Chapter 33

April 18th, after sundown. The Nest, New York.

"Nice place." Sirius muttered somewhat sarcastically, looking over the gloomy front side of the building.

"Wait until you see the inside of it." Harry replied wryly.

"Looking forward to it."

"Can we get this over with already?" Fleur said snippily, not looking forward to another meeting with the vampire.

Harry could have pointed out that she didn't have to come along, but that would be dumb. Even though she had practically pounced on him after he'd come back from the skinwalker finding mission the previous day, Fleur was still less than pleased at being left behind.

So he simply nodded and wrapped his arm around her waist as they entered the supremely cliché vampire-run club.

"I see what you meant about the inside." Sirius said as soon as they did, looking a little weirded out by the decor.

Well, it was rather over the top.

" There is a fell whisper in the air. " Etal hissed from his collar at the same time.

" Ophelia's spell. " Harry replied shortly. " We should see her soon. "

They reached the bar quickly and as Harry had expected, Ophelia glided into view from the other side almost immediately, looking as blatantly vampiric as ever.

"So you return to me. I was hoping you would." She said in her charateristically soft voice.

Harry was unprepared for for Etal's reaction. The quetzalcoatl clenched around his shoulders almost painfully tight and hissed loudly enough to be heard even over the music.

" What is that?! It shines darker than the night!. " He hissed in the Parseltongue version of a scream, the normally slight musical tone of it discordant and grating on the ear.

" That would be Ophelia. " Harry explained patiently, trying to ignore the hypertense serpent.

" It does not belong! Kill it with fire! "

" Kill it with- " Harry repeated incredulously. " You want me to start throwing fire around? Here? "

" YES! Kill it, kill it, kill it! "

" Will you calm down? " Harry hissed, both literally and figuratively. " She will not harm us and you are drawing attention. "

" It does not belong. " Etal insisted, sulking at the reprimand.

" I understand, but I cannot destroy her for that alone. "

Etal said nothing, merely made a sound of disdain and jumped ship, nestling himself in Fleur's collar.

Ophelia had waited out this interaction with an immovable patience and only spoke once it was clear that it was over. "Is all well?"

"Don't worry, Etal just has some nargles." Luna chimed.

"Most unfortunate." Ophelia said, as if that actually made perfect sense. "I see you have brought your the last of your party. Be welcome, Sirius Black."

Harry felt the magic in the air react again just as it had the last time they were here and he frowned slightly. It seemed to be connected to a person's self-identity. Some kind of login system?

"A pleasure to meet you, Ophelia." Sirius replied suavely.

Harry wanted to close his eyes in despair. The dumbass was flirting with her. Of course, that was just Sirius being Sirius, but you'd think he'd know better. Harry supposed it had been naivé of him to think that his godfather would restrain himself simply because Ophelia was a blood sucking creature of the night.

"The pleasure is all mine." Ophelia purred back softly, the magic permeating the club reaching out towards Sirius like a mother's embrace.

"Enough." Harry said, flaring his own aura and breaking the spell before it could turn his godfather into a willing bloodbag or something equally demeaning. "I thought we had an understanding about that?"

"We do, but I do not refuse those who come to me." The pale vampire said with an angelic smile.

"Did I miss something?" Sirius asked, looking quite bewildered.

"I'll tell you about it later." Harry sighed and turned towards the vampire again. "I need to talk to you about something."

"Certainly." She said with a smile. "Will you walk into my parlor?"

"Said the spider to the fly." Fleur muttered, glaring suspiciously at the vampire.

But Ophelia only smiled invitingly in response to the hostility and beckoned them to follow.

It was only as they were ascending the stairs that someone spoke, that someone being Sirius. He leaned over to whisper into Harry's ear, though his eyes remained glued to Ophelia's - admittedly damned fine - leather clad arse as it flexed with every stair she climbed.

"What kind of understanding do you have with her?" He asked. "And why are Fleur and Etal so tense?"

"There's a spell of some kind active on the building that influences everyone inside it, kind of reminds me of a bee hive actually, with Ophelia being the queen. The understanding is that she wouldn't use it on us, but she took your flirting as an invitation." Harry explained in a low murmur.

"Oh." Sirius said lamely. He'd just flirted because that was what he did. That it might be dangerous had never crossed his mind.

"As for Fleur and Etal… well, they just don't like vampires."

Ophelia led them into the same dimly lit room as last time and settled herself into the same armchair in the same straight-backed posture.

"So, how goes the hunt for the skinwalker?" She asked, once they were all seated.

"We found him." Harry admitted.

"Hm." Was her unsurprised response. "I should like to meet him myself one night."

"He's not very sociable."

"A pity. Now, what do you need?"

"Amortentia and Re'em Blood Potion." He said bluntly.

Instead of showing surprise, Ophelia merely smiled widely enough to show her fangs, apparently very amused. "My my, how interesting."

"So, can you help me get those?" Harry prompted when she didn't say anything more.

"Perhaps." The pale vampire said lightly, still smiling. "The Amortentia is easy enough, but the Re'em Blood Potion is not."

"So you can't get it?" He asked, disappointed.

"I didn't say that." She countered. "We have some re'em blood available, but it is currently reserved for someone else. If I diverted it for your use, I would be inconveniencing several people. I can do it though, for a price."

"What kind of price?" Harry asked, unsurprised. He'd figured that he would need to do something for her.

"You will return here three nights hence, at one in the morning on the 22nd, alone."

"Are you going to have Harry put his penis in your vagina?" Luna asked innocently.

The unexpected question neatly derailed Fleur's rising temper at the thought of Harry going off to do something dangerous by himself again while she was left behind. Harry and Sirius were just plain surprised.

Ophelia remained unruffled however. "No, child. A vampire's body is largely numb to such pleasures."

"Well that takes the shine off immortality for me." Sirius joked.

Ophelia smiled slighty and turned back to Harry. "Remember; three nights, at one in the morning. If you are not here at the appointed time, I will take it to mean that you find my terms unacceptable."

"And what will we be doing?" Harry asked.

"Nothing too strenuous." The vampire assured.

"Yes, but what is this not strenuous thing?" He pressed, a bit annoyed by the evasions.

"You will have to wait and see, but it will not place you in undue danger, that much I can assure you." She said, not budging in the slightest.

"Fine, why alone then?"

"Because I have no interest in your companions."

"'Arry, I think you should cut your losses." Fleur whispered into his ear after a few seconds in silence.

" Listen to your mate. " Etal hissed from the veela's collar. " No good can come of dealing with this creature. "

He was definitely thinking about doing just that. Asking him to show up alone and for some unspecified purpose because she was only interested in him was rather more ominous than he was comfortable with.

But something was not quite adding up. She had to know that he would tell Fleur, Luna and even Sirius about whatever they did anyway, so that couldn't be the reason she was being so mysterious. It could be because of Etal's adverse reaction to her, but there was no way to be sure and Harry doubted she would answer if he asked.

"I'll think about it." He said at long last.

"By all means." Ophelia replied without concern, either convinced that he would show up or not caring either way.

"You're not going, right?" Sirius asked as soon as they were back at the hotel.

"I haven't decided yet." Harry prevaricated.

"'Arry, it is too dangerous." Fleur said, worried.

"I don't think she's out to hurt me." He replied with a thoughtful frown, still going over the conversation for clues.

"What do you think she's out to do then?" Luna asked curiously.

That was the rub, wasn't it? Harry had no idea what Ophelia was out to achieve by setting such a suspicious set of conditions. Most likely it was another test of some sort, but he couldn't be sure.

" Etal, why do you dislike her so much? " He asked the quetzalcoatl, hoping to get some clarification.

" It does not belong. " The feathered serpent answered.

" Yes, you mentioned that, but what does it mean? "

" There is a cold void where the wind should move. It has no place in the world. "

Ah, so the quetzalcoatl was freaked out by the vampire's non-presence. His eyes were telling him that Ophelia was there, but his other senses were telling him that she couldn't be there.

Etal wasn't really wrong though. Vampires were unnatural, in ways that even the most ridiculous magical creature wasn't. In ways similar to the dementors.

"Please tell me you aren't seriously thinking of going?" Fleur's voice broke into his thoughts.

Harry rubbed a hand over his jaw and sighed. He was thinking of going. He didn't want all that effort to track down a skinwalker to be in vain and he was also curious as to what Ophelia wanted.

Three days later, just before one in the morning, Harry found himself approaching the vampire-owned nightclub again, alone.

In the end, he had decided to come, too curious and too greedy for the skinwalker's knowledge to cut his losses as Fleur had suggested.

Fleur had not been happy about that, first demanding that he not go, then threatening, attempting delays with seduction and finally pleading when all else failed. Most of the past three days had been spent assuring her that he would be alright.

Sirius and Etal had also been of the opinion that he shouldn't go. In fact, Harry had come upon Sirius attempting to communicate a plan to Etal where he would follow along on a broom while the quetzalcoatl guided him.

Harry had stolen the man's broom and hidden it just in case he actually tried it. He did the same to Fleur and Luna's brooms as well just for the sake of being thorough.

Luna was really the only one that didn't protest him going, but he suspected that was simply because she was Luna. She did give him a hug and ask him to hurry back though, which had somehow managed to make his insides squirm just as uncomfortably as Fleur discarding her usual pride out of worry for him had.

Relationships were such a clusterfuck of feelings, but it was nice to be cared about. He'd have to do something nice for them once this was over.

Harry blinked as he set foot inside the nightclub again. The last two visits had been done much earlier in the night, not too long after sundown actually. Now that it was just before one in the morning, the patrons were quite… different.

For one thing, the music was far more lively even if it did still carry a certain broodiness to it. For another, whereas before most of the people had been only slightly strange, it was now full of weirdoes that looked like they'd just come from the set of a cheesy vampire movie. The sheer amount of cliché being displayed was probably threatening to destabilise the space-time continuum due to the cringe factor alone.

Alright, maybe that's a bit harsh. Harry admitted to himself. But if the sprinklers start spraying blood I might just take Etal's suggestion about killing it with fire.

There were also considerably more magicals present. He counted well over a dozen auras from full witches and wizards and half as many squibs.

The spell that lingered over the club felt different too, more active and powerful and Harry began to suspect that it was some kind of self-reinforcing feedback loop. The wizards and witches here besotted with their pale mistress and feeding that attitude into the spell with their uncontrolled auras, in turn affecting everyone inside it, including themselves. If he was right about this - and Harry was almost sure that he was - then it was a damned clever way of entrapping people without being obvious about it, doubly so since the cheesy vampire theme and popular perception of vampire groupies would camouflage what was really happening.

Getting to the bar was also much harder than it had been the last two times, and it wasn't just because there were more people clogging the place at this hour. Harry wasn't sure whether it was the basilisk hide coat or something else, but he was attracting far too much attention for his comfort. Finally though, he managed to push his way past a group of handsy women whose primary garment was electrical tape over their nipples.

As she had the previous two times, Ophelia made an appearance almost immediately and Harry was by now convinced that she had probably known of his arrival the moment that he'd stepped into the building.

"Harry." She greeted and Harry noticed that she was a good bit taller tonight. Must be wearing high heels. "You are just in time. Would you care for a drink?"

"No thanks. I'd rather we get right to it, whatever 'it' is."

"Hm, very well."

Ophelia didn't do anything obvious that Harry could discern, but another vampire glided in to replace her at the bar as soon as she stepped out of it.

This one was also a woman, but as dark as Ophelia was pale. Black hair with black eyes and ebony skin, wearing a revealing leather vest and tight leather pants that Harry was starting to suspect passed for a uniform around here.

"Take good care of the Nest while we are gone." Ophelia instructed the new arrival in that peculiar soft tone that still managed to carry over all the other sound around them.

"Mistress." The dark vampire acknowledged, her voice deeper and throatier but still easily heard. Too easily to be natural. That one word confirmed Harry's guess that she was Ophelia's progeny.

To Harry's surprise, Ophelia grabbed his arm and started leading him away. His first impulse was to pull his hand away, but her grip was like an iron manacle and he was left with little choice but to walk with her or be dragged along like a small child.

The clubbers moved out of the way like a herd of sheep, giving Ophelia, any by extension him, an open path, but not without reaching out to touch her longingly as if she was the last drink of water in a desert and looking nearly rapturous if she so much as smiled at them. It was honestly rather nauseating to watch and Harry felt very much the outsider surrounded by fanatical cultists, not an altogether comfortable sensation.

Ophelia did not lead him upstairs to her office as he had half-expected, but to a back exit that he hadn't noticed before. She let go of his arm as soon as they were away from the crowd and Harry wasted no time in putting some distance between them.

"My apologies for grabbing you like that." She said softly as they walked through an empty hallway. "I did not wish to lose you back there."

"It's fine." Harry said grudgingly. He could easily imagine the zombies back in the club cutting him off from here if they were left any room to do it, but he still hadn't appreciated the grab. "Where are we going?"

"We are already here." The vampire said with a fanged smile, pushing open a heavy metal door with deceptive ease and gesturing for him to enter.

"A… garage?" Harry asked with a surprised blink.

Of all the things he'd expected to see, this was definitely not on the list. The room was probably magically expanded, but other than that it was the kind of space you'd expect to see a mechanic have, full of tools and assorted junk that was as alien to Harry as a magical laboratory would be to the average person.

In the center of the room stood a motorcycle. Harry had little interest in the things, despite Sirius' attempts to convince him of their coolness, but even he could tell that it was well cared for and probably very expensive. Unlike Sirius' bike though, this one was not as heavily magically modified. The frame and tires were enchanted for increased durability, the exhaust was muffled to decrease the noise level and there was a powerful Notice-Me-Not weaved around the whole thing that he figured was meant to make it impossible to identify the rider or plates and generally discourage people from taking interest in it, but other than that it was pretty vanilla. From a magical perspective anyway, he didn't have the foggiest notion about any mechanical alterations made to it.

"Motorcycles have been a hobby of mine since they were invented." Ophelia admitted, running a hand along the fuel tank.

"That's… interesting," And it was, because really, how often do you come across an albino vampire bike enthusiast/mechanic? "but why did you bring me here?"

"Because we are going for a ride." The vampire said with more honest cheer than he had ever heard from her.

"Excuse me?" Harry deadpanned, wondering when exactly the world had stopped making sense.

"Unless of course you've decided that you no longer want the Re'em Blood Potion and the Amortentia?" Ophelia asked pointedly.

Harry sighed. He didn't really want to play along with these games, but he did want those potions. "Fine."

"Excellent." She said, grabbing a leather biker jacket. "Here, put this on and leave your coat here."

"Why?" Harry asked suspiciously, feeling rather protective of his hideously expensive basilisk hide coat.

"For your safety." Ophelia explained gently and handed him a pair of gloves as well. "The coat may get caught on the back tire. I am the only one that comes here, so you needn't worry about theft."

Unable to refute that argument and unwilling to give up the promised potions over such a relatively small matter, Harry did as she said, however reluctantly. The jacket and gloves fit him well. Suspiciously well in fact.

"Got these just for me, did you?" He grunted as he had put them on. "And where are we going anyway?"

"You will see." Was her unhelpful answer, accompanied by an empty duffel bag being thrown at him. "Could you please shrink that and put it in your pocket?"

"Are we picking something up?" Harry continued to question as he did so, frowning in thought as he tried to figure out what it could be at this hour, and why it would require his presence.

"In a manner of speaking." She replied, unhelpful as ever. Then she swung herself onto the motorcycle and patted the spot behind her. "Come and join me."

With another sigh, he did so, settling himself awkwardly behind her while she used a remote to open the garage exit.

"Hold on tight." Ophelia said and kick-started the bike.

A vampire's aura was cold and dark and impenetrable at all times, giving Harry no clues about Ophelia's current mood or feelings even when he was touching her, but something in her voice caused a sudden dread to bloom in his heart and he quickly pressed himself up against her back and wrapped his hands around her middle.

Harry had never considered himself to be afraid of speed. A broom at top speed merely exhilirated him, even if he did find them to be a bit ridiculous. Even freefalling didn't frighten him, Slowfall was a rather simple spell to cast after all.

So it came as a bit of a surprise to him that he found himself clinging to Ophelia like a limpet while the albino vampire raced through the streets of New York like a damned lunatic. By all rights, the thrumm of the bike's powerful engine between his legs and the wind whipping past his face should have been just as exhilirating as a high speed broom or a freefall, but it was not so.

Maybe it was the fact that the sky was generally free of impedients whereas the streets were not, or maybe it was the fact that he wasn't in control. Either way, Harry was resorting to Occlumency in order to stay calm.

While in the forced calm of an Occlumency trance, Harry noticed several things.

The first was that Ophelia didn't seem to need any protection for her eyes despite their speed and that she could apparently process information fast enough to prevent problems associated with tunnel vision.

The second was that she had a heartbeat.

Harry had long suspected that vampires were not actually undead. Necromancy was a finicky field of magic and to the best of his knowledge, nobody had as of yet managed to raise a corpse with anything past the most rudimentary intelligence.

But she was not alive in the same sense as a human would be either. Though her heart still beat, the blood it pumped through her body was freezing cold, leeched of all warmth by the Dark that sat at the core of her nature. That was probably why she could drive a bike at high speed through the night wearing only a corset that left her arms and shoulders bare, whereas Harry knew that his hands would be freezing if not for the gloves she'd tossed him earlier.

These ponderings were a welcome distraction from the knowledge that he probably wasn't sturdy enough to survive if she fucked up and crashed them into something at the speed they were going. Harry had to restrain himself from seeming too eager to be off the bike as soon she they stopped.

Taking a deep breath, he frowned as he caught a whiff of salty sea air. "Are we at the harbor?"

"Almost." Ophelia answered with a smile. "Would you please use a spell to discourage bike thieves?"

With a silent nod, Harry did so, making the bike seem terribly uninteresting to anyone that might see it.

"Thank you." She said and made a beckoning gesture. "Come now, there is work to be done."

"What kind of work?" He asked, walking in step with her.

"As you have surmised, there is something we must retrieve."

"What?"

"You will see."

Harry scowled slightly, annoyed by all the pointless cloak and dagger. Still, he said nothing more and instead wondered how she was managing to walk in those high-heeled boots without making any noise. Creepy.

"Here we are." Ophelia said softly a few minutes later.

Harry wondered what the hell they were doing in what was clearly an industrial scale cargo dock. Well they were obviously going to steal something that didn't belong to them, that was a given, but what?

As it turned out, he got his answer.

"Can you perform a Locator Spell?" Ophelia asked with a gentle smile that nevertheless had a certain challenge to it.

Harry nearly scoffed. That was kiddie stuff.

"Do you have a focus?" He asked instead. Unless the caster was personally familiar with the sought after item, something was required to use as a starting point.

"Check the left inside pocket of your jacket."

Harry raised an eyebrow and did so, pulling out a small plastic bag filled with a white powder and staring at it in some surprise. He somehow doubted this was sugar…

Still, he had to ask, if for no other reason than because knowing the name of the object made the spell perform better. "What is it?

"Cocaine."

"You're into drug trafficking?" That just seemed so… mundane an activity for a vampire to be doing.

"Problem?"

Harry took a moment to seriously consider the question. He'd never given drugs much thought, considering them to be the purview of the stupid. Truth be told, he didn't understand why governments didn't just legalise everything and let natural selection take over. They could tax it, the smarter people would stay away just as they were doing now and the dumb ones would self-destruct, also just as they were doing now. There was literally no downside.

"No, not really." He finally said.

Ophelia merely smiled in response and gestured for him to perform the Locator Spell.

"Over there." Harry said once it was done, gesturing in the direction from which he'd felt something resonate with the small sample he held.

"Can you dim the lights?" Ophelia asked, once again smiling that irritating smile.

A harder proposition but well within Harry's ability. The trick was not to mess with the electronics, but rather to snuff out the luminosity of the lights. They still worked fine, but the light they cast was essentially shortened to a useless range.

"Impressive." Ophelia purred as they heard the exclamations of the night shift dock workers as the lights were snuffed out one by one. "Come."

"Notice-Me-Not Charms just in case?" Harry asked, not willing to trust the darkness alone.

"Use them on yourself if you wish." Ophelia said, walking in the direction that he had previously indicated.

Harry quickly cast the spell on himself and went after her, noting with fascination that Ophelia seemed to just sink into the deep shadows created by the lack of illumination. With the albino vampire's snow-white hair and marble skin, she should have still been quite visible, but the darkness appeared to cling to her as if it was a living thing. As it was, Harry could only tell where she was because he could sense the supernatural Dark of her aura, and even that was only a general location.

It wasn't long before he lost track of her completely, which was a bit nerve wracking, but Harry didn't let himself be unduly bothered by it and simply moved towards the cargo container that had the drugs in it instead of whispering the vampire's name like some clueless twit looking for his mother.

He was just casting a silencing spell on the seals of the cargo container when she showed up again, sort of.

"This one then?" Her voice whispered out of the darkness.

"Yes, and you can stop the theatrics now." Harry grumbled at the crimson eyes peeking out of the shadows.

"Spoil a lady's fun." The darkness slipped away from the pale vampire's form like water, revealing an amused smirk on her bloodstained lips.

"Had yourself a little snack, did you?" Harry asked rhetorically.

"Mmm, vegetarian." She answered anyway, licking the blood from her lips. "Such a rare find in a place like this."

"Congratulations, now can we get this over with?." He said sarcastically and started unsealing the container.

"Certainly."

"That one." Harry said once they were inside, pointing at a particular crate from which he could feel something resonating with the cocaine sample he'd used as a focus.

"That's a lot of drugs." Harry muttered a few minutes later. He'd already needed to cast a quick and dirty expansion charm on the duffel bag so that they could fit all of it inside.

"Indeed, someone is going to be very angry when they find them missing." Ophelia replied, clearly amused.

Yes, Harry imagined they would be. "How did you even know this would be here?"

"Oh, I have my ways."

After they'd left the cargo dock with a shrunken bag of drugs in tow, Harry had expected that they would return to her nightclub.

Not so. The second motorcycle ride from Hell ended in an unremarkable alley that had not a single thing of note in it.

"What are we doing here?" He asked, looking around in confusion.

Ophelia smiled at him and removed a manhole cover that he hadn't paid any attention to, gesturing for him to climb down into the sewer.

"You've got to be kidding me." Harry deadpanned.

"Not at all."

"You are unbearably cliché, I hope you realise that."

"I do."

With a sigh, Harry descended into the sewer, glad that his basilisk hide boots were waterproof and that magic would easily get rid of any filth. Ophelia followed immediately after, replacing the manhole cover as she climbed down.

Harry took only a moment to summon a floating magelight before letting his thoughts on the situation be known. "All the possibilities that magic allows, the nigh infinite variety of ways you could use to hide your ill-gotten gains, yet here we are, slogging through a sewer like a couple of level four noobs on a quest to kill a bunch of sentient slime monsters terrorising the townspeople. There had better not be any fucking sentient slime monsters down here."

"No slime monsters." Ophelia promised, openly amused by his rant. "We might run into the odd alligator though."

"Better than a shit eating otyugh I suppose."

They spent the next five or so minutes walking in silence, with the worst encounter being a rat the size of a rabbit. Harry had long since given up on figuring out how Ophelia navigated the place.

"Here we are." The vampire said, stopping before a blank wall that was exactly the same as every other bit of wall they'd passed so far.

Except for the blood seal on it. It was the first bit of magic he'd seen used by the vampires so far that would be easily detectable with wand-cast detection spell. Of course, some witch or wizard would have to actually be willing to slog through the sewers to be capable of casting such a detection spell on this particular stretch of wall. Harry could not imagine that happening.

Ophelia didn't seem bothered by his lack of answer and pricked a finger on a fang and smeared a few drops of dark blood on a particular brick. As expected, the bricks opened up, revealing a room that was much too large for the space it occupied.

"Nice setup you've got here." Harry commented, looking over the large collection of no doubt contraband material.

There was an entire wall dedicated to magical substances, every last one of them no doubt heavily regulated by the local magical government. Another section had already finished potions still another magic items, both cursed and otherwise.

The final part was perhaps the most surprising, filled as it was with racks of modern mundane weaponry. Looks like Ophelia might be dabbling in the arms trade as well as drugs.

"Thank you." Said vampire said. "The bag?"

Harry nodded, unshrinking the duffel bag and handing it to her, but most of his attention remained focused on the guns.

He'd considered getting one for himself since before they'd come to notoriously gun happy USA, but had never gotten around to it. Sure, magical shields could easily block even large caliber bullets and automatic weapons fire without any noteworthy strain, but magical shielding had one crippling weakness when faced with firearms.

Bullets were much faster than spells, meaning that you had to know you were about to be shot if you wanted to defend yourself with magic.

"Would you like one?" Ophelia asked as she glided over to his side, gesturing at the collections of guns.

"I was thinking about it?" Harry admitted.

"Pick something then and consider it a gift in remembrance of this night."

Well that wasn't creepy at all. Harry thought to himself sarcastically, but looked over the guns again anyway, this time considering which one he should take.

The submachine guns looked tempting, but he was wary of them. Playing around with a fully-automatic weapon without ever having held a firearm before seemed… unwise.

"How about one of those?" He said eventually, gesturing towards a series of black handguns.

"A Beretta, 92FS series." Ophelia said with an approving nod. "Not the most powerful of handguns, but solid and reliable. A good choice all around."

"I wonder how much I could improve it with magic." Harry mused, turning the gun over in his hands after Ophelia handed it to him.

"Quite a bit no doubt, but remember that the mechanism that chambers new rounds is recoil operated and will not work if you use magic to eliminate it."

"Ah." Harry said a bit lamely. That had been his very first idea.

"Would you like a quick lesson on gun safety?" Ophelia asked with a smile.

"That would probably be for the best, yes."

The third motorcycle ride from Hell saw them pulling back into her private garage, for which Harry was thankful. He was more than ready for the night to be over.

He quickly took off the gloves and loaned jacket and put the basilisk hide coat back on.

Ophelia meanwhile, had retrieved two potion vials from a cabinet, one a bubbling dark red and the other having a pearly sheen.

"Re'em Blood Potion and Amortentia, as promised." She said, handing over the vials.

"Thank you." Harry said, pocketing them. He was vaguely tempted to drink the Re'em Blood Potion himself, but not badly. His strength was in knowledge, not in muscle.

"Now the only thing left to do, is to complete your payment for services rendered." The pale vampire whispered, parting her lips in a show of fangs.

"I was wondering when you'd mention that." Harry sighed, rolled up his sleeve and presented his wrist to her. "Just don't take too much, hm?"

"Not to worry, I won't." She said in that same hypnotic whisper and, to his great discomfort, ignored his offered wrist and stepped forward into his personal space.

"What are you doing?" He asked warily, backing up.

"The best blood is close to the heart." She replied, advancing again.

"I'm not really comfortable with that." Harry said, freezing when he bumped into a wall.

There was a moment of horrible realisation as it dawned on him that he had let his guard down and was now trapped between a wall and a creature that phsysically outclassed him to a hilarious degree.

Slightly panicked, he tried to apparate out, but an arm with the strength of a troll went around his waist and squeezed the air out of him, disrupting his focus. At the same time, her other arm grabbed the back of his head and pulled it to the side, fully exposing his neck.

"There is no need to fear. Just relax and release your sorrows to me." She cooed into his ear, pressing herself up against him more fully.

Unable to suck any air into his lungs with the way his diaphragm was being compressed, Harry inanely realised that she had probably worn such high heels tonight with the express purpose of being closer in height to him. And then the fangs sank into his neck and there was no more thinking.

He wheezed out what little air he had left at the minor pain and tried to push her off, but it was useless. She was much too strong.

His magic wasn't responding either. Instead of the tightly controlled power, it felt more like a river rushing towards an endless black abyss that would just keep drinking it in until there was nothing left. The sound of a throat working to swallow thundered in his ears, but it wasn't right, too deep and too loud and getting slower with every mouthful, until it seemed to take an eternity to finish the act of swallowing.

Harry felt himself falling into the peaceful darkness, oddly reminded of his close call with the dementor back at the start of his third year in Hogwarts. It was nice.

And then it was abruptly over and he found himself with his cheek resting on a pair of breasts that felt wonderfully cool and equally cool fingers combing through his hair. Harry sighed contently, simply enjoying the mothering.

Realisation struck like a hammer. He didn't have a mother. His mother was long dead.

Harry tore himself out of the gentle, cold embrace with unncessary violence and took a graceless spill across the floor as the lowered blood pressure made him feel dizzy and lightheaded.

"You should give yourself some time to adjust." Ophelia's voice advised gently.

Harry looked back at her, noting that she had apparently turned them around at some point so that she was the one leaning against the wall.

"What…" He started, unsure of what he was even trying to say. His heart ached with unaccustomed emotional pain at the sight of her.

His hopes of having loving parents, biological or otherwise, already battered by the Dursleys and the orphanage, had been crushed on his eight birthday, when he'd received the final proof that Robert and Katherine didn't care about him as a person, but as a piece of the image they were trying to project. The disappointment had stopped hurting a long time ago, but now whatever Ophelia had done to him had ripped the scars from that old wound.

"What did you do to me?" He demanded, suddenly furious.

"I tried to comfort you, to take away your pain." She answered gently.

But the gentle tones only made him more angry. He remembered all too clearly the legion of zombies and their sick devotion back in the club.

"I don't need your comfort ." He spat out, getting back on his feet and ignoring the spots in his vision.

"As you wish."

Harry wasn't listening anymore. He was grinding the heel of his palm into his eyes and trying to center himself enough to enter an Occlumency trance. He needed wrap up all this pointless pain and shove it deep down, where it could be dealth with later. This was no place to suddenly start grieving for things that no longer mattered.

"I am returning to the bar should you need me." Ophelia continued. "For what it is worth, I am sorry. I was only trying to help."

Harry was grateful for the fact that she at least knew better than to approach him. He wasn't sure if he could have stopped himself from taking a swing at her if she did, no matter how idiotic getting into a physical confrontation with a vampire was. His emotional control was thoroughly shot and he wasn't feeling very rational right now, which just made him even more angry.

When Harry made it back to the hotel that they had been staying in for the past few days, he had regained some semblance of his usual composure, but he was exhausted in ways that had nothing to do with his body.

Seeing Etal curled up in an armchair, air whistling musically through his nostrils as he breathed, made him crack a smile. Seeing Fleur sitting on the couch was less welcome though. He'd been hoping she would be asleep.

"I told you not to wait for me." He sighed, taking his coat off and hanging it up.

Fleur's displeased expression broke at the exhaustion in his voice and she quickly approached to stare him in the face.

"What's wrong? What did that thing do to you, 'Arry?" She asked in alarm.

Harry rubbed a hand over his face before answering. "I'm fine, just… tired. Can we postpone any talking until tomorrow and just go to bed?"

He hadn't meant to sound so plaintive, but at least it did the trick as Fleur simply nodded, gave him a quick kiss and led him to the bedroom.

Luna was already asleep and didn't wake as they joined her. If Fleur noticed that he held her a bit more tightly than normal, then she didn't say anything.

April 25th . Unknown location.

Ophelia made her way through the dark corridor without hurry. She would no doubt be the last to arrive as she always was, but her peers were well used to that given the long years of their partnership.

Upon reaching her destination, she gave a nod to Bjomolf, her old friend.

"You are late, as always." Chided the man next to him, a thoroughly unremarkable man with brown hair. Neither handsome nor ugly and dressed in clothing that didn't merit a second look, he was the type of man that needed no spells to remain unnoticed.

"And you point out the obvious, Baranar, as always." Ophelia replied to her counterpart in South America, the second oldest vampire alive after Bjomolf.

"Must we do this every time?" The only other woman present sighed gustily. She looked very young and could not have been more than seventeen when she was Turned, over six hundred years ago. She was also very beautiful, with golden-brown skin, shining black hair held in a long braid and mysterious dark eyes accented with Egyptian style eyeshadow. An Egyptian style white dress with a diaphanous blue cloak and a wesekh collar around her throat completed the image of Ancient Egypt. Fitting, as that was the area she controlled, along with the rest of Africa.

"Of course we must, sweet 'Neferu'." Baranar snickered, doing another thing that was common on these get-togethers.

Baranar would mock Neferu for the pretense of being from the time of the Ancient Egyptian pharaohs which she used to offset the initial appearance of youth and make herself seem more mysterious, even implying that her name was made up. He was probably right, but that didn't mean much since Ophelia doubted that anyone save Bjomolf still used the name they had been born with. She certainly didn't.

Neferu sneered at him silently with her fangs bared and then turned away as if he was beneath her.

The two of them had sniped at each other for centuries until all the jibes and insults had worn away to nothing, leaving behind only this tiresome, empty ritual.

"We should proceed." A Chinese man with a white-grey goatee on his chin and equally white-grey hair gathered in a top knot on his head spoke quietly. He was Tao, or so he said, the vampire master over Asia. Despite his aged appearance, he was actually the youngest of them, for a given value of young.

"Yes." Bjomolf affirmed, the ancient Viking's word enough to put an end to the delays.

Silently, all five approached the large basin in the middle of the room and took up the prepared knife. In unison, they opened their wrists and held them over the basin until it was sufficiently filled with a mixture of vampire blood.

Once it was done, they took up the prepared chalices and reached into the basin to fill them.

With a final few glances at each other, they drank.

Ophelia didn't grimace, no matter how disgusting the cold blood of vampires was to drink. They had done this so many times that none of them bothered to grimace any more.

No matter how distasteful this ritual was, it was necessary to reinforce the mystical binding that chained them to a common purpose. Without the chains forged of shared blood, there was too much room for deception and backstabbing and they no longer had the luxury of indulging in those games.

"Ophelia, what news on Potter?" Bjomolf said once they were done drinking.

"He is a creature of deep thought and cold logic, he did not flinch away from any of my tests, but I overreached. I tried to make him one of mine and failed. He will be more distrustful now." Ophelia admitted without prevarication.

Bjomolf uttered no condemnation even though he had warned her away from attempting what she had. The old Viking was too practical to waste time saying 'I told you so'. "Enough to be our enemy?"

"I don't think so, but interacting with him in the future will be difficult."

"What does it matter?" Baranar cut in. "With the way that events have been accelerating recently, any help he could give us would be minimal at best."

Bjomolf remained silent for a few moments before nodding. "True, our original timetable was vastly in error and our plans will need to be enacted much sooner than originally predicted, but that makes keeping an eye on Potter all the more important."

"Your theory that he is a prophesied chamption?" Tao asked, stroking his long goatee.

"I sent one of mine to take a look into the British Department of Mysteries." Bjomolf said. "There is an active prophecy in play regarding him and a Dark Lord."

"Riddle?" Ophelia speculated. "The circumstances of his supposed death were always suspect."

"Him or another, it makes little difference." Bjomolf said.

"True, fate's champions are always troublesome people with the way events seem to bend around them until their task is done." Ophelia nodded in agreement.

"Even if he is one, I don't see what difference it makes." Baranar argued. "What's coming is too vast to be stopped by anything short of a god."

"The question is not if he will stop it, but if he will ruin our plans. Remember that for all our preparations, our survival also hangs in the balance. Powerful sorcerers make their own reality and the coming chaos will not take him."

"We could try killing him." Baranar suggested, but only because someone had to do it rather than because he thought it was really a good idea.

"Too risky." Ophelia shook her head. "Even if he were not a prophesied champion, the chance of failure is too great, and so are the consequences."

They stayed silent for a long minute before Bjomolf spoke again.

"Tell me of his companions."

"Sirius Black is a boy at heart and loves his godson dearly, but he is short-sighted, impulsive and childish. A wizard of little consequence. Fleur Delacour has the standard veela traits; pride, vanity, passion, but she seems more intelligent than most. Her nature drives her to dislike vampires on instinct, but she is held deep in the sway of Potter's power and will not easily go against him. Luna lovegood is a strange creature, unburdened by the usual human foibles and possessing an outlook that combines innocence and wisdom. Like Delacour, she is deep in Potter's power, but I suspect it would make little difference even if she wasn't."

"And the quetzalcoatl?" Bjomolf prompted.

"It hated me on sight."

"That could be a problem." Tao noted.

"Unlikely." Ophelia disagreed. "Had they met sooner, it may have been, but Potter has gazed deeply into the Black Abyss and been changed for it. I am uncertain if he even realises how much of himself he has lost in his dabbling. He is more like us than he knows."

Another lengthy silence followed as they each thought this over. Like before, it was Bjomolf who broke it.

"He will return to Europe soon, but given his learning of Hindi, modern Arabic and Ancient Egyptian, as well as others, he still intends to travel to India and Egypt at the very least."

"Nothing from South America?" Baranar said mockingly. "I think I'm insulted."

"If he comes to Egypt, I will keep a close eye on him." Neferu voved, speaking up for the first time and treating Baranar as if he didn't exist at the same time. "He will not awaken the last remnant of the Long War."

"Perhaps… you should let him find it instead?" Bjomolf said thoughtfully.

Neferu looked at him as if he was insane. "Are you mad? My bloodline has kept watch over Egypt for more than twenty-seven centuries and our sacrifices have been many-fold. Now you want me to abandon my duty at the very end?"

"The best thing about prophesied champions is that you can throw your enemies in their way and be assured that the results will be spectacular." Bjomolf chuckled. "If we are truly fortunate, then Potter will be the last man standing with all those he cares about slain and we can honestly say that we had no hand in it. With his women dead, he will have that much less reason to struggle."

Ophelia was not the only one to nod approvingly at that. It was a good plan.

May 3rd. Forest on the outskirts of Tsaile, Arizona.

Harry shifted uncomfortably as the blood from the skin of the freshly killed coyote trickled down his body. Learning Skinwalking also required taking a lot of baths.

"To take the form of an animal, you must reconcile with its spirit." Ahiga lectured. "It will be hostile at first, not least because you were the one who killed it, and you will have to battle it for control. Only once you have subdued it completely and given it a place within yourself will you no longer need the skin itself to change."

"Are there any side effects to doing that?" Harry asked warily.

"Some." Ahiga admitted. "You will always feel an echo of an animal's instinct once they become part of you. It is for this reason that you must not do this with more than one animal of each type, as the effects are cumulative. Even then, predators will make you aggressive and prey will make you a coward if you take in too many."

"That's good to know." Harry muttered. "Now, how do I actually find this coyote's spirit?" He had easily breezed through the preparatory instructions, his assumption that he had already learned much of it on his own proving correct, but this part eluded him so far. "I can't feel anything."

"The spirit lingers in the body -and thus in the pelt - for a time." The skinchanger said. "Reach out with your own spirit and you will find it."

Harry tried, but this was a different kettle of fish than trying to sense magic. The coyote was magically inert as far as he could feel, particularly since it was dead. For fifteen minutes he meditated with a bloody coyote pelt draped over him and tried to sense something, anything, but got nothing and sighed in exasperation at the itchy feeling of blood drying on his body.

"Perhaps white men are incapable of learning." Ahiga said with a shrug.

Harry scoffed. Ahiga was actually pretty racist and as a result thought that his people were something special, the idiot.

"Does this apply to human skins too?" he asked instead of contradicting his current teacher. Telling racists that they were wrong never worked anyway.

"Human skins are slightly different. For one, the spirits of humans are more complex and diverse than those of animals. For another, you are human yourself and do not need to subdue the instincts of the previous owner of the skin. The more familiar the skin of the one you took, the easier it will be to take their shape. A close friend or lover of the same gender would be easiest, while a complete stranger of the opposing gender would be the hardest."

"What about the skins of magical animals and humans?"

"I have never had the opportunity to try on the skin of a wizard, but magical animals are dangerous to attempt Skinwalking with. Their spirits are much stronger and the fight they put up greater. A skinwalker may easily find himself overcome if the creature whose skin he took is too powerful. I would not have dared to wear the skin of the Serpent King like you do for example."

Harry was a bit startled by that. He'd never considered that his basilisk hide coat might be used for Skinwalking. Of course, it had been such a long time since the creature's death now that it was unlikely to work even if he did try, but recalling the monstrous basilisk did make him think that trying to force its spirit into submission would probably be unwise even if that weren't the case.

Trying it with a wizard though… was probably still a bad idea, but something to keep in mind.

Harry shelved it under 'if I absolutely need to impersonate someone and Polyjuice isn't an option' and got back to work on trying to find the coyote's spirit.

May, Puebla, Mexico.

The Great Pyramid of Cholula was the largest pyramid in the world by quite a large margin, at least by volume if not by height. Harry had wanted to visit it after he was done with Teotihuacan, but with Sirius and the girls getting more than a bit edgy in Mexico, he'd needed to postpone his visit until now.

His lessons with Ahiga were still ongoing, but didn't happen every day or even every other day, so there was plenty of time and his girls were appeased by a promise that their stay in Mexico would be short.

The pyramid was originally dedicated to Quetzalcoatl and the locals had taken to performing a ritual dedicated to the god on the site every year during the Spring Equinox, though there were no sacrifices obviously. There had been one just two months ago actually, mere days after they had left Mexico. Etal had been a bit sulky about missing out on an event that was technically dedicated to his kind, though he had observed it once in the past without understanding what all the silly humans dancing about was supposed to mean.

The temple had also been considered sacred to several other gods over the course of its existence, most recently to the Goddess of the Nine Rains just prior to the arrival of the Spanish.

Amusingly enough, Cortés and his posse never learned that there was an actual temple there, because the pyramid had long since been covered in greenery and they mistook it for a hill, though they had still slapped a church on it, simply because putting churches on top of hills was all the rage back then. The giant structure was only discovered to be a pyramid and not a natural hill in 1910 when a mental asylum was being built a bit too close and they hit upon the bricks.

But Harry wasn't here because of amusing historical anecdotes, he was here because of the human sacrifice.

The magic of the place was in many ways even more subtle than it had been in Teotihuacan, possibly because the pyramid was covered in dirt and plants, but Etal was able to help him somewhat this time.

May 20th. Great Pyramid of Cholula.

"Ladies, are you ready?" Harry asked, grinning enthusiastically.

"If it will get us away from here, I am ready for just about anything." Fleur said with a huff.

"Ready, Harry." Luna said with a smile.

" Etal, are you ready? " he hissed at the quetzalcoatl.

" Yes. " The feathered serpent hissed back, just as eager.

"Alright, let's do this then." Harry said and extended both his hands to Luna and Fleur with the palms up.

With one last look of hesitation, they each grabbed one and used the knives in their hands to cut them open.

Harry clenched his teeth against the pain and waited.

Both girls quickly dragged the knives across one of their own palms before they could chicken out and then held out their bloodied hands.

The three of them clasped hands so that the blood mingled and Harry initiated a variation of the Joining, the Spell Meld.

"Alright, I have you." He whispered, feeling their magic touching his own. While anyone could perform a basic Blood Linking for the purposes of simple communal magics, it took a certain level of skill in manipulating one's own magic and trust between participants to create a true Spell Meld. Not that most people today would know about Blood Linking since it was deemed illegal. "Just relax now and let me do everything."

He felt their acquiescence before he ever heard their words of acknowledgement.

" Etal, we are ready. " He hissed to the waiting quetzalcoatl.

" Good. " Etal said and took off, full sized.

As it turned out, Etal had a much better feel for the magics imbued into the pyramid because they had been at least tangentially dedicated to his kind. With his help, Harry was going to see if he could tap into those magics.

The quetzalcoatl flew circles around the pyramid, far faster than any bird, and with every pass the winds started picking up as the dormant magic was roused.

Once the air was practically sparking with the riled up magic, Etal dove for Harry and wrapped himself around his neck.

Immediately, Harry reached out for it with his own magic, backed by Luna's and Fleur's, using Etal as a sort of catalyst so that he didn't have to fight against the ancient and wild power that had been deposited there through human sacrifice.

Harry didn't even notice as his breaths deepened, all his focus dedicated to shaping the magic that now bubbled in the skies around the pyramid. It almost seemed to have a mind of its own, closely linked to wind and rain and the natural world as a whole.

He definitely did notice when a thunderstorm started forming out of nowhere though and he knew then that attempting to control it was a lost cause even with his girls' magic to bolster his own.

Having dabbled in lightning generation himself, Harry knew that it was a most problematic force to control, but directing it was much easier.

Having no real time to think as he felt the violent discharge building, he directed it at the most obvious place. The church at the top of the pyramid.

Immediately, a great spear of lightning stabbed down from the clouds and blasted the roof off the church.

The Spell Meld broke and Harry blanched at what he'd inadvertently done. Then he started laughing.

"That was fun." Luna said before frowning at her bloodied palm. "But I'd rather not cut himself to do it again."

"Harry, what the fuck was that?" Sirius ran up to them and demanded from where he'd been standing and observing.

Harry was still laughing, but managed to answer anyway. "It was a bit more than I could handle."

"Why is that so funny though." Fleur asked in exasperation.

"Because, that church has been struck by lightning several times in the past, just not recently." He answered, still chuckling, though it quickly cut off when he heard the shouts of the local police equestrian unit that protected the place.

"Err, we might want to get out of here just in case that registered on any sensors back in New York." He said, quickly going for the tent so that they could make tracks out of here.

"Hawaii?" Sirius suggested hopefully.

"Hawaii sounds good actually."

July 5th. Malfoy Manor.

"Mother?"

Narcissa looked up from her book at her son's call.

"What is it, Draco?"

"I have something important to tell you."

Draco certainly did look excited and Narcissa wondered if she would finally learn what had had him so anxious for the past couple of days since his return from Hogwarts. At first she'd assumed he was simply nervous about the results of his OWL examinations, but it was far too soon for him to have received word on that.

"I went to the Ministry a few days ago and arranged to be emancipated. You're looking at the new Lord Malfoy."

Oh. Narcissa thought to herself faintly, too surprised to even correct him about his use of a noble title that the Malfoys didn't have.

"That's… great." She said, forcing a smile. In truth, she had been dreading the day he turned seventeen and reached his majority, but this had blindsided her completely. She knew that by 'arranged' he probably meant 'promised a bribe to someone', but that was simply business as usual. No, what had her worried was…

"It is, isn't it? Now you don't have to… associate with Potter anymore."

… that.

A year ago, this would have been great news to her. It certainly would have spared her a great deal of worry in the wake of Lucius' death. Surely Draco would have provided for his mother, even if she wasn't a Malfoy any longer?

But even the most corrupt Ministry official would have hesitated to emancipate a minor that hadn't even taken his OWLs yet, especially with the memory of Lucius' demise so fresh in their minds, leaving her no choice but to go looking for a patron.

That she would find unlooked for happiness and fulfillment as Harry's social planner and mistress was an unexpected stroke of good fortune for her.

Now her darling, misguided son wanted to 'save' her. She had never told him that she liked things the way they were, knowing of his hatred for all things Harry Potter, but events had now come to a head.

And Narcissa did like things as they were right now, liked them very much indeed. She had a job that she was good at, the prestige of being attached to the new rising star of the wizarding world, a sex life far more exciting than anything Lucius or the frankly mediocre lovers she'd taken while married to him had ever managed and was even well on her way towards rebuilding her relationship with Andromeda. Most of Britain's noble witches didn't have it anywhere near this good.

"We shouldn't be too hasty, Draco." She said delicately, trying to find a way to tell her son that she didn't want to stop associating with Harry that wouldn't result in a blow-up.

"Hasty?!" He exclaimed in disbelief, staring at her as if she was mad. "You've had to spend a year providing for us already, but I have access to the Malfoy fortune now. You don't have to put up with that disgusting halfblood humiliating you anymore."

What a mess. Draco loved her and wanted to do right by her, which was sweet, but also problematic.

"I'm just saying that you've only just been emancipated." Narcissa tried again. "You still have two years of schooling to get through before you can properly take over for your father and it wouldn't do to overstep yourself."

She was stalling and she knew it, but what else was there to do? In truth, Narcissa was very quietly panicking at the fork in the road she could see coming.

Draco was her son and she loved him, would do almost anything for him, but Harry was… Harry .

He was the lord of her House, powerful, ruthless and cunning like the Blacks of old and she desperately wanted to stay by his side. The thought of never again seeing him smile at her in approval as she completed a task he'd assigned her, never again hearing him sigh in pleasure as she took him into her mouth, never again feeling him spill his seed into her… well that was simply not something she wanted to contemplate.

What would become of her if she did as Draco asked and turned her back on her lord? Harry could still ruin her reputation by casting her out of the Black family if he wished. Even if he didn't, Narcissa was well aware that the currently high regard she enjoyed in society was not because of her own merit but because of her association to him. Take that away and what was left? Nothing to do, no one to talk to except for her son… since she wasn't even a Malfoy any longer, she would be reduced to being a permanent guest in Draco's home, doomed to walk aimlessly through the opulent manor, sighing in boredom and quite possibly developing a drinking habit. And when Draco had actual guests over, she would either have to hide away like some kind of house-elf or endure the snide comments from insipid little bitches looking to make themselves feel important by sniping at her or worse, the attention of wizards who thought she was part of the entertainment.

"I was thinking of dropping out of Hogwarts." Draco admitted.

"You can't!" Narcissa exclaimed urgently.

"Why not? I finished my OWLs and I'm emancipated. House Malfoy has been without a head for a year already and it can't afford to languish for another two."

That sounded like a practiced speech to Narcissa's ears. Much as she loved Draco, she knew that he wasn't normally so eloquent. More than likely, he wanted to prove that Harry wasn't the only one that could drop out of Hogwarts early and do well for himself.

"Be that as it may, nobody will take you seriously if you don't have your NEWTs." She cautioned and it was true.

But it just seemed to irritate Draco and he confirmed her prior suspicion. "Potter didn't even sit his OWLs and people seem to take him seriously."

"You aren't Harry Potter." Narcissa said and held back a wince as his face reddened in anger.

"So what if I'm not Harry bloody Potter?" He demanded, scowling. "He's not any better than me!"

Once again, despite her love for her son, Narcissa knew that this simply wasn't true. Harry outperformed Draco in pretty much every category.

"Harry Potter was a legend before he was even two years old, the defeater of the Dark Lord." She said instead. "Since his return, he's reaffirmed that legend, becoming a wizard to be feared and respected. I'm sorry, Draco, but you don't have enough of a reputation to get away with dropping out of Hogwarts with an incomplete education."

"HE'S JUST A HALFBLOOD!" Draco shouted furiously, as if it would become true if he said it loudly enough.

"Don't you shout at me." Narcissa said sternly, now angered herself by her son's atrocious behavior. "And Harry Potter isn't 'just' anything. The Dark Lord thought he was just a baby and Lucius thought he was just a boy and look where that got them."

"YOU'RE DEFENDING HIM?!" Draco demanded, his volume going up rather than down. "HE KILLED FATHER AND TURNED YOU INTO HIS WHORE AND YOU'RE DEFENDING HIM?!"

"Lucius tried to have him killed, did you think he would just lay down and die?" She demanded, her own temper rapidly boiling. "Draco, I know you idolised your father, but he was not a good or even a particularly smart man. He let the Dark Lord brand him like cattle and then tried to assassinate the wizard that killed him as a baby. He got greedy and paid for it. And Harry never forced me to do anything I wasn't willing to do."

Narcissa wondered if she had said too much as Draco simply stared at her for a long time, the angry red color of his face slowly paling into normality.

"I worked hard all year to get the best possible grades on my OWLs so that I could get you away from that filthy halfblood. I had to listen to people make jokes about you being Potter's plaything and what he's doing to you, now you're telling me that you like being his trophy?" He said quietly after nearly a full minute of silence.

"Draco…"

"Well? Answer me, do you like getting fucked by him?"

"Draco, please." She wasn't even sure what she was pleading for. That her son not be angry at her?

"Get out."

"What?" She asked, shocked.

"I said get out." He repeated.

"Draco, please, you have to understand-" Narcissa desperately tried to explain, reaching out with her hand.

"GET OUT!" Draco suddenly screamed over her, slapping her hand away so violently that she recoiled in genuine fear as well as hurt. "IF YOU LIKE POTTER SO MUCH, THEN GO LIVE WITH HIM. I WON'T HAVE A TRAITOR STAYING IN MY HOUSE."

Narcissa wasn't quite sure what transpired in the next few minutes or how she had ended up sobbing all over Andromeda, trying to explain what had happened to her baffled and worried sister, all she knew was that her son hated her, but she couldn't abandon Harry, couldn't abandon her place at the side of the new Lord Black.

July 5th. Hawaii.

Harry had nearly dozed off when the vibrations of his communication mirror brought him back to full wakefulness, from where he'd nearly fallen asleep sunbathing.

"Who is it?" Fleur asked sleepily, even more out of it than him.

"Let's see then." He mumbled, groping around for the vibrating object.

"Dora." He greeted, only mildly surprised to see the face of the metamorphmagus. "Good afternoon."

"Evening." The currently-pinkette replied with a grin.

" Bonjour, Nymphadora." Fleur chimed in with a teasing smile.

"Damn it, woman, I told you not to call me that a thousand times already and why are your tits always out when I call you?"

Fleur's breasts were indeed fully exposed, oiled and gleaming in the sunlight, as was the rest of her. There was actually a small-ish magical community on Hawaii, but it turned out that American magicals were horrible prudes, even worse than the non-magical ones. Fleur had taken one look at the 'no nude sunbathing' rule, turned her nose up and declared that they would find their own stretch of beach.

"Good timing?" Fleur suggested with a smirk, fondling her breasts suggestively for the metamorph's viewing pleasure. "You like?"

Tonks stared at the play of light and oil on the enticing expanses of flesh for a moment and then shook her head. "Stop trying to distract me, you slut, I've got something important to say."

"Then by all means." The veela laughed.

"It's a bit of a funny story actually. See, I was just getting off work when my dad calls and asks me to come over. Being the dutiful daughter that I am, I rolled my eyes and apparated to my parent's house and what do I find there but Auntie Narcissa blubbering all over my mum, choking out a sad - and kind of disjointed - tale about how darling Cousin Draco kicked her out because she didn't want to stop fucking you. According to Dad, Kreacher popped her in about ten minutes before I got there and she's been a mess ever since."

Tonks took a deep breath and pinned Harry with a penetrating orange gaze. "Now I've never paid any attention to all those rumors about you boning my aunt, but now I have to ask, are you boning my aunt?

Seeing no way or even much reason to lie, Harry told the truth. "Yes, I'm boning your aunt."

Tonks simply nodded as if this was the expected answer. "Figures, you always did have a thing for older women."

"What can I say? There's something special about fucking a woman twenty or thirty years your senior."

"Mou, does that mean you found my mother more attractive than me?" Fleur pouted.

"Yes." Harry nodded decisively.

"You pig." Fleur said and started slapping him over the chest, but didn't quite manage to keep her laugh in.

"Hey, you asked." Harry defended, blocking her vicious assault with a smirk. "Don't get mad at me for answering your questions."

"Alright, you two can have yourselves a shag later, I have more questions!" Tonks broke in.

"I'm sure we can multi-task." Fleur said with her most sultry tones.

"Let's not." The metamorphmagus said with a little quaver in her voice that indicated she was not entirely opposed to the idea.

Fleur smirked some more and shrugged, deliberately jiggling her breasts. She would be getting Nymphadora into a four-way relationship with them no matter how long it took. A person as likable as her with adjustable intimate parts was simply too good of a catch to pass up.

"What other questions did you have?" Harry asked, ignoring that little by-play at the end. He knew what Fleur and Luna were angling for where Dora was concerned and while he couldn't say that he was exactly opposed to it, he was staying out of it. If his current girlfriends succeeded in tempting his ex back, then drinks and orgies for everyone and if not, he would just have to restrict himself to wishful thinking.

"Oh, I was just thinking back to what a snobby bitch my aunt used to be, but as soon as you started fucking her, she suddenly starts shaping up to be a decent human being. You wouldn't happen to have an explanation for this strange coincidence, would you?"

"I'm a really good shag?" Harry said weakly, knowing exactly what Dora was getting at.

"You're not that good." Tonks deadpanned.

"Oi!"

"Harry, did you fuck my aunt in the soul?"

Harry slumped in defeat. "Yes, I fucked your aunt in the soul."

"Damn it, Harry, you can't just use the Joining to give people attitude adjustments." Tonks sighed, rubbing her forehead in exasperation.

"It was a rock and a hard place type of situation." Harry protested. "She was begging me for help, but I knew she was a vindictive, poisonous bitch, so it was either leave a desperate woman out for the sharks or help a vindictive, poisonous bitch get back on her feet. I didn't like either option so I decided to make her my vindictive, poisonous bitch. You can't tell me that things aren't better now."

"I guess." Tonks admitted reluctantly, because she well remembered exactly what a vindictive, poisonous bitch Narcissa Malfoy was or used to be, but she was an auror for fuck's sake and Soul Magic was massively illegal.

"Don't worry about it too much, Nymphadora." Fleur soothed. "All is well that ends well, non ?"

"Your pretty little arse won't end well if you don't stop calling me by that name." Tonks snarled.

"Nymphadora!" Fleur gasped dramatically and turned towards Harry. "'Arry, did you 'ear that? Nymphadora is threatening me with anal if I don't stop calling her Nymphadora. What are you going to do if Nymphadora goes through with her threat?"

Harry grinned at his veela lover. "I'll take your cunt and then we'll switch."

"I do like the sound of that." Fleur purred. "Though I would prefer a, what do you English call it, a spitroasting?"

"Nuh uh, Dora said she wanted your arse and your arse she shall have… although, couldn't she just grow two cocks with her metamorph powers?"

"Yes…" Fleur breathed, her eyes gleaming at the idea.

"Oi, stop making plans to have me turn into some kind of monster futa for your twisted fantasies!" Tonks protested, her skin literally fire engine red.

"True, I still haven't broken that orifice in myself." Harry nodded sagely and turned back to Fleur. "We should get that handled soon."

"Hm, I 'ave never seen my rear end as a sexual organ, but your descriptions of 'ow much your Professor Vector enjoyed it 'as admittedly made me curious and I cannot let it be said that a mere witch would try what a veela will not." Fleur mused.

"Wait, wait, wait, you fucked Professor Vector in the arse?" Tonks cut in, both impressed and curious.

"Oh yeah, you would not believe what a buttslut she turned out to be." Harry shook his head with a grin. "I don't think she's removed the buttplug I gave her for more than ten minutes at a time in the past year."

"Wow, talk about ruining the image of professionalism I had for her…"

"Nonsense, it's perfectly possible to be a professional with a buttplug stuffed in your rectum 24/7." Harry snickered.

"Anyway, getting back to the matter at hand…" Tonks began assertively, wanting to move past any talk about buttsex. "when are you coming home? Narcissa is apparently going to be staying at my parents' house for now, but you'll have to pick up your personal vindictive, poisonous bitch pretty soon."

"We didn't really have a set return date, but it is getting to be a bit dull around here, my lessons with Ahiga have stalled and I do have some responsibilities coming up back in Britain." Harry said thoughtfully.

"Tomorrow or the day after?" Fleur suggested.

"That'll work." He nodded.

"Alright, cool. I'll let my folks know." Tonks said and signed off.

Veela and wizard stayed quiet for a few moments and then Fleur looked over at Harry with a suggestive smirk. "So… Luna is giving Etal a tour on one of the other islands with Frank and Sirius."

"Mm."

"We 'ave this little spot all to ourselves." She went on, running fingers down Harry's chest.

"Mhmmm."

"That little talk 'as left me excited and curious." The fingers glided over his erect manhood, making it twitch eagerly.

"Mmmmmmhmmmmm."

"I think I need to stretch a bit."

Harry observed with lust-darkened eyes as the sexy veela stepped right in front of him, planted her feet at shoulder width and bent over all the way to the ground, leaving her tight arse and moist opening fully exposed to his view. The oil she'd used made her gleam and the tight ring of her anus looked more inviting than ever.

He got up from his own beach chair and kneeled behind her, taking a quick whiff of her juices before dragging his tongue over her opening, making her gasp and nearly fall forward on her knees.

"'Arry, what are you doing, you naughty boy?" She said huskily, turning around to face him.

"Just testing your balance, my dear. It seems a bit off, why don't you brace yourself against that rock over there?" He said, gesturing over at one of the large boulders sitting on this part of the beach.

"A good idea." She said and went to do exactly that.

For a moment, Harry simply watched as she braced herself against the rock and bent to a nearly ninety degree angle, gleaming arse sticking out beautifully. He had been dubious about her use of the oil seeing as she didn't need any protection from the Sun, but there was no denying how much it enhanced her already immense sex appeal.

Moment of appreaciation over, he retook his kneeling position behind her and got to work on licking her honeypot. He took his time doing it too, deriving great enjoyment from her little gasps and shaking legs.

A few minutes in, she let out a cry and shuddered violently with climax, a small squirt of vaginal fluid wetting the sand between her feet.

"So, 'ow was my balance?" She asked huskily, still shaking a little but staying in position.

"Excellent, but now it's time for the main exam." Harry said, preparing a small transfiguration. "Stay steady now."

The spell raised the sand under her feet, lifting her a few inches. Just enough that her holes lined up perfectly with his member.

"Do your worst." She challenged, bracing herself more firmly.

"We'll save that for later. For now, let's start with beginner's anal." Harry smirked, running a knuckle across her virgin rectum.

Fleur balked a bit and looked back at him nervously. "Right now? I thought…"

"We don't have to if you aren't comfortable with it." he assured her.

Instead of taking the offered way out though, her expression firmed with determination. " Non, now is good."

Harry shook his head at the veela's stubborn pride, especially when sex was involved. Still, she'd given the go ahead and far be it from him to say no to an arse as magnificent as that.

While she was oily and slippery, he had no idea how appropriate sunbathing oil was for ones insides and thought better of using it for the purposes of lubrication. Instead, he used the familiar conjuration spell to create a spurt of lubricant over his fingers.

"This'll feel a bit weird at first, but try to relax." Harry advised.

Fleur nodded a bit nervously, but made an honest effort. Of course, she still clenched instinctively when she felt his lubed up middle finger sliding into her and nearly jumped when the cleaning spell hit her bowels and removed all traces of waste.

"What was that?" She asked nervously.

"Just getting you ready." He assured, reapplied the lubrication to his fingers and re-inserted one.

It was slow going since Harry didn't want to hurt her. First just the one finger until she got used to the sensation and started enjoyig it, then two, with frequent re-applications of lube to prevent any unpleasant friction.

Once her rectum was sufficiently loosened, he applied the lubrication to his member and another to her anus just to be thorough.

"Alright, i'm going in. If you want me to slow down, just say so." He said, placing his tip against the slippery opening.

Fleur nodded, hands braced against the rock and eyes resolutely facing the ground.

The process was more than a bit torturous for both of them. Fleur was clearly enjoying the penetration and would occasionally rock back impatiently, only to wince as it drove him in further than she was prepared to take. For Harry, it was simply so slow and reminded him why he had used a buttplug on Septima to prepare her instead of doing it this way. He had doubted his ability to restrain himself for this long.

It took a solid fifteen minutes before Harry was able to sheathe himself inside her bowels all the way to the hilt and by then both of them were far from their best.

Fleur's knees were shaky and her breath came in pants and Harry was struggling with himself not to being thrusting wildly like his body wanted to.

"You alright?" He asked roughly.

"Yes!" She gasped, nodding along. "You can… you can start moving now."

Harry firmly gripped her hips and slowly pulled out, relishing in her whine. Then he pushed back in with equal slowness.

"This is… good!" She gasped. "Faster, you can go… faster!"

"Gladly."

He increased his tempo from a slow tease to a faster, but still gentle thrusting. Even that nearly proved too much for Fleur as she cried out every time he hilted himself into her. He'd long since had to take over the task of holding her legs up, as they were shaking too much.

"'Arry! Please, please fill me." She begged. "I can't take it any more."

"Here it comes!" He grunted and thrust into her roughly, groaning as his aching testicles released their load into her.

Fleur gasped for air with each spurt of warm seed painting her bowels white and cried out weakly when he made a final few thrusts to squeeze out the last of it.

Once it was over, she sank her knees, feeling exhausted in a way that one round of sex hadn't left her in a long time. Harry sank down with her and wrapped his arms around her, maintaining the Joining that they had kept going for the entire duration of the intercourse, both of them glorying in the intimate connection.

For a few minutes, there was no sound but the ocean, the occasional bird and the slow drip-drip of his seed leaking out of her and staining the sands.

"I cannot believe we didn't do that sooner." She murmured, leaning back against him contently.

"That good?" He asked with a self-satisfied smile, justifiably proud of himself.

"Mmm." She sighed. "It was a different kind of good. Not like tasting your magic on my tongue or feeling it rush into my womb, but so very good all the same."

"I'm glad you liked it as much as I did then." Harry said, nibbling on her ear and gently fondling her slippery breasts.

"Now that I know what this is like, I will not rest until I 'ave Nymphadora take me from behind as a double-cocked monster futa while I 'ave you in my mouth." Fleur vowed.

"I suppose having life goals is important." Harry quipped. "We'll have to give your butt lots of practice if you want to try that one though."

Fleur turned her head enough to allow for limited eye contact, letting him see the gleam in her sky-blue eye. "Yes, lots of practice."

Tonks Residence.

Nymphadora Tonks had just poured herself a glass of juice after watching her mum take her distraught aunt to a guest room when she felt a foreboding chill go down her spine.

"Brrrr!" She said, experiencing an odd, full body shake.

"You alright there, honey?" Ted Tonks asked, looking at his daughter in concern.

"Yeah, I just felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if two perverts on the other end of the world were talking about me and making plans." Tonks frowned.

"That's… awfully specific." Ted blinked.

"Yeah…"