriending him?" She asked. Perhaps she might have to arrange an accident for Blaise after all. Harry was far too interesting for his attention to be wasted on that bit of runaway sperm.

"Hell no. I'm not the type to go out of my way to make friends." Harry snorted and raised his wine glass towards her in a sarcastic toast. "To shitty parents and/or legal guardians."

Adrastia smiled widely in amusement and echoed the toast despite taking some splash damage from it. She had needled him about his girlfriend earlier so it was only fair.

The next morning, some time before dawn, Harry was still at Potter Manor, having breakfast in the dark and waiting for people to wake up.

Penny had gotten used to being the first one up and was badly startled when she walked into the dining room to see a pair of green eyes gleaming at her from the darkness.

"Harry! You startled me." She said, holding a hand to her chest and calming down her breathing.

"Sorry about that." He said, placidly chewing on a bit of toast with jam.

"Shouldn't you be at Hogwarts?" She asked.

"I should, but I had to save Sirius from becoming the latest victim of the Black Widow."

"You mean that was actually true?" Penny asked in surprise. Tonks had told her the rumors about Adrastia Zabini, but she had been skeptical. It seemed a bit strange for someone to get away with doing that and Adrastia had seemed pleasant enough.

"Oh yes, but I'll tell you the rest when Sirius and Dora get here. Why don't you bring me up to speed on things in the meantime?"

"Alright, what would you like to know?" Penny agreed with a shrug and sat down at the table herself.

"Any interesting mail?"

"Not really, but you did get some pretty funny hate mail for the way you handled the dragon."

"Hate mail?" Harry's eyebrows shot up.

"Yep." Penny was amused. "They seemed to think you insulted them personally by not making a spectacle of the event and I quote 'giving them their money's worth'."

Harry's eye twitched. Seriously? "Are you sure the laws don't let me send a return letter with a nasty curse attached?"

"Quite. You could probably get away with it given the way the law works in magical Britain, but it would damage your reputation." Penny advised.

"Right, and we can't have that." He muttered. "Anything else?"

"You got a business proposition wrapped in a betrothal offer from Spain." Penny said with a frown. " A ' Leandro Montesano of the Montesano line of horse breeders' as he introduced himself wants to enter into a partnership with you in order to set up a pegasus ranch in Britain and is offering his oldest daughter to you in marriage as a show of his sincerity."

"I get the feeling you didn't much like him." Harry commented.

"I didn't." Penny confirmed with a small scowl. "The man talks about his daughter the same way he talks about his horses and he comes off as generally slimy as a Malfoy."

"No doubt some ambitious twat hoping to weasel their way into the nobility." Harry rolled his eyes.

"That was my guess too given the way he was extolling the virtues of his daughter as if she was a prize mare." She agreed.

"Were there pictures attached?" Harry asked.

Penny gave him a deadpan look of disapproval.

"What?" He asked innocently.

"Yes, there was a picture, but Sirius already stole it." She finally said.

"Bastard."

Penny decided to simply change the subject. "We've got a final tally on the sale of the basilisk, your share came in at just over a hundred thousand galleons."

Harry whistled. That was actually quite a bit higher than the initial estimates he'd been given. "I thought it was only supposed to be eighty thousand?"

"It was, but a group of collectors apparently really wanted its skeleton. They got into a runaway bidding war and the winner ended up paying forty thousand for the whole thing." Penny explained.

"Well if they prefer bones over gold…" Harry grinned. "What about the girls and their store? How are they getting along?"

"Good, they've been building up stock and experimenting with new things. I try stuff out for them sometimes and I have to say that I'm impressed. Just last week, they finished working on a series of designer bras that look as good as anything you can get at Victoria's Secret but have a load of Cushioning Charms and other spells worked into them to make sure they offer perfect support without pinching or digging into the skin. I never want to live without one of them again." Penny said happily.

"That good?"

"Let's just say that taking my bra off isn't the best part of the day anymore."

"… I obviously can't relate, but it sounds significant."

"You have no idea."

"Things are looking good for them then?"

"Very good. The only real issue they've hit is that the goblins have a limited supply of British pounds to exchange for galleons, so buying in the non-magical world got a bit problematic for a while."

"Right, of course." Harry sighed. It made sense, the goblins only cared about precious metals, gems and shiny things. They only traded for paper money out of necessity and had no connection to the mundane banks. The intransigent little bastards were just one complication after another. "We'll have to find a way around that problem."

"I already have." Penny said smugly.

"Do tell." Harry prompted with interest.

"Just because the goblins in Britain ran out of normal money doesn't mean they're all out. I had them bring over euros from the continent and exchanged that into pounds."

"I bet they hated that." Harry laughed.

"Of course they did." Penny shrugged. "They seem to hate everything."

"Any luck getting some of my money away from them?"

"Not yet." Penny frowned. "The owner of the last pawn shop I visited tried to convince me that the Black family silverware wasn't worth more than twenty pounds."

Harry snorted. How very stereotypical.

The ongoing effort to liberate his money from the greedy fingers of the goblins had hit a few snags, which was the reason that they were resorting to pawning various non-magical trinkets owned by the Blacks. Sirius also thought it was hilarious to sell his family's baubles to the very people they had hated so much and encouraged it enthusiastically.

The first snag was the goblin's outrageous fees if you tried to exchange more than a hundred galleons and now apparently also their smallish supply of regular money.

As a way around it, Harry thought of buying various goods that were common to both worlds with gold and selling it for pounds. It would be sold at a loss no doubt, but it would be worth it to have some money that wasn't in goblin control. That idea ran into the problem created by the secrecy of the magical world. With there being no paper or electronic trail for those goods, they couldn't do anything big or else draw the wrong kind of attention. Sooner rather than later, someone was going to notice that those goods were appearing out of thin air and if there was one thing that the government was diligent about, it was collecting taxes. This forced them to look at more 'under the table' types of deals which inevitably also carried the risk of getting ripped off.

Harry was still disgruntled over the fact that he had sold the whole basilisk in Europe. That had been the 'expert' advice of the wizard lawyer he'd gone to, the man's rationale being that dealing with multiple currencies would delay the sale even more and probably get him less value out of it. He hadn't known the full extent of the goblin monopoly then and didn't realize that the extra hassle would have been worth it.

"You should try eBay." He suggested. "There's bound to be some rich nut out there that wants tacky silver and emerald candlebras and snake themed forks bad enough that he'd be willing to pay through the nose for them."

"I guess…" Penny agreed reluctantly.

Harry just grinned. Penny's aversion to computers never failed to amuse him. It would have been normal to see it on a pureblood, but as she was the first person with a drop of magical blood in her family, it was simply hilarious.

"You don't have to sound so excited about it." He chuckled.

Penny huffed.

"So, how did your date go?" Harry asked to change the subject.

"Meh." She replied with a wishy-washy gesture.

"That bad?"

"He wasn't a bad guy or anything even if my parents did take it upon themselves to set me up with him, but I had to keep tip-toeing around the topic of magic all the time. It was exhausting."

"Don't I know it." Harry muttered, thinking of his own difficulties with explaining certain details to Zoe and the somewhat different situation with Dora. Secrets made a mess of any relationship. They also had a bad habit of breeding more secrets.

The two of them chatted about inconsequential things for the next hour, such as Malfoy and his continued string of humiliation. Penny tried to frown disapprovingly at that, but her smile kept getting in the way.

That was how Tonks found them when she walked in.

"Morning." She greeted and went to kiss Harry in greeting.

Harry returned the kiss, but couldn't help remembering the things he'd learned the other night. Fun times were ahead, he could already tell.

"So, what happened?" Tonks asked once she sat down.

"Hang on a second, let's bring Sirius down for this too. Kreacher!"

"Filthy halfblood master called?" Without guests, there was no need for politeness.

"Yes, could you wake Sirius up and tell him to get down there?"

"Kreacher can do that."

A few minutes later, Sirius was staggering into the dining room. His entire face was painted black with permanent marker.

Something tells me that Kreacher doesn't have a very good grasp of what 'doodle something rude on his face' means. Harry thought over the sound of the two girls laughter.

"You stunned me and painted my face black!" Sirius accused, pointing a finger at Harry.

"No, I stunned you and had Kreacher paint your face black." Harry corrected.

"Why?" Sirius demanded.

"Because I needed to talk to Adrastia alone and you were in the middle of one of your long winded prank stories."

"You're on first name basis with her already?" Tonks asked archly.

"Considering what we talked about, formalities seemed a bit redundant." Harry explained.

"What did you talk about?" She pressed.

They were interrupted by a brief yelp as Sirius used a spell to remove the blackness from his face, coincidentally also removing the top layer of skin. He was just lucky that Kreacher had spared his facial hair.

"Well first of all…" Harry began, looking at his godfather. "Sirius, you've been dumped."

"Adrastia wouldn't dump me just like that!" Sirius protested.

"I thought you might say that, so I had her put it in writing. Here you go."

Sirius opened up the letter and read it out loud with a frown of consternation. "'Sirius, we're done. Be a dear and give my regards to Harry, will you? Goodbye.'"

"Damn, that is cold ." Tonks commented with a snicker at the crestfallen look on her cousin's face. It was funnier now that he was no longer in danger.

"I can't believe she'd do this." Sirius said sulkilly, still staring at the letter in his hands.

"Stop moping, old man. She was going to kill you." Harry sighed.

"Those were just rumors, Adrastia isn't a killer." Sirius protested.

Harry snorted derisively. "She most definitely is a killer. Her plan was to seduce you first, then move on to me, make you jealous enough to start a fight in which I killed you and finally drive me to commit suicide out of guilt followed by a massive spending spree with our family money."

"How in the world did you find that out?" Tonks asked, amazed.

"She admitted it to me." He shrugged.

That got him goggle-eyed looks from all three of them.

"Just like that?" Tonks asked in disbelief. Over a decade of murders and then she just up and admits it?

"I was able to sense what she was doing and she's canny enough to know when to abandon a plan." Harry explained.

"This is great!" Tonks exclaimed. "We might finally be able to arrest her."

"No you can't." Harry sighed.

"Why not?" His girlfriend demanded.

"Because I had to make a deal with her."

"You made a deal with a serial killer ?" Tonks asked incredulously.

"She's actually not a bad person if you ignore that mile wide streak of emotional sadism she has going. Apparently she gets her jollies from turning people into stammering shadows of their former selves and humiliating them before finishing it all off with murder when she gets bored." Harry explained sarcastically.

"How is this not a good reason to arrest her?"

"Because you can't prove anything."

"We could if you helped!"

"In which case she'd make sure I went down with her since someone" Harry glared at his godfather. "blabbed a lot of incriminating information to her."

"I was sure I could trust her." Sirius defended weakly. "Sorry, Harry."

"It's fine, you never really had a chance." Harry sighed.

"So we're supposed to just let a killer walk free?" Tonks demanded, carefully noting Harry's implicit hint that he was hiding certain illegalities as well and correctly guessing that this was the reason why he refused to tell her.

"It's not like it'll be a new thing." Harry retorted. "How many more Death Eaters besides Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle, Nott, Parkinson and Snape are currently free?"

Tonks grunted irritably but conceded the point. She didn't like the way he'd said it, but he wasn't wrong. Wizarding Britain was full of killers that had walked free. Zabini just happened to be international and still active.

"Fine, if we can't put her away, will you at least tell us how she got her hooks into Sirius?" She asked.

"I can't. Part of the deal was that we keep it all to ourselves." It wasn't, but the last thing he needed right now was to open the topic of Sex Magic and its potential for subtle subversion. Dora was anything but stupid and would probably make all sorts of inconvenient connections.

When did life get so complicated anyway? Harry wondered. This is all Sirius' fault somehow, I just know it. Things were simple before he showed up. Well not really. Sirius was a catalyst at best, but it was easy to blame him for it right now.

The fangirls were acting even stranger than usual today, Harry noticed as he made notes for potentially useful underwater spells. Given the message in the golden egg, the next task was almost guaranteed to take place in the Black Lake and have something to do with reclaiming a thing he would sorely miss from the Merpeople. Harry wasn't particularly sentimental and could think of very few things he would miss at all, much less 'sorely'.

Of course, there was the distinct possibility of it being some one rather than some thing that was to be taken from him, in which case he would be sorely tempted to commit multiple homicide on the organizers. Either way, he wasn't letting Luna out of his sight in the days leading up to the second task.

But back to the fangirls. As previously noted, they were acting weird. The practice of hiding(badly) behind the bookshelves and giggling was something he'd gotten used to, but they seemed to be in a furious debate of some sort today. Maybe they were going to make another clumsy seduction attempt and were deciding which one of them would do it? Harry wished he could just fuck them and get it over with. A few of them would probably get a life of their own afterwards and the others would at least stop being stalkers. Probably. Maybe. It could happen. They'd have their mouths busy some of the time at least.

Then the whispered debate/argument suddenly cut off and Harry raised his head to investigate the reason for this unlikely event. Ah, that would do it.

"'Arry." Fleur said as she sat down at his table without an invitation.

"Fleur." Harry greeted back.

A few moments of pregnant silence passed.

"Can I help you with something?"

" Oui. I need a date."

Well that wasn't at all what he was expecting. "What for?"

Fleur blinked. "You do not know?"

"Know what?"

"About ze Yule Ball?"

"We're having a ball?"

" Oui, eet eez tradition for ze hosting school to organize one and ze champions to open eet."

Harry hated parties on general principle and he hated mandatory parties on a personal level. It was like someone coming up to him and telling him that he was obliged to go somewhere and have fun in an event that was patently not fun. He had yet to hear of anything with tradition involved that was actually fun.

Unfortunately, it would probably be less bother to go along with it than mounting a rebellion against social norms. That was the inconvenient truth of these matters and probably the root cause for about 90% of the world's problems.

"And I suppose we're expected to have a date for this farce?" He sighed. He briefly wondered why Penny hadn't given him a heads up. Maybe she hadn't run across it or maybe it was another one of those things that nobody bothered to write down but everyone was expected to know. It would fit with the tradition angle. It also occurred to him that this must be the reason for the spirited debate among the fangirls earlier. He could just imagine them now, hiding behind the bookshelves, gnashing their teeth and glaring at Fleur.

" Oui. " Fleur said and looked at him expectantly.

Harry realized that she was waiting for him to ask her to be his date. Probably too proud to be the one asking but not proud enough to be above giving him hints so obvious it may as well be a flashing neon sign.

Going on a date with the beautiful French veela was hardly an unpleasant prospect, even if the substance of the date itself wasn't to his liking. And he couldn't exactly ask Dora to be his date for this thing since it was a school event.

Dora… he had no idea what he was going to do about her. She was displeased by the way the Black Widow situation had been resolved, mostly because she didn't really know how it had been resolved since Harry was keeping all the details to himself. Still, she seemed to be willing to let it go and move on. The problem was that Harry was no longer certain of anything concerning their relationship. He had thought himself lucky(and admittedly more than a little badass) for managing to get a woman that much older than him and an auror to boot to stay interested in him. Now he had to wonder how much of that was a result of him pulling on her soul and unknowingly preying on her feelings of isolation and desire for companionship. He was not going to be another Adrastia Zabini, going around the world and reducing her targets into doormats to be walked over and cast aside when they stopped being amusing. Her jibe about Dora becoming a pet struck uncomfortably close to his worries.

"'Arry?"

Fleur's voice brought him out of the brood he'd dropped into. "Sorry, I got lost in thought."

"About ze ball…?" She prompted.

Right, the damned Yule Ball. Another bit of shite to wade through on the journey that was life.

"Why me?" He asked.

Fleur sighed in exasperation and muttered something French under her breath. Harry had the sense that she was annoyed that he wasn't playing along with the polite fiction that she had tried to establish about who was asking who on a date.

"You are ze best wizard 'ere." She said simply.

'And I want the best.' was the unspoken sentiment.

"I'm flattered." Harry drolled. "There is something I have to do before I can ask you to be my date though."

"And zat eez?"

"I have to ask Luna if she wants to go to this ball or not. If she does, I'll be taking her. If not, I can take you."

Fleur looked like she had just been slapped. Despite being a lot more humble than her outward veneer or the jealous rumors spread by other women might indicate, she was also well aware of her beauty and used to getting her way with men. Being relegated to the position of 'backup date option' was not something that she appreciated.

Still, she swallowed down her indignation and managed to reply civilly. She had known this was a possibility before she'd approached him. She didn't think the little blonde was his girlfriend based on the wording of his refusal, but it was best to be sure. "Are you wiz 'er zen?"

"No, she's just a friend." Harry replied, smiling awkwardly and trying not to contemplate Luna's professed plans for the future. He really had no idea how to deal with that.

"I zee." Fleur could respect that he was placing his friend above her. The two of them seemed to keep mostly to themselves so it was not likely that this Luna would be able to get a date if Harry did not take her and he did not even know that those below fourth year could only attend if they were someone's date. Paradoxically, being rejected out of loyalty to a friend only made Harry even more desirable. "I will have to find anuzzer to take me to the ball zen."

"I can still take you if Luna doesn't want to go, but I doubt that's going to happen." Harry said, smiling apologetically.

" Merci, but I am no one's zecond choice." Fleur said, wrapping a cloak of proud dignity around herself to mask the disappointment she was really feeling. "But… I will zave a dance for you."

"I'll make sure to scrape the rust off my dancing skills then." He said wryly. He had been half his current size the last time he'd danced.

"You 'ad better, I do not want my feet stepped on." She joked back.

That same night.

"What do you want this time, Harry?" Penny asked with exasperation. It was late.

"A few pairs of swimming goggles and a dozen or so scarves." Harry stated.

"It's better than dead cows at least." Penny muttered.

Elsewhere in the world…

Lucius Malfoy was annoyed. Why did Potter have to be so damned clever instead of dying like he was supposed to?

Lucius was of course aware of the fact that wishing his enemies to be incompetent wouldn't make them so, but the world would be so much better if the unwashed masses would just know their place instead of being uppity. Dealing with the likes of Fudge might be tiresome, but at least that bumbling idiot knew when to shut up and listen.

Well, no matter. Potter's handling of the dragon might have been embarrassingly simple and he had obviously known about the task in advance, but the second task would give him a lot more room to arrange something.

All he needed to do was find a competent assassin that wouldn't mind taking a cold swim in February and offing Potter for a few galleons.

Dolores Umbridge was annoyed. She had wholeheartedly supported Cornelius' idea of using a trio of Hungarian Horntails instead of the tamer breeds of dragon, but it had not been for the sake of fairness like the Minister. No, she had been hoping that the insolent Potter brat and the veela abomination would be killed.

The fact that the only champion of good breeding had died during the first task just went to show how little justice there was in the world.

Still, not everything was going wrong. She was almost finished with kicking out all the filth that Crouch had allowed to work in the DIMC and replacing them with proper purebloods. More importantly, the next task was to take place in the Hogwarts Black Lake, where anything at all could happen away from the eyes of the public.

All she needed to do was find the right sort of wizard that wouldn't mind taking a cold swim in February and taking out the trash for a few galleons.