Curious – Regular wolves can have yellow eyes as well and the slight glowing effect of his magic just makes it more pronounced.

He did answer the question about gender differences, just not explicitly. He said that it's up to the individual person what they make of their power, meaning that gender has no impact on it. Unless you count the natural differences in inclination between men and women.

Koomba19 – I'm familiar with the song.

I'd ask that people wanting questions answered make an account. It's easier to answer them that way than to put them at the start of chapters like this.

Joe Lawyer has been a huge help as always and gets all the thumbs up.

January 5th, 2019.

"You've received a summons from the ICW, my lord." Narcissa said with clear disdain. "They demand that you present yourself immediately before the Council of Mugwumps."

"Oh they demand, do they?" Harry asked mockingly, unsurprised that he'd barely had time to come home, greet his girls and change his clothes before those old fossils reacted. They could move fast when they felt like it. "Tell them to send a representative if they have something to say to me directly. Otherwise they can talk to you."

"Already done." Narcissa said with aplomb.

Harry grinned and pulled the unresisting blonde witch into a kiss. She was not the most imaginative of subordinates, but she was competent and loyal. It was important to reward good service.

"Good work, Cissy." He murmured into her ear after breaking off the kiss.

"It was a pleasure, my lord." She replied huskily, not specifying what exactly was a pleasure.

"Was that all?"

Narcissa quickly wrapped the mantle of dignity and poise around herself again before replying. "No. You've also received a polite request to attend an emergency Wizengamot session back in Britain."

"What do you know, they can learn." Harry was amazed. He hadn't thought the Wizengamot was capable of such a thing. "When is it happening?"

"In three hours."

"Hmm." Harry rubbed his chin thoughtfully. His schedule was free right now, but that wasn't enough time to really get anything substantial done unless he went into the Hyperbolic Time Chamber and he wasn't in the mood for that right now.

"You were the one who reminded the Wizengamot on what constituted appropriate conduct when dealing with a powerful wizard, didn't you?" He asked. Decades of Dumbledore's easygoing attitude had given the Wizengamot the mistaken idea that every extraordinarily powerful wizard that wasn't an outright Dark Lord could be treated as 'just another guy'.

"It didn't take much work." She admitted. "They were already rather scared of you."

"Still, I appreciate it." Harry's smile turned into something suggestive. "Why don't I take this time to show you just how much I appreciate it."

Narcissa's skin flushed with anticipation. "I am always ready to receive your appreciation, my lord."

Harry's smile widened at the double entendre. "I'll bet you are….."

Wizengamot Chamber.

So this is what things are like when Dumbledore is busy elsewhere . Harry thought to himself with amusement, listening to the many overlapping arguments. They're worse than children.

The Chief Warlock was currently busy being the Supreme Mugwump, so this daycare center was left without supervision. The results were predictable. Everyone was talking over everyone else and he could swear that he'd actually seen money changing hands in one corner. It was like watching a political parody skit. Having Dumbledore absent was unexpected, but could definitely be worked with.

Before this chaotic mess had erupted, several people had looked as if they wanted to ask him something and then lost their nerve. Fudge and Amelia Bones were the only ones either deluded enough to think he was their friend or had enough spine, respectively, to address him, but they had gotten bogged down dealing with all the mouthy idiots around them. Now everyone was content to ignore him and argue with the less dangerous people. He was actually sitting inside an invisible zone of calm that extended a distance of three empty seats in all directions. The funny thing was that there was nothing magical about it.

But the amusement value of the situation faded quickly and Harry began crafting a spell. It wasn't anything special, just a wide-area zone of silence, but giving it a few extra controls and functionalities made it tricky. Once it was done, he released it and the chamber was instantly plunged into silence. The chaos guttered out almost as fast.

Harry stood up and, with everyone's eyes on him, made his way towards the empty seat of the Chief Warlock. His footsteps echoed loudly in the room, giving the moment more gravitas. He was keenly aware of the symbolism of such an act, so he figured that he may as well play it up.

Once he was seated in his new spot, he looked over the gathered wizards and witches. They had all ceased attempting to speak and were now focused exclusively on him.

"Now that you've had your excitement, perhaps we could get to the business of handling the present crisis we have on our hands?" He asked coolly, pleased to see a great many of them ducking their heads in embarrassment, or perhaps fear, when his gaze passed over them.

"Minister Fudge." He said, looking at the fat idiot. "Would you like to hear my advice on how you should proceed?"

Amelia Bones looked like she wanted to say something, but his spell prevented it, much to her silent outrage.

"Err…" Fudge tried and then brightened when he found that he could speak. "Yes, Lord Potter-Black, your advice has always been wise in the past and I would like to hear what you are proposing."

"The first thing you should do is resign your position." Harry said.

Fudge went wide-eyed and tried to splutter out an objection, but the spell once again kept him silent.

"You were a good Minister for calm times, but you have not the will, strength, knowledge, temperament or even desire to tackle the problems that now lie before us." Harry continued implacably. "Resign with dignity or the task ahead will bury you."

"Surely it isn't that bad?" Fudge asked in a bargaining tone.

"We are at a critical point in history and you cannot even begin to grasp the enormity of the issues facing us as a people. Your tenure has been easy and your self-indulgence could be tolerated, from here on out it is going to be hard decisions between often terrible choices. We as a people no longer have the luxury of letting you feel important while rolling our eyes behind your back. You would make dangerous mistakes that would echo out into the future and haunt us for many years to come. You have already made mistakes."

"What mistakes have I made?" Now Fudge sounded offended, predictably ignoring the parts he didn't want to hear.

"You have allowed the ICW to pressure you into helping with their doomed plan to restore the Statute of Secrecy, creating further animosity on top of what Riddle has already caused. You have spent the past five days arguing about useless things instead of talking to your non-magical counterpart and working to separate us from Riddle in their minds. You have failed to realize the danger the British magical population is in."

"What danger?" Fudge was finally blustering. "They're just muggles! Even if they could do anything to us, they couldn't find us!"

"Really?" Harry asked sardonically. "The magi of Russia and China thought the same thing some seventy odd years ago and now they are gone ."

He took some delight in their shocked silence even if it was indicative of a wider problem with this society.

Amelia Bones raised her hand like a schoolgirl, the necessity of doing so clearly pissing her off.

"Madam Bones?" Harry prompted and temporarily lifted the enforced silence on her.

"Explain!" She barked.

"After the Second World War, the mundane governments of China and Russia were at the dangerous intersection of power hungry and very well armed. Through the help of bought, coerced or simply resentful wizards and witches, they launched a campaign to subjugate their local magical communities. The result was that most of the Russian and Chinese magicals were killed and the survivors scattered across the world."

"How did we not know about this?" Bones asked with a deeply disturbed expression.

"Why would you know about it?" Harry shrugged. "Magical societies are isolationist by nature, Binns only teaches about the Goblin Rebellions and I suspect that the ICW was helping that information fade into the background."

"And you say that we are in a similar position now?"

"Not exactly, but they did just have their capital wrecked and tens of thousands of citizens killed by a British wizard. Things are far from ideal."

Fudge started waving his hands around.

"Yes?" Harry prompted.

"But they still couldn't find us…..right?" The fool trailed off hopefully.

"Where do the muggleborns go, Minister Fudge?"

"Ummm…?" The Minister of Magic was confused, as if nobody had ever asked him to think about muggleborns before. They probably hadn't.

"Every year, somewhere just over 10% of the students in Hogwarts are muggleborns. So….where are they all? All of the Ministry's department heads are purebloods, except for the Goblin Liason office which is widely considered one of the worst jobs in the Ministry. All of the other higher offices are also held by either purebloods or particularly well-connected halfbloods. The middling offices are held almost exclusively by halfbloods. The only muggleborns in the Ministry are low level clerks that are often being taken advantage of by those above them. How many of them do you see when you walk down Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade? A few here and there? Judging by their numbers in Hogwarts, they should be a significant part of Britain's magical population, but they aren't. Where do they go ?"

Harry waited for a moment for the Wizengamot to grasp the implications.

"You are saying….that they go to work for the muggles?" Fudge sounded as if the very notion offended him.

"Some of them, yes. Enough of them that secrecy is not as much of a shield as you'd like to think. I've personally noted the occasional non-magical masquerading as a wizard walking around Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade. I've seen them at the Quidditch World Cup five years ago. They were wearing amulets designed to defeat the muggle-repelling charms and I would be shocked if they weren't spies in the employ of the mundane government."

The chamber tried to erupt into chaos at his revelation, but the silencing spell just made them look silly and they settled down quickly.

"Now I'm sure most of you are thinking something stupid like 'we have to find them and get rid of them'." Harry continued casually. "It's far too late for that. Like it or not, you are going to have to learn how to coexist with the non-magical population."

"They still couldn't do anything to us." Fudge insisted stubbornly.

Harry was done trying to talk sense into the idiot's tiny brain. He pulled out his gun and, before anyone who actually recognized the weapon had a chance to do more than go wide-eyed, shot the Minister of Magic in the shoulder.

Fudge howled in pain and fell off his chair while the rest of the chamber jumped at the noise and scrambled backwards fearfully.

" Freeze! " Harry boomed with a magically enhanced voice, stopping the burgeoning panic in its tracks. "Someone help that moron back into his chair." He ignored the wands that Bones and several other people were pointing at him.

The current Senior Undersecretary, a skittish and sycophantic-looking man, did so and settled the whimpering Minister of Magic back into his seat.

"For those of you who don't know, this is among the most basic of weapons that they have." Harry continued, showing off the Berreta. "Fudge, why don't you share your experience with the class? Did getting shot hurt?"

"Harry…..why?" Fudge whimpered, sounding pained, confused, hurt, betrayed and scared all at the same time.

"Because you're an idiot with no ability to adapt to a changing situation." Harry replied disdainfully. "Now answer the question. Did it hurt?"

"Yes." Fudge whimpered some more.

"Do you think you'd survive if I shot you in the head?"

"No!" Now the fool sounded panicked, probably fearing that Harry would actually shoot him in the head to prove a point if he said yes.

Harry would have done exactly that. There was a certain critical threshold of stupidity that he would cheerfully murder people for passing even if they had done absolutely nothing to him.

"Do you still think wizards are impervious to mundane weaponry?"

"No."

"Good, because they have a lot of weapons and no shortage of professional killers to eager fire them at us right now. In fact, the United Kingdom alone has more professional killers than there are wizards and witches in the entire world and it ranks sixth in overall military strength. Violent confrontation has to be avoided because we are hopelessly, hilariously outnumbered." A bit of a dramatic exaggeration there about how bloodthirsty the mundane armies are, but it would hopefully help it sink in that they did not want open war.

Oh, Harry had no doubt that wizards and witches could make a serious nuisance of themselves if they had a mind to, but attrition rates alone would see them horribly lose any kind of war, especially since it wouldn't be a clean 'us versus them' scenario. And that wasn't even taking into account the lack of fighters among the magical population…..

He wouldn't even bet on himself winning a direct engagement. Blocking small arms fire was easy (which was why he'd stopped trying to use a gun against Voldemort, besides a staff being a two-handed weapon), but getting into a serious confrontation against the Army or Navy or special forces or whatever else they might throw at him? No way, all it would take was one missed surprise or a moment's distraction at the wrong time. Not to mention the worrying prospect of enchanted ordinance gained by whatever means, which would make things considerably more dangerous. Harry had never bothered enchanting his own bullets because it was a time-consuming practice with relatively small returns against a wizard as powerful as Voldemort, but it was an advantage that the mundanes definitely did not need.

Moreover, the world had largely moved away from direct warfare in favor of more clandestine methods. Fighting head on would only serve to give his enemies more leverage and create more enemies.

If the Worst Case Scenario(capitals mandatory) happened, then abandoning all known magical enclaves was only the first thing that they'd have to do. Harry did have some plans fermenting in his brain in the event that a modern round of witch hunts couldn't be avoided, but they were in the same category as tainting water sources with liquid magic and letting the chaos unfold.

"Then what are we supposed to do?" Fudge asked piteously, still clutching at his bleeding shoulder. He looked and sounded like a whiny child.

"The only thing you have to do is resign before you fuck up any worse. The next Minister of Magic should ideally be someone with an excellent knowledge of the mundane world and strong ties to the magical one. It wouldn't hurt if he or she had a spine either."

There was a long silence as everyone absorbed his words and Harry couldn't help noting, again, just how ridiculous politics were in the magical world. He had usurped Dumbledore's authority, assaulted the highest government official with a deadly weapon for the sake of proving a point and now he was dictating policy to the judicial and legal branch of it and he was getting away with it . The pretense of law over power had never been thinner.

Harry saw someone raising his hand and suppressed his surprise at seeing that it was Marcus Flint. He hadn't thought about that idiot in forever. Last he'd heard, Flint had gone into hiding instead of joining up with Voldemort like his father, no doubt fearing what the Unbreakable Vow that Harry had forced him to swear would do to him. Unusually smart of him. Unlike Snape, Flint probably couldn't hide his true loyalties, so he'd have been worthless as a spy anyway.

Apparently he'd crawled out of the woodwork after hearing that his father had been killed.

"Yes, Lord Flint?" Harry prompted, unable to keep a slight mocking tone from his voice. Flint wasn't qualified to be the lord of a molehill.

"I nominate Harry Potter for the Minister of Magic post." Flint said grumpily. Oh, he thought that he'd figured out the game and was trying to help. How unimaginative. Also funny, because people were acting as if Fudge was already out of office simply on his say so.

The chamber erupted into silent excitement at the nomination. Quite a few people looked like they wanted to throw their support behind it. Idiots, as if he would allow himself to be used as a shield while they played games behind his back.

"I refuse." Harry said before the idea could gather any steam. "Don't forget that I have my own realm and people to look after and that I'm only here as a courtesy. I can't represent Magical Britain unless you make it part of my realm."

The resulting silence didn't need to be enforced with magic. Many looked quite put out at his swift refusal, while the shrewder ones had picked up on the hint and were giving him calculating looks.

Nothing more was likely to get done in any case, so it was a good spot to end things on.

"Well, that's really all I had to say." He said and started walking towards the doors, only stopping and turning around once he was in the threshold. "One final bit of advice in your dealings with the non-magicals. Stop calling them muggles. It was originally an insult and it will still sound insulting to their ears, which isn't going to do your diplomatic efforts any favors. Good luck."

With that said, he walked out of the Wizengamot Chamber, rolling his eyes at the wall of noise that hit his back almost immediately after his silencing spell faded. Useless twats.

He put a finger into the collar of his shirt let the beetle hiding inside it climb on.

"I hope you enjoyed yourself in there, Rita." Harry said, smirking at the beetle. "Do spin that in my favor, hmm?"

The beetle buzzed agitatedly. The bitter and spiteful reporter still didn't like him, or anyone for that matter, but she knew better than to go against him.

January 6th, 2019.

"'Harry Potter offers his guidance and protection to the citizens of Magical Britain in these difficult times' . " Dora recited from the Daily Prophet with a tone intense mockery. "Gee, that sounds a lot better than 'Harry Potter demands to be made king before he'll lift a finger to help'."

The rest of the article continued in much the same vein, playing up Harry's virtues, praising his handling of the WIzengamot and subtly(or sometimes unsubtly) suggesting that he was a better alternative than the Ministry.

"It does, doesn't it?" Harry agreed, accepting the slice of bread that Luna had just offered him with a nod of thanks. She'd spent the past ten minutes meticulously applying a spread of pistachio butter to it.

And apparently animating it to look like it had spiders crawling over it. He gave the creepy thing an askance look before shrugging and taking a bite.

"Hey, this is really good." He exclaimed, surprised by the crunchiness. He chewed some more, feeling the little animated legs and carapaces crack under his teeth. It was almost like eating pistachio-flavored potato crisps.

Luna beamed at the praise.

Next to him, Fleur shuddered in disgust.

"What's wrong, Princess? Can't handle a few creepy crawlies?" Dora drawled teasingly. Her current look was well suited to the expression, being World of Warcraft style succubus with purple skin, red eyes, curling horns and deep black hair. She did give the hooves, tail and wings a miss though.

"Why don't you have some then?" Fleur sneered imperiously.

"I'll have some if you will." Dora countered with a fangy grin, knowing that the sophisticated veela was far more averse to such a thing than she was. Amazing, the lengths that a person was willing to go to if it would make a loved one uncomfortable.

Harry just smiled at their amusing little games of one-upmanship, glad that Dora had recovered her good cheer after the events in London. She'd been a bit mopey for a while, but they had managed to draw her out of it.

He crunched more pistachio spiders between his teeth and thought that he could even hear them wheezing in pain as they 'died'. That was some serious dedication to realism on Luna's part. She would have made the chocolate frog industry quite horrifying for children if she went to work in their animation department.

The breakfast continued in the same vein, with the two older women playfully sniping at each other while Harry and Luna spectated and occasionally inserted a comment. It was a moment of relaxation in an otherwise tense time and none of them were in a hurry to see it end.

So it just figured that Narcissa walked in to interrupt it.

The blonde witch briefly started at seeing the demonic-looking breakfast participant before realizing that it must be her niece.

"What is it, Cissy?" Harry asked.

"I'm sorry to interrupt your breakfast, but Mugwump Auger is here to see you. He has a pair of ICW enforcers with him." Narcissa said apologetically.

Harry remembered the old French bastard. He always did seem like the one most attached to the status quo.

"Have them wait in the uncomfortable sitting room. I'll join him when I'm done here." He said.

Narcissa smirked and nodded before going to do as she'd been directed.

"You sure that's a good idea?" Dora asked, archly raising an eyebrow.

"A man of his age and position should know better than to arrive unannounced. My time is valuable after all." Harry replied breezily and turned to Luna. "Want to have a naval battle? My crew of raspberry jam soldiers on a bread ship versus your crew of peanut butter pirates?"

"We be plunderin' yer booty, yarr." Luna said impishly and started animating her crew with bright eyes.

"All you pirate scum will be hanged by the neck until dead." Harry retorted with a grin as Dora and Fleur snorted in amusement.

The great naval battle of 2019, fought between the merciless Peanut Butter Pirates and the Raspberry Republic, ended with inconclusive results. Both sides had fought to the last man and not an inch of either ship remained free of the carnage. The bodies were never recovered, due to being eaten.

Auger was looking quite agitated by the time that Harry deigned to see him. Part of that was no doubt due to the wait, but part of it was because all the furniture in this specific sitting room was deliberately designed to be uncomfortable. A lump in the padding here, one chair leg just a little shorter than it should be there…. It was a small thing, but an annoying one. Perfect for subtly making people understand that they weren't welcome.

"Mugwump Auger! What a surprise." Harry said greeted mockingly.

"Don't play games with me, Potter." The old man snapped. "You know why I'm here."

"To thank me for doing your job for you? There was no need to come over personally, a letter or a fruit basket would have sufficed."

" Thank you?! " Auger spluttered in outrage. "I'm here to bring you to trial for deliberately violating the Statute of Secrecy! Bad enough that you caused the breach in the first place, then you went on to give that interview on top of it."

Harry's face twisted into a scowl at the ridiculous accusation and he started stomping over to the old man.

Auger balked at the anger in his face and his two enforcers stepped forward to defend him. Harry sent them flying with barely a glance and grabbed the elderly Mugwump by the front of his robes.

" I caused the breach?" Harry sneered at the now terrified wizard's face. "You miserable worm, I was the one who warned you that Voldemort would eventually do something like this. Now you're trying to use me as a scapegoat just because I adapted faster than you?"

"W-we could have still fixed it." Auger stammered.

"You don't even have the courage to look at the truth." Harry scoffed and pushed him into the sofa. "Slave to a broken order, I'll give you the same advice I gave to Fudge. Retire and let someone younger and smarter take your place. And get the fuck off my island."

January 8th, 2019.

Harry stared out the window of his study, just watching the Sun slowly sink behind the horizon. His mind was on all the things that were happening in the world right now.

Fudge had 'resigned' and Amelia Bones had been voted in to replace him as Minister of Magic. There were worse candidates to be sure, but it showed a lack of adaptability. The head of the DMLE was often chosen for the top seat, especially in times of crisis. He wondered how long Bones would be able to keep things together, faced as she was with the untenable problem of being a miniature nation within a much larger and currently rather unfriendly one, to put it mildly.

The various magical governments in the rest of Europe and America seemed to be doing slightly better. They were still half-panicked at the sudden exposure, but they didn't have the giant problem of a wrecked capital casting a shadow over everything. It was anyone's guess how things would turn out there.

The ICW was still being useless or even obstructionist, its many representatives having become mired in arguments. Auger had notably not resigned, so at least part of those arguments were on what to do about Harry himself, but he didn't expect anything to come of it. They had too many other problems now to make an enemy of him and Narcissa was doing a good job of stonewalling them.

The rest of the mundane world had by now firmly jumped on the 'magic is real' bandwagon. Unsurprisingly to Harry, many mundane governments in the 'west' had come forward with wizards or witches that they had in their employ. There were always some people on the fringes of any society that were susceptible to offers of money and position like that. For the moment, the situation remained tense but stable. However, he expected that the mundane governments would soon begin to make insistent diplomatic overtures that would prevent the magical ones from doing what came naturally and attempting to pretend that nothing had changed.

Large parts of Asia and most of Africa were not handling this new reality anywhere near as strategically. India seemed to be doing mostly alright at the moment, but elsewhere the dumb monkeys were predictably screeching about 'devilry' and 'abominations in the eyes of God/Allah/whatever'. He expected the horror stories to come rolling in soon, most, if not all, of them probably starring people who had no magic in them at all.

Speaking of dumb monkeys, Harry had never realized how many foreigners there were in Europe these days. People from failed African states and backwards Middle Eastern ones, every variety of sub-optimally cultured human. Which idiot thought it was a good idea to open the gates for the barbarians? London even had a Muslim mayor for fuck's sake.

Learning this little tidbit had genuinely shocked him. It was true that he hadn't paid as much attention to the mundane world as he'd intended to years ago, especially after moving to Spellhaven, but missing a veritable invasion of dubiously civilized third-worlders into Europe was a bit much.

The only reason he knew about it at all was because he'd noticed an unusual amount of attention was being given to what the Muslims had to say in response to his interview.

Nothing intelligent as it happened – as if Muslims were capable of doing anything except stirring up trouble – but it was the fact that they weren't being dismissed out of hand that had disturbed him. Then he found out what had been going on in the mundane world for the past few years.

Harry was honestly having a bit of a dilemma on what his reaction should be. Those braying goat-fuckers were sure to be a problem in the long run, but their screeching about the evils of magic was liable to actually help advance his plans in the short term. Now he just had to restrain his first impulse, which was to introduce them to Khorne's religious practices….

There was a very good reason for why he'd gone to some length to avoid interacting with the locals in Egypt. Islam somehow managed to embody almost everything that he despised in a school of thought – cultish, entitled, dogmatic, self-important, restrictive, incurious, narrow-minded, inflexible and all covered by a nice steaming pile of bullshit – and he was sure that they found the concept of magic similarly abhorrent. There could be no conversation between them, only hatred, blood and death.

It had been much the same with Christianity back in the day, but the middle sibling of the Abrahamic religions was almost tolerable these days and counted far fewer zealots among its ranks, at least in the better parts of the world. And it had only taken a couple of centuries of progressive social development, two world wars and millions of corpses to happen. Islam never got the metaphorical snot beaten out of it like that, so it was still as juvenile, bratty and entitled as any spoiled child.

It was only a matter of time before the mouth-breathers made their move. The zealously religious were notoriously incapable of minding their own business and were as good as guaranteed to attempt snuffing out all magic in the name of their hollow god. They would not find him lacking in resolve when that day came. He was perfectly willing to return the favor and build a mountain out of their skulls as an abject lesson if that's what it took.

Still, that was a concern for the future and the wise thing to do right now would be to use the situation to his advantage, so he supposed that he could hold off the bloodletting for now…..

A knock on the door brought him out of his thoughts.

"Come in!" He called.

Penny poked her head through the door. "Hey, I hope I'm not interrupting anything?"

Harry grinned at her cautious attitude. She'd apparently walked in on him while he was busy with one woman or another one too many times.

"No, I was just thinking about all the people I'd like to kill." He answered honestly.

"It bothers me that I can't tell if you're serious or not." Penny huffed and stepped in. She was holding a small, carved wooden box

Harry grinned again. "What have you got there?"

"Not sure." She shrugged and put the box on his desk. "It was addressed to you, but there's no note or return address."

Harry wasn't sensing any magic from the box, malicious or otherwise, but he was still careful about opening it. Unnecessarily, as it turned out to not be a trap at all.

"Is this part of some weird inside joke that I'm not privy to?" Penny asked in bewilderment, staring at the contents.

"In a manner of speaking." Harry grumbled with a deep scowl.

Inside the box was a set of plastic vampire dentures clenched around a rubber ball painted to look like Earth.

January 9th, 2019. Vienna.

Harry didn't really want to be here, but the constant hints that Bjomolf wanted to talk to him had gnawed at him until his curiosity became too much. Not to mention his concern at what the ancient vampire might be plotting.

So he rang the goddamn doorbell and waited to be let in.

A familiar face opened the door, albeit one that he'd only been introduced to briefly at that long ago Christmas party that Adrastia had taken him to.

"Good morning." The female vampire – Zuzanna if memory served – said. "Please come in."

Harry supposed that half past midnight was technically morning.

"Thank you." He replied automatically and entered.

"Bjomolf wasn't sure if you'd come." Zuzanna commented as they started walking through the empty halls.

"He was rather creative with his invitations." Harry snorted. He also noted that her footsteps creepily made no sound at all.

She smiled. "He does like his little amusements."

"So what's your story?" Harry asked abruptly.

"That's rather blunt." She commented, seeming more amused than offended.

Harry shrugged. He was curious and there wasn't time to meander about the point, nor was he in the mood for it.

"I was a first-generation witch in Poland. He pulled me from the ruins of my family's house in Warsaw eighty years ago and offered me the change twenty years after that. I've never regretted it." Zuzanna revealed.

Harry hummed noncommittally and tried to fit this new detail into what he knew about Bjomolf. What kind of nefarious plan relied on rescuing young orphaned witches from the Nazi war machine? Loyal minions? Portable blood supply? A successor that could be easily molded? Infiltrators? Sleeper agents?

….Apparently there were quite a few nefarious plans that one could use orphaned children for, so that didn't really tell him anything. Also, was her actually indulging his curiosity part of some ploy as well? Bloody vampires.

Not long afterwards he began hearing music. Hard drum beats, fast guitar riffs and aggressive-sounding vocals whose words he couldn't quite make out.

"Bjomolf listens to metal?" Harry asked bemusedly, because that was unmistakably what the music was. He could feel the cliché vampire image in his head take another hit.

"Worse." Zuzanna said with exasperation. "He listens to Viking metal."

"How meta of him." Harry deadpanned. Ironically, that seemed exactly like something that the old Viking would do.

She said nothing in response, not that there was much time for it since they reached the door to Bjomolf's study that he remembered from last time.

"He's in there." Zuzanna said unnecessarily.

"Thank you." Harry nodded.

Her eyes flickered over to his neck and her expression became unmistakably hungry, fangs poking out from beneath her upper lip. Harry raised his power and prepared to defend himself, but she shook it off almost immediately, nodded back at him and walked away without a word.

Harry continued to watch her retreating back warily and wondered just how much a vampire's thirst preyed on their will, and how much self-control it took to keep it in check. Zuzanna was by far the youngest vampire he'd met so far, but hardly a fresh fledgeling yet her true nature had still slipped through the façade of humanity.

Only once Zuzanna had turned a corner did he allow the nearly complete Flame Cloak spell to fizzle out into nothing. He had learned his lesson about dropping his guard around vampires.

With no reason left to delay, he opened the door to Bjomolf's study, and was immediately blasted with sound.

Fortunately, the vampire turned the cacophony of noise off in less than a second, but it still left Harry wondering how he could focus on the paperwork in front of him while listening to that. Didn't vampires have enhanced senses?

"Hello again, Harry." Bjomolf greeted and gestured to the chair in front of his desk. Not the one in front of his desk, but to another pair where they could sit as equals. "Please, have a seat."

"That sophisticated air you're trying to put up would have worked better with classical music." Harry said bitingly as he took the offered seat.

"I was around when classical music was technically pop music. That tends to take any sense of prestige out of it." Bjomolf said wryly, moving from his desk to sit across from him. He had a Jenga box in his hands.

"I suppose I can see your point." Harry nodded thoughtfully. "And what is it with you and Jenga?"

Bjomolf continued to set up the game on the coffee table between them as he answered. "I find it to be a rather good metaphor."

"For what?"

"Everything."

One of Harry's eyebrows went up skeptically.

"So, you're no doubt wondering why I wanted to talk to you again." Bjomolf changed the subject.

"There's a lot of things I'm wondering about."

"Such as?"

"Why did you send that mercenary to help Voldemort?" Harry got right to the point.

"Oh, I did more than just that." Bjomolf said easily. "Much of his success in recruiting followers around Europe was due to my meddling."

Harry was briefly stunned by the brazen admission, but anger quickly replaced it.

" Why ?" He growled. The years since the mad fucker's rebirth had largely been spent destroying his support base. To find out that this vampire had been making things more difficult than they should have been…..

"The mercenary was mostly to get your attention and contrive this very meeting. I knew you would recognize him and suspect me of hiring him." Bjomolf replied, unpertured by his anger. "The other aid I gave Riddle was solely to make his later failure more acute. The higher the rise, the greater the fall and all that. His psychological profile has always suggested that he doesn't handle failure well and he was bound to do something spectacular if sufficiently provoked."

"The attack on London." Harry said in stunned realization. Never once had he thought that Bjomolf might actually desire that outcome.

"Yes, although I must admit that I didn't expect anything quite that spectacular. Still, it turned out well, don't you think?"

Harry took a deep breath, clamped down on his emotions and regarded the gently smiling vampire coolly. Getting upset over the difficulties it had caused him and would continue to cause him personally was easy, but it wouldn't help him figure out Bjomolf's motivations.

So, how did this insanity benefit the vampires? It might create certain opportunities in the short term, but breaking the Statute of Secrecy in such a way that any effort to get the magical and mundane to coexist would be crippled from the get go was sure to hurt them in the long run. For the life of him, he just couldn't see the angle.

"Why?" He finally asked. "This seems short-sighted at best and completely stupid at worst. The long term repercussions might very well end up being even worse for you than they could be for us, especially if I told anyone about this."

"Except of course, if there is no long term." Bjomolf countered with a small grin.

That caught Harry by surprise again. "What? How can there be no long term? Are you expecting the world to end or something?"

"Or something." Bjomolf smirked. "I can explain in detail if you wish, but it will involve listening to me monologue a bit. I understand you're a monologuer yourself, so you probably prefer listening to your own voice."

Harry was annoyed by the subtle hint that the vampire was familiar with his personality traits. "Just get on with it."

"Do you remember our first conversation?" Bjomolf asked as he finished constructing the Jenga tower.

"Of course I do."

"What I told you then about our purpose was and still is true. Survival remains our goal always."

"And this goal is served by deliberately amping up tensions between us and the mundanes?" Harry asked sarcastically.

"It does seem counter-intuitive, doesn't it?" The vampire quipped. "Let's say that Riddle had never been born and magic was revealed in optimal circumstances. What do you think would have happened? Your move by the way."

Harry rolled his eyes and moved one of the blocks. "I'm guessing that we would still have had a fight on our hands if we wanted to stay an independent people, but it would have been much easier with a good or at least neutral first impression."

Bjomolf went quiet for a while and focused on extracting a particularly tricky block.

"Jenga is a lot like life." He finally said once he had it out. "If you want to add something to the top, you first have to take something from the bottom, to where it would eventually return. For thousands of years, mankind's ability to gather and use resources was limited to what men could do with their own two hands, but just over two hundred years ago, that began changing. Suddenly, the limitation shifted to the power of clever and increasingly more elaborate machines. Man built a great civilization through his ingenuity, but in his drive to create forgot that he couldn't just keep taking forever without giving anything back."

Harry considered that and could find no fault in the logic. He moved another block.

"Magi are different. Your ability to take and create is only limited not by muscle, but by your knowledge, will and creativity, yet it still cannot exceed you." Bjomolf continued, turning to look at Harry meaningfully.

"So?"

"Who rules the world, Harry?" The vampire asked.

Harry blinked at the non-sequitur and found himself almost sympathizing with Dora's irritation when he did the same thing.

"Nobody, unless you're telling me that the Illuminati are real." He snarked, privately worried that the vampire would indeed tell him that.

"No, the Illuminati aren't real." Bjomolf chuckled. "And you are quite right, nobody rules the world. Not a person or group of people at least, however much some might fancy that they do."

"That makes it sound like some thing does rule the world."

"It does. The system of resource exchange that connects the global economy is the true ruler of the world. And this beast with no soul, who is too old, too strong, too deeply ingrained in the very foundations of modern civilization to be stopped or changed, who is always hungry for more wealth and more power, will never allow something with as much potential for profit as magic to be kept away from it. Whatever plan you've hatched in response to the situation will fail, because this is not a person that can be appeased, negotiated with, threatened or killed."

Harry scowled and glared at the Jenga puzzle in thought. If Bjomolf's words were taken at face value then the problem was indeed much worse than he had imagined. Politicians were still just people in the end and people could be handled, but if the very structure of society did not allow for a population of magic users to be left to their own devices, then merely uniting all wizards and witches under one banner wouldn't be nearly enough.

That was if he could take it at face value. The vampire's words rang with truth, so he at least believed what he was saying, but was he right? He was finding it impossible to lightly dismiss something said by a person more than a millennium old.

"It gets worse." Bjomolf said idly, keeping his attention on the now somewhat wobbly Jenga tower.

"Do tell." Harry drolled.

"What is the first and last directive that both living beings and organizations share?" The vampire asked instead.

Harry didn't need long to figure that one out with how general the question was.

"To sustain themselves." He said with certainty.

"Exactly." Bjomolf nodded approvingly. "Now, the problem of mankind's soulless beast is that it was not created deliberately and so no thought was spared for its sustainability. It devours resources as if they were unlimited, without regard for the damage caused in the process. It rewards people who help it do so and punishes any who try to stop it. It grows larger and larger every year, while the resources to sustain it dwindle ever faster and the harm continues to accumulate. You could liken it to Tolkien's Ungoliant, actually. And just like the fictional spider, it will eventually devour itself when everything else has been consumed."

Before Harry could respond to that, the ancient vampire gripped a critical support block and looked at him with a sly grin. "Quick, save the tower!" He cried and swiped the block with supernatural speed.

Harry wasn't sure he was playing at, but reacted all the same, grabbing hold of the falling pile of wooden blocks with his will and freezing it in place.

"Well done, Harry." Bjomolf praised. "Now hold it just like that."

Harry gave the vampire a look that demanded an explanation, but he merely stood up and walked to an elegant chest of drawers. From it he pulled…..another three boxes of Jenga?

Harry was starting to think that Bjomolf had a problem.

The vampire paid no heed to his looks and just opened up the boxes.

"Keep it steady now." He said and began stacking more blocks on top of the tower kept static in mid-collapse by his magic.

More and more blocks were piled on, at first still with something approaching stable construction but soon branching out in ways that had no hope of staying upright without magical aid.

Harry understood now what Bjomolf was saying. The original Jenga tower represented the interconnected global economic system, starting off strong and stable but deteriorating over the years as the lack of forethought that had spawned it did its work. As it neared collapse it would seek new sources of wealth, which magic could provide. But using magic to shore up such a greedy and voracious system would result in uncontrolled and downright cancerous growth as it demanded more and more…..

Harry stopped supporting the now horribly ungainly tower and the blocks fell to the ground with a loud clatter.

…until even magic could no longer support it, at which point it would collapse and take all of its adherents with it.

"You see?" Bjomolf asked with a smirk. "Jenga is a great metaphor."

"You'd have looked awfully silly if I was too slow or refused to play along." Harry commented.

"Sometimes you have to take that risk." The vampire said sagely.

"So, is this little demonstration somehow supposed to make me reconsider incinerating you for aiding my enemies?"

"It was nothing personal, we just needed someone to break the Statute of Secrecy as badly as possible and Riddle was perfect for it." Bjomolf shrugged. "It was supposed to have happened years ago, but your mother derailed that plan with her cleverness."

"Godric's Hollow." Harry realized.

"Yes, you were supposed to die that day." The vampire nodded. "Riddle was on the cusp of victory. It wouldn't have been long into his reign before his followers began attacking the mundanes even more brazenly. The ICW would have been forced to intervene despite its reluctance. In the ensuing conflict, a breach in the Statute could have easily been manufactured even if it didn't happen on its own. As the face of the British magical community, Riddle would have done irreparable harm to the image of wizards and witches in the wider world."

"But how would this help you?" Harry asked.

"There is no scenario in which the magical and mundane coexist peacefully, there are simply too few magi in the world to prevent themselves from being absorbed and the mundanes are either too fearful, too greedy or too fanatically hateful of magic to leave well enough alone. So it is better to make things bad early, that way wizards and witches will be more inclined to accept safe haven in secret places under vampire protection before it is too late for them. We have to protect our food supply, I'm sure you understand."

Ah, so that's the way it was. Or at least, that was partly how it was. Bjomolf was speaking only truth, but how much of it?

"I won't let you reduce us like this." Harry glowered. He may not have much respect for the average witch or wizard, but he wouldn't let this happen. Plus, he had mellowed out a bit since his teenage years and could admit that the world needed average people as well.

"We don't have to be enemies, Harry." Bjomolf said without concern. "Spellhaven and any other lands you take for yourself in the future would be considered off limits."

Harry continued to glare suspiciously, not trusting the vampire even if he could hear the truth of his words. There was more to this. There was always more to it.

Alright, think. What would happen with Spellhaven if Bjomolf's plans were to go ahead? The answer was surprisingly easy to reach.

"And you'd happily use me to draw attention away from yourself." He growled.

"You chose this course yourself, nobody forced you into it." Bjomolf pointed out calmly. "Indeed, your decision to create Spellhaven came as quite a surprise. All signs were pointing to you becoming the grey eminence of Magical Britain before you did so, but it is true that we were not displeased. A bit of advice for the future, Harry. When making plans, always leave them malleable enough so that they can absorb unexpected surprises without crumbling, even if it comes at the expense of possible gain. Details are all well and good, but adaptability will serve you better in the long run."

"Why are you so damn convinced that your way is the best way in the first place?" Harry asked sourly, not liking the vampire's unassailable logic.

"It is the way of nations to rise and fall. Every great state tends to think of itself as eternal while it is strong. The Egyptians did, the Greeks did, The Romans, Persians, Chinese and many others all did. Yet they all fell eventually. This era is unique in its interconnectedness. No nation truly stands alone anymore, and so none of them will fall alone. When Rome began falling it scrabbled to stay together for decades, like a wounded animal desperately clinging to life. It took centuries for Europe to regain even a semblance of Rome's glory afterwards. Mankind dared reach for the stars in this age, but its grasp falls short and the return to the earth may very well leave it broken beyond hope of recovery. All we vampires are doing is planning to preserve what little we can. Will you not work with us, so that we may preserve a little bit more?" When Bjomolf was finished, he held out his hand.

Harry glared at it suspiciously. "I make it a point to never get into bed with people trickier than me." He just didn't believe that was the only thing that the vampires were angling for and he wasn't going to let himself get entangled in some decades-long plot whose effects wouldn't become obvious until it was too late.

Bjomolf retracted his hand and shrugged, apparently not at all offended. "Fair enough."

"I'm still considering if incinerating you and every other vampire on the planet wouldn't be the best course of action." Harry continued.

"You're not going to do that, Harry." Bjomolf assured him.

"You think I can't?" He raised an eyebrow.

"Oh no, I'm sure you could theoretically do it. Eventually. The Sun is too crippling a weakness for us, which is why we never fight directly if we can avoid it." The vampire waved off. "No, you're not going to do it because the cost would be too great."

"What cost would that be?" Harry asked, unimpressed.

"Let me show you." Bjomolf stood up and gesture for him to follow.

Harry shrugged to himself and stood up as well, following the vampire towards a door off to the side that he'd assumed was a closet or something.

The door was opened and he froze in shock. There was only one thing in the small-ish room and its soul spoke of a great and terrible purpose, so much so that he was surprised he hadn't been able to 'hear' it from across the street, never mind from the study. He didn't even need to see the black and yellow symbol painted on its side to know what it was.

"You have a nuke in your closet." He stated blandly, staring at the vampire with no idea how to feel.

"I usually keep it somewhere else, but I thought you might need to see it." Bjomolf said casually.

"You have a nuke in your closet ." Harry repeated with feeling.

"Mhm. The Soviets really didn't keep as close a watch on them as they should have in the early days. Neither did the Americans for that matter."

"You have more of them?" Harry asked, aghast. The vampire's words did at least explain the somewhat aged look of the device, not that it was any less dangerous for being early Cold War era.

"Of course, they are a vital component of Contigency Plan Ragnarök." Bjomolf replied almost cheerfully. "You see, Harry, in the event that all the preferable plans go awry somehow, it pays to have the ability to set off the apocalypse on your own terms. A wizard such as yourself deciding that all vampires need to die certainly falls into that category."

Harry scowled so deeply that Fleur would have teased him about how it would permanently warp his skull if he kept it up. "Fine, I guess I won't be incinerating you." He said snippily.

"I knew you would see it my way." Bjomolf said and closed the door.

While Harry watched, the vampire went behind his desk and pulled out a thick binder that he could tell was also enchanted to hold even more stuff.

"Take this." Bjomolf said, handing it to him. "Look it over. You might change your mind about working with us once you do, but no hard feelings if you don't. We can just agree to stay out of each other's way if you want to go at it on your own."

Harry took the binder without saying anything. There wasn't much to say.

The ancient vampire didn't seem bothered by his silence and pulled a Dane axe of all things from under his desk.

"Catch." He said and lightly tossed it in his direction.

Harry caught it by the long, elaborately carved haft. The carvings had a distinctly Norse theme and he could sense magic running through them. The bearded head was also exquisitely made and carved with magic runes. It was a magnificent work of weaponcraft and enchanting.

"That's my favorite axe." Bjomolf said fondly. "Take it as a gift and a peace offering. We are going to be dealing with each other for a long time, Harry, and it would be for the best if we could be cordial about it."

Harry wanted to lodge the axe in the vampire's skull and put an end to it all. The thought of dealing with this crafty fucker for decades or even centuries was not at all appealing.

But he couldn't. It was easy to get tunnel vision when a persistent problem keeps popping up in your life, such as a pesky Dark Lord trying to kill you, but now he could see that the conflict between him and Voldemort had always been part of a larger scenario. A scenario that he had never perceived because its borders were so vast.

But Bjomolf had another thing coming if he thought that Harry Fucking Potter(and boy did he wish that he had a more imposing name to think that with) would be staying inside someone's else's scenario. The ancient vampire may have won this round before it even began, but the game was far from over. It was just another challenge to be overcome and he would rise above it.

It wasn't as late in Spellhaven as it was in Austria and even if it were, the girls would have waited for him to come back, so Harry wasn't surprised to find them playing board games.

As soon as he came through the door, they jumped to their feet and looked him over as if they expected him to come back half dead. Whatever their original query was going to be, it got stalled when they saw what he had in his hands.

"What's with the axe?" Dora blurted out.

"Bjomolf's idea of a gift." Harry groused, although privately he rather liked it. There was just something satisfying about having a big axe. Could be a guy thing. Plus, it was magical.

"We want to see what happened." Fleur stated and gestured towards the pensieve they had already prepared.

Harry had no reason to hide anything from them, so he put his memory in the bowl without protest.

The girls weren't any more pleased with the old vampire's plots than him.

"What are we going to do?" Dora asked once they got out, clearly at a loss. The heavily implied threat of a nuclear apocalypse if things started going ill for the vampires had shaken her rather more than it had Harry.

"First, we're going to look through this." Harry said, holding up the thick binder that Bjomolf had given him. "Then we'll talk further."

Not even Fleur was in the mood to go to bed or even playfully complain about the sex they were missing out on, so they settled in to read.

It didn't take them long to see that the binder was basically a Compendium of All the World's Problems™, their origins, interactions with each other and probable end points.

Or rather, end point , as everything seemed to indicate that the catastrophic collapse of modern civilization and subsequent extinction of the human race was inevitable.

It was all very dramatic, but the arguments, evidence, extrapolation and conclusions were compelling. The Compendium was equivalent in size to a massive tome and spanned topics ranging from politics, ecology, economy, conflict hotspots, history, cultural and social shifts, demographics and much more. It was backed up by a collection of countless studies done by hundreds of independent scientists over the past two centuries that the vampires had collated together. All of it was interspersed by observations on human behavior patterns done by those same vampires going back nearly two thousand years, often referencing relatively recent psychological studies or animal experiments that corroborated those observations.

If he had to summarize it in one sentence, Harry would say that 'as soon as humans had a good thing going, they found a way to ruin it' fit the bill. Always a pessimist, he found himself agreeing with much of what he read.

The real problem with this was that now that magic had been exposed, the mundanes would drag the world's magical communities into the abyss with them as they scrambled to survive.

In light of this, the plans of the vampires made perfect sense. They wanted to survive and their food supply was about to kill itself, so what else was there to do except save as many as they could and then keep them penned up to prevent it from happening again?

Oddly enough, that had the effect of defusing most of his resentment towards Bjomolf, leaving only moderate annoyance. A man had to do what a man had to do. He had himself been contemplating what lengths he'd have to go to in the future to protect and preserve the world's magic just minutes before Penny had brought him the vampire's 'invitation' after all.

That didn't mean that he was just going to go along with it though, it just meant that even if their respective visions for the future made them enemies, there would be no hard feelings about it. It would be a civilized apocalypse.

Of course, it wouldn't do to be too hasty. He didn't think that the Compendium of All the World's Problems™ was an elaborate trick, but there was always the chance that it was simply wrong, so a certain amount of wait and see would be required. And second opinions. Consulting various non-magical specialists and then obliviating them should do it.

According to what was written here, the collapse had already begun decades ago, but the signs were still ignorable when viewed in isolation, although rapidly becoming less so. Within thirty years at the absolute maximum it would be obvious with even the most cursory look at the world around them and by the end of the century at the latest, humanity was projected to be in its final death throes, provided that nobody started a nuclear war over some resource or other first, which was considered to be a highly likely scenario.

That was…..not a lot of time. It sounded like a lot of time, but it really wasn't. He was already playing catch-up with plans and events that had been in motion since long before he was born.

But was doing that even smart? There was little hope that he could compete against Bjomolf and his ilk in their arena of choice. His primary skills lay in in unraveling the secrets of magic and necessity had forced him to become a fighter, but he was barely a novice at this cloak and dagger shit. It would be much better to change the game than to try playing one he wasn't good at.

Good thing he was a wizard. Changing the rules was practically his job description. Multi-classing was for chumps anyway.

"This is pretty grim reading." Luna said about an hour before dawn, yawning hugely and then blinking at them all. "We should get a grim."

"We don't need a grim." Harry replied absently, rubbing at his eyes tiredly. It had been a long day and night. "We need a nap."

"Don't forget that Adrastia will be showing up soon." Fleur reminded him.

Harry grunted in acknowledgement. He was picking up Laura tomorrow for their second interview, although it might be more akin to a documentary, and Adrastia was coming to give him a few more tips on how to handle it and her, as well as to be nearby in case he needed on-the-fly advice that couldn't be conveyed over the mirrors. His thoughts were elsewhere, but Adrastia might be a good sounding board for some of his ideas as well.

"What are you thinking?" Dora asked slightly suspiciously. That did make him smile. She'd developed quite a good nose for sniffing out when he was planning something a bit unorthodox.

"I'm thinking of opening a love hotel on Spellhaven."

Ravenhead.

"Really, Harry? A secret wizard's tower hidden in the frozen north?" Adrastia's voice held that nearly omnipresent amused lilt of hers. "You have such outrageous hobbies."

"I have it on good authority that eccentricities are the mark of a powerful wizard, so I endeavored to acquire some as quickly as possible." Harry replied smoothly.

The serial killer on his arm giggled girlishly, as if they were on a date and he'd said something that was actually funny. They certainly looked like they were on a date, what with Adrastia dressed to the nines as usual and hanging off his arm as if they were on a stroll through the nicer parts of a big city.

Harry didn't protest or put an end to the charade, the pointless small talk and the flirting, because he knew that she was doing it to show him the manipulative tricks she used.

That ended when they arrived at the massive, rune-carved stone doors of the Hyperbolic Time Chamber.

"And what is this?" Adrastia asked with interest, inspecting the runes with a frown that clearly said she couldn't make heads or tails of the arrays.

"My other big secret." Harry said, having no compunction about revealing it to her. The geas prevented her from betraying him even against her will.

"Oh, Harry." She said breathily and gave him a scorching look of want that he was fairly sure was at least partially fake. A very convincing fake though. "You know what secrets do to me."

"You'll love this one then." He snorted and began the process of opening the, for lack of a better phrase, temporal airlock.

Adrastia continued to watch with silent curiosity until the doors closed behind them and they entered the Chamber proper.

"Is this your bachelor pad?" She asked innocently, effortlessly slipping into the role of a new girlfriend seeing her boyfriend's living space for the first time.

"I suppose you could call it that." Harry admitted. It did look like a bit of a bachelor pad, being a spacious apartment/workshop that had clearly never felt a woman's touch.

"It's…nice." Adrastia said hesitantly, as if afraid to express her opinion.

Harry had to marvel at her performance. Even her body language had shifted. Usually she walked and talked with the self-assured confidence of a woman that knew she was too good for whoever she was with, now she was a dead ringer for an insecure girl that didn't want to offend. Even the exquisite dress she was wearing seemed somehow ill-fitting all of a sudden, as if it was being worn by a teenager trying to look older.

"A bit closed in though." She continued, still in that hesitant, please-don't-be-mad-at-me tone. "Do you have something against windows?"

"Windows would mess up the temporal dilation field affecting this place." He said casually, smirking when she froze in place, her act disrupted.

"Temporal dilation field?" She repeated faintly.

"Mhm, a hundred days in here is one day outside." Harry continued in the same casual tone.

"You were right." Adrastia chuckled, returning to her usual sultry persona. "I do love it. I hadn't thought you would have any more such delicious secrets after the Philosopher's Stone, but you've surprised me yet again."

"I aim to please." He drolled.

"Hmm, I thought that was my job?" She riposted teasingly and sashayed towards the bed, throwing a look of invitation over her shoulder once she was halfway there. "Help me with my dress?"

Harry moved forward and pressed himself up against her back, beginning to nibble on her neck in that one spot he knew she liked. However much a deceiver she was, she still had buttons that could be pushed.

After about a minute of heavy petting over their clothes, her lusty moans were interrupted by a hitch in her breathing as his finger slid upwards across her thigh, brushed past her labia and pressed against the tight ring of her anus over her thong.

Harry could almost smell her apprehension with the way it was radiating through her aura. She wouldn't protest if he pushed – she wasn't in a position to protest anything – but she'd rather he stay away from there.

His finger moved on and she relaxed, seamlessly returning to her earlier display of lust, although it was not as genuine. The silent promise that he would one day have her like that as well continued to linger between them.

Harry grinned as he bit down on the soft skin of her neck a little harder. Reminding her that he owned her with little things like that was way more fun than he'd expected it to be. She had no idea when he would insist instead of backing off and it made her nervous.

As much as he wanted to fuck that delicious arse of hers, Harry was also determined to tame this pet monster of his properly. That meant being patient and slowly eroding her resistance instead of forcing her. Plus, this game was far too much fun to ruin by being too forceful.

A couple of hours later….

Adrastia purred contently as she cuddled into Harry's side. Living in bondage was made markedly less unpleasant by his most excellent performance in bed. He was one of only three men she'd ever had that could rightfully be proud of their prowess and the best of the lot by a considerable margin.

"Hey now, don't be falling asleep on me." Harry's voice intruded on her enjoyment, amusement coloring his tone. "I didn't bring you here just for fun."

"Will you not allow me even a moment's rest after the beastly violation I just endured?" Adrastia sighed mournfully.

"You've got two choices right now," He replied, sounding even more amused. "either we get up and get to work, or we stay like this long enough for the instrument of beastly violation to get its third wind and demand another go."

"What a cruel master I am bound to." She bemoaned. "Is this to be my life now? To be used as a means to sate your dark lusts, with my only reprieve being times of service when I am used to advance your ambitions?"

"You should have gone into theater." Harry snorted, clearly unmoved by her performance. "Now get up, you'll definitely want to see this."

"Very well." She sighed and got up, directing one last regretful glance at the spot she'd just left. It really had been comfortable there and post-coital cuddling was by far the simplest way of endearing oneself to a man. All a woman had to do was lay there and smell nice and the rest would happen naturally.

Instead of getting dressed, she stole Harry's shirt. It was rather comfortable, reaching down to her thighs and smelling of him. More importantly, it made said wizard look at her with an admiring gleam in his eye.

Adrastia didn't bother to suppress the smile that crept on her face. Men were such simple creatures.

She could see that the 'instrument of beastly violation' was already recovered and quirked a questioning eyebrow at Harry, blatantly asking if he wanted another go.

"Later." He said and pulled on his underwear. "Come on."

The thing that he wanted to show her turned out to be a memory, as he led her to a Pensieve.

"Dive right in." He said, gesturing to the memories swirling within the runic bowl that he'd just deposited.

Now feeling very curious indeed, Adrastia did just that.

"I am surprised…..and yet somehow not very surprised." She said mostly to herself once she came out of the memory, feeling rather amused. It was such a Bjomolf thing to do after all.

"I felt the same way after I had a chance to think it over." Harry nodded.

"Well, at least this further vindicates my decision to place myself in your care." Adrastia smirked.

"Why's that?"

"If this is to be believed then I would have been in quite the spot of bother once Bjomolf's plans came to fruition. My skillset wouldn't have been of much use in a post-apocalyptic world, but now I will have you to protect me." She replied, briefly adopting an adorably bashful persona and looking at him from under her eyelashes. It wasn't completely true, since she probably would have been a vampire by then if Harry hadn't presented her with an alternative, but there was no need to ruin a story with details. The geas didn't threaten her with punishment for the minor dishonesty since she was just playing.

"Right." Was his dry response. "Anyway, I want you to take a look at this and then I need to talk to you about some things."

Adrastia took the binder that she had seen Bjomolf give to Harry within the memory, sat in a comfy armchair and opened it with a sense of curiosity.

The nature of it became clear quickly and she easily grasped why Harry wanted her to look it over. For that reason, she skipped over the majority of it and sought out those parts that her expertise would be most useful in assessing, namely the sociological, political, cultural and demographic sections.

It was rather fascinating work actually, detailing millenia of human cultural and social development and the way politics and demographics changed to suit it. She had read such things before, but never so detailed and broad in scope and never with first-hand accounts weaved in.

"So, what's your initial impression?" Harry's question interrupted her reading, more than an hour later.

"My initial impression is that I would like to talk to whoever wrote this." Adrastia said thoughtfully. "They have great insight into the human condition."

"You agree with it then?" He asked with a sigh.

"Agree with it?" Adrastia echoed with amusement. "My dear, you have clearly not been spending much time in non-magical society lately. It doesn't take a genius to see that the social structure of the world's most advanced nations has become brittle and unbalanced. A hundred years ago, I would have had to be far more careful when I hunted there than I have to be now. Disregarding the unrelated issues my skin color would have caused, the community would have closed ranks and ostracized me if I did even a fraction of the things that I am able to easily get away with now.

Harry's face gained a distinctly sour expression.

Adrastia could guess at what his problem was. Sirius Black had been a man filled with pride for his godson and guilt for not being there for him. Getting him to talk had barely required any trickery on her part, so she knew of Harry's poor track record with the traditional concept of family.

"I understand how you feel," She said honestly, having her own poor track record. "but some form of marriage and the basic family unit is the foundation upon which a strong society is built. Monogamous or polygamous, it is an ancient covenant between men and women that ensured cooperation in the face of a harsh and unforgiving world, gave everyone a purpose in society and integrated children into the system. Men would protect, provide and build, while women would nurture and give the men something to fight for and come home to. As long as this practice is secure, trust is shared and the wider community holds firmly together."

"The clan-form is strong, it shapes body and thought. In the clan-form is strength and purpose." Harry muttered, almost too low to hear.

"What?" She asked with a frown.

"Nevermind, what you said just reminded me of something." He waved off.

"Right…." She continued to frown, but let it go. It wasn't important. "If you take a look at France, Germany, Britain, the United States or any other advanced nation, you will see that the practice is not secure. Too much social upheaval in too little time, the concept of marriage has not had time to adapt and it shows. What was once a lifelong commitment and the final rite of passage into adulthood has become a risky gamble with a high chance of failure that fewer and fewer people are choosing to take every year."

"Or maybe people are just catching on to how ridiculous the institution is." Harry grumbled.

Adrastia pretended she didn't hear him and simply continued. "Feminism, for all its originally noble sentiment on the individual level, has made a disastrous mistake on the societal one by giving women all the privileges that were once enjoyed only by men while ignoring the ones we already had as a protected class, which are assured as a matter of inescapable biological imperative. The combination permits and even encourages ruinous levels of narcissistic selfishness in women, which has the knock on effect of doing the same to men since the more reserved sexual strategies of the past are no longer optimal and this echoes outward through the whole society. While it has certainly made my brand of fun almost disappointingly easy, it is also causing the social fabric to crumble as children grow up in a world without direction or boundaries, leaving them disconnected from the civilization their forefathers built and with no incentive to fight for it once they become adults. The covenant is broken, the trust is gone and the wider community is in chaos."

"When oath-bonds are weak, there is pain, and shame, and loss, and Darkness, and great fear." He muttered again.

"Seriously, what are you muttering about?" Adrastia asked in confusion.

"Sorry, you just keep reminding me of something I read." He answered with a strange little smile pulling at his lips. "In any case, this isn't what I wanted to talk to you about.

Adrastia decided not to press her curiosity in favor of ignoring his attempt to wiggle out of a topic he found uncomfortable. This was important and her fortunes were inextricably bound to his now, so she was going to make sure he prospered as much as possible.

"You should marry your women." She said firmly. "Magical society has always worked slightly differently because witches were usually strong enough to take care of themselves and could afford more independence, but don't think for a second that marriage serves no purpose. It provides structure and stability, which is going to be especially important now that the magical and mundane worlds will begin bleeding into each other. I didn't mention it earlier because I didn't consider it urgent, but the situation is more precarious than I realized. Your realm must stand on solid ground if you want it to weather the storm and your personal power will only extend so far. Marry your women and set an example for those who look to you for guidance. Defending a castle against outside threats won't do you any good if the foundation is poorly laid."

"Next thing I know you'll be telling me to give up my mistresses in order to uphold 'proper family values'." Harry groused sarcastically.

"That would serve no purpose with all the veela around." Adrastia sniffed derisively.

"What do you mean?" He asked, nonplussed.

She gave him an exasperated look. "Harry, the veela are a figurative third wheel that you are going to need to deal with. Since I rather doubt you will be willing to exterminate them, you must find a way to incorporate them into the social order you are creating. If you allow them to run wild, they will forever be a destabilizing element. That was another thing I didn't think was quite so urgent."

"But what am I supposed to do with them?" Harry frowned. "Monogamy stifles them and I don't think they'll willingly go back to that now that I've let them do as they please for so long. I can't let them poach all the men and you're telling me that simply letting them sleep around isn't good either."

"When pondering how to control people, consider what they want." Adrastia advised.

"Sex and babies." He said thoughtfully.

"Well then, find a way to keep their access to sex and babies conditional on them behaving themselves."

"I can't control their access to sex with the constant orgies going on in their commune, but babies….they need either sufficiently strong wizards or sufficiently strong witches with Polyjuice for those. Or Dora."

Adrastia hummed approvingly. "Now we're getting somewhere. So, how will you control their access to magi of sufficient strength?"

"I suppose I could do it myself." Harry admitted reluctantly. "Fleur has already been dropping hints that they'd appreciate it if I was willing to impregnate a few every once in a while."

"Oh, you will almost definitely have to do something like that." Adrastia chuckled. "Setting more examples and all that, but it won't be enough. You need to make it a cultural thing, something that ties veela and humans together into a single community and benefits both, but doesn't intrude unduly on human social dynamics."

"Sure thing, I'll just pimp out the veela as prizes for the most powerful wizards on Spellhaven." He said sarcastically.

"No, you have it backwards." She deliberately ignored his sarcasm. "It has to be a reward for the veela, not the ones sleeping with them. Perhaps some kind of annual or biannual event?"

Adrastia was actually starting to enjoy this. Charting the course of a fledgling society was proving to be an unexpectedly intriguing project. Plus, Harry's expressions were simply too amusing.

"I already miss dealing with Voldemort." Said wizard groaned, burying his face in his hands.

"That is because you are, despite your intelligence, still an unsophisticated savage, my master." Adrastia mocked, finding it hilarious that she could insult him and acknowledge his ownership of her in the same breath. For all their strength, the chains she wore were remarkably long and light. "But not to worry, I will be more than happy to help you in any way you need."

Harry took his hands away from his face and looked at her with eyes that darkened with lust.

Adrastia smiled invitingly and re-crossed her legs, causing the shirt she was wearing, his shirt, to ride up her thighs.

Half an hour of what could only be called 'vigorous rutting' later, she found herself straddling him, a fresh deposit of warm seed slowly oozing down his softening manhood.

"Let's put this talk about veela on hold for now." Harry spoke as if they hadn't taken a break from their earlier conversation. "We'd have to get Aurélie and Fleur and maybe a few others in on the conversation anyway."

"Very well." Adrastia nodded with an amused smile. "What was it you wanted to talk about then?"

"What kind of consequences do you foresee if I opened up a resort on Spellhaven designed so that young non-magical couples could be assured of magical offspring?" Harry asked bluntly.

"What an interesting question." Adrastia hummed and absently kneaded his pectorals while she considered her response. "I assume this is meant to increase the rate at which you accumulate power?"

"Yeah, I've got a feeling that I don't have time to take it slow." He sighed.

"Well for one thing, you might as well be handing out invitations to every spy agency in the world."

"I figured as much." Harry nodded, much to her approval. It would be quite dense of him to not expect at least that. "Legilimency and Obliviation would take care of that problem and I'd be getting a steady stream of confidential information out of it."

"Aside from spying on you, infiltrators from less ethically-burdened organizations would use the opportunity to acquire magical children."

Harry nodded again. "I thought of that too, but since I'd be screening everyone with Legilimency they could easily be stopped from conceiving. But the real safeguard would be a magical contract that acknowledges any magical children born because of this as citizens of Spellhaven and requires that the mother go there to give birth."

"And when someone eventually attempts to use those children for some nefarious purpose, you would have legal authority to act as their protector and thus increase your reputation. How clever of you." Adrastia purred admiringly, leaning down to give him a steamy kiss. The feeling of his manhood getting hard again made her smile.

"I'd also stipulate the creation of blood phylacteries so that I could track those children anywhere if it became necessary." He admitted, his hands now gripping her thighs. "They'd be presented to them when they came of age."

"You've clearly put some thought into this already, but doing this would come with some downsides as well. The purebloods would hate it for example."

"That's a downside?" Harry asked archly.

"Not in and of itself." She replied amusedly. "But they would do their best to make things more difficult for you on the magical side of things. Speaking of, the magical governments themselves likely wouldn't be terribly pleased either, but there really isn't much they could do about it directly."

"They're going to have their hands full dealing with their mundane counterparts anyway." He said with a shake of his head.

"True." Adrastia nodded in agreement. "You will have to set up more infrastructure if you decide to do this however. Having all those children as citizens of Spellhaven will also make you responsible for their education and whatnot. While you could outsource it to other magical schools like you've been doing so far, I would not recommend it."

"It's past time that I set up some kind of education system anyway." Harry said agreeably. "I'll talk to Narcissa about it once we get out of here." He paused and looked at her with a raised eyebrow. "Any suggestions?"

"I might have a few." Adrastia grinned and began gyrating her hips. "But let's take care of this other hard problem of yours first. You can't be expected to focus on weighty matters of state with all this tension keeping you as stiff as an iron rod after all."

They spent a couple of days in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber discussing things and making rough plans for the future before leaving. Harry called a meeting with his girls as soon as they did so.

"What's up?" Dora asked without preamble and with a hint of suspicion, no doubt wondering what idea Adrastia had planted in his head.

"We're getting married." Harry declared.

A deafening silence ensued for several long seconds.

"What?"

"Are you drunk?"

"When?"

Leave it to Luna to remain unruffled.

"No, I am not drunk." Harry said, giving the metamorphmagus a pointed look. "Adrastia and I were talking about things, one of them being the topic of marriage. She argued, irritatingly well actually, that encouraging rampant promiscuity with our example might have deleterious long term effects on the society we're making here. That's why we're getting married, so that we'll only be encouraging contained promiscuity."

"Don't we get a say in this?" Dora huffed.

"Of course you do, as long as that say is 'yes', otherwise no, you don't." Harry retorted smugly.

For a moment, she seemed too taken aback by his statement to even be annoyed, but she started working up some steam quickly enough.

Fortunately, Fleur came to the rescue, by glomping the metamorphmagus and slapping a hand over her mouth.

"Shhh, just agree to it before he changes his mind!" She hissed.

Dora pulled the hand away from her mouth and glowered at the veela, but Fleur wouldn't budge.

"But I wanted a romantic proposal, not this caveman crap." Dora said sulkily after a few seconds.

"You can romantically propose to each other if you want." Harry deflected with a grin. "I don't do fluff, I get shit done."

"You suck." Dora crossed her arms and pouted.

Luna took one of her arms and one of Fleur's and looked deep into their eyes.

"Nymphadora Tonks, Fleur Delacour, will you join me in holy haremony to this man?" She proposed with perfect seriousness.

Harry's chest bloomed with pain at the effort it took to keep from roaring with laughter. Luna's ridiculous, butchered, yet still utterly genuine proposal and the gobsmacked looks on the other twos faces were just too much.

"Of course we will." Fleur said once she got her wits back together, now looking very amused. She turned towards Dora with a mischievous grin. "Well, how about it, Nymmie? Are you going to join us as our sister wife, or would you prefer to be relegated to the position of mistress?"

The metamorphmagus gaped at the veela in shock.

"That's not fair!" She cried. "You're supposed to help me extort some romance out of our bastard man, not put me in a corner like this!"

"Some battles are just not worth fighting." Fleur countered sagely.

Harry finally lost the battle against his laughter.

"I need you to buy me books."

"Which books?"

" All the books."

Penny paused and gave her employer a skeptical look. She'd gotten used to carrying out all sorts of strange requests, but Harry surely wasn't being literal.

"What do you mean all the books? All the books about what?"

"All the books about everything, fiction and non-fiction, textbooks and novels, mundane and magical. If it was written down, then I want it. At least three copies of each if possible."

Penny had been afraid he would say that. Working for Harry was great in many ways. The pay was more than generous and nobody looked down on her, which may have something to do with the fact that he operated more like a mafia boss than a standard politician, but Penny had stopped overthinking that part years ago. Harry did avoid stepping on other people, but if they tried to trip him then he would grind them into the dirt. That was fair, wasn't it?

If only he didn't get these insanely ambitious ideas every so often. The last time that had happened, the Atlantic Ocean gained a new island.

"What could you possibly want every book in existence for?" She asked in exasperation.

"Preserving knowledge for the end of civilization as we know it. I want to have the biggest goddamn library in the world." Harry replied completely seriously, much to her dismay. "Which reminds me, I'll also need you to hire some dedicated librarians to keep track of the books and contract a few spell researchers to create a magical filing system."

Harry paused pensively, and Penny felt a brief flare of hope that he had realized how crazy this was and tell her to forget about it. It was a vain hope, as it turned out.

"Actually, nevermind the spell researchers, I'll do it myself. It sounds like an interesting casual project and I don't want to entrust something that important to a third party. Do another population census instead."

"How are you going to pay for so many books?" Penny protested, going back to the earlier topic. "You're not that rich, Harry!"

"Yes I am." He contradicted, as if she didn't know the exact state of his finances. "I'm a powerful wizard and the world is full of possibility, I just have better things to do than make money all the time."

"Cissy."

"Yes, my lord?" Narcissa nearly jumped to attention as she was addressed. Desire squirmed in her belly as those intense green eyes focused on her.

"I need you to start spreading rumors that I'm thinking of setting up an education system on Spellhaven for aspiring wizards and witches that would teach things both magical and mundane, and that I may take students who impress me as apprentices in the future."

Narcissa's eyebrows shot up in surprise. That would surely generate a lot of interest. She didn't personally see the appeal of a non-magical education, but it was obviously good for something given that it had helped Harry get as powerful as he was, so she wasn't going to object.

"I would need some more details." She said, grabbing a notepad and pen to write down his instructions.

It only took a few minutes for Harry to lay out what he wanted and Narcissa was sure that it would indeed garner a lot of interest. All magical parents dreamed that their child might one day be great and an apprenticeship to a wizard like Harry was immensely prestigious, so they would be more than willing to send their children to schools where that could happen, even if they were of the opinion that wizards and witches didn't need a mundane education.

"Is there anything else you require of me?" She asked suggestively.

Harry grinned and leaned in until his lips were at her ear.

"Behave." He whispered and Narcissa had to force down a whimper at her body's reaction. She had never considered herself a lustful or wanton woman, but this man brought it out of her with such ease, made her burn for his touch.

January 10th, 2019, late afternoon. Spellhaven.

Laura was nearly vibrating with excitement as they stepped through the front door of the beautiful cháteau where she would be staying for a while.

The past five days had been pretty amazing. After scoring a journalistic coup the likes of which most reporters could only dream of, her time had suddenly become a hot commodity for everyone that wanted to either have her convey their own questions to Harry or somehow get in on the action. Her career was really going to take off now.

In fact, she'd been so busy taking calls and talking to people that they'd nearly missed their flight to the Azores. Wouldn't that have been a disaster? Fortunately, her favorite camera man and sole crew member for this trip, George, had ensured that they made it, even if she'd found his pestering annoying at the time.

They'd spent barely a few hours on one of the larger islands on the archipelago when Harry arrived to pick them up on a flying carpet. A real flying carpet!

The flight had been incredible, even if she had spent the entire time on her hands and knees, terrified that they'd fall off. She had also tried to keep an eye out for when Spellhaven would appear on the horizon, only to fail. It seemed like it just sort of appeared in her perception between one blink at the next and by then they were already landing. Magic was pretty incredible.

Now here she was, entering the castle of a powerful wizard. It was like something out of a fairy tale.

"Can I take your coat?" Harry offered with a smile.

"Of course, thank you." She said and took the heavy and rather expensive garment off. She'd bought it new specifically for this occasion and had somewhat underestimated how warm it would be in comparison to Britain.

The rest of her outfit was also new and much better suited to the mild Atlantic climate, albeit accidentally. A tight fitting skirt and blouse combination to emphasize and show off her curves, it had been chosen in an effort to appeal to Harry's already admitted attraction to her. Laura was certainly not going to lose out on this opportunity by failing to dress well and to be quite frank, it felt nice to get some male attention. It had been increasingly rare recently, both at work and in private.

To her confusion, Harry held out the coat into the air and then it just disappeared!

"What did you do with it?" She asked in bewilderment.

"I'll explain later, don't worry about it for now." He waved off. "Come on, I'll introduce you to the rest of the household."

Laura quickly put her coat out of mind, eager to meet the people closest to him.

The eagerness took a slight hit when she was led into a room filled with nothing but beautiful women. Four blondes, a black-haired woman and what appeared to be one extremely out of place punk rocker with hair dyed a blazing pink.

"Alright, introductions." Harry said. "Girls, these are Laura Byrne and her camera man, George Puckett."

"Hello." Laura greeted, hiding her slight nervousness.

"Hi." George likewise greeted. She wondered if he was really as composed as he sounded.

"Laura, George, these ladies comprise most of my immediate circle of polite social interaction." Harry said with a slightly joking tone, moving to stand behind and place his hands on the shoulders of the shortest of the women present, a pretty young blonde with a somewhat disconcerting pale blue gaze. "This is Luna Lovegood, my first apprentice in the magical arts, lover and fiancée."

"Hello." The now introduced Luna said with a dreamy tone that made Laura wonder if she was all there.

The revelation that Harry was engaged to be married also made her feel rather foolish and a bit angry on the young girl's behalf. What had he been flirting with her for if he was in a committed relationship already?

Harry moved to the next woman in line, an impossibly beautiful silver-blonde with piercing sky-blue eyes that made Laura feel about as attractive as a leper in comparison.

"This is Fleur Delacour, my second apprentice in the magical arts, lover and fiancée." He said, throwing her nascent sense of outrage into shocked confusion.

" Bonjour ." The egregiously beautiful woman said with a mischievous smile on her perfect lips.

Harry moved on, placing his hands on the shoulders of the punk rocker looking woman.

"And this is Nymphadora Tonks, my third apprentice in the magical arts, lover and fiancée." He said, smiling with amusement at her.

"Wotcher." The pinkette tossed out casually.

Laura was glad that she was not expected to reply in this situation, because it was taking all her attention to keep from doing an impression of a fish. Three wives-to-be and he hadn't even finished introducing everyone. This must be what culture shock feels like.

"These three women are the most powerful witches in the world and rule Spellhaven at my side." Harry continued.

"Flattery won't get you forgiveness or using my first name." Nymphadora – who seemed to dislike her name for some reason – snarked. Much to Laura's further shock, her hair also turned red as she said this.

"As you can see, it's safer to just call her Dora or Nym or Tonks." Harry went on as if sudden changes of hair color were normal.

"The hair…." Laura tried to articulate.

"I'm a metamorphmagus." Nymphadora explained. "A natural born shapeshifter. Watch."

And before Laura's eyes, the woman turned into an exact copy of herself, albeit still dressed like a punk rocker.

" Damn ." George quietly swore next to her.

"Wow." Was all that Laura could say as her double reverted to her previous pink-haired appearance.

"Next we have Narcissa Black." Harry moved on to the next woman, an older blonde of indeterminate age. Laura figured that she could be anything between twenty-five and an extremely well-aged forty, but it was nearly impossible to tell for sure and the woman's cold expression didn't help any. "She is my social secretary and representative to the International Confederation of Wizards. She is also my mistress."

Laura just barely kept herself from blurting out the question burning on her tongue. It was rude to be poking one's nose into other people's personal lives, but damn if she wasn't being sorely tempted.

Harry seemed to know it too, at least if the amused smirk on his face as he moved to the next woman was any indication. Just like the previous one, this one's age was also hard to pin down by sight alone.

"This dark-haired beauty is Septima Vector. She heads the R&D department of my telecommunications mirror business. She, too, is my mistress." Harry said with a grin that could only be called predatory and Laura noticed with considerable shock that the woman was wearing a collar around her neck. "Isn't that right, Septima?"

"Yes, Master." Septima said barely audibly, face nearly aflame with obvious embarrassment.

While Laura was confused and more than a little alarmed by whatever was going on here, the eyerolls from practically every other woman there except Luna, who just smiled happily, did a lot to calm her down. While finding out that Harry was apparently into some kinky stuff was unexpected, it was a lot better than some of the other ideas that had immediately popped into her head.

"Last, but certainly not least, we have Penelope Clearwater." He said, moving to stand behind the final woman, a curly-haired blonde that looked to be in her twenties. "She's the family steward and…."

Laura knew what was coming by this point.

"…. not my mistress."

Alright, maybe she didn't.

"It says a lot about your life when you have to specify that I'm not sleeping with you." Penelope huffed with an exasperated sort of amusement.

"So it does." Harry agreed. "Now let's gets our guests settled and then we can have dinner."

Unlike a live interview, putting together the footage for a properly edited journalistic piece could be spread out over a number of days and edited later for maximum effect.

The first thing they did was the introduction of Luna, Fleur and Dora, as they were too important to be left unmentioned, but the manner of doing so was decided to be somewhat strategic.

They were first introduced as a group in a manner similar to how they were first introduced to Laura and then included individually whenever their presence helped to highlight a particular facet of the magical world.

Dora was present alongside Etalpalli, to better highlight the nature of inheritable magical talents….

"He's gorgeous." Laura said with awe as she looked at the lazily floating quetzalcoatl with his shimmering scales and ostentatious feathers.

"Careful with the compliments, he's also pretty vain." Dora quipped wryly.

Etal gave an offended hiss.

Harry rolled his eyes, gave Dora a look and started hissing back at the feathered serpent.

"You can actually talk to him?" Laura asked in surprise.

"I can't, but Harry can because he's a parselmouth." Dora explained.

"What's a parselmouth?"

"A parselmouth is a witch or wizard with the ability to speak Parseltongue, the language of snakes." Dora elaborated.

"Incredible….but wait, that would mean that snakes would have to be intelligent enough to hold a conversation!" Laura exclaimed.

"That's a bit more woolly." Dora admitted. "Etal is a magical creature and they tend to be more intelligent to start with. Some can even learn human languages once they get old enough and if they spend a lot of time around people, such as acromantula. Those are giant spiders by the way, they can get to be the size of a small house."

"I can barely deal with the small ones." Laura shuddered.

"You are right about regular snakes though." Harry cut in. "They generally aren't intelligent enough to talk to, but the act of a wizard speaking to them as if they were that intelligent seems to have the effect of…..letting them borrow the speaker's intellect, for lack of a better explanation."

"Is this permanent?" Laura asked in amazement.

"Only with long term exposure." Harry explained. "In the short term, they just tend end up being slightly more intelligent."

"That's still pretty amazing." The reporter said. "And this is a genetic trait passed down through families?"

"No, it's a magical trait. Genetics has nothing to do with it. Same as Dora's metamorph talent, my Parseltongue might vanish from my bloodline for generations before suddenly reappearing when the circumstances in one of my descendants are just right for it to become active again. Some talents are rarer than others and have more finicky requirements for appearing, such as metamorphing. Dora is the first metamorphmagus to have been born in over three centuries for example, whereas parselmouths are pretty common within certain family lines. Alternatively, some gifts are always present but require a witch or wizard to find them within themselves and awaken them, new ones can be created by a clever enough magic user and bound to a bloodline and some just pop up randomly for no apparent reason before vanishing again."

"I see." Laura said, but the frown on her face made that a dubious claim.

Fleur was present at the introduction of house elves, all the better to make it clear that one could not apply human thinking to different species of magical beings.

"I'm sure you've been wondering what happened to your coat." Harry said amusedly.

"I have." Laura admitted.

"A house elf took it." He replied mischievously.

Laura looked at him dubiously, not sure if she should believe him.

"Teeny, come here please."

Much to Laura's shock, a small creature in a miniature maid uniform with floppy ears and huge, tennis ball eyes appeared out of thin air.

"What can Teeny do for Master Harry?" The little creature asked eagerly, staring up at the scarred wizard with adoration.

"Nothing right now, Teeny, I just wanted to introduce you to our guest.

"Hi." Laura waved.

Teeny shyly returned the wave and stepped closer to Harry, nearly hiding behind his leg.

"Could you please tell Laura what you do around here, Teeny."

The house elf nodded and looked at the reporter with more resolve.

"Teeny takes care of Master Harry and his missies. I's cook, clean and bring things." She declared proudly.

Laura was starting to put together a picture here and she wasn't sure she liked it.

"Do you get paid for doing these things?" She asked gently.

The look of horrified outrage she received was decidedly unexpected.

"NO!" The house elf nearly shouted. "Teeny is a good elf!"

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to insult you." Laura backpedaled in shocked bafflement, wondering what she had said that was so offensive.

"You can go now, Teeny." Harry spoke up.

The diminutive house elf shot the reporter one last glare before popping away.

"What did I say?" Laura asked in bewilderment.

"The very first thing you should know about house elves is that they are not a natural evolution." Harry began. "A long time ago, a wizard decided that he wanted magical servants and being a clever sort, set out to create them. House elves have come a long way since then, but at their core they are still a servant race. I know that this sounds a lot like slavery and I suppose that in some ways it is, but keep in mind that house elves aren't human, so they don't think like humans either. To them, working for a magical family is their life's purpose and they draw their power from it. A house elf that doesn't work won't live longer than a year or two at the most, and they won't be good years."

"But….can't they change?" Laura asked with a frown. "To become something more than servants?"

"This isn't like me asking you if you could quit being a reporter and become an engineer, this is like asking a lion to become a zebra." Harry answered, shaking his head. "The need to serve is at the core of a house elf's being and they can never be happy doing anything else. It takes truly monstrous treatment for a house elf to even consider leaving the family they serve."

"I'm not sure how to feel about that." Laura admitted.

"I figured it would give you trouble, many first-generation wizards and witches have the same problem." Harry nodded. "That's why Fleur is here, to serve as another example."

"But, how…..?" Laura trailed off, looking at the hitherto silent beauty in confusion.

"Fleur isn't human either, she's a veela." Harry explained with a smile. "You remember what I said about the succubi during our last interview?"

"Of course."

"The veela came into existence during the waning years of the sixteenth century. All succubi after Lilith were sterile and their race was nearly extinct by then because of it. One of the last of them was named Velana, who was thousands of years old by then and a very powerful sorceress. Seeing that her race was facing certain doom, she performed some unknown magic that altered her barren womb and allowed her to give birth to the first veela. She was killed soon after, but not before her legacy became strong enough to have a chance of survival." Harry explained.

"As descendants of the succubi, veela are highly sexual in nature." Fleur smoothly took over. "You humans have sex for pleasure and reproduction, but we need it. A veela that doesn't have sex regularly becomes lethargic, depressed and irritable."

"You could say the same about humans." Laura joked.

"Not in the same way." Fleur shook her head. "We draw power from ingesting sexual fluids, any kinds of sexual fluids. You would call us bisexual, but veela don't think like that. What matters to us is the magic, not the gender of our bed partners. The more powerful the people we have sex with the better. I am the envy of my race for having three such powerful lovers to satisfy my hunger and am constantly asked to share."

"You don't have any male veela?" Laura asked, looking a bit uncomfortable with the topic.

"No, veela are all female." Harry cut in again. "You see, they don't become pregnant from the sperm itself, but from the magic in it. Veela also do not ovulate, menstruate or go through menopause. The only thing that prevents witches from impregnating a veela is their lack of proper equipment to deliver fluids charged by the power of a recent orgasm to their womb. Their daughters are always full veela as well, nothing of the father is passed on, which is why all veela have silver hair, sky-blue eyes and look very closely related. As far as genetics is concerned, they're all something very close to being clones of each other."

"And you must understand that, like house elves, we don't think like humans either, although our way of thinking is admittedly closer to it." Fleur said. "Sex to us is a fun communal activity and the concept of incest simply doesn't exist. Our family events almost always end with orgies and we will happily have sex with all of our acquaintances regardless of relationship status as long as they will have us, which has admittedly caused some problems in the past. We become sexually active the moment we start puberty, mothers send freshly matured daughters to sleep with other young veela as a way to make friends or to older ones for mentoring. Not that long ago I started sleeping with my twelve-year-old sister to teach her about sex and when I have daughters of my own, I will have sex with them as well for the same reasons."

"Oh, that's…wow." Laura stuttered. "I can already hear the hordes of men clamoring for the right to visit."

"They would be disappointed." Harry snickered.

"What do you mean?" Laura asked.

"We are only attracted to those with magic in them, as I mentioned earlier." Fleur explained.

"Non-magical people are kind of like a combination of a carbonated drink that's gone flat and a mule to a veela's senses." Harry cut in, amused. "Without magic, you don't register as any more attractive than furniture to them, nor can you impregnate them, so they have no use for you in the bedroom. Veela exude an Aura of Allure to attract sexual partners, but you can't feel it because you don't have any magic of your own and aren't considered viable as a result."

"And now I can hear the groans of disappointment." Laura said, also amused.

"The lesson to take away from this is that you should never assume that non-human magical beings will have the same thought processes as humans, not matter how similar some might look."

And Luna was present for when they went to see the unicorns because….well, because they ran away from Harry if she wasn't there.

"You're in luck, we've only managed to convince a unicorn herd to settle on Spellhaven recently." Harry was saying as they observed Luna coaxing the equines from out of the tree line.

"They're so beautiful." Laura was nearly in tears from the sight.

"Some of the most beautiful creatures on this world." Harry agreed. "You see the small golden ones over there? Those are the foals, their coats will stay golden until they reach the age of two, at which point it turns silver. Their horns grow in at four and they are considered fully grown at seven, which is when their coats turn white. Their hooves will stay golden their entire lives."

Laura thought that calling it white was grossly insufficient as she observed a magnificent stallion prance around. Even freshly fallen snow would look dirty in comparison.

"How long do they live?" She asked.

"We're not actually sure." Harry admitted. "Keeping track of one can be difficult, and nobody has actually seen one die of old age. For all we know they might be immortal."

"Every little girl in the world is going to want a unicorn instead of a pony now." Laura joked.

"Unicorns are not pets." Harry said sternly. "They suffer in captivity and won't hesitate to gore or stomp anyone that tries to keep them imprisoned."

"They're violent?" The reporter asked in consternation, not wanting to consider that anything so beautiful could be violent.

"Not without cause. If someone was killed by a unicorn, then you can be absolutely sure that they deserved it. They can sense ill-intent better than anyone."

"Do they have any other powers?" She asked with interest.

"Plenty." Harry nodded. "They can run more than three times as fast as a regular horse and navigate even deep forests with an ease you'd never expect from such a large animal. Their presence has been known to soothe troubled minds, their horns have powerful magical properties and are sometimes used in potions, their tail hairs can be used for wand cores and their blood renders anyone who drinks it temporarily immortal."

Laura's jaw dropped in shock. "J-just like that? Drink a little unicorn blood and you're immortal?"

Harry nodded again. "For as long as the effects of the blood lasts, which can be anything from a few hours to a few months depending on the amount ingested, you will survive anything short of having your brain destroyed, including decapitation."

"Amazing…." She trailed off.

"Right now you're probably thinking of how useful being temporarily unkillable would be." Harry noted casually. "Maybe for risky surgeries? Give the patient some unicorn blood and be guaranteed that they will survive no matter what complications happen."

"It has crossed my mind." Laura admitted.

"Then this is the perfect time to inform you that doing harm to a unicorn, being party to it or benefitting from it would curse you with a lifetime of misfortune." An unproven legend, but Harry was more than happy to perpetuate it. "And I don't mean like that walking under a ladder stuff. Your head would be constantly targeted by bird poop, if you dropped your phone then it would definitely end up damaged beyond repair, lost items would stay lost, you'd end up broke if you so much as stepped through the front doors of a casino and walking under a construction site would be just as dangerous as walking into high speed traffic. It would, quite literally, feel as if the world itself was punishing you for harming the purest of its children."

"Oh." Laura said quietly.

"That's not even the worst of it though." He continued. "Drinking the blood of a unicorn carries a curse so terrible that it far outweighs any boon gained from it. Yes, you will be temporarily immortal, but as soon as the blood touches your lips, your body will forever lose the ability to heal itself. Once the power of the blood wore off, your body would start to fail. Bruises would stay forever, a small cut would be fatal, sleep wouldn't grant you any rest, you couldn't absorb nutrients properly, your cells would die without replacing themselves, your organs would rot while still alive and you would feel every excruciating second of it."

"Okay, hurting unicorns is bad, message received." Laura shuddered at the picture he'd painted.

"No, I don't think the message has been properly received yet." Harry countered firmly. "Rhinos are already going extinct because of idiots that think there's something special about their horns, so I expect that unicorn parts will be even more highly prized by greedy poachers. I also expect that there are ambitious scientists or doctors out there that will only hear about the properties of unicorn blood and dismiss my warnings, thinking that they can somehow filter out the curse as if it was a physical thing. I can't stop anyone from being too stubborn to listen to me, but I am letting it be known here and now that if I hear about anyone so much as attempting to capture or do harm to a unicorn I will kill everyone involved in it. I have ways of getting information that you can't imagine and I won't be stopped by distance, borders or politics, nor will I be swayed by bribes or pleas for mercy."

Laura was stunned by the blatant death threat issued against the world and took a long few seconds to recover.

"I'm not sure if that's a smart thing to include in the final product." She said cautiously. Actually, she wasn't sure if her bosses would even allow it to be included.

"It's probably just wasted breath anyway." Harry sighed and looked back at the unicorns. "But you can't tell me that they aren't worth killing to protect."

Raised as she was in a culture that abhorred killing, the thought of unicorns being hunted for the sake of base greed and ambition still forced her to nod in agreement.

They silently watched the magical equines graze for a few seconds more before the reporter asked her next question.

"Um, you said that their horns can be used in potions and their tail hairs in wands. Doesn't that count as hurting them?"

"Plucking out a single tail hair doesn't quite count, especially if you asked nicely first. And they do replace their horns every once in a while, which is how we get them."

"They're sentient?" Laura asked in surprise.

"I think you mean sapient." Harry corrected, unable to help himself. "Any living creature responsive to sensory perception is sentient. The answer to your questions is, as is often the case with magic, a bit woolly. Magical creatures generally tend to get smarter as they grow older, so it isn't outside the realm of possibility that some of the older unicorns are actually smart enough to do calculus. Regardless, they are some of the most intuitive creatures alive and are capable of discerning the intent in speech even if they don't understand the words themselves."

"Then harming them should be a crime anyway." She said firmly.

"I quite agree." Harry said and nodded towards Luna, who was now waving at them. "Looks like Luna is done coaxing them to let you approach. Go ahead and feed them some those carrots I gave you then. They love those just as much as regular horses."

"You're not coming?" She asked.a

Harry smiled. "They don't like men much. It used to be that hunting unicorns was a thing and it was mostly men doing it. They never forgot or forgave. The young ones might let me approach, but the older ones only tolerate women, and even then only those of gentle disposition."

After that, Harry decided that it was time to introduce her to the friendly neighborhood dryad.

"Oh my." Laura breathed, staring up at the towering plant woman.

Harry snickered. "Yeah, that's a common reaction."

Marae was inspecting the strange newcomers curiously. Having never met a non-magical human before, it was clear that the dryad was perplexed.

"What's she doing?" Laura asked nervously as the wooden fingers traced over her face.

"She's just curious." Harry reassured. "Despite her size, she's still basically a baby."

"You almost sound like a proud father." Laura noted with amusement.

"Well, she is technically my daughter." Harry shrugged.

"What?!" Laura exclaimed, causing Marae to jerk back in surprise. "Sorry." The reporter reflexively gave a contrite apology when she saw the startled look the dryad gave her.

"Dora, Luna, Fleur and I performed several fertility rituals on this island back when it was still a barren rock." Harry began explaining. "One day, we noticed that a strange plant pod had appeared in the newly grown forest. A while later, it opened and Marae emerged from it, full grown. We're the closest thing she has to parents since our magic made her. You might have noticed that she's a bit handsy? That's because some of Fleur's intrinsically sexual nature was passed on to her."

Harry paused to wipe a bit of nectar from a leaking nipple and showed the golden excretion to the reporter. "It's also why she keeps leaking all the time. This might look like honey or thin tree sap, but it's actually a liquefied form of a veela's Allure. Makes for an excellent aphrodisiac and energy booster."

Harry quite deliberately licked the nectar off his finger and winked at the reporter, making her blush and stammer briefly before changing the subject.

"Can she talk?" She asked.

"Yes, but not in any way you would understand." Harry nodded. "Her voice is the whisper of wind and the rustle of leaves. A dryad is the soul of her forest and speaks through it."

"That seems like a strange thing for an atheist to say." Laura commented.

"I'm not an atheist." Harry replied amusedly.

"But…"

"There is more to this world than imaginary gods, overblown legends, false prophets and poorly written books of fiction, just as there is more to it than the unbending laws of nature." He continued, answering the obvious question. "I am an animist, I believe that everything has a soul. People, animals, plants, rocks, mountains, lakes, rivers…..everything. But my belief doesn't come from faith, it comes from knowledge."

"Could you explain that?" Laura asked, now curious.

"Not in a concise fashion." He shook his head. "We'd have to set aside a good chunk of time for that discussion if I was to do anything other than confuse you. Maybe some other day, after I've had time to prepare a presentation. For now, let me just say that there might be ten thousand trees in the forest, but it is only one forest and Marae is the physical representation of it."

They went to the sphinxes after that and then to several other critters, as well as going on a brief tour around Spellhaven to get a look at how people lived. For the last stop on the last day before Laura and her camera man left, Harry took them to see Bryanna and Tiana. And the other two, he supposed, but he didn't pay Jade and Isabel much mind these days.

"That looks amazing." Laura was saying as she looked at Fleur, who had agreed to model a few outfits. She was currently wearing an elegant green dress combined with enchanted emerald jewelry that added some sparkling effects around her. "You'll have Hollywood and big name fashion companies beating down your door if this is the kind of work you can do."

"We've already started looking into the possibility of expanding into the non-magical world." Bryanna said, keeping the silly grin off her face with great effort.

"Then I think we can safely say that you'll have more work than you'll know what to do with." Laura joked.

"You're more right than you know." Harry cut in.

"What do you mean?"

"I didn't bring you here just to get some free advertising for my friends, I also did it to highlight a particular facet of the magical world that non-magicals need to understand as soon as possible."

"Oh?" Laura was curious now.

"Everything here was made by hand." Harry gestured all around them. "I'm sure that many people weren't satisfied with my answer to your statement about all the people that magic could help, but we literally cannot help as much as many would probably like to think. Magic can't be automated, so everything has to be done by hand, and with our small numbers in comparison to yours that means that what we could do is barely a drop in the ocean. Moreover, the resources we have available for brewing healing potions and the like are often scarce even for just ourselves. Brewing them to help tens of thousands of times the number of people is beyond impossible."

"I see." The reporter said quietly. "You're right that a lot of people weren't satisfied, but what you're saying makes sense.

"Strictly limited and specialized high value trade is still possible, such as the girls here providing custom order outfits, but they could never hope to make clothing for millions of people. The same goes for any other interaction between the magical and mundane."

"I suppose it just seems like being offered some incredible thing and then having it snatched away." Laura said ruefully.

"Well, I am thinking of something that might help with that a little." Harry admitted, pretending that he hadn't been angling to drop this bit of information the whole time.

"I'm sure you must be sick of hearing this from me by now, but….what do you mean?" She asked humorously.

"I've always wanted there to be more magic in the world and now that the big secret is out, there might be a way for me to do it." He said. "You remember how I told you that non-magical couples that conceive children in locations saturated with magic have a higher chance of having magical children?"

"Of course."

"Well I've been considering the idea of opening up a resort on Spellhaven that would cater to those who would want their children to be magical. Everything in it would be enchanted to an egregious degree and it could act as a honeymoon location or something like that for young couples looking to have children. That way we both get what we want."

Laura's eyes were wide with surprise. "There would definitely be a lot of interest for something like that."

"We'll see. If the response is favorable then I'll see about setting it up."

January 14th, 2019. Pico Island, Azores Archipelago.

"I'll contact you when we're done editing so you can give the final product over your stamp of approval." Laura was saying after Harry had dropped her and George off near the airport.

"I look forward to seeing it." Harry nodded with a smile. "It was nice having you over."

"I had a great time." Laura admitted and held out her hand.

"So did I." Harry's smile became something that belonged in a bedroom as he took her hand and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. "Don't be a stranger."

"I won't." The reporter said with a blush.

Harry smirked as he flew away. There had been no hanky-panky this time, although not for lack of opportunity. Adrastia had emphasized the importance of timing. He could have seduced the reporter already, that was true, but she needed time to wrap her head around his other relationships or she might chicken out.

January 25th, 2019. Somewhere in the Albanian mountains.

With a fleshy squelching sound, the newly reborn Voldemort plopped out of his gestation chamber.

He looked even less human than before, having lost his ears in favor of a more serpentine sensory organ and acquired a set of retractable venomous fangs.

After spending fifteen years helplessly floating around as a formless spirit, he had been determined to make a contingency plan in case he became disembodied again. One of Nagini's eggs, the womb of a young captured muggle and some dark magic and he had put together a way to restore his body in case it was needed.

In the following hours, Voldemort determined that he had lost all his remaining followers in the attack on London. This meant that the only resources he had were his wand, one of many he had stashed here as spares after robbing a wand store, and the clothes on his back. The dementors had abandoned him and what was left of the giants wouldn't fight for him.

Voldemort was not happy about this.

His state of mind had not improved during his flight to Albania and the gestation period. It was now a barely cognizant mess of fear, hate and ego.

He had just enough prudence left in him to make the gestation chamber ready again before acting on his next impulse, which was to show to Harry Potter, the world and most of all to himself that Lord Voldemort was still powerful.

January 27th, 2019. Spellhaven.

The past couple of weeks had been…..okay, relatively speaking.

As expected, his magical baby making resort idea had proven immensely intriguing to a lot of people and it was already in the process of being set up.

His threat against anyone thinking to harm a unicorn had been aired in the end, to mixed results. While the magical populations of the world largely agreed with him that anyone who tried to do harm to a unicorn deserved to die, the non-magicals were a lot less homogenous in their opinions. Many thought that it was too extreme a reaction over a mere animal, even such a magnificent magical one, refusing to believe that something that walked on four legs could be as smart as he claimed.

Harry could only shake his head in despair at how dull those people were. If they couldn't even appreciate a unicorn's majesty then why did they even bother staying alive?

Laura had also dropped by again, to continue the effort of demystifying the magical world somewhat. Their talks seemed to be becoming something of a regular evening feature on television. That would be useful, even if he personally found the constant media attention tiring. He was gladder than ever for the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, spending a few days relaxing or swinging a hammer in between the annoying but necessary things he had to do these days was quite therapeutic.

The effort to start fucking Laura was also proceeding apace. She'd have her personal interests welded to her professional ones soon.

Tensions everywhere continued to be high, especially after information about the past misdeeds and specific abuses of power of wizards against mundanes started trickling in. Harry strongly suspected vampire involvement in that one. That could be a problem, but he had no real way to fight it. The magical world had been acting like dicks and the only documented counter-examples he could give were centuries old. Moreover, this was being done through the internet and the stinking mire of social media, which even he had heard was basically a place where people went to get angry at shit that had nothing to do with them. He couldn't even be sure that it was actually the vampires doing it, since the only thing he had were suspicions about the timing and how something new seemed to pop up just as the outrage over the previous bit of information started dying down a bit.

The ICW had finally stopped panicking, but was still arguing uselessly. Without the Statute of Secrecy to uphold, the entire body was starting to look more than a bit useless and the individual magical governments were showing the first signs of pulling away from it.

Amelia Bones' Ministry especially. The unfortunate woman had been saddled with a nightmare of a situation and had no time for anyone's shit, even with Dumbledore as Supreme Mugwump, for what that was worth. She had inherited the bad reputation left behind by Fudge's government, the legacy of Dolores Umbridge as temporary head of International Magical Cooperation from a few years ago, hordes of pureblood idiots hamstringing her and now had the monumental task of placating her mundane counterpart from a terribly weak position.

The previously mentioned information about past misdeeds leaking into the general consciousness made it even worse for her. She had already been forced to admit to several serious crimes perpetrated by wizards against mundanes, including the theft of the Hogwarts Express. That the non-magical people in these stories were then memory-wiped caused further outrage and there was already a very strong public push to make obliviation strictly illegal. A non-magical nation passing such a law was mostly pointless aside for the few magicals they had in their employ, but the problem was that the public was pressuring them to force the Ministry of Magic to pass such a law.

That was a damn sticky situation, as the Ministry absolutely could not afford to let itself be pushed around like that if it wanted to stay independent. On the other hand, they were also deep in the negative zone as far as political capital was concerned and were having a devil of a time finding a good argument for not making obliviation illegal now that the Statute of Secrecy was a thing of the past.

Bones was currently stalling and trying to find a compromise that wouldn't make them look too weak while simultaneously doing her best to improve the image of wizards and witches, but it was an uphill struggle. Even her attempts to garner good will by offering magical aid in the rebuilding of London never seemed to turn out quite right. There was a lot of resentment towards magic as a whole in all of Britain these days, but within London especially. People wanted to be angry and were looking for any excuse. A few violent altercations had already happened between Bones' people and some Londoners, although with no serious casualties as of yet. He was thinking of sending the new Minister of Magic a gift in the form of a crate full of amulets that would block at least a few bullets. That kind of thing might become necessary field gear soon.

And then there were the people that Harry collectively classified as 'human garbage'. For the sake of brevity and because he didn't feel like being nitpicky, he applied this label to, among others, most everyone living in Africa and the Middle East, as well as anyone that had come out of there and still retained cultural ties to those places. Not very nice, but that wasn't a label he aspired to anyway.

The first such group was London's substantial Muslim population. As he had expected to happen weeks ago, their religious zealotry and backwards culture was serving to exacerbate a bad situation. They were a third facet to the problem, being distinctly angry at magic because it was magic, rather than for the harm it had been used to do, giving them no real common cause with the natives. It was turning the situation into a multi-sided snarl of problems that would likely prove impossible to unravel. Harry would have the sword prepared for when it would be time to cut through it.

In other news about human garbage, the first of the expected horror stories had come in. Some lunatic in Africa had suspected that a child was magical and chopped the young boy up for body parts. Apparently there was a new black market opening up. Lovely.

Still, that kind of thing would just serve to push more people towards him for protection in the future and it wasn't as if a new set of atrocities happening down there were going to be terribly out of place.

Penny walked in then, holding a small folder.

"Another one of those mysterious deliveries." She said and handed it to him.

Harry sighed tiredly and opened it up, wondering what Bjomolf had sent him this time. He had to suppress a reaction between irritation and amusement when he saw a cute chibi version of the ancient Viking giving him a thumbs up from the first page.

The amusement quickly faded as he saw the contents. A small town in Romania destroyed with a Dark Mark left floating above it. Casualties estimated to be in the low hundreds.

'TR location unknown. Will find out and let you know.' was written at the bottom of the report.

Looks like Bjomolf was still trying to play nice, even though Harry knew that having a crazy wizard rampaging everywhere served his plans just fine. Or maybe Voldemort had served his purpose already and needed to be disposed of. Whatever the case, Harry didn't really have much choice at the moment but to accept the help.

A sudden commotion drew his attention. It sounded like a stampeding metamorphmagus. Dora always did have heavy feet.

And it did indeed prove to be so as a frazzled looking Dora barreled into the room.

"Harry, we've got a situation." She blurted out quickly.

"Let me guess." He said dully. "A town in Romania destroyed. Lots of dead people. Dark Mark."

Dora blinked. "Well, err, yes. So are we heading out?"

"You go ahead and see if there's anything worth finding, take the Raven Host with you." Harry said, knowing that there probably wouldn't be but unable to justify sloppiness. "I'm going to go swing a hammer for a few days and/or months/years."

It was starting to become obvious that conventional methods wouldn't work and he felt like he was going to make a breakthrough in an unconventional method soon.

February 3rd, 2019. Ravenhead, Hyperbolic Time Chamber.

Harry Potter, aged somewhere between twenty-five and twenty-six – probably, he'd lost track with all the temporal shenanigans – was standing bare-chested in front of his forge. It was time to make that thing he'd set out to do years ago.

It had taken a lot longer than he'd expected, but his initial estimates had been hopelessly optimistic anyway. The soul of metal did not yield its secrets easily and unlike his previous pursuits, there was no wealth of knowledge gathered by generations of wizards before him to draw and expand upon, nor did mundane science help much. The past few subjective years in this place had been spent touching, smelling, tasting, listening to and shaping metal until he knew it in ways that few could fathom.

With a deep breath, he extended himself outward and linked with the forge. It wasn't like the Joining, but it was similar enough. Every stone and spark of flame became not just an extension of his body, but part of it. And why shouldn't it be? He had made it after all.

Pulling the chain felt like straining a muscle tendon. The emptying of the cauldron was a sensation curiously similar to draining his bladder, if only for lack of anything else to compare it to. The molten metal pouring out of it was like the rush of burning blood in his veins.

Harry breathed deeply and the fires of the forge flared up in response. He knew intuitively when the metal was at the optimal temperature and began swinging the hammer, every strike echoing the beat of his heart.

The hours slipped by without notice, his focus so complete that nothing existed except his breathing, the rise and fall of the hammer and the metal. Over and over he folded it, not to give it strength or cleanse impurities – that wasn't needed since he was working with 100% pure silver – but to layer the many spells he was imbuing into his work. His eyes were closed the whole time. Who needed sight when he could feel every imperfection in the metal? He used no tongs, handling the red-hot metal with his bare skin instead. What did he have to fear from his own fire?

It was incredibly dangerous, what he was doing. It was a ritualistic way of binding the crafter, the tools and the materials into a single entity. The resulting forge-bond drew the whole of his being into the act of creation. It allowed him to sense even the smallest imperfection and work with unsurpassed focus, but such perfect execution of art came with a cost. When heart and lungs became one with hammer and flame, a dropped hammer meant a stopped heart and a hitch in his breathing meant a burned respiratory system. He didn't know if the goblins did things the same way, but if they did then their apprentices had to die in droves trying to learn it. His ridiculously high magical perception was the only reason he'd been able to unravel this technique in years instead of the decades it probably should have taken a novice with no master to guide him. Despite his impatience, he hadn't dared rush any further once he learned of the risks.

Had Dora, Luna and Fleur known how dangerous what he was doing was, they would have been quite upset and insisted that he stop, but Harry had never been one to shy away from dangerous magic. Only boring magic was truly safe.

Fully twelve hours after he started, Harry slowly disentangled his soul from the forge. As soon as it was done, the hammer dropped from his fingers and he nearly collapsed on the anvil, holding himself up on trembling arms that burned with pain and desperately gasping for breath.

That had been a little more taxing than expected. The strain of working his muscles past the point of exhaustion was the least of it. He had invested so much of himself into the act of creation that, had a healer examined him right now, they would be amazed, baffled and horrified at seeing such an extreme case of magical exhaustion. It was well past the point of how far it was possible to go with a wand.

But it was worth it. He thought through the migraine that threatened to split his head open, looking upon his work.

It was nothing particularly intricate, just a silver disc the size of a large dinner plate, thicker in the middle and narrowing towards the edges. Incongruously small in comparison to the amount of metal he had used to make it, but that was part of what the spells weaved into it would do. On command, it would expand to a large platform exactly two meters across.

The designs on it had come out exactly as intended as well. Upon a blue background sat the eight-pointed star of Chaos Undivided done in bronze, inlaid with the circle and tentacle-like flame motif that comprised the Mark of Tzeentch, done in hues of glimmering blue and light purple. Though he had used no colors during the forging, it hadn't been hard to work in the spells to do so.

It was only polite to honor the person or thing one was stealing ideas from after all.

February 6th, 2019.

" This is what we found you collapsed in the hallway for?" Dora asked, unimpressed and disapproving as she looked at the silver disc in his hands. "A Warhammer-themed metal frisbee? I know you think that Chaos is cool, but this is ridiculous even for you."

Harry had not made it to his bed after he was done forging. His body had given out shortly after he'd stumbled through the mirror portal.

The following three days had been spent sleeping, getting fed like a sick child by a trio of upset women and having ointments rubbed into his abused muscles by a small army of veela masseuses. Despite that last part, it had not been a fun three days.

"It doesn't feel like much." Luna noted when it was her turn to handle the disc.

"Look deeper." Harry advised casually, unable to keep a smug smirk off his face. "I didn't enchant that thing, I spellforged it like the goblins do."

He cherished the sight of their shocked faces. Especially Luna, because her large eyes often made her look permanently surprised and she now looked Extra Surprised. It was an adorable look.

"You've figured out the goblin forging method?" Fleur asked with wide eyes, still frozen in place with her hands reaching out to take the disc from Luna.

Their shock was completely justified. The goblins guarded the knowledge of spellforging more jealously than gold, which was saying something.

"I don't know actually." Harry shrugged. "I'm just assuming that they do something similar, although probably more refined since they've had so much longer to work out the kinks."

"What does it do?" Dora asked, now looking much more interested.

"Let me show you." Harry grinned and took the disc back.

He threw it towards the ground, but instead of hitting the earth, it hovered just slightly above it. Then he jumped on it and it expanded to its full size, giving him a large platform to stand on.

"The Disc of Tzeentch is a Chaos Screamer daemon fused with metal and sorcery into a mount for a mortal champion, providing an immense tactical advantage for its rider." Harry began explaining, grinning at the eyerolls from Dora and Fleur. "Fortunately or unfortunately, this reality of ours is boringly devoid of Warp daemons and Chaos Gods – as far as I've been able to determine – so I had to make do with an approximation. It doesn't have the ability to grow blades, tentacles, eyes or to emit mutating flames and psychic screams, but it is fast and completely impervious to damage from any hand except my own."

"How much better can it be than flying on our own?" Dora asked skeptically.

Harry summoned his staff to his hand from where he'd set it down nearby and grinned again. "Why don't you come at me and find out?"

It was far from the first time he'd sparred against all three of them. They did it often in fact. Before, it had always been a challenge to keep from being overwhelmed by their numerical superiority even if he was significantly more powerful than any single one of them. Good practice for all four of them.

But that was before. With the Disc, he didn't need to expend that extra bit of focus to keep himself in the air and barely needed to bother with defense. It was indestructible, so all he needed to do was put it in the way of spells and they would bounce of harmlessly, no matter how powerful they were. Indirect spells were more effective, but also required comparatively less effort to defend against than direct ones. Lastly, it also had windshield spells built into it and perfect inertial dampening, allowing him to pull off speeds and turns that should have blinded him or torn him in half. He could make a ninety degree turn at more than two hundred miles per hour and feel nothing.

"I WANT ONE!" Dora and Fleur shouted in unison once he was done flying rings around them. Luna just nodded her agreement with the sentiment.

"And you'll each get one." Harry said easily, shamelessly soaking up the admiration of his women at his achievement. "After all, it'll take all four of us to utilize the primary feature."

"Eh?"

"I tacked on a lot of extra features to the idea of this baby over the years as they occurred to me and my skill grew, but the original intention was always to make a mobile warding system to trap annoying Dark Lords and their minions that keep running away when things start getting dicey for them." He explained with a grin.

"Ohhhh." Dora and Fleur matched his malicious expression at the thought of finally pinning Voldemort in place like the pest he was.

"We need to start working on a design!" Luna said urgently, her eyes wide.

Harry blinked. What?

"She's right." Dora nodded. "If we leave it up to Harry, he'll put something as stupid and nerdy on our Discs as he did on his own."

"Oi!" Harry protested indignantly. His design was not stupid! It might be a bit nerdy, but it wasn't stupid.

"No kidding." Fleur shuddered, completely ignoring him. "He'd probably want to stick with the theme and represent the other Chaos Gods from that ridiculous franchise."

"That doesn't even make any sense." Harry complained. The Discs of Tzeentch were strictly, as the name implied, Tzeentchian.

"Good point." Dora shuddered as well, ignoring him yet again. "I don't even want to imagine which one of us would get stuck with the Nurgle theme. Talk about ew."

Harry huffed exasperatedly. He knew that they were just taking the piss out of him at this point, but the oooh-ing and aaah-ing phase had passed entirely too quickly in his opinion.

Luna patted him on the arm sympathetically while Fleur and Dora continued to loudly discuss how gross and uncool everything in Warhammer was, the uncultured bitches.

"Why don't you go play with Septima while we decide on what designs we want?" She suggested kindly.

Luna had to be the only person alive that could say something like that without sounding patronizing.

"That's a good idea actually." He nodded, already feeling his blood rushing south at the thought of what he'd do to the subby former Arithmancy professor. A mistress that got off on being dominated was an indispensable way to unwind if you were into that kind of thing.

I don't usually bother explaining myself, but I suspect that some of you are thin-skinned enough to require it this time and it might spare me the effort of doing so individually as you vent your spleen at me in reviews or PMs.

By now you will have likely guessed that this is about Harry's decidedly uncharitable thoughts on large chunks of the human population and towards a certain ideology in particular.

That is exactly what they are. Harry's thoughts. He's not a nice man, as if that hasn't become abundantly clear at this point, and he's certainly not going to censor his thinking, nor am I going to write him as less offensive to spare anyone's sensibilities.

What I personally think of those same people is irrelevant. I've stopped engaging with the world at large years ago. Fanfiction is in fact the only foray I make outside my room, so my thoughts and opinions will inevitably bleed through it to a degree, but that's nothing you need to get upset over. I am, after all, just a slightly overweight guy in his underwear typing away at a keyboard.

Now some of you may argue that I didn't need to go there, that I could have just not mentioned it at all. That might have even been true if I kept to the original HP time period, but I moved it up 20 years so that I wouldn't have to bother remembering what the world was like back then, which means that I can hardly ignore the current day shitshow going on.

If reason doesn't cool your misplaced outrage then let me remind you that I don't care about you, your feelings, your thoughts or your opinions. Ranting at me will only serve to make you look petulant and achieve nothing at all.

If you both lack the capacity for objective thinking and don't value your dignity enough to simply stop reading if you don't like what I write, then could you at least try to be creative with your rants? There's nothing quite so tedious as reading generic insults. I long for the day when someone insults me by comparing to a sausage link.