It was Christmas Eve when Harry James Potter received an owl from the Ministry of Magic with his name on it. His name was written in festive red ink, which Harry noticed many times as the letter began hitting him on the head after he refused to open it, in favor of continuing to snog Ginny Weasley senseless (after all, they must put that mistletoe to good use). After about the fifth whack, however, when he'd received a rather nasty looking papercut just beneath his scar, Harry realized he couldn't ignore the letter any longer and had to break the seal and read it.

"Probably just another offer from someone wanting you in their department," Ginny guessed, her arms still around Harry's waist as he scanned the letter with his emerald green eyes. "You're a very valuable commodity of late."

"I know," Harry responded, grinning ferally at his girlfriend before returning to the letter. "But it looks like this one's a bit harder to avoid, sadly."

He handed Ginny the letter and watched her frown as she read.

Dear Mr. Potter,

Your presence is required at a meeting of the
Heirs, this evening at 11:30 p.m. Please arrive
via Floo Network fifteen minutes prior to the
meeting and proceed to the Department of
Mysteries. You will be directed from there.

Sincerely,
Bridget Donnelly
Department Chair
Department of Preservation

"The Heirs?" Ginny asked, wrinkling her nose in confusion, and Harry shrugged at her.

"Dunno," was his astute assessment. "But I have about ten minutes before I have to leave. We'd better put it to good use." Ginny grinned at him and they returned to their embrace.

Ten minutes later, Harry Potter was hurrying down to the Department of Mysteries, still looking slightly dissheveled despite his and Ginny's valiant attempts to put him back together. He was grinning to himself, still heady with the memory of that night's near-epic snog. Merlin, he loved Ginny, and he had a feeling he always would. The Ministry was dead silent at this time of night, and Harry's trainers made squeaking sounds on the polished floor as he hurried down to the Department of Mysteries. Hopefully this "meeting of the Heirs" would be over with sooner rather than later, and he could be back with Ginny to celebrate Christmas properly.

Harry felt a bit deflated when he reached the Department of Mysteries. Already standing there were Professor McGonagall, Luna Lovegood and (Harry groaned inwardly) Zacharias Smith, all in their dressing gowns. Luna gave him a wide smile, stifling a yawn. "Hullo, Harry," she greeted him in a sleepier version of her typically dreamy voice. "Did the flutterbumblies keep you up as well?"

Harry blinked at Luna, unsure how to answer the question, but he was saved from what could have been an awkward conversation (for he had seen Professor McGonagall looking away determinedly and Smith getting an angry look on his face) by a smart looking woman in a white lab coat. She looked far too happy and perky for it to be nearly midnight, her high heels clacking professionally on the floor as she approached the four of them. "Thank you all for coming on such late notice!" she greeted them, a bit too loudly. "What we have to discuss is very important, so I am very glad that you all could make it!"

"Bridget," Professor McGonagall began, her voice low and gravelly in contrast to this woman's remarkable energy. "Why was there a need to call us here this late on Christmas Eve? I was under the impression that we were making no progress in the Haviland matter."

"You were wrong!" Bridget chirped. "Let me take a look at them before we head in! Ahh, let's see..." She turned to Luna, the perky smile fading from her face slightly as she took in Luna's odd appearance. "You'll be Lovegood, then?"

"Luna Lovegood," Luna answered, staring right back at Bridget with her wide eyes. Harry had to stifle a laugh at how unnerved the other woman was by it, but she seemed to recover quickly and moved onto Smith. Here her smile returned.

"Zacharias Smith, then!" she exclaimed, patting him on the arm. "You're quite the spitting image of your father! He was very much a Looker, too!"

Smith rolled his eyes in annoyance. "Well, if you've called me here at near midnight on Christmas Eve to tell me how handsome I am, you needn't bother. I hear plenty enough of it already."

Bridget's laugh came too harsh and loud for the quiet hallway, and Harry had to stifle an urge to block his ears. "You clearly have your father's wit, too!" she crowed, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes, while the others stood by in an awkward silence, waiting for Bridget to finish laughing. When she finally did, Harry tried his best to keep his face neutral as she approached him, eventually standing far too close. He could smell what was probably six pots of coffee on her breath as she stood there, her eyes flicking first to his scar and then slowly appraising the rest of him.

"Harry Potter," she declared, in a quieter, awe-struck voice. "The Boy Who Lives."

"Very observant of you," Professor McGonagall cut in, her voice terse and unamused. "Can we get this over with, Bridget, or do you intend to keep us all in your department well past the New Year?"

"Oh, not nearly that long!" Bridget answered, back to her perky, chirpy self. She turned on her heel and began marching down the hall, and Harry gathered by McGonagall's sigh that they were to follow. The three captives trotted after Bridget and McGonagall, not exchanging glances and still too amazed by the oddness of the entire affair to say anything. The procession finally ended at a simple door, which Bridget tapped twice with her wand, causing it to swing open into the hallway. "Inside!" she chirped, and they all filed into what turned out to be a small conference room. A long, black table sat in the middle of the room, surrounded by squashy purple chairs. At the head of the table was what appeared to be a projection screen, and there were windows behind most of the chairs, showing a cheery snowfall.

Looking around the bright room, Harry was startled to notice that one of the squashy chairs was already occupied by a beautiful and frightened-looking girl, seemingly of about eighteen. Her eyes were startlingly beautiful: large and beautifully shaped, a distinctly silvery blue color, almost the color of a Patronus. They took in the newcomers from behind long, dark lashes that brushed against her high cheekbones. Her face was as white as the snow outside the window, and there was something familiar and beautiful about the shape, though Harry couldn't quite place it. She was chewing nervously on her bottom lip, but even so, Harry could see that her mouth was full and lovely, and a healthy pink. She wore a loose-fitting heather grey jumper that didn't seem nearly warm enough to keep out the cold of Christmas Eve. Her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail, but wavy strands escaped the hair tie's clutches and brushed gently against her cheeks and shoulders. It took Harry a moment to realize that everyone else was as taken with her appearance as he was, particularly McGonagall, who was gaping wordlessly at the girl, as if seeing a miracle.

"Oh yes," Bridget answered McGonagall's unasked question with a wicked sort of glee, her voice hushed with excitement. "This is Delphina Haviland...the Heir of Slytherin."

A moment of silence passed before Harry finally spoke up, his voice sounding far too loud in the conference room. "That's impossible." Everyoned turned to look at him, which Harry was quite used to by this point. "Voldemort was the last Heir of Slytherin and he's dead..."

"Thanks to you," Delphina stated quietly, her voice emotionless, but still surprisingly beautiful. Harry glanced at her for a half second before continuing.

"...so...unless he had a sister or a daughter..." And Harry stopped here, the truth dawning on him. Bridget smiled at Harry's realization.

"My sources, and Delphina's presence, have confirmed a theory that many of us in the Department of Preservation and the Society of the Heirs have held for quite some time," Bridget explained, her voice still holding a note of the excitement it conveyed earlier. "We have long believed that the Dark Lord attempted to produce an heir before that fateful night at your house, Harry Potter. He copulated," (and here, Harry had to swallow hard to keep from vomiting at the idea of Voldemort copulating) "with a young woman named Serafina Haviland. When Serafina gave birth to a daughter, the Dark Lord lost interest, instead pursuing the death of a young boy whom he believed capable of bringing about his ultimate destruction. Serafina, in order to protect her daughter from her father, left the country and lived in America for nearly twenty years. And now..."

"I was under the impression that the search efforts were not going well," McGonagall interjected, clearly knowing a great deal more about the situation than anyone else in the room, save for Bridget. The other woman shook her head with a sly smile.

"It was all for Delphina's protection, until we could be sure that she was who we thought she was and until the Dark Lord was destroyed."

"That's all very interesting," Zacharias cut across Bridget, speaking in his most irritated voice, "but what does it have to do with the rest of us?"

Harry had been wondering the same thing, though he refused to admit it. Bridget smiled again, disgustingly.

"Ah, yes. The rest of you. As you may or may not have guessed by Delphina's presence and parentage, this is a meeting of the heirs of the four houses of Hogwarts. Each of you is a direct descendent from their lines. You, Mr. Smith, are a descendent of Helga Hufflepuff. Miss Lovegood is a descendent of Rowena Ravenclaw. Miss Haviland is a descendent of Salazar Slytherin. And Mr. Potter..."

"...a descendent of Godric Gryffindor," Harry finished for her. It was beginning to be too much to handle. Voldemort had an heir, Harry was the heir of Gryffindor...would Bridget be revealing next that Professor McGonagall was a reincarnation of Merlin himself? He braced himself, watching her for any swift movements that might alert him to a new piece of history in the room. Instead of that, however, Bridget revealed a manila folder labeled "The Heirs Law" in gold lettering.

"It was decided two weeks ago by a committee here in the Department of Mysteries that, should the heirs of the four Hogwarts houses ever all be found, those heirs will need to be watched very carefully to prevent another dark lord from rising from their midst. To make this easier on us all, the Heirs Law was passed. The law states that, should gender, age and family relations allow for it, the Heirs of Hogwarts are to marry amongst each other so that their movements and doings can be more easily followed by the department."

"WHAT?!?" Harry and Zacharias spoke simultaneously, both leaping out of their chairs in outrage. Luna still sat in hers, apparently completely nonplussed by the events, while Delphina simply lowered her eyes and looked at her hands.

"You can't do that! I'm not marrying anyone in this room!" Zacharias was the first to retort and though Harry hated to agree with Smith, he did so.

"You can't control who we marry!" he argued, but Bridget held up the law for them to see.

"You'll see that I can. Failure to comply with the terms and conditions written herein will result in a mandatory lifetime sentence in Azkaban Prison. Any takers?"

Harry looked helplessly over to Professor McGonagall, who looked horrified but just as helpless as the other four. Bridget's predatory smile grew larger.

"Good, then. To make things even easier for our department, your spouse has been chosen for you already. Mr. Smith and Miss Lovegood are to be wed, as are Mr. Potter and Miss Haviland. The marriages become magically and legally binding when you sign your names on this contract or when the clock strikes midnight. Whichever comes first." The wicked witch looked up at the clock across the room...midnight was less than a minute away. Harry wasn't quite sure what to do with himself, and really wished that Hermione was there to give a lofty education of the loopholes of this law, as he really couldn't think of any.

It was Luna who took up the quill first, smiling cheerfully as she did. "Might as well get it over with," she stated nonchalantly, as if talking about getting an injection at the doctor's. She signed her name with slow, careful loops before passing the quill to Smith. Smith sighed in furious exaggeration before taking the quill from Luna.

"Damnit," he muttered, signing his name as well. As he did, a band of gold looped upward from the paper and split in two. One half of it wrapped itself around Smith's left ring finger and the other around Luna's. Before Harry could react to this strange turn of events, the clock's hand shifted to midnight, and somewhere, a bell began to chime. To his surprise, Delphina darted her hand out and signed her name to the paper as quickly as she could. When she'd finished, she offered the quill to Harry, a strange look on her face, almost as if she were both challenging him and pleading with him. Harry considered for a moment, holding the quill aloft. This couldn't be right...but what could he do?

As he signed his name and the gold band wove itself around his finger, Harry Potter wondered how on earth he would explain this whole mess to Ginny.