A/N: There's a poll on my profile... just a quick survey of opinions concerning pairing options. Viper's not an option, I hardcore friend-ship Kacey and Viper.
Chapter Summary: You like to get things done while motivation runs high. Your motivation these days runs high indeed. Also, you conveniently own the solution to a significant problem. Viper is, once again, super done with you, and decides to do something about it. Also, your middle name is finally revealed.
"One hour," Viper says accusingly. "You were out of my sight for one hour."
"Ahem." You shift awkwardly.
"And in one hour," Viper takes a deep furious breath, "You painted an even bigger target on yourself by all but challenging the entire Mafia! If you'd just stayed away and under the radar, they'd have forgotten about you eventually. But then you have to send those three in that state - elephant ears and bat bogeys, for goodness' sake - and aim a Howler at the whole island! What is even going on in your brain?!"
"Ahem."
"I advise you to leave the island and stay away from the Mafia for the rest of your life. They might forget about you in about ten years." Viper stomps his foot. Oh boy, he's really mad.
"I kinda agreed to give the folks here some magic lessons?" you ask more than state. "'cause, they've got no school! And those three were going to kidnap Cecile, and she's twelve and that's just not right! And then they wanted to kidnap me too and I kicked their collective arses and then I was a bit angry. Okay, a lot angry. So I sent the Howler. The Gifted can't even defend themselves, and because of what I did, they've got people hunting them, I can't just stand by when it's my fault."
"It's not your fault," Viper snorts. "It's the way the world works. It was that way before you came, and it will be the same way when you leave."
"Then the world needs to change," you snap. "I won't accept it. Those are my people, and they're being treated like third-class citizens just because they were born with magic! That's not okay with me, especially when I think about how I grew up."
Viper groans. "The entire Mafia, Kacey," he points out. "You went and declared yourself protector of the Gifted to the entire Mafia. What kind of idiot-"
"Gryffindor."
"Whatever! And you realise committing to teaching those people means you're now tied to Mafia Land?" Viper face-palms. "My God, Kacey, you could have been so much smarter about this."
"Gryffindor." You shrug. "And maybe you're right, maybe this is all a terrible idea, but. Don't you understand? I can't stand by. There are - there are lines. This isn't about doing something because I have a hero complex or because I'm pissed at the situation, it's about being able to live with myself, and hell if this gets me killed, then at least I tried." You flail a bit. Talking's not really your thing. Inspirational speeches are what people like Dumbledore and Hermione do. You're just you.
"And about being tied down... I have an idea."
"Oh no," Viper says and backs off. "Oh no. Not an idea. I will bankrupt you, I mean it. Spare me your ideas."
"It's a good one!" You beam at your best friend winningly. "Hear me out." You spread your arms in order to emphasize the sheer amazingness of your genius.
"Stop making that face. It precedes bad things." Viper sounds so done.
You laugh. A bit of simple light manipulation, and you're drawing a rainbow into the air. "Behold my idea..." you announce. "I feel like there should be a drum roll here..." You look at Viper meaningfully.
"Not in your life and not for the entire contents of your various bank accounts and vaults will I be caught up in your crazy," Viper flatly.
"Spoilsport." You pout. "Here's my idea..." You make jazz hands. Viper looks two seconds away from murdering you. "School De Mort!"
Viper kicks your shin.
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Your first lesson is going to be in a week. It gives you some time to get some stuff done. Sheets of paper line the bulletin board in the office Viper insisted you get. "First thing we need is a location," you state. "Right, Oodako?"
Oodako waves from his spot in the aquarium. You've installed a pipe system all over Villa de Mort so he can go wherever he wants. It connects to the cave, too, so the sea snake has access as well. This is a good thing because Viper's taken a liking to it and since named it Fantasma. Also, you've been talked into teaching them Parseltongue. Well, why not. A little bonding time is nice.
"Location..." you lean back in your insanely comfortable throne. It's a Black family heirloom.
Black family heirloom.
Black family heirloom.
"Eureka!" you shout and jump up, doing a hero pose. Oodako mimics you enthusiastically. "Black family inheritance!"
"Did you say inheritance?" Viper magically appears. By magically you don't mean apparition, you mean the mysterious happenings that cannot be explained using reality-appliable scientific or magitheoretical concepts of any kind. In other words, it's a complete mystery how Viper does it.
It usually involves key words like stock market, investment strategy, and apparently, inheritance.
"I conveniently own a private island!" you cheer. "I completely forgot about it!"
"...I will not be sucked into your crazy," Viper chants under her breath. "I will not be sucked into your crazy. I will not be how the hell do you forget an entire island."
"I dunno. I forgot how I forgot." You stare off into space. "I need to write to Madam Longbottom and ask for a Remembrall. She knows where to get them. She sent one to Neville in first year, boy did that kick off some crazy shit. Like, half of the crap I got into that year is indirectly her fault. If my life were a literary work, that Remembrall would totally be a MacGuffin. I wonder what happened to it." You snap back to attention. "So wanna go check out my island with me?"
"No!"
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"How did this happen," Viper demands dully as you two stand on your very own private island. "I said no. I know I said no."
"Don't question these things!" You skip ahead. "Oh man, this is pretty great. Come on, let's check out the castle!"
"Castle," Viper mutters as they (gender neutral as of ten minutes ago) stomp after you sullenly. "You own a castle. On an island. Which you also own."
"Pretty cool, huh?" You spread your arms as you trudge over a hill. "Lookie here! There it is!"
"It's a ruin."
You beam. "It has character!"
"It's rotting away."
"More character!"
"Unliveable."
"Adventure!"
"It looks haunted."
"More adventure!"
"...you want to house children in there."
"It's perfect!" you declare gleefully. "And so long as it isn't housing a basilisk in its pipeworks like Hogwarts did, I shall deem it adequate."
"...Hogwarts. Houses. A basilisk?!"
"Well, not anymore." You wave distractedly, strolling up to the castle ruin. You envision how it will soon look. How it will be filled with laughing children, eager to learn magic. "I killed it when I was twelve."
"...there are things I never wanted to know about the school I studied at for seven years. That was one of them. And how did you kill a basilisk."
"Oh, funny story, that. Involved a phoenix, the sorting hat, a damsel in distress and a nefarious plot, also a sword and lots of Gryffindor courage."
"I don't want to know anymore," Viper immediately decides. "Mou, this will take work and money."
"Hmm..." you muse, plotting.
"And that's just the building. What about that?" Viper swipes their arms, indicating everything else about the island. Namely, the dense and foreboding forest that no one has tended to in decades. And this is a magical island. Which makes the forest magical as well. Fun things happen if magical forests are left alone.
"Well..." you say. "Forbidden Forests are educational."
Viper looks murderous again, but takes a deep breath. "And let's not talk about the most pressing fact."
"Hm?" you ask.
"The entire island is flying what the ever-loving hell."
"Oh, that." You shrug. "It's a Floating Island, of course. See, those trees are Cloud Pines, they start levitating after reaching a certain age, at which point they'll also have an extensive network of roots dug deep into the ground, meaning the ground they're growing on rises with them. See their net-shaped leaves? They filter stuff from the air with it and then transfer it into the ground, storing it in these fluffy crystal structures, making the underside of the island look like a cloud. Pretty awesome, huh?"
"You own a flying island." Viper's voice is flat. "I stand on a flying island."
"Fun anecdote, Atlantis didn't actually sink, they just planted a lot of trees they thought were pretty, and then it turns out those were Cloud Pines. Sadly, Atlantis had no wards to keep breathable air in, not to mention large-scale temperature management, so they all had to evacuate... the city is probably still floating around somewhere, it was unplottable and they never found it again..." Your voice trails off. "Isn't that amazing? An entire magical city, just flying around miles and miles above the ground?"
"Is it full of treasure?" Viper asks, distinctly unimpressed. No sense for romance, that's just sad.
"Probably?" You shrug. "But anyway! This island had temperature and oxygen management wards. So I declare it livable. C'mon! There's gotta be a control room with a Sink Stone here somewhere. They probably built the castle over it..."
"Sink Stone," Viper repeats flatly. "Let me guess... it's responsible for sinking the island by making it heavier."
"Right you are! Just gotta channel magic into it... a Cloud Pine conglomerate will automatically create one at the very center - occasionally they need to sink since getting water when above cloud level is hard, you know? And wizards figured out how to manipulate those and create control rooms... wonder where the wards gather the energy from, it's not like they can access ley lines this high up... maybe the sunlight?" you mutter to yourself. "Might have to get Bill on the job, but he'd give his left kidney to see this place..."
"...and how do you know so much about these... Floating Islands?"
"This dude that lives in Siberia has a Cloud Pine farm, sells and rents out floating habitats in all sizes. Like, from one-tree ships you can set your magical tent on, with a single ward bubble around, to fifty-tree zeppelin things. Full islands like this are pretty rare, though. Figures the Blacks would have one and just forget about it, haha." You hung around that guy for a while. Crotchety old man that he was, he put you to good work, you learned a thing or two.
The magical world has so many wonders. It amazes you how you can find the most amazing things in the middle of nowhere.
"I've decided," you declare. "I will build a school for magic on this island I conveniently own, and I will take any student who wishes to come."
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Schools need teachers. You know this, of course. You're just one person, you have absolutely no intention of being a teacher for the rest of your life, so you need others to do it for you. And they need to be capable and have the right temper, and must be willing to do something as risky as establishing a magic school for Mafia kids. Not to mention they must be okay with dealing with the Mafia itself. Not exactly easy to find people like that, but... you have a few friends across the world. Might take you a bit to track them all down, though.
You figure you'll just solve the living situation first. That includes hiring a bunch of curse breakers to take a look at the wards and the castle. Bill is pretty happy about it - working a desk job for Gringotts is getting on his nerves, but it's not like he can just take off for a few weeks to larger curse breaking projects - he's got a little daughter running around and another on the way, he can't leave his family alone for that long. But since portkey travel to-and-fro Cloud Pine Island is completely possible, Bill can still be home at the end of the day. And since he's a dab hand at Black family wards already - this isn't the first job he's done for you, and you've happily let him read all books on wards you found in the library - the risk is pretty much minimal.
That's one problem taken care of. Next one is in the works.
"Again, why am I here? How am I here?" Viper is entirely unappreciative. "And where are we?"
"Kacey! Merlin's balls, didn't know you were coming!" Charlie Weasley's grinning like a loon before he pounces and sweeps you up in a bear hug. You laugh.
"'Sup, Charlie! This is my awesome friend Viper! Viper, this is Charlie, he's a dragon handler. And we're in the Romanian dragon reserve. Thought you'd like to see some dragons!" You grin at Viper. Your friend's got a soft spot for creatures. It's adorable. Reminds you of Hagrid.
"A pleasure, I'm sure," Viper greets.
"Likewise! How'd you two meet?" Charlie's grinning from ear to ear.
"Vi was making sure I wasn't Riddle because my secret identity's name rhymes with Voldemort, and I was exibiting suspicious behaviour," you sum the whole thing up. "Ended up opening an ice cream business together and now we're both filthy rich. It's pretty awesome!"
"...a vastly undetailed account of happenings," Viper criticises.
"Eh, it's Kace," Charlie waves them off. "Sounds legit. Want a tour?"
"It's free!" you tempt. Viper throws you a baleful look but concedes.
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"...and that is how you feed a baby dragon," Charlie concludes proudly.
Viper is looking really happy, feeding large pieces of meat to a tiny Ironbelly that was kicked from the nest by his mother for some reason. You, in turn, are happy they are happy.
"Say, Charlie," you then speak up quietly. "There's a tense atmosphere around. Old Yuri is even brooding."
Old Yuri being one of the founders of the reserve, and the senior dragon handler. The guy's amazing.
"Ah..." Charlie sighs. "There's a... situation."
You give him a questioning look. "Go on..."
"There's a bit of a... global wand shortage," Charlie begins.
You blink. "The heck?"
Charlie shrugs. "Wizarding population is growing rapidly. In Britain especially, with the end of the war and the elimination of blood prejudice, more children are born. Meaning, more wands are needed. And wands generally have one of three possible cores - unicorn hair, phoenix feather, and dragon heartstring. Unfortunately, all of these creatures are rare. Meaning, the number of fabricated wands is dependent on the number of available creatures."
You frown. "There's tons of other possible magical foci they could use aside from wands. Do you know how many foci I have? I met this guy while travelling-"
"Not the point, Kace," Charlie interrupts. "Look, dragon hearts are huge, and around two-hundred wands can be made from just one. So to keep up with the rising demand -"
"They want to kill dragons?" you ask, horrified. "Are they mad?"
"We've been ordered to pick out the old ones that aren't useful anymore," Charlie says, rage in his voice. "The ones that can't reproduce anymore. The people in charge are sending an execution squad in two days."
You know he and the dragon handlers will go to war over their dragons. They won't let a single one come to harm.
"...what if your dragons suddenly got hit by wanderlust and flew away?" you ask offhandedly.
"Where would a dragon hide?" Charlie asks bitterly. "They are big. Except for the Hawaiian Dwarfbreeds."
You smirk. "Funny that you should ask..."
"No," Viper says.
"What?" you ask innocently.
"No. I will not help you smuggle a dozen dragons onto your goddamn island. Not in your lifetime."
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"Mou, I am not talking to you, Acacia James Potter."
Ouch. Your blasted middle name was brought out. What your Dad was thinking, giving you James as a middle name, you'll never know.
"Oh come on!" you whine. "It wasn't thaaaat bad. And all went fine! See, it was neither the first nor the only dragons I've ever stolen or smuggled. I'm an expert!"
"Not. Talking. To. You. Not only did I agree to smuggle a dozen dragons - I did it for free." Viper's voice is absolutely frigid. "It has been four days since you came up with this ridiculous school scheme of yours."
"Well, I like to get things done while motivation runs high! And look what we accomplished - the island's gonna be curse-free in two weeks! Charlie and friends are combing the forest for dangerous creatures! And we got dragons for island security! Things are going great! We can even relocate some of the creatures in the basement garden to the island. Neville can have a look at the plant life. And Bill knows someone who works in Magitecture so the castle's gonna be repaired and we're even gonna have some more buildings, we could have the island habitable in just a few months!" You beam at Viper. "Come on, doesn't it feel great to have done something good?"
"It feels terrible to have done it for free," Viper answers dully.
"I'll pay you?" you offer.
"I will not accept pay outside of a working contract," Viper snaps. "Now leave me alone. I have profit to make."
"...how do I get you to talk to me again?" you ask.
"Suffer."
"Uh... okay? How, exactly?" you ask, a bit unsure. But this is your best friend, and you don't like that they are mad at you. You may have overdone it with your shenanigans this time. You're not sorry, it was funny and Gryffindor as hell, and you did a good thing. But, maybe you shouldn't have gotten Viper caught up in it. "I'll do anything," you promise.
"Anything?" Viper asks.
"Anything, I swear on my magic, so mote it be, Scout's honour," you nod seriously. "Pinkie swear!" You hold out your pinkie.
"No," Viper snaps. "I'm not doing that."
Spoilsport. Viper can be such a sourpuss sometimes.
"Anything..." Viper muses darkly. "I am sure I can think of something suitably torturous."
Oh crap.
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Viper is vindictive, holy hopping hippogriffs.
Now here you are, sitting in a café in the middle of Mafia Land, in full view of everyone. Oh boy, that is not very fun, and you hate to be at the center of attention. You are completely undisguised, everyone knows you're the crazy witch that declared protection of all Gifted. So far, Kacey vs. Mafia is going well, there've been no more kidnapping attempts - they're just waiting for your next move while making their own in the shadows. Already anti-apparition wards have been installed on Mafia Land which doesn't bother you seeing as you can just apparate close-by and then fly in in bird form, no worries there. The only real inconvenience is being unable to apparate out of uncomfortable situations, but hey - you're Acacia Potter, you can tough it out.
So yeah. Back to topic. You're sitting in a café being stared at. This, however, is not what Viper ordered you to suffer through. Oh no. It's just the beginning.
Reborn sits down in front of you. "Chaos, Acacia," he drawls, tipping his fedora to you. If he wanted to surprise you, he'll be disappointed. Sitting around until he showed up was your whole plan. Arse sure took his time.
"Why hello, Sideburns." You force a smile that's probably really awkward-looking. God. You are suffering already.
He chuckles lowly. The sound is enticing. How's he doing that? Why is it attractive? He's an arse! "How is life as a person of interest treating you?" he asks.
"Same old, same old," you answer blandly. Since you sat down two hours ago, there've been four rather uninspired assassination attempts, yay. "What brings you here? Would you like a sandwich?"
"Oh, I merely heard my dear friend was in town, and was hoping she'd join me for a little outing of sorts." He smirks, leans back in his chair. The chair is made from hot pink plastic - the café's made some very dubious furniture choices - but he still manages to look elegant. It is really unfair.
"Like a date," you surmise, dead inside.
"If you would like it to be?" Reborn snatches your hand and presses a kiss to it. You attempt to push your fingers into his eyes but alas, your arms aren't that long.
"Sure thing," you grit out, mentally cursing Viper in your head. Merlin's balls, your best friend is vindictive.
Reborn blinks. "Come again?"
"A date. With you. Sounds fun," you force out, your hand cradling into a fist. Seeing as said fist is still in Reborn's face vicinity, he sees fit to cradle it in his own. Blessed with long and elegant fingers, your own fist is safely encased, thus preserving the handsomeness of his face.
"You don't sound particularly enthused, my dear," he drawls with a raised eyebrow.
"One, do not call me that again, ever." It was what Dumbledore usually addressed you with when placating you. You didn't see it for what it was back then. For good or worse, Reborn's tone is completely different from Dumbledore's though, not that the enticing croon makes anything easier in any way.
"As you wish, bellissima." He smirks at you, a finger caressing your fist. No, you are not flattered, being called beautiful, even if the Italian does sound nice. Considering you're wearing the ugliest outfit you could find, it is fairly obvious he's blatantly lying to you.
"And two, I am only agreeing to this because Viper's decided a date with you is a good way to make me suffer. Just so you know."
Maybe he'll be insulted and leave? Please! Any god that's listening!
"I must thank Viper, then," he murmurs before he stands and tugs you up to stand as well. He holds out his arm. "Shall we, my lady?"
"Nooooo..." you whine. Someone in the street takes a shot at you, Reborn casually deals with it. Which, goddammit Kacey, isn't attractive in the least.
You take his thrice-damned arm. Maybe you can squeeze it so hard it breaks.
He's doing something with Sun Flames, so that doesn't work out for you. "Where are we going," you ask listlessly.
"How do you feel about ping-pong, bellissima?" Reborn asks.
And yeah, that was about the last suggestion you ever expected.