"I'm sorry, but your actions definitely warrant punishment," Luna said, shaking her head. "It's the abuse of trust that hurts the most. When you lose trust it's very hard to get it back."
Odd and Selene winced.
"Two weeks restriction, extra chores, no games," Luna decided. "Doesn't that sound fair?"
Selene shook her head. "Dear, we're the parents, you can't ground us."
Luna nodded. "So you're saying trust is unimportant and the ends justify the means." She looked thoughtful, even as her parents exchanged confused and horrified looks. "Very well, if, as my parents, you've decided to teach me this lesson, I'll just have to accept it."
"No!" Odd burst out. "Trust is very important, the ends do no justify the means and we are grounded!"
Selene quickly agreed, "Two weeks!"
"And separate bedrooms," Luna finished seriously before turning and leaving the room.
"Drat!" Odd cursed. "I'd hoped she'd forgotten that."
"I don't recall being this strict with my parents," Selene complained, before rubbing her temples. "How in the world do we keep ending up in these situations?"
"My mother used to say that raising children required sacrifices and in the case of Lovegood children your sanity and the occasional fattened calf," he explained.
"I can't say she's… fattened calf?" Selene asked. "Who would we even sacrifice it to?"
"Whoever is willing to help," Odd replied solemnly. "You know the family motto."
"Which one?" Selene snarked at him.
"The one about raising children," he replied.
"Raising a Lovegood can try the devil?" She shook her head. "I thought that was a joke."
"It is," Odd assured her. "He doesn't have the patience to try that again."
*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*
"The unicorns were over the line," Shelia said after they'd flooed home. "It's like you don't trust me."
"It's not that we don't trust you," Sirius said. "It's just that…" his voice trailed off.
"We don't trust you in this particular situation," Lisa explained, making Sirius wince.
"And why not?" Shelia demanded.
"Because you're not mature enough to make these kinds of decisions," Lisa said bluntly. "It'll take at least a couple more years before you have enough experience resisting your hormones to make sane, rational decisions while horny."
Shelia looked surprised for a moment before gaining a thoughtful look on her face.
Sirius sighed heavily and placed a hand on her shoulder. "There is something to be said for waiting. Not a day goes by that I don't regret not waiting until I met your mother."
Shelia rolled her eyes. "Do you really think I'm that gullible? And how in the world did you manage to say that with a straight face?"
"Occlumency and practicing in front of a mirror," Sirius said, his chest puffing out in pride, before he realized what he'd said.
Lisa groaned and buried her face in her hands.
"I don't know why you're both so sure I'm going to lose my virginity before I reach Hogwarts anyway," Shelia said.
Lisa just gave her a look. "Are you claiming you haven't already decided who you plan on bedding? Marriage may not be in the cards quite yet, but we both know who you've been picturing in the bath."
Shelia blushed but didn't deny it. "Between potions and spells it's not like we'll have to worry about getting pregnant or catching anything."
"Yes, but while you may think you are ready to make these kinds of decisions, due to hormones, your body still hasn't reached the stage where it can respond correctly. Trust me when I say that you need at least a couple more years. Sex right now would be more frustrating than anything," Lisa explained.
"Really?" Shelia asked, a touch of doubt in her voice.
"How often do you quit masturbating because you can't seem to reach climax?" Lisa replied.
*POP* Sirius quickly apparated out rather than hear any details.
Shelia bit her lower lip and chewed on it thoughtfully.
"You know I'm right," Lisa said seriously.
Shelia sighed and her form shifted into Ginny's. She shivered and stretched before adjusting her clothes. "You'd think this would all have been fixed when we torched Harry's bed."
"For Veela it is," Lisa assured her, "but not for witches, not even when on polyjuice… at least I don't think so." Lisa shook her head. "Maybe polyjuice would work, but it's far too expensive to use that casually and would just make waiting the rest of the time even more frustrating."
"Umm…" Ginny blushed bright red as she realized she'd been caught and what she'd revealed.
"Shelia doesn't bite her bottom lip like that," Lisa explained. "She tends to tug on her ear."
"We thought it'd take at least a couple of days before you guys caught on," Ginny admitted.
"I'll keep quiet until Sirius catches wise," Lisa decided.
"I think mum will catch on first," Ginny offered.
"Probably," Lisa agreed. "And one last thing on the sex topic, do you really think Harry is ready for that kind of relationship, even ignoring the fact that you're his sister?"
"Sometimes he seems more mature than Da," Ginny said thoughtfully, "other times as immature as Sirius, but I'm pretty sure no one is ever 'ready' the way you guys are saying. You can't get good at something unless you work at it and making mistakes is all part of that."
"I'll give you that," Lisa conceded, "but our point on being physically ready still stands."
"I don't think any of us are in that big of a rush anyway," Ginny said. "Though it is tempting to get it out of the way just so we don't have to deal with any more 'tests'," she threatened.
"I think I can talk them down into just visiting the unicorns once a year, which is something we'd planned on doing regardless," Lisa said.
"Fine, but no questioning why one of us doesn't feel like feeding the unicorns," Ginny bargained.
Lisa laughed. "Good luck with that!"
Ginny sighed. "Yeah, I can't see that working, either. Oh well, at least we gotta couple of years before you guys start poking your noses in."
"That's the spirit," Lisa said cheerfully.
"Fingers don't count, right?" Ginny asked hopefully.
*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*
Harry wasn't surprised when Ginny slid in next to him, he'd gotten used to sleeping in a pile and had been feeling a bit lonely, but not two minutes later while they were still trying to get comfortable, Flora climbed into bed with them as well. Harry didn't question it, simply putting her between him and Ginny.
"You guys still like me right?" Flora whispered.
"We still love you," Harry assured her, while the pair of them hugged her.
"Really?" she asked timidly.
"Really," Harry said kissing her forehead.
"Cause you two have been ignoring me a lot lately," Flora pointed out.
"Not on purpose," Harry replied, reassuringly.
"And we needed someone we trusted to look after the little ones," Ginny quickly added.
"Evie can't look after Cara and Dawn on her own," Harry said.
"Shelia can take my place like she's taking Ginny's," Flora said. "Not all the time, but once in a while."
"How'd you know?" Shelia asked, as she shifted back into her normal form.
"Me and Ginny have a routine for dealing with the youngest and you didn't know it," Flora replied.
"I thought you seemed a bit quiet," Harry said, "but you had me fooled otherwise."
"Quiet?" Shelia asked in disbelief. "I started a food fight, two dog piles, a bannister race and three games of hide and seek!"
"Yeah, but Ginny would have done all that plus have picked up Dawn and Evie and spun them around a few times, hugged everyone and jumped on Harry at least three times," Flora explained.
"Being Ginny is exhausting!" Shelia complained.
*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*
"Deal me in," Death said, as she slid into a chair at the table where Harry, Voldemort, and Snape were playing poker.
"Sure, but just to warn you, there are no rules," Harry said, dealing out a new hand.
"We're just sorting memories and the day's events," Snape explained as he shuffled the cards in his hands, laying a red card with a picture of Lily bending over onto a pyramid of similar cards.
Voldemort laid a glowing card with a herd of unicorns on it in front of him, took out a quill and wrote notes along the edges, before adding it to a stack of glowing cards hidden in a book that had been hollowed out.
Death laid out two cards in front of her, showing a pair of sleeping girls and tapped them with her ankh, causing them to shiver for a moment.
"Are you trying to give me a thing for my mum?" Harry asked.
Snape nodded. "Of course I am. Doubt it'll go far, but it should give me some interesting dreams to review. And in a complete change of subject, are you going to give my alternate self a copy of my research?"
"Won't he have it already?" Harry asked, as he accepted the two cards back from Death and added them to the castle he was building.
"Some of it may overlap, but his association with the Marauders guarantees it has drastically diverged," Voldemort offered.
"Gloomy bastards research different things," Harry agreed with a nod.
"Not sure how you can slip it to him, but we could separate out some copies of my memories of testing various potions so he accepts that it is his," Snape suggested. "The hard part will be keeping him from tracing it back to you."
"You are going to have a busy year," Death predicted, pulling a familiar looking cloak from behind herself and laying it on the table.
Harry opened the cloak and found his old body and all his possessions in it. "I was wondering where that went!"
"It was cluttering up my place and I hate to dust," Death replied.
"It'd make a good body pillow," Snape offered.
"Or a dutch wife," Voldemort added.
"No idea what that is and I'm pretty sure I don't want to know," Harry said firmly.
Death smiled. "They are suggesting I use your old body as a sex doll."
"Yeah, I was right, I didn't want to know that," Harry said. "Ohhh! I just thought of what to name my penis!"
The three all turned to stare at him.
"I've been in here almost as long as you have and yet I still can't follow your train of thought at times," Voldemort admitted.
Snape took the opportunity to steal a card from in front of Voldemort that showed Lily using a charm to braid the girls' hair and added it to his own stack. Voldemort sighed and tapped the table in front of him, causing a duplicate of the stolen card to appear. When he went to write a few notes on it however, he found extensive notes on combining hair growth and restraint charms.
"I'll bite-" Death began.
"Please don't," Harry interrupted before shaking his head. "Sorry, been really distracted lately."
"That's my sister's fault," Death replied. "She should calm down once you reach Hogwarts and are closer to returning her mirror."
"See if you can distract her until then, I'd like a peaceful last couple of weeks until Hogwarts and it's not like I can get there any faster," Harry replied. He carefully folded up his robe and stuffed it in his pocket.
"Your family is filled with enough chaos to make that unlikely, but I'll have a word with her," Death promised.
*SPLASH!*
Harry, Shelia, and Flora sputtered and flailed about as they were dropped into several feet of water.
"Cannon ball!" Evie called out as she leapt off the rail and into the water bed with a huge splash.
"Mum sent you to wake us up?" Flora questioned, after Evie had surfaced.
"Yeah, and I found the bath setting," Evie agreed cheerfully.
*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*
"We better get letters," Ginny told Harry just before she released him.
"Lots of them," Flora added, moving up for her own hug.
"I will," Harry promised as he was pounced on by the three youngest, who were tired of waiting.
"Miss you!" Connie exclaimed, laying a sloppy kiss on his ear.
"Visit!" Dawn ordered, hugging him as hard as her tiny arms would allow.
"Stupid school," Evie complained as she hugged him.
"Ready to floo?" James asked as the mothers pried off the little girls.
"Almost," Harry said, holding his arms open for Luna and Shelia to hug him.
"I'll visit," Harry promised.
"And write," Luna added. "Still doesn't mean we won't miss you."
"Even if next year we'll be right there with you," Shelia agreed.
"We should have done this on the platform," Sirius said.
"We'd have lost half the girls as they snuck on the train," Lisa pointed out.
"Probably a couple of the parents too," Selene added. "I know Odd would love the chance to interview the children on the way and Sirius… Well, he's a bit shifty, isn't he?"
Sirius grinned proudly, while the rest of the parents laughed.
"And off we go," James said, tossing a pinch of green powder into the floo. "9 and ¾!" he called out before pushing Harry in.
"Argh!" Harry yelped as he vanished into the flames.
"I thought someone was going to see him off," Lisa said.
"Nah, he said he's got it," James said. "Besides the last thing he needs is someone crying on his shoulder."
"You could have sent Lily," Odd suggested, making everyone laugh even though Selene knew he was being serious.
AN: And Off to Hogwarts we go!
Typing By – Sitheus Maximus