A/N I am so sorry for not doing this sooner! I've been really really busy this week - I've had to go out every day and I'm exhausted at night and haven't had the energy to write..

As the sun rose over Ireland, the cottage was teeming with life. Five humans were bustling back and forth, packing up the last remnants of the Dursleys existence there. While they were finishing the last of it, Dudley finally got a minute alone with Lyra, who sent Charlie away with just a glance.

"Dudley?" She murmured as her cousin stood before her. She looked him up and down as he shifted anxiously, and sent him a reassuring smile. Lyra had noticed the morning before how Dudley's clothes hang looser on his body. He wasn't thin yet, not even near, but clearly a year away from Privet Drive had done him some good.

"Hello.." He hesitated before saying her name "-Lyra." She smiled at him again, and waited patiently for him to speak.

"He's gone, isn't he? You properly killed him?" Lyra sighed, but nodded.

"Yes, he's gone. Technically he killed himself though, I spent the year travelling to find a way to do that. It was very complex magic and very Dark. But that's not why you're talking to me - is it?"

"Dedalus and Hestia told me what you are.. The 'Girl Who Lived'? That's been your entire life? And now he's dead.. You're free?" He looked at her then, the light from the window making her kind emerald eyes stand out in the cottage, and with new resolve he continued "I'm.. Err.. I'm sorry I was.. such a bully to you."

He stuttered over the last few words, but was pleased when his cousin just smiled at him, accepted his apology, and as they parted he felt grateful that she hadn't made a big thing of his change of heart.

Dudley watched as Lyra returned to Charlie's side, laughing with him as they packed up the last few items from the kitchen. Lyra pulled out the last of the kitchen tools and passed it to Hestia, laughing as Hestia turned to look at her and burst out laughing as well, before she popped the potato peeler in to the last box and sealed it.

Once they were joined by the two Dursley parents, they loaded the car with all the luggage and it wasn't until then that Dudley realised a problem.

"Lyra? The car only fits five..and there are seven of us."

Dedalus winked at Dudley before saying,

"Well we could expand the car.."

At which point Vernon predictably flushed purple in his anger, but before he got a chance to vent his fury Lyra intervened, and laughing, she said,

"Charlie and I are going to disillusion ourselves and fly above the car"

Dudley looked at her in confusion, he didn't really understand at all, but as Lyra turned to Charlie, the redhead pulled out two tiny twigs, touched them with his wand and they swelled to large broomsticks. Lyra winked at her boyfriend and grabbed the shinier one, which Dudley noticed had the word 'Firebolt' written in gold calligraphy along the handle.

He couldn't look at the brooms any more, though, as Hestia hustled them in to the car and they sat as they had on the way out, almost a year before. When he glanced at the pair standing outside of the car again, he was just in time. As the car started pulling out of the drive, Lyra and Charlie simultaneously touched their wands to their heads and disappeared, a slight shuffle of the grass where they were standing the only indication that they had left the ground.

The journey was underway.