Chapter 31

March 5th. Las Vegas.

"Blimey, these muggles sure do know how to make a hotel room." Sirius said, looking around the luxurious accomodations with an impressed expression on his face. He'd never stayed in a place like this before.

"With what we're paying to stay here, they damn well better." Harry groused, mostly for the sake of grousing. It was a great room and the price, while high, wasn't really enough to put a serious dent into his finances. Plus, with Sirius insisting that they do some of the gambling that Vegas was infamous for, Harry was certain that he'd be able to cheat his way into making a profit from this part of the trip.

"The bean counters back in New York are going to have kittens when they see the spike in my department's budget." Frank, who was technically here on business and thus actually being paid to stay here, muttered.

"Good." Harry grunted.

"Look, bath robes!" Luna squealed, skipping out of the bathroom wrapped in a canary yellow robe. "It's so fluffy! Harry, can we take these home with us when we leave?"

"I don't think hotel management would approve of you stealing their stuff." Frank pointed out awkwardly.

"Oh, I thought they were gifts." Luna said with a pout.

"Don't worry about it, Luna. It's not stealing, it's just borrowing indefinitely with no intention of ever returning." Harry said, not overly concerned with what the hotel management approved of.

Luna's expression immediately brightened. "Okay!"

"Maybe we should 'borrow' this couch too while we're at it." Fleur chimed in from her lounging position on said item of furniture. "It's very comfortable."

"Heh, just imagine the looks on their faces as they try to figure out how we made off with the couch." Sirius chuckled.

"That's probably not a good idea." Frank said with a wince. "Vegas has a long history of violations to the Statute of Secrecy because people kept getting tempted to cheat at gambling. I was actually supposed to confiscate your wands as soon as we arrived. If the Aurors catch so much as a hint misuse of magic, they'll come down on us like a ton of bricks."

"Is that so?" Harry asked rhetorically, feeling his opinion of their chaperone rise just a little bit. "How close an eye are they keeping on this place?"

"Not very close." Frank admitted. "Every spell cast in Vegas gets a lot of scrutiny, but they mostly rely on wand confiscation as a preventative measure. There are only a couple of wizards stationed here on a constant basis to take care of that, but you don't have to worry about them since I'm here. Just try to keep as low a profile as possible or we'll all be in trouble."

"You hear that, Harry? That means no cheating." Sirius teased.

"No, that just means careful cheating." Harry corrected.

"Leave that for later." Fleur said authoritatively. "I am hungry and this hotel has a restaurant, non ? We skipped breakfast since someone " She turned to stare at Sirius, who adopted his best innocent expression. "wanted us to leave early in order to avoid encountering a girl whose heart he broke."

"It's not my fault she had this deluded fantasy that I'd take her back to Britain and make a lady out of her." Sirius protested.

"Sirius' continued ability to pick all the wrong women to have flings with aside, I think Fleur has the right of it. I'm pretty hungry myself." Harry said.

"I want pudding." Luna chimed in.

"Wouldn't you rather try something a little different for a change?" Fleur asked, continuing her ongoing effort to broaden both Harry and Luna's culinary horizons.

"I will be trying something different, different pudding."

"Of course, because American pudding is completely different from British pudding." Harry chipped in, amused.

"Exactly." Luna nodded firmly.

Fleur sighed. Luna was entirely too fond of pudding.

Later.

After Luna gorged herself on four different types of pudding, Fleur insisted on going clothes shopping, claiming that she and Luna needed new dresses if they were going out.

Harry handed the two several thousand dollars in cash and another dose of Aging Potion and left to do his own thing, as did Frank and Sirius.

After finding an isolated spot, he turned into Blackbeak and flew into the surrounding countryside.

This place was much too warm for his tastes, but he knew that there were plenty of ravens in Nevada, a problematic number as far as people were concerned actually. Enough that the government was allowing people to kill several thousand of them every year in an effort to lower their population. It wasn't really working as their numbers just kept on growing, but that's what you get for giving an opportunistic bird lots of opportunities.

It didn't take long to locate a few of his feathery brethren. They really were all over the damn place, perching on telephone poles and power lines, nesting on electric towers, giving themselves a spectacular vantage point for preying on other birds, tortoises, food discarded by humans and roadkill.

Harry transformed back underneath a power line that was currently serving as a perch for about a dozen ravens, probably the bird analogue of a teenaged gang as ravens were known to form those, and croaked out a greeting to them.

In unison, the birds cocked their head curiously and stared at him for a few moments before apparently electing a spokesperson to talk to him. The chosen raven flew off the power line and perched on his outstretched arm, croaking inquiringly.

" I need your help. " Harry croaked back at it in the corvid language that he'd still not bothered to name.

" Help? " The raven inquired, it's limited vocabulary working against it.

" I am searching for something ." Harry explained. " Magic. A man or woman that can transform into many animals ."

The conversation went on for a while longer as he explained to the bird what to look for and where. The raven's ability to speak and understand increased noticeably during this time and by the end it had haggled a large meal and a more secure nest out of him.

Harry was aware that he was probably going to end up making the raven problem in the area worse by interacting with them and increasing their intelligence, but that was no concern of his. They could turn the sky black with their numbers for all he cared.

It took several hours for them all to return to the hotel, at which point Sirius began prodding them to move off to the nearest casino.

"I'll just excuse myself for now." Frank said once they arrived. "I'll be around if you need me."

"Bye, Frank." Luna waved cheerily, smiling when the American wizard returned it.

"Alright, what should we try first?" Sirius asked, rubbing his hands together eagerly.

"What are those?" Luna asked, pointing at a row of machines. She was still under the effects of the Aging Potion and was looking very nice in a light blue dress that Fleur had helped her pick out.

"Slot machines. You pull the lever and hope to get a winning matchup. Mostly used by old ladies with nothing better to do if my research is correct." Harry explained blandly.

"Let's try the craps table first." Sirius suggested and started walking towards it without waiting for a reply.

"Craps?" Fleur asked uncertainly, wondering if she'd heard that correctly. English still threw her sometimes. Like Luna, she was also in a dress, but hers was silver, which she insisted was her color.

"Something to do with dice, no idea why it's called craps though." Harry answered with a shrug.

They went after Sirius and saw him studying the game that was being played.

"Figured anything out yet?" Harry asked as he moved to stand beside his godfather.

"Err, looks like we have to bet on the dice throws, but I'm still trying to work out the rules of this thing." Sirius said with a sheepish shrug.

The four of them continued to observe the game, slowly getting a general idea of how it was played. Then one of the casino employees invited them to play.

One hour later.

"That was easy." Harry muttered, several hundred dollars richer than he'd been before. Magic made the act of throwing dice considerably less random than it was supposed to be. To the point of boredom in fact. Good for making easy money though, should he ever need it.

"If it was so easy, then why did we leave?" Sirius pouted.

"You're just upset because you were starting to attract the gambler bimboes." Harry snorted.

"What's your point?"

"My point is that you're thinking with your cock again. The last time you did that, we ended up having Adrastia Zabini in our lives."

"That's no reason to cockblock me now!" Sirius protested.

"Cockblocking you is a reason in and of itself."

"You're a terrible godson."

"Thank you."

"Gentlemen, perhaps we could choose our next game instead of bickering?" Fleur said pointedly.

Harry and Sirius looked at each other and shrugged. Fleur was probably right.

"Poker?" Sirius suggested.

Harry considered it briefly. Disregarding his ability to glimpse people's surface thoughts through eye contact, it would be harder to cheat than with dice. In fact, he wasn't sure how he could influence the dealer to give him a particular hand. It would be an interesting exercise.

"Poker it is."

"Neat." Luna chimed in. "What's poker?"

"You can sit with me and I will show you 'ow to play." Fleur said, hooking her arm in Luna's elbow and leading her to the poker area.

Several hours later.

"Two pairs." Harry said, turning his cards around to show them.

He looked to his right, where Sirius was sitting. A pair of aces.

"One pair." Sirius grumbled, showing an ace of spades and one of diamonds. He knew that he had just been taken out of the game.

The man next to him was morbidly obese, with big rolls of fat hanging from his frame and multiple chins wobbling beneath his jaw whenever he moved. Due to that and his constant sweating, Harry had taken to referring to him as Porky inside his head. He was a pretty decent player and obviously had money to burn, as he had constantly pushed up the betting limit. He had also been trying to impress Fleur despite all evidence pointing to her being disgusted by his interest. A straight .

"Straight." Porky said with a satisfied grin, sweat shining on his forehead.

The next man in line was an old guy in his sixties with thinning hair and a neat mustache. He'd joined in some time ago and was indisputably the most savvy player at the table. Three of a kind, queens.

"Three of a kind." The old man said with resignation, showing a trio of queens.

Fleur was the last player still in the game, Luna being a bit too open with her expressions and had gotten whittled down some time ago. Two pairs, kings and jacks.

"Two pairs." She said with a huff. She did indeed have a pair of kings and jacks.

The dealer pushed the chips towards Porky and began shuffling the cards again.

"I think I'll bow out here, it's getting pretty late." The old man said, standing up along with the recently eliminated Sirius.

"Why don't we play one last game?" Porky suggested. "All in, one hand only."

"I must bow out then, I don't 'ave that much." Fleur said. She had been approaching elimination herself and there was close to five thousand dollars between the other three players still in the game.

"I would accept a night with you in place of money." Porky countered, looking like he was trying not to be creepy and failing.

"Sir, those kinds of bets aren't allowed." The dealer broke in sternly.

"I'm sure the lady can decide for herself if she wishes to take the bet or not." Old Man argued, eyeballing Fleur with interest. He had been much less obvious about it, but he'd been just as enamored with the veela's beauty as Porky was. He wouldn't have suggested such a crass bet himself, but was perfectly willing to back it now that it was out there.

Fleur had initially looked quite repulsed by the idea of sleeping with the land whale, but now looked at the large stacks of chips still on the table and then turned towards Harry with a calculating look.

"What do you think, 'Arry? Should I take that bet?" She asked, but the real question was whether there was any chance of Porky or Old Man actually winning.

"You'll be mine tonight either way." Harry said unconcernedly. Cheating at poker was child's play with Legilimency, but he'd spent the past several hours figuring out how to rig who got which cards. That had honestly been more fun for him than the actual game.

"Will I now? And what if I win? Will you be mine?" Fleur challenged.

"You won't win." Harry asserted with a self-assured smirk. "Lady Luck knows I like to be on top."

Sirius snorted at that and behind him, Luna giggled.

"Lady Luck is a notoriously fickle mistress." Old Man commented, sitting back down with a small smile.

Lady Luck has been my bitch for the past hour. Harry thought to himself with an internal snicker.

At first, using Legilimency to glimpse who had what had been his only option to cheat, and not a perfect one either since Fleur and Luna had good Occlumency shields and Sirius had ones good enough to repel such a basic mental probe.

Now though, after the hours he'd had to practice, he was able to control who got which cards. Influencing the dealer was out of the question, because his shuffling was random and would thus require far too direct intervention to get anything done with that.

Instead, Harry had focused on individualising each card. True, they were all just thick paper with pictures on them, but those very pictures gave them a sort of identity. An individuality. Similar to a rune but without the complex meaning attached to a runic symbol. It had taken quite some time to magically imprint that individuality into all the cards, but now that he had, he could easily switch them around. The dealer could shuffle all he wished, but it was Harry who decided who got which cards.

"So, Fleur. Are you in or are you chicken?" He taunted his lover.

She glared back. "I'm in."

Porky looked like he was about to wet his pants with excitement.

The dealer didn't look pleased and was probably worrying about his job, so Harry put a minor compulsion on him to go along with it.

The dealer huffed and started shuffling.

Harry was tempted to do something stupidly dramatic like give Porky and Old Man both four of a kind and himself a royal flush, but that would be retarded.

Once the cards were distributed, the dealer pushed all the chips to the center of the table.

"One hand only, winner takes it all." He said, surreptitiously glancing at Fleur. "Show your cards."

"A pair of deuces." Porky said, profoundly disappointed.

"A pair of threes." Old Man sighed, showing his own lackluster hand.

"Two pairs." Fleur said neutrally, staring at Harry.

"Three of a kind." He grinned back at her.

"It would seem that Lady Luck really does know what you like." Old Man said to Harry, shrugging in a 'you win some, you lose some' fashion.

"I told you so."

Sirius decided to keep gambling for a while longer, but Harry took his winnings and went back to the hotel.

As he crossed the threshold of their rented room, he pulled his most important win of the night to him so that her back was pressed to his chest and assaulted her neck with an aggressive kiss.

"Well now that you won me, what are you going to do with me?" Fleur purred with a small moan at the attention.

"I'm sure I can think of a few things." Harry murmured into her neck, sliding his hands over the front of her body, enjoying the texture of the silver dress she was wearing.

Feeling Luna's hands going around his body, he left her a bit of space so that she could start undressing him.

Harry could hardly believe there had been a time that he'd been glad of the promise Luna had made to her father. After having her take part in the sex but never more than foreplay, he was sorely tempted just blow it off and go all the way, fifteen wasn't that much different than sixteen anyway. Luna wanted it too, he could tell, but keeping her promise was all the more important to her now that her father was dead.

Ah well, at least there was only a year left. Less even.

Fleur reached back to give his member a few strokes the moment his pants dropped.

"I've been waiting for this all day." She said lustily and wiggled out of his grip, dropping to her knees in front of him.

As the familiar sucking heat of her mouth enveloped his member, Harry gave a low groan to express his enjoyment. While he did sometimes feel that Fleur was using him as a magical cum dispenser, he was at the end of the day a guy and wouldn't dream of complaining about an ultra beautiful woman wanting to suck his cock multiple times a day.

While his veela lower was busy down below, Harry focused on getting Luna naked. She helped along eagerly and pulled him down for a kiss as soon as it was done.

Harry made sure to tease her nipples with his fingers while fighting the tongue war, placing the familiar pleasure spells almost on automatic. He'd done it so many times at this point that it took barely any focus at all.

Then his fingers reached lower and started stroking along her lower lips, giving the little nub of her clitoris the occasional flick as well.

The angle was more than a bit awkward with Fleur occupying his front, but magic made up for it and Luna was soon panting needily and clinging to his shoulders. Her excitement egged on his own and in no time at all, he found himself grunting as he released into Fleur's hungry mouth.

The veela made appreciative sounds low in her throat as she drank down the magically charged sperm and Harry felt the familiar swell in her magic as she did.

The magical flare helped Luna along as well and she clung to him as she climaxed.

All three of them were left panting in the aftermath, two from their release and one from need.

Fleur all but jumped to her feet and attacked his mouth, pushing him towards the bed.

Luna giggled as she saw the veela's eagerness and decided to egg things on.

"You two have fun, I want to watch." She said, moving to sit in a comfy armchair that had a good view of the bed.

It was a testimony to how much the dynamic had between them had changed that Harry didn't even find that odd anymore, nevermind objectionable. He simply accepted that Luna would be masturbating as she watched him fuck Fleur, and then she would probably join in again a bit later.

"You lost to me, so I don't want any struggling out of you tonight." He murmured into her ear, cupping her groin with his right hand and a breast with his left.

"You cheated." Fleur accused, though it lacked any force on account of it being almost moaned out.

"A win is a win." Harry countered and pushed her on the bed.

Fleur quickly turned around so that she was propped up on her elbows, staring at him with eyes full of lust. "'Ow dishonorably British of you."

Harry grinned as he kneeled at the edge of the bed, pulled her by the legs so that she was lying right at the edge of it, removed her shoes and slid his hands up her legs all the way up to her waist. "I'd rather be a dishonorable winner than a honorable loser."

Fleur didn't reply, merely bit her lip as he slipped off the tiny white thong she had worn under her dress.

"Someone's excited." He teased, feeling the dampness on the garment. Then he brought it to his nose and inhaled deeply. "You smell delicious."

"Pervert." She teased.

Harry didn't reply with words, choosing instead to grab her legs again and took a whiff of the source.

His enjoyment of cunnilingus hadn't abated even though he had picked up a few other fetishes along the way and Fleur expressed her appreciation of that with a cry of pleasure as he gave her clitoris a firm lick, her fists twisintg the sheets as all the right buttons were pushed with both tongue and magic.

Harry took his time, deriving great enjoyment from every cry and moan of pleasure and uncontrolled tremor. There was a certain artistry to the manipulation of sensitive nerves that made a woman buck her hips into his mouth impatiently, looking for that final push that he refused to give until he had his fill of her lusty whimpers.

" Stop teasing me! " Fleur cried out in needy French after several minutes of being kept on the edge of orgasm, English being a bit beyond her at the moment.

Harry decided to oblige, undoing the little spell that had been keeping her climax at bay. The true beauty of that particular spell was that it also sent a jolt of sensation through her nerves as it was removed.

Fleur climaxed with a strangled cry, hips bucking without her input and a spllater of female sexual fluids squirted into Harry's face.

With a grin on his face, Harry wiped off the wetness. That never got old. Now it was time to take care of his own pleasure though and he once again used his grip on her legs to turn the still recovering Fleur onto her stomach and then pull her lower half off the bed.

One of Harry's other fetishes was the desire to be in control and this position appealed to him for that reason, but it could be made even better.

He grabbed Fleur's arms and brought them together on the small of her back. Then once her arms were neutralised, he grabbed both her wrists in one of his and used his free hand to grab her hair as he positioned himself.

His earlier efforts had left him rock hard and Fleur was of course already soaked, so there was little reason to be careful as he plunged into her with a single forceful motion.

Fleur's cry of pleasure was a sweet sound to his ears as he set a slow but relentless pace. Seated in a chair across the room, Luna locked eyes full of lust with him as she imitated his actions on herself through the use of her fingers.

Fleur saw this too and felt a happy warmth spread in her chest with every thrust, moaning lustily in helpless pleasure. She liked being in control too and didn't get the chance nearly often enough for her tastes, but submitting to Harry wasn't any great hardship either.

His pace steadily increased over the next few minutes until he was grunting and pounding into her with reckless abandon.

And then with a final thrust, Fleur felt his second discharge of the night, this time spilling it's warmth and power towards her womb. The glorious feeling was accompanied by the Joining, Harry's familiar soul enveloping her own in a soothing spiritual embrace, even the cold darkness that was part of it had long since become familiar and comforting.

Eventually, the Joining ended and Fleur weakly laid her newly freed arms next to her head, taking deep breaths with her cheek mashed into the bed. She hadn't even gotten the chance to take her dress off and Harry's member was still inside her, although it had softened.

"That was beautiful." Luna said softly, sitting on the bed next to Fleur. There was a sheen of sweat on her body that gave mute testimony to her own enjoyment.

"It's not over yet." Harry said, looking at his younger girlfriend over with a gleam in his eye. "Seems a shame to let her mouth go unused."

Fleur felt his member regaining its hardness as he grabbed her hips.

"You're right, Harry." Luna agreed and scooted over with legs wide open to give the veela access.

Fleur didn't put up any kind of fight, merely braced herself with her now freed arms and started lapping at Luna's sex while Harry renewed his thrusts.

Luna's magic was not as strong as Harry's and her fluids not as thick, but it was good all the same. Still, she eagerly awaited the expiration of that stupid promise so that she could have both at once.

A couple of hours later.

Harry let out a content sigh as his two girls cuddling into his sides, a three-way Joining settling into place. Fleur and Luna were only just getting the hang of performing it consciously, but he was easily able to guide them with his own greater ability.

"I love you." Fleur murmured softly into the crook of his neck.

"Love you too." Luna replied sleepily.

Harry's eyebrows furrowed in consternation. Neither Fleur nor Luna had ever said that to him. Should he say it back? Did he even love them? What the fuck was love anyway?

He knew that he wanted them to stay part of his life and would go to considerable lengths to make them happy. Was that it? He could feel a lot of affection directed at him from both girls and he returned it, but was that really love? Shouldn't it feel like something more distinctive, something that you could definitely point a finger at and say 'there, that's love'? Hate felt pretty distinctive, but despite what overly romantic idiots thought, hate and love were not two sides of the same coin.

Sometimes, Harry envied people that were more in touch with their emotions, despite all the trouble it seemed to cause. He spent most of his time in neutral and didn't really understand those that got excited or upset over anything that wasn't life-altering, the rune provoked rages from a few years ago aside. The Jedi mantra of 'feel, don't think' was completely wasted on him. Thinking was his primary pastime.

A second ticked by as Harry continued pondering this vexing subject.

Fleur and Luna were easy for him to like. Quick to laugh but not annoying in their humor, a good contrast to his more biting, sarcastic one. Each strong-willed in their own way, but not pushy or overbearing. They knew he needed time to himself sometimes and didn't try to 'cure' his introversion, nor did they make an issue out of his occasionally morally dubious actions. In a way entirely separate from their good looks, he could hardly ask for any more.

He was overthinking the situation. The end result wasn't dependent on whether he said the words in this particular moment, so he might as well say them. Time would tell, as it always did.

"I love you girls too." Harry said, relaxing now that he had reasoned himself into a logically unassailable position.

The two blondes wiggled closer and he could feel them smiling, but they didn't say anything. Another quality of theirs he appreciated, they didn't ruin comfortable moments with needless discussion.

The next morning upon leaving their room, Harry, Fleur and Luna were witness to a small miracle.

Sirius was up before them and had already ordered room service.

Of course, that was probably more to do with the bleached blonde twenty-something that was sitting with him than with Sirius himself, as the dog in human form looked to be nursing a mild hangover.

"Morning." Harry greeted, setting off a procession of similar allocutions.

"Guys, this is, uh,…" Sirius started once they were all done greeting each other, looking at his most recent sexual partner with consternation as he realised that he'd never gotten her name.

"Lily." She said dryly.

"Nice going, Sirius." Harry snickered. "Too bad she isn't a redhead, then you could've pretended she was my mother."

"Screw you, Harry." Sirius grumbled, bitterly regretting that he had ever admitted to developing a tiny crush on Lily after all the time he'd spent helping James chase her.

"I bet you wish my mother would've screwed you."

"I hate you so much."

"But not as much as missing out on a chance to make a Lily sandwich with my dad, right?"

"Damn it, Harry, it's too early for this."

"Did I interrupt your daydreams about my mother wearing nothing but an apron while she made you breakfast?"

As the verbal sparring between the two wizards escalated, the American, non-witch Lily turned to Fleur.

"Hi." She said with an awkward smile, extending her hand. "I'm Lily."

" Bonjour ." Fleur replied, shaking the offered hand. "Fleur, and this is Luna."

"Hi!" The younger blonde chirped, looking up from her artful spreading of jam on bread.

"So, you're French?" Lily asked after returning the greeting. "I've always wanted to go to France."

"I recommend it." Fleur said with a nod, still convinced of the superiority of everything French.

"You're determined to be extra horrible today, aren't you?" Sirius' accusatory words cut through their brief conversation.

"It depends. How much of my money did you gamble away last night?"

"Why do you immediately assume I lost it?" Sirius demanded indignantly.

"Don't take it personally, you inbred old man, it's just statistically more likely."

"I'm not old!"

"How much?"

"… two thousand."

"Inbred?" Lily asked in a whisper, leaning towards Fleur.

"'Is parents were first cousins, 'Arry never lets him forget it." Fleur answered.

"Ew, gross." Lily shuddered.

Fleur was amused, having frequently had sex with her own mother and expecting to have it with her sister in some years and then her daughters when she had them. Since veela reproduction only needed an influx of raw magic to their womb rather than genetic material, inbreeding was a non-issue for them and it was not unheard of for a veela to have children with her own father. Though that had generally only been done in desperation, when times were hard and there were no other options to propagate their species. A single wizard could provide many generations of veela daughters. Unnecessary in these more peaceful days, but it may well have been the only thing that had spared them from extinction centuries ago.

"See that, Sirius? You're grossing Lily out with your degeneracy." Harry said, catching the little exchange between the women.

"Sure, I'm the degenerate. Says the guy making cracks about his dead mother having threesomes with me and your father."

"Your father and I." Harry corrected pedantically. "And am I supposed to cringe whenever sex is mentioned in relation to my parents? For all I care you could have buggered my mother with your wee doggy cock while she blew a stag."

Fleur nearly spat out the juice she'd been drinking at the unorthodox possible use for Sirius' and James' animal forms.

"My cock is not 'wee'!" Sirius exclaimed in outrage, focusing on the most important part of that sentence.

"If you say so, Sirius. You're being awfully defensive about it though."

"I should've dropped you on your head the first time your parents let me hold you." Sirius muttered darkly. "How Fleur and Luna put up with you is beyond me."

"'E 'as a really big cock and knows 'ow to use it." Fleur chipped in helpfully, still amused by the kinky imagery of a beastiality threesome and unable to help herself. She and Luna generally stayed out of these dick measuring contests that Harry and Sirius engaged in, but that had been simply too perfect.

"Yes, I can't wait for him to put it in my vagina." Luna added dreamily.

"Aren't you a bit young for that?" Lily asked, looking at the clearly underage blonde with considerable alarm.

"Yes." Luna pouted.

"What?" Lily blinked, thrown off by the unexpected reply.

"Don't worry about it." Harry said dismissively, adding a compulsion to his words and making a mental note to confound the woman so that she would have trouble bringing this conversation to mind later.

"So, what do you want to do today?" Sirius asked far too cheerfully to be real.

"I was thinking skydiving." Harry said.

"Skydiving?" Luna asked, cocking her head curiously.

"Jumping out of an airplane from several kilometers high seems like fun." Harry shrugged. It would certainly be more fun than jumping off the Hogwarts Astronomy Tower like he'd been tempted to do a few times.

"Is it safe?" Fleur asked dubiously.

"Should be."

"What about Frank?" Sirius asked, recalling that their chaperone was supposed to stay with them for the most part.

"Well he can either come with us or he can be a wimp, I'm fine with either." Harry shrugged again.

Lily was looking a bit queasy at the thought of jumping from a plane and sought refuge in safer topics. "So, Fleur, what product did you use to get that hair color? It's amazing!" She gushed, looking at the veela's silver-blonde hair.

"No product, this is my natural 'air color." Fleur said, not quite able to keep the vain preening out of her tone.

"No way!" The American exclaimed. "I'm so jealous."

"Envious, you're envious." Harry muttered to himself. "Jealousy is when you're afraid someone will take something of yours, not when you want something that another person has. Why does nobody understand this?"

Luna patted him on the thigh, being the only person to have heard him complain about the incorrect use of language.

The four of them continued to partake in the distractions of Las Vegas for a while longer. Money was lost, either through gambling or the high cost of their lifestyle, but Harry cheated shamelessly every time he entered a casino and thus actually made a small profit. Not a big one since he didn't want to draw attention, but more than enough to offset the losses.

Eventually though, he got fed up of the bright lights, the people and the whole city in general. The local ravens hadn't reported anything worth checking out yet and he wasn't willing to stick around any longer. There were other things he wanted to do in America besides watch his godfather develop a gambling habit.

Said godfather was less than enthused about this decision however…

"I can't believe you'd rather go to Mexico than stay in Vegas." Sirius sulked, sitting down with an almost petulant huff. He and Harry were already packed and waiting for the girls to finish up.

"We can barely take Luna anywhere in Vegas without Aging Potion and that stuff isn't exactly orange juice you know." Harry retorted in exasperation.

"But why Mexico of all places? Why not Hawaii?" Sirius continued to complain.

"Because I want to take a look at the Aztec ruins."

"You could have babes, beaches and booze, but you'd rather look at rocks?" Sirius feigned horror. "It's like I don't even know you."

"I have babes, beaches are overrated and I never saw the appeal of booze." Harry shot down his godfather's arguments. "Look, Sirius, it doesn't say anywhere that we have to stay together all the time. Nothing is stopping you from going to Hawaii if you want, or staying in Vegas for that matter, but Fleur, Luna and I are going to Mexico."

Sirius sighed as if making a great sacrifice. "I suppose Hawaii is going to be nicer towards the end of our stay in America anyway. Why don't you tell me why you're so interested in seeing the Aztec ruins?"

"I want to see if I can find any hints about how they used magic." Harry answered, skirting around the truth somewhat. "To do that, I need to take a look at the ruins of their temples and understand their religion."

"I thought you hated religion." Sirius commented.

"I hate willful ignorance." Harry corrected. "Religion just happens to be a sub-category of willful ignorance in the age of information. But even if the Aztecs had existed today, I'd still have more respect for their religion than I do for modern day religious dunderheads as our good friend Snape would say."

"Didn't the Aztecs have a thing for human sacrifice?" Sirius said archly, grimacing slightly at the thought of Snape. "I've seen you curse a nun with three days of horrible flatulence for quoting the Bible, not even to you at that, just within hearing distance, but you don't mind ritual murder?"

"That about sums it up." Harry nodded, recalling the nun episode with a smirk. Sirius had pestered him to go have some guy fun without the girls, so Harry chose gaming as the activity, knowing that Sirius had never played a video game in his life. Not having electrical wiring in Potter Manor, they had gone to a gaming arcade in London. It was on the way back that they'd passed the nun quoting that waste of paper to another woman and decided to give her some 'unholy wind'. Good times. Petty, yes, but it was far too late to be making any claims to the moral high ground anyway, not with his own dabbling in ritual murder. And on that note, it was too bad that he had needed to leave Blackrazor at home, but getting caught with it on his person would end badly.

"Harry…" Sirius was the one exasperated now.

"Do you know what the difference between the polytheistic religions and the monotheistic ones is?" Harry interrupted.

"Aside from your obvious bias?"

"Yes, aside from my obvious bias." Harry could be honest with himself and admit that he had a personal resentment towards Christianity and its counterparts. Having to listen to a lecture about how magic was an abomination in the eyes of God every time something inexplicable happened in the orphanage that he'd spent a year in could do that to a person. Doubly so since the dried up old cunt giving the lectures never did anything about the other kids picking on him and causing the instances of accidental magic in the first place. Harry prided himself on his objective reasoning, but the spite he felt for the Abrahamic religions and those who bought into them was not a character flaw he cared to try fixing.

"I haven't got a clue."

"The old, polytheistic religions were attempts to understand the world." Harry began to explain. "They had gods for everything; the rain, the earth, the sky, the sea, the stars, the rivers… everything. It may have been a bad attempt at understanding the world, but it was an attempt. The monotheistic religions have the same answer for everything; 'God did it'. How was the world made? God did it. Why is the sky blue? God did it. What's up with rainbows? God did it. Why is water wet? God did it. Where did humans come from? God did it. God did everything, now stop asking questions or you'll burn in Hell forever while demons gangrape you. Granted, the more sensible Jews, Christians and Muslims can be reasoned with these days, but they clung to their ignorance like a leech to a pig's arse for as long as possible. Many of them still do and all of them are still delusional enough to believe that they merit the attention of some sort of supreme being."

"How is that different from any other religion? Just replace 'God' with whatever other deity is appropriate. And isn't every religion a bad attempt to make sense of the world?" Sirius argued, not really understanding his godson's point.

Said godson sighed in response. "There is a big difference between saying that it took a pantheon of gods to create the world and saying that everything was done by just the one. The first is trying to figure out the workings of the world, albeit from a fatally flawed base assumption. The second is declaring that there's no point in thinking about how the world works because 'God works in mysterious ways which are known only to him'. What a marvelous blanket statement to use when you don't want to admit that you're too fucking stupid to hold a thought more complex than the best efforts of a ten-year-old in your head. Plus, religions with many gods almost invariably focus on how the gods interact with each other, whereas a single, all-powerful god is depicted as a micromanaging psychopath that will sentence you to eternal damnation if you don't do what he says, but - and note the sarcasm - he loves you. The priests of polytheistic religions could only spew a limited amount of bullshit before it intruded on someone else's bullshit and they didn't try to portray their gods as nice, whereas the clergy of a monotheistic religion has an effectively unlimited bullshit license and can talk about unconditional love and fire and brimstone in the same sentence."

"Harry, you told me yourself that the Aztec priests sacrificed children, carved out people's still beating hearts, flayed people… I'd think that was a tad worse than being able to bullshit endlessly."

"Eh." Harry shrugged. "There's that fatally flawed base assumption I mentioned earlier. They had this ridiculous notion that the world would end without them doing that. Stupid and strangely arrogant to be sure, but at least it wasn't hypocritical."

"I don't know about you, but I'll take a little hypocrisy over human sacrifice any day." Sirius muttered.

Harry didn't agree. Aside from people captured from other tribes, the Aztec sacrifices had largely been willing. They'd had all the power in the world to put an end to their bloody practices, but their fear-mongering religion made them think it was necessary. Idiots dying was all to the good in his book. Plus, their rituals seemed to have actually achieved something if the high rate of magical births in the area was any clue.

"There's another reason why I like the old religions better, the biggest reason actually." He said instead. "Magic."

"What about it?" Sirius asked, puzzled.

"Magic had a place in a world with many gods. Judaism and Christianity decry all magic as evil despite the blatant use of magic by their vaunted prophets and Islam only tolerates magic done in Allah's name, hypocritical as ever. If the world still worshiped Ra, Zeus, Odin and the like, magic wouldn't have needed to be hidden."

"I'm not sure that would be a good thing." Sirius said.

"I guess we'll never know."

Yes, they would never know what it would be like if Christianity, Judaism and Islam had died ignobly as sad little cults barely meriting a mention in the history books, but Harry didn't believe that magic would stay secret for much longer. The world had too many eyes.

March 11th, Mexico City.

"I thought we were supposed to be feeling uncomfortable here." Sirius commented with furrowed brows, looking around as if he expected some wizard to jump from around a corner and curse him.

"You will." Harry said with a sort of grim amusement.

They were in front of the Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral at the moment, the oversized church that the Spanish had built over the main temple of the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan after destroying it. The Templo Mayor, as the Spanish had called it, had been dedicated to two gods; Huitzilopochtli, the god of the Sun, war and human sacrifice and Tlaloc, the god of rain, water and fertility. There wasn't much left of the temple now, just a platform and some paving.

"You feel something?" Sirius asked with a raised eyebrow.

"The stone and earth here remember what the Aztecs did." Harry said. "It's very faint, like the memory of a memory, but I can almost hear the echo of their rituals." It was like walking on a courtyard paved with bones and feeling them crunch under your feet with every step.

"I'm not feeling anything. You sure it's not just indigestion?" Sirius tried to joke weakly.

Harry turned to his godfather with a humorless smile. "Quite sure."

Sirius shivered a bit and looked away, feeling deeply unnerved by Harry right now.

"Do you girls feel anything?" Harry asked.

Luna shook her head, but still took his hand as if looking for comfort.

Fleur on the other hand was looking around with a deep furrow in her forehead.

"I… don't know." She said uncertainly. "Maybe?"

With the temple being dedicated to a solar deity and the sacrifices being done in his name, it would figure that Fleur would have an easier time sensing it than Luna.

"Let's look around a bit more, there's still a little bit of the original temple left."

March 16th, Teotihuacan.

Teotihuacan was an interesting place, predating even the Aztecs. Nowadays it was a popular tourist destination, with admission requiring a ticket.

Selling tickets to a place where human sacrifice was once performed struck Harry as being very strange. Of course, as far as these tourists were concerned, whatever had happened here was just a historical curiousity.

Harry had a somewhat different perspective. They had spent the past few days going around Mexico City, following whatever vague impressions he was able to feel. A lot of blood had been spilled there and the echoes still lingered, but it was notoriously hard to pin anything down.

A lot of blood had been spilled here too, but this place was largely still the same as it had been centuries ago, unlike Tenochtitlan, whom the Spanish had destroyed almost entirely and then built Mexico City over. Harry was hoping it would be easier to figure out what exactly all this ritual sacrifice had achieved in a place where the original construction still stood.

All these bloody tourists could be a problem though… How was he supposed to investigate anything with people crawling all over the pyramids, snapping photos and doing other touristy things? At least it wasn't the summer tourist rush, but there were still too many for his tastes.

"You take me to such exciting places, Harry." Sirius said sourly.

Harry didn't blame his godfather for being a sourpuss, annoying as it was. He was starting to have trouble sleeping and it was making him crabby. Luna and Fleur were less affected because they slept Joined together and thus protected by Harry's magic, but even Harry himself was feeling the effects of the 'curse'. A better knowledge of what the 'curse' actualy was would hopefully mitigate the effects.

"It's exciting to me." He said with a shrug, deciding not to remind the man that he could leave at any time. Sirius still felt that he had to look out for Harry and wouldn't leave without him. "And you might enjoy sneaking around here at night more than playing tourist."

"Why would we sneak around at night?" Fleur asked curiously.

"Because we don't want to get caught by the guards." Harry replied cheekily.

Thanks to the danger that some entirely non-magical, garden variety nutjobs would try to use Teotihuacan to re-enact a ritual or two, the abandoned city was well guarded at night.

"You know what I mean." The veela growled. "Why can't we do whatever you want to do 'ere during the day?"

She wanted to get out of Mexico too.

"Too many tourists." Harry answered simply and that was the end of it.

March 21st, Teotihuacan, Temple of the Feathered Serpent.

Harry meditated on top of the smallest of Teotihuacan's three great pyramids. The building was mostly intact, save for the top, which was basically a heap of rubble. Not the best of seats, but it would do.

Getting caught up here by security, long after visiting hours were over no less, would get him into a lot of trouble. Fortunately, the guards were not equipped to deal with magic so that was not likely to happen.

These temples were odd. He could sense a very subtle, but also powerful magic attached to them, but it was maddeningly vague. The situation was compounded by the fact that it didn't feel like it had been done properly. He knew that people, often children, had been sacrificed at the four corners of these pyramids to bless them, but not all of those sacrifices had been magical.

There was no indication that any of the Mesoamerican cultures had a secret magical society in the way that Europe had had them even before the rise of the Ministries of Magic. Everything that was of magic seemed to be bundled together with their religion.

An absurd set of beliefs, that the gods sacrificed of themselves so that humans could live, and in turn requiring human sacrifice to sustain them. Absurd, but the truth was hidden in those beliefs.

The Aztecs and those who had gone before them had sacrificed to the gods that represented the world. They sacrificed to Earth and Sea and Sky, to Sun and Stars, to Moon and Night.

Harry's senses, no matter how sharply attuned, could not perceive that. It was the same as pouring a cup of water into a lake and then trying to see the difference in water level. The magic of those sacrifices blended into the background.

That was just a theory though, as he could not say with any certainty that the world even had any magic of its own. It would make sense, and most academics agreed that it did, but he had no personally acquired proof of it.

He could only sense the echo of the rituals done here because the people doing those rituals hadn't had the faintest fucking idea of what they were doing.

Rituals were delicate things, as prone to outside interference as incomplete spells, but could be influenced from a far greater range. They were best done in seclusion, with preparation made to contain magical leakage beforehand.

Performing them as what amounted to a publicity stunt in front of a large, emotionally charged crowd, including more soon-to-be sacrifices, was almost the polar opposite of the safe way to perform rituals.

No wonder that magicals couldn't ever feel comfortable here. Not when the magics of the world were so tainted by fear and bloodlust and anger and dread and hate and religious zeal and who knew what else. Harry himself couldn't even go to sleep anymore without dreaming of the Sun going out and the Void swallowing the Earth,which was these days something that any idiot with two neurons to rub together knew was not going to happen any time soon, but which the Aztecs had feared as highly likely to happen every fifty-two years. That nonsensical pseudo-nightmare was interspersed with visions of rivers of blood running down stone altars and similarly visceral imagery. That little side effect had probably driven their untrained, ignorant magicals into a terrified frenzy that more sacrifice had to be offered to the gods, imprinting more fear on the world and driving future generations of magicals to even more desperate zealotry.

Positive feedback loops were such fun things.

Still, Harry was almost impressed by the rest of it. All this sacrificing to the various gods was definitely the cause of the improbably high rate of magical births happening around here. Unlike the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present figure of the Judeo-Christian god, who was simply an abstract representation of humanity's collective daddy issues, these old gods represented natural forces and sacrificial rituals dedicated to them had a tangible impact.

Unfortunately, it was impossible to determine which rituals had achieved what aside from making educated guesses.

The interesting thing was that there weren't any swarms of magical pests floating around Mexico, and presumably Guatemala since the Mayans had been nearly as prolific in their sacrificing.

Any place with a high concentraction of magic attracted magical pests. The Hogwarts house-elves spent a considerable amount of time just keeping the castle free of them. Heavily warded houses suffered similar problems. Harry had needed to remove a boggart from Grimmauld Place just before they'd left Britain for example and according to Luna and Ginny, even the Weasley's ramshackle house attracted pests simply for the sheer amount of magic being used to keep the bloody thing standing.

More than that though, places of heavy magic concentraction had peculiar effects on plants and animals as well. A lot of magical plant and animal species were the result of deliberate action on the part of wizards and witches, but quite a few also popped up by themselves.

Magic was an agent of change. Oftentimes a mutagenic one. Tzeentch would approve.

Harry sometimes wondered what would happen if he could somehow manage to get a hundred completely mundane couples to conceive children inside Hogwarts. Magic seemed to beget more magic, so he strongly suspected that a high percentage of them would be either squibs or outright magical.

How the purebloods would howl about muggles stealing their magic if that was the case. A retarded argument, but purebloods were usually retards.

In spite of the high birth rates of magical children, Mesoamerica had neither great numbers nor variety of magical creatures however. These sacrifice obsessed Mesoamerican civilizations hadn't picked a spot like Hogwarts and enchanted it to the gills, which would saturate a place with strutctured, active magic, but had instead focused the magic back on the world itself.

The only exception were perhaps these temples where they later conducted their rituals, but even that had been dedicated to their gods to serve as places of worship and sacrifice. This particular one had been dedicated to Quetzalcoatl, God of Wind and Wisdom and a bunch of other shit, who was depicted as a feathered serpent.

Harry was meditating on top of it in an effort to divine whatever he could of the magic imbued into this temple. He had already tried this on the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon, to no particular effect, so he was not really expecting any success this time either.

The minutes trickled past as Harry meditated, trying to tease out the magic he could sense at the edges of his consciousness. It was only through long experience at clearing his mind that he didn't grow annoyed by the exercise, as the magic slipped past him like… well, like the wind actually, which would make sense given what the temple was dedicated to.

He wasn't sure how long he spent chasing the elusive feeling when an oddly musical hiss made his eyes snap open.

Then he nearly went arse over teakettle off the pyramid as he saw the winged serpent hovering right in front of his face, looking at him curiously.

Harry released an awed breath at the sight of the quetzalcoatl, not the god obviously, but the magical creature. They were as rare as phoenixes and none had been seen in centuries. They were so rare in fact that modern literature was catious about even saying whether they had ever existed.

It was gloriously ostentatious. A snake the size of a man with deep green scales over its sinuous body and a paler green over the underside. It's head and forked tongue were typically serpentine, but it had many rows of fangs, much like a basilisk, and its slit eyes blazed gold even in the dark of the night. Around its neck was an almost lion-like mane of feathers in gaudy colors of red, green and a few gold. A short ways down its body grew a pair of wings that were just as gaudilly colored; short green feathers at the top, mid-sized gold ones in the middle and long red ones at the bottom.

It was easy to see why a primitive people would think this creature divine when it was so beautiful. Or perhaps it had been the other way around and it had been the blundering of ignorant magical priests that had led to its creation? He knew there was such a thing as a perfectly mundane quetzal bird and it was entirely possible that one of its eggs may have been hatched under a serpent, with some magic added to the mix, leading to this beautiful hybrid. Impossible to say which way it had been now.

The quetzalcoatl gave another curiously musical hiss, tilting its head as if wondering what was wrong with him.

" Hello. " Harry hissed back in Parseltongue.

Never had he been more grateful for the effort he had expended to master the ability, even though he had long thought it more or less useless. Talking to snakes wasn't really that big of a deal if you ignored the reputation that Parseltongue had, but Harry would not dismiss any magic as worthless, so he had practiced it. Now he was grateful for that, as the ability had been Voldemort's and not his. It would have been lost to him along with that piece of the bastard's soul if he had not used it enough for it to imprint on his own magic.

The quetzalcoatl reared back in surprise. " You speak? "

"I speak. " Harry confirmed, forgoing the sarcasm that would usually be used in response to such a superfluous question.

" There have been no speakers here for many long seasons. " The quetzalcoatl said almost sadly, but shook it off quickly. " I tasted your magic on the wind, seeking. What do you seek? "

" Knowledge. " Harry answered. " Have there been many speakers here before? " That would imply snake Animagi… Well, that wouldn't be too farfetched. He knew that the Native Americans further north had developed the ability independently of European wizards, possibly even taken it further with Skinwalking.

" No, I was but a hatchling when the last speaker lived. He named me Etalpalli. "

" Etalpalli. " Harry repeated, trying out the word. Weird how names somehow worked in languages that they shouldn't work in, but that's why they were magical and not logical. Regardless, he'd have to look up what it meant later. " I am Harry. "

" Harry. " The quetzalcoatl repeated just he had. " A strange name. "

" It is common among my people. " Harry replied with a hissing laugh. " To me, your name is the strange one. "

" It is a good name. " Etalpalli insisted, his mane of feathers shivering.

" I did not say it was not. " Harry placated, not wanting the quetzalcoatl to leave over such a small thing.

Fortunately it seemed to be enough, as the winged serpent changed the subject. " You come from across the sea? "

" I do. "

" Tell me of the lands across the sea. " Etalpalli said, contriving to sound simultaneously pleading and demanding. " The winds whisper of them sometimes, but they are far away. "

Harry had no idea how he could describe things to the quetzalcoatl in a satisfactory way, but he had a better idea anyway.

" I intend to explore many places, you could come with me and we would see them together. " He offered.

Etalpalli coiled closer together, giving off a distinctly thoughtful air.

" I have never left these lands. " He said.

" There is a first time for everything. " Harry shrugged.

The quetzalcoatl let out a strange hiss that Harry could only interpret as the snake version of a laugh.

" You speak truly. " He finally said. " Very well, Harry, I will go with you to the lands across the sea. "

" We will not go right away. " Harry warned. " It will be several turns of the Moon yet before we leave these lands. "

" Perhaps I will show you these lands first then. " Etalpalli hissed thoughtfully.

" Excellent. " Harry grinned widely. He had never expected to meet an actual quetzalcoatl on this trip, much less gain one as a companion. " I must introduce you to my mates, they will love you. "

" Can they speak as well? " Etalpalli asked curiously, floating alongside him as he made his way down the pyramid.

" No, the serpent speech is no less rare across the sea than it is here. " Harry answered and the two of them feel into easy conversation as he led the way to the wizarding tent they were staying in.

While Harry was making another unorthodox acquaintance, Sirius, Luna and Fleur were plotting.

Harry may have thought that the side-effects of centuries of mass human sacrifice performed by the indigineous peoples were merely irritating, but his companions were somewhat less blasé about it.

Sirius spent most of his time as Padfoot after discovering that it helped to blunt the worst of it, but he was far from happy. It was starting to reach Azkaban levels of unpleasant, though in a different way.

Fleur was starting to feel frightened without Harry around to hold her and that was simply unacceptable to the prideful veela.

Luna showed the least amount of reaction, but that was only because she was resorting to an old coping mechanism that Harry had helped her abandon. Namely, staring blankly into space and shutting out the world.

All three agreed that today was their last day in Central America and that Harry had used up his last 'just a little longer'.

This was why they were sitting in the common room of the vastly expanded interior of the wizarding tent they had pitched a short distance outside of Teotihuacan, waiting for the source of their current misery to return.

"'Arry, we need to talk." Fleur opened up with the words that every male the world over dreaded hearing.

Except for Harry apparently. "Sure, but first I've got someone I want you to meet."

Fleur opened her mouth to say something, only for it to remain open as the most magnificent creature she'd ever seen carefully poked its head inside the tent, forked tongue tasting the air curiously.

"Everyone, meet Etalpalli. He's a quetzalcoatl." Harry said with a grin and turned to the feathered serpent.

" Etalpalli, the two females over there are my mates, Fleur and Luna, and the male is Sirius. " He hissed.

The quetzalcoatl slythered through the air as if it was solid ground, his wings only barely moving, and went right at Fleur.

" This one's magic tastes of the Sun. " He hissed, tongue flicking close to the nervous veela's skin.

"'Arry, what does it want?" She asked tremulously.

"He's just curious." Harry reassured her. "Don't worry, he won't hurt you."

Fleur swallowed and let the dangerous looking reptile/bird hybrid inspect her.

" She is a veela. " Harry took the opportunity to explain. " They are creatures of the Sun. "

" I have never seen one like her before. The humans that lived here before your people came across the sea would have thought her a grand offering to the gods. " Etalpalli noted, not surprising Harry in the slightest as he had figured as much himself already.

He decided not to relay that bit to Fleur though. She probably wouldn't appreciate knowing that she was prime sacrifice material.

The quetzalcoatl eventually stopped flicking his tongue at Fleur and moved on to an awestruck Luna.

Unlike Fleur, Luna had no fear whatsoever. Harry had said that his new friend wouldn't hurt them and that was that.

With this in mind, she reached a dainty hand towards the mane of feathers at the quetzalcoatl's neck and gave it a gentle scratch, alternatively ruffling and soothing the feathers.

Harry bit his lip to keep down a smile as the winged serpent briefly tensed and then leaned his head to the side to allow better access, releasing a long hiss of pleasure that once again sounded oddly musical.

"He's beautiful, Harry." Luna said with a wide smile as she continued the scratching.

"Harry." Sirius said in a strangely hollow tone of voice, finally mastering his shock at the legendary creature that Harry had apparently stumbled upon.

"Yes, Sirius?"

"We're going back north."

"But I still wanted to go see the Great Pyramid of Cholula." Harry protested.

"You can do that later, but we're spending at least a couple of weeks away from this place." Sirius said firmly.

"I second that." Fleur piped up.

"And I third it." Luna finished off.

"But…" Harry tried again and then slumped under the combined weight of their stares. He supposed it had been a bit selfish to insist on staying for so long despite the effect it had on them. "Fine, but what are we going to do back in North America?"

"I'm glad you asked." Sirius said imperiously, thrusting a poster into Harry's hands. "Frank just so happens to have informed us that there's a dueling tournament taking place in Mississippi at the end of the month."

"Where the fuck is Mississippi?" Harry muttered, looking at the poster. He had no doubt that Frank had only told Sirius about this dueling tournament during one of the brief visits that the American wizard made to check up on them before fleeing back to North America after Sirius had asked him about an activity he could use as an argument to leave Mexico.

"Somewhere south-west-ish of New York… I think." Sirius said unconvingly, no more educated on the geography of the United States than Harry.

"More than half of the US is technically south-west of New York." Harry said dryly. "Eh, whatever. We'll find it."

He turned back to the girls and Etalpalli and raised an eyebrow at the way they were cooing over the quetzalcoatl and rubbing all of his sweet spots. Apparently Fleur had gotten over her fear in a right hurry after seeing how Luna handled things.

" Enjoying yourself? " He hissed in a deadpan.

" Yessssss. " Was the drawn out reply. " I like your mates. "

Harry continued staring at the mythical creature that was clearly also a hedonist with a deadpan look and wondered why he had ever expected something more dignified. That hadn't been very cynical of him.

Right on schedule, Frank dropped by the next day to check up on them. His impending visit was the reason that Sirius, Luna and Fleur had decided to gang up on Harry about leaving Central America the previous night.

He too could only stare slack-jawed at the sight of the majestic quetzalcoatl.

"What the…?" Was all he managed to say.

"His name is Etalpalli and he's decided to travel with us for a while." Harry explained with a smirk.

Frank shook off his shock and awe and managed to give a coherent reply, wincing as he did so. "Ah, that may be a problem."

Harry narrowed his eyes at the man, already smelling more American bullshit coming down the line. "Why?"

"Because Magical Congress deems all native magical creatures as being under their authority. Now I don't think we've ever had a quetzalcoatl to deal with, but I doubt the bureacrats are just going to let you leave with a legendary magical creature in tow without causing some kind of trouble." Frank sighed.

"Figures." Harry grumbled.

" Harry, what is he talking about? " Etalpalli hissed curiously.

" The wizards here are under the impression that they control all magic, including magical creatures such as yourself." Harry explained, the contempt clear in his tone.

The quetzalcoatl reared upright like an incensed rattlesnake and hissed angrily. " I belong to no one! "

" No, you do not, but I am not strong enough to challenge their delusions openly. Do you have a means of hiding yourself?" Harry asked.

Etalpalli let out another irritated hiss before answering. " Yes, I can hide. Wizards have attacked me in the past when they saw me and I could not always kill them. "

Upon saying that, the quetzalcoatl shrunk to the size of a small garden snake, tucked his wings close to his body and dove into Harry's collar, poking his head out a moment later.

" Like so. " The now much smaller serpent hissed with amusement.

" Amazing, even your wings and feathers are turned in such a way that I would never have noticed them if I didn't know where they were ." Harry hissed in admiration after getting over his surprise at the transformation. This ability combined with flight, the elusive magical presence and apparent vast sensing range through some connection with the wind would make the quetzalcoatl pretty much impossible to constrain, similarly to how the fire-based teleportation of a phoenix made them impossible to constrain.

"That'll work." Frank muttered, blinking at both the transformation and the use of Parseltongue, which he hadn't known that Harry was capable of.

March 31st. Somewhere in Mississippi.

Luna hummed to herself as she made a little bubble castle while she bathed.

The buzzing of her communication mirror distracted her and the bubble castle collapsed into ruin, taking all of the bubble people living in it to a bubbly grave. It was a dark day for the bubble capital of Bubbleonia.

Luna wiped her hands and extended one towards the distant mirror in a grabbing gesture, concentrating on summoning the mirror to her hand.

It took a couple of seconds, but the world bent to her will and the mirror flew to her hand.

Luna smiled at her success. Harry would be pleased.

"Nymphadora!" She exclaimed happily when she saw who had called her. "Hello."

"Wotcher, Luna." The metamorphmagus replied. "And don't call me Nymphadora."

Luna disregarded the second sentence as she always did. Nymphadora was a beautiful name and she was silly for wanting to reject it. Nymphadora would hopefully realise that too one day.

"How are you?" She asked instead of saying that.

"Pretty good, just got off work and thought I'd check in with you guys. I called Harry first, but he didn't answer."

"Oh, yes, he's busy shagging Fleur right now." Luna explained.

She would usually participate or at least watch, but she hadn't been in the mood today. Multi-partner relationships were incredibly convenient in that regard, there was always bound to be someone up for a shag instead of it being dependent on just two people's libidos aligning and there was more variety on top of it. Why so many people seemed to think that group relationships were a bad thing escaped Luna's understanding completely.

"Right." Nymphadora said, seeming a bit nonplussed for some reason.

"Let's go see them." Luna decided.

"No, that's quite alright. I can call back later." The metamorphmagus said quickly, almost desperately.

Luna disregarded this just like she disregarded the auror's dislike of her name. Nymphadora was obviously missing getting shagged by Harry, but felt too awkward about it to do anything to restore that happy state of affairs. Luna had really been looking forward to turning her and Harry's relationship into a threesome by adding herself to it, but then they had to break up for no good reason like a couple of poopyheads.

Luna was not going to miss out on a chance to tempt Nymphadora back to them and she knew that Fleur would help her do it. The veela was keen to make it a four-way as well, having very much liked her semi-drunken tryst with Nymphadora.

She ignored Nymphadora's protestations as she got out of the tub and removed the ruins of Bubbleonia from her body with a quick wave of her wand, put on the fluffy yellow robe they'd swiped from Vegas and made for the bedroom that she, Harry and Fleur shared in the wizarding tent. These tents really were marvelously convenient.

Harry and Fleur paid no mind to her entrance, busy as they were with their rutting. The veela was on her stomach, with Harry lying on top of her, braced on his elbows with his arms hooked under her armpits and nibbling on her neck just the way that Luna knew Fleur liked. The position left Fleur quite helpless as Harry thrust into her forcefully from his dominant position.

"Poor Fleur." Luna said over the grunts and cries of pleasure, orienting the mirror so that Nymphadora could see as well. "I think her attempts to take the lead are just encouraging Harry's domination fetish."

"Sweet Merlin, he's gotten even worse." Came the mutter from the mirror.

Luna smiled. Nymphadora was watching.

"Yes, at this point I probably have no chance of making it my harem anymore." She said and shrugged philosophically. "Oh well, I guess being a harem girl instead of a harem mistress isn't so bad. Less responsibility to be sure."

With a grunt, Harry seemed to climax, bearing Fleur down on the mattress and sucking on her neck possessively while she shuddered and moaned under him.

Harry made a final few thrusts, probably to squeeze out the last of his release, and then looked up at their audience.

"Luna… and Dora." He said, his voice carefully blank. "Good afternoon."

"Hi." The witch in the mirror said dryly. "Sorry about the voyeurism, but Luna wouldn't take no for an answer."

"Don't I know it." Harry responded with wry humor. Luna was pleased by his lack of outrage at being watched. That had taken a lot of effort to ease him into. "Fleur, say hello to our audience."

The veela raised her head tiredly, face sweaty and tired but having a certain satisfaction to it that made it even more beautiful than normal.

" Bonjour, Nymphadora."

"Don't call me that." The metamorphmagus huffed.

"But it is such a beautiful name." Fleur teased. Her neck was full of bite marks and hickeys.

"You should listen to Fleur, Nymphadora." Luna opined.

"Well I don't like it." Nymphadora was sounding a bit petulant to Luna's ears.

"You could just call her Dora like I do." Harry suggested.

" Non, Nymphadora is better." Fleur insisted.

"How about Nymmie?" Luna added her own two cents.

"No!"

"Nym?"

"I like Dora better."

"Why?" Luna and Fleur asked simultaneously.

Nymphadora mumbled something.

"I'm sorry, what was that?" Harry asked, smelling a secret no doubt.

"I said it reminds me of Dora the Explorer!" The metamorphmagus snapped, more embarrassed than angry. "I loved that cartoon as a kid."

Harry and Fleur blinked and then collapsed into laughter, finally rolling out of their sexual position and using the sheets to cover up, though Fleur left her breasts on display. That might be for Nymphadora's benefit.

"What's it about?" Luna asked curiously. Harry had introduced her to muggle television a long while ago and there seemed to be no end to the entertainment to be had there.

Once he was done laughing, Harry opened his mouth to say something.

"Don't you dare!" Nymphadora snapped and Luna could well imagine her glaring through the mirror she was holding.

"Dare what?" Harry asked innocently.

"I know what you're thinking, and I swear I will curse you into next week if you say it." Was his only explanation.

Luna was confused and sought to remedy the situation.

"What were you going to say, Harry?"

"Nothing much, I was just going to ask if she'd ever morphed herself into a little Mexican girl and called herself Dora the Sexplorer." Harry snickered.

"Oh, how clever." Luna said, smiling in realisation.

"Goodbye, childhood, you were a fond memory until the perverts tainted you." The metamorphmagus said mournfully.

"Absurd, you can't ruin something with sex." Fleur declared.

"Says the veela nympho." Nymphadora snarked back.

"Exactly. I am the expert."

"Point to Fleur." Harry refereed with a snicker.

"You guys suck." The metamorphmagus sulked.

"No, only Fleur sucks." Luna interjected. "Harry licks and I have to wait until my birthday until I can start sucking."

"Point to Luna."

"Do Fleur and I get extra points for licking?"

"Loads."

"Hurray!"

"Why are all my friends such deviants?" Nymphadora lamented.

"I seem to remember you-" Fleur started casually.

"We don't talk about that!" The auror interrupted sharply. "I was drunk."

"Of course, Nymphadora." Fleur said patronisingly.

Harry merely snickered and Luna was curious, but decided to repeat a question that she had never gotten an answer to earlier instead of prying into something that Nymphadora clearly didn't want to talk about.

"What is Dora the Explorer about?"

"It's an educational cartoon for children. I was eight when I first saw it and thought it was the best thing ever, but you probably wouldn't find it too interesting at your age." Nymphadora explained, sounding relieved by the change in subject.

"Oh, I see. Thank you."

"So, how are things back in Britain?" Harry asked, changing the subject again.

"Eh, nothing too exciting." Nymphadora said with a shrug. "Mum organised a family dinner the other day, Narcissa included. I think she was trying to force Narcissa to stop 'pretending' to be a changed woman by making her sit next to my oh-so-muggleborn dad, but it kind of backfired when she engaged him into a conversation about what kind of movies he liked and commenting that she'd like to see a few, but that Malfoy Manor had no television. He invited her over again before Mum could stop him."

"That sounds like Narcissa's MO all right." Harry snickered.

"Yeah, Mum was all set to be a cast iron bitch every step of the way through their reconciliation and it didn't take Narcissa long to figure out that working through Dad would be much easier. I never thought watching my mother give her food a confused glare would be so funny." Nymphadora snickered back. "But enough about that, what are you guys up to?"

"Nothing." Fleur huffed with a glower, crossing her arms under her bare breasts.

"Okay…" There was a brief pause before the metamorphmagus continued. "What's gotten into the French princess?"

"Sirius had the genius idea of participating in a dueling tournament." Harry started explaining, grinning in amusement. "Only, he apparently missed the part where it said that only wizards and witches of twenty-one years of age or older could sign up for it. As you can see, Fleur is a bit miffed about that."

"But you and Fleur are legal adults." Nymphadora said, frowning.

"Yes, and the Americans have to acknowledge our adult status, but the tournament specifies age rather than status. To be honest, I think they consider us weird for giving people adult status at seventeen in Europe and extra weird that I got it just shy of fifteen."

"I see." The auror said, bemused.

"Which is of course, ridiculous." Luna spoke up. "It's the Americans that are weird."

"Damn straight, regulation obssessed twats." Harry scowled.

"Not to mention the 'uge food portions. I could feel myself getting fat just looking at them." Fleur added.

"And the flags everywhere. Like seriously, everywhere ."

"Prices without tax being included."

"Lawyer advertisements."

"Too much water in the toilet bowls."

"They're also too close to the ground."

"Don't forget the huge gaps in the doors in public stalls."

"Tipping."

"The insanely sweet bread."

"Infinite refills for soft drinks."

"Ice in every drink."

"Soda is cheaper than bottled water for some reason."

"Fruit and vegetable prices are ridiculous."

"The coffee obsession."

"The endless political campaigning."

"Alright, I get it! The Yanks are weird." Nymphadora broke in, grinning at the list of playful gripes. "So what are you guys doing while my cousin is trying to win a dueling tournament?"

"Fucking." Fleur said succintly.

"We watch the more interesting duels, but otherwise yeah, fucking." Harry agreed.

"We also take walks." Luna added cheerily. "And we talk to Etal about Britain and France."

"… Who?"

"Etalpalli is a quetzalcoatl that Harry befriended while we were in Mexico, but I like to call him Etal." Luna explained cheerfully. "He's amazing and really cute."

"Remind me what a quetzalcoatl is again?"

"A mythical feathered serpent, very rare. There hasn't been a sighting of one in well over three hundred years in fact." Harry obliged. "They were worshipped as divine by the native Mesoamerican people."

"Only you, Harry." Nymphadora said, shaking her head in exasperation. "So where is your new friend?"

"Exploring." Fleur said with her lips twitching into a smile. "'E does not care for mammalian mating rituals."

The metamorphmagus snorted at that.

April 2nd. Colorado.

Etalpalli hissed agitatedly as he and Harry apparated in.

" What a horrible way to travel. " He complained.

" I told you it would be, but you insisted on coming along. " Harry reminded him.

" We could have flown instead ." The winged reptile insisted petulantly.

" I cannot fly as fast as you. It would have taken me the better part of a day to make the trip as a raven. " Harry countered. There was also a slight chance that the quetzalcoatl would have been spotted by non-magical eyes, but it was a fairly remote possibility. Like many magical creatures, Etalpalli possessed the peculiar property of slipping past the notice of mundane eyes as long they did not get the chance to stare at him for long. In his shrunken form, he could blitz through a crowded street and be waved off as a trick of the light.

The quetzalcoatl hissed out an incoherent grumble and started floating at Harry's shoulder as the young wizard made for one of the magically created and hidden nests he had made for the ravens he had recruited to be his scouts. They hadn't found any sign of skinwalkers yet, but North America was vast and he had no specific place for them to look besides 'two hundred or so kilometers in all directions', so that was hardly a surprise.

The dueling tournament in Mississippi was still underway, but Sirius had been eliminated yesterday. Having fought in a war before, he had done well for himself, but his propensity for using prank spells when he thought he could get away with it had seen him defeated against one of the more competent duelists.

Harry croaked a loud greeting in the raven speech and waited for one of the large corvids to show up.

" They looks tasty. " Etalpalli mused, looking at the flock of ravens that had just taken flight speculatively.

" No eating my ravens. " Harry scolded. " We can steal a chicken or a turkey from a ranch or something if you're hungry. "

" Fine. " The quetzalcoatl said, sounding about as pouty as a snake can get.

" Are you jealous that I can speak to ravens as well as serpents? " Harry teased.

" I am not jealous!" Etalpalli hissed loudly. " Serpents are better. "

Harry hummed noncommittally and nodded in response to that, but he wasn't sure if he agreed. The quetzalcoatl was indisputably magnificent, but on average he would have to say that birds were better than snakes.

One of the ravens finally gathered the courage to approach despite the potential predator hovering at his side and perched on his shoulder.

Harry grinned widely when he heard the raven's report.

" What did the snack have to say to make you show your fangs? " Etalpalli asked curiously.

" They found me a skinwalker. "