Clarifications for Common Complaints: I get that maybe I should be more explicit with plot details, but sometimes it's hard to know when I'm hitting you over the head with it.
Chapter 15 - Long Walk, Short Pier:
Sirius gave James a pitying look, but Remus looked back at the professors, waiting for them to say, 'No, he's not dead, but he is at St. Mungo's.'
Followed by:
Instead, McGonagall sniffed and looking up she said, "Yes, Mr. Peter Pettigrew is dead. And no, Mr. Potter, a harmless prank it was not."
AN: So I get what the confusion is and I do have a dyslexic habit of reversing negatives or leaving them out entirely but in this case, 'Peter not being dead' then "Peter is dead." Is wishful thinking versus what actually happened. As for why they weren't expelled, I feel like worse has happened at Hogwarts, and the cabinet a hundred percent shouldn't have been out in the open, shoving someone into a closet that can easily fit two people, magic or otherwise, shouldn't lead to death in a school corridor.
Chapter 16 - Red Roses:
"Please," Lucius said, reaching a hand out toward her, "one chance."
She was about to shake her head when a sense of peace overcame her.
"Please," he said again, "one chance, one meal, just take my hand."
AN: Imperioed before Narcissa agreed to go with Lucius. No, Narcissa shouldn't have gone alone that late, but she didn't choose to go with Lucius, she was imperiored on the street and then manipulated further in the restaurant. Probably the least romantic interruption for a plot, but as I have no romantic experiences that turned out good, it sometimes flat to me for things to work out well and smooth all the time.
Chapter 25 - Not Your Bitch:
Bella is revealed to be pregnant before Petunia's wedding. Harry and Narcissa discuss adopting the child. Harry is reluctant then, and Kingsley is portrayed as having to make a choice between taking care of his wife or his child. Both would be somewhat unreasonable. Bella is still prone to psychotic episodes and it would be a stressful and perhaps unsafe place to raise a baby. Not all mothers are capable of being with their children even if they love them.
Helix Peverell will know his birth parents but live in a stable household with relatives that can meet all the needs of a growing child.
George Floyd: Murdered 25th of May 2020. Black Lives Matter. I hope one day to be from a country that values life above the 'freedom' to be evil.
Chapter 28 - There's Nothing I Wouldn't Do Anymore
Had Harry placed a tracking charm on his son and continued to put a tracking charm on him every morning?
Yes, yes, he did.
Paranoid?
Could you really be called paranoid if they were really out to get you?
Teddy was five years old, Harry himself had been targeted by a mass murderer at the age of one. Remus, Tonks, Naomi, Harry's parents, and Sirius had all died less than natural deaths.
So on days like today, he felt completely vindicated as he rode his broom through the trees looking for any sign of his son, as the tracking charm he placed on him had ceased giving a signal.
He didn't find Teddy.
But he did find tracks of several students and lots and lots of hoofprints.
Centaurs.
Harry had never had anything against magical creatures, until they started fucking him over.
To be fair, he had stolen the goblin's dragon and robbed and used an unforgivable on one or two of them.
But this?
Harry was so angry, his skin tingled, electricity raising the air in his lungs, and when he found the centaur herd, the trees seemed to move, thistle bushes cutting the herd in half.
The females managed to escape him, but it didn't matter. Judging by the fear on some of the male's faces, he knew they were guilty of something or at least had seen something.
Harry vanished their bows with an easy flick of his wand, letting his access power further grow the block their escape.
"Where is my son, Firenze?" Harry called, recognizing the blonde.
He owed the centaur a life debt from saving him in his first year from Voldemort, and it was the only thing urging Harry to remain restrained.
"Mr. Henry Peverell-" the centaur began in a lofty voice.
"WHERE IS MY SON!?" Harry roared, the tries bowing toward them.
"With Remus Lupin," Firenze said, watching him warily.
Harry sucked in a breath, "Who was with them?"
"James Potter, Sirius Black, Lily Evans, and two cats."
"Cats," Harry murmured, remembering what Narcissa had said only this morning. He shook his head, "Enough, games, Firenze. This has gone on long enough, where are they?"
"Impudent human, you think you can make demands on-"
"Sectumsempra," Harry hissed in Parseltongue.
The speaker, Bane, fell to the ground in a splash of crimson.
He didn't have time to scream, the cuts had ran so deep, some of his limbs had almost been amputated and he had nearly been amputated.
Showed you what one could do when you cast with feeling.
"I'm going to ask once more," Harry said in a deadly calm voice, "And you will answer me or I will slay you and then hunt down your females."
"Butcher!" someone yelled.
Harry smiled, "My son is a five year old. I don't really care what hell you put me through, but him? If you attack a child then you are no more innocent than a Dementor. Now answer me!"
Firenze swallowed hard, "They are with the Morrigan."
A centaur Harry recognized as Ronan, said, "After what the wizards did to our people, our young! You think you are better than us!?"
"I think," Harry said, "That standing between me and mine is a poor life choice. I don't give a damn about your history or your sad story. How much danger have you put my son in?"
Ronan stomped forward, huffing, turning his fearful glances at Bane's bloody corpse to fury, "You were supposed to help-"
"You kidnapped us!" Harry roared, fisting his hand and bringing the centaurs to their knees, their back legs sliding out from underneath them at the abruptness of the invisible force applied on them, "I am so used to misfortune I let it pass, but taking my son from me? My students? Tell me where they are now or I promise you will suffer for it."
"You already know!" another Harry had never met cried.
Harry didn't feel a shred of pity for him, "I will ask, once more."
The trees shuddered, the autumn wind tossing the leaves about, their stirring the only sound.
Ronan said, "You know where they are."
"Wrong answer," Harry said, casting the same curse again.
The dozen or more centaurs fell to the forest floor.
All but Firenze.
The blonde stared up at him from his knees, tears streaming down his face, "No, you-"
Harry cast a body-bound hex on him, before putting his wand tip under his throat, "Where are they?"
"I don't know," Firenze said in a soft voice, eyes wide. He started trembling, "We only had a one way trip there, the pixie dust-"
"How does the pixie dust work?"
"It pulls you toward the Morrigan, the ancient pixies were her creatures."
"Why did they mean I already know?" Harry asked digging his wand in, causing Firenze to arch his neck.
"You're researching her, aren't you? We never found her but Merlin did. It's the wizards who know how to find her because they are the ones who hid her."
"What," Harry began slowly, "does that mean?"
"It means you must find her. She told us in our dreams that it must be tonight."
Harry felt his stomach sink, "If I don't find her tonight, I'll never see my son again, will I?"
Firenze nodded his head silently, the tears still spilling from his bright blue eyes.
Harry backhanded him.
The blonde centaur fell to his side, falling on the flank on one of his kin.
Harry had never known hatred like this before, but he had seen what happened to Wormtail.
"I owe you a life debt, consider it paid," Harry said, and then added before apperating away, "If I cannot find him, I will personally empty the Forbidden Forest."
Sirius was hugging Teddy's cat as Remus transformed.
There were standing on a grassy plain, rolling slopes as far as the eye could see of the greenest grass he had ever seen. The sky was strange. As if the sky was closer to the full moon several sizes too big, the rolling clouds streamed over diamond like stars far too quickly for the gentle breeze they were feeling on the ground.
James didn't run off with Lily, there was nowhere to hide and even if there was, something about this place felt… sinister, unreal, and being separated felt like the worst danger of all.
Sirius had already decided that he would run off as a human to lure Remus away from Lily if it came to that. Because at this point, a werewolf seemed like the least of their issues.
Sirius braced himself for the painful sounds of Remus transforming, of bones breaking and reforming into the frankly ugly half wolf thing he was.
Teddy was the prettiest and cutest werewolf Sirius had ever heard of.
Sirius turned around to watch as Remus fell to his knees trying to fight it, Teddy, the little pup, pressed his small furred-self against Remus's side.
With a groan, Remus gave into the call of the moon.
But it was like no change Sirius had ever seen from him, in fact, it looked like an animagus transformation.
And in Remus's place sat a larger form of Teddy, they had the same beige colouring but Remus had more gold in his fur than the grey undercoat of Teddy's puppy form. A wolf, a normal, mundane wolf. Not an oversized werewolf, just a wolf. Not much bigger than Sirius's own form. Sirius passed Regina up to Lily wordlessly, her knealze was perched on James's antlers again.
"Remus?" Sirius asked and cautiously approached.
Remus wined low in his throat, squeezing his eyes shut, pressing himself against the ground. Teddy began to give puppy kisses to the bigger wolf's jaw and muzzle. It was real wolf behaviour as it happened, a way of begging for attention.
Sirius went to his knees beside them, "Remus? Are you alright?"
Remus whined again but opened his eyes, which were a warm amber not the enlarged version of his own human eyes. Slowly, he raised his head stiffly, holding himself still for almost a full minute before Teddy jumped him and bit his ear.
Remus snapped his teeth at the puppy but it was just a show, because the next moment, he gave Teddy a sloppy tongue pass over the top of his head. Teddy yipped, falling over Remus's front paws.
Sirius couldn't help smiling, it was a really cute scene, but he wanted to know…
He wanted to know if somehow Teddy, who had been born both a metamorphmagus and a werewolf, had passed on a different type of lycanthropy altogether.
"Remus?" Sirius called again, "Can you understand me?"
Remus met his gaze, a long fathomless wolfy stare, before headbutting Sirius's knees.
Sirius laughed, and almost cried at Remus's stroke of good fortune.
Remus had been cursed since the age of four. Aside from the physical pain, the fear that came living life like that, afraid he would be a danger to others, afraid others would fear and hate him, afraid that his incredibly kind parents had given up too much for him.
Sirius patted Remus's head, and when Remus didn't try to bite him, just wagged his fluffy tail, he decided to stop pushing his luck and transformed into his dog form.
Lily stayed silent and watchful, staring out into the night from her vantage point, James following her example, but Sirius and Remus played with Teddy and the cats, keeping them from running off as they played tag and nipped each other's tails.
They didn't go searching for a way out by themselves, because for miles and miles there seemed to be nothing and no one.
Sirius had seen Henry Peverell the Earth from its slumber, take on a Dark Lord without a sweat, and redirect fiendfyre as if dusting cobwebs.
Professor Rell would come for them; he would come for his son.
And they were all his students, and of the lessons he had taught them, the one he had reminded of them time and time again was:
Waiting for help is an excellent solution when you are safe and everywhere else is unsafe.
To the best of their knowledge, they were relatively safe, for now, and there was nowhere safer for them to go.
So, they waited.
Narcissa had never seen Harry so furious, and she was beyond glad that she had cracked the code to Merlin's little hidey hole
"Cats," she said.
It was ten pm on all Hallows Eve at Oweynagat, otherwise known as Cave of the Cats.
And there were lots and lots of cats, watching them with a singular focus that went beyond disturbing.
Kingsley and Ted were with Helix, while Narcissa, Andromeda, and Bella had gone with Harry.
Harry said nothing as he climbed into the small entrance first, ignoring the tail-twitching, mirrored eyed cats that watched them.
The caves fit Merlin's descriptions. Harry had explained on the way that the reason for his being pulled into this timeline was to pull him closer to Morgana. The Black Library had Merlin's journal's which was likely why he had been dropped nearly on top of Bellatrix.
Andromeda was reading the small runes allowed as they passed the tiny inscriptions on the stone walls. Narcissa translated for Harry, but he wasn't listening, not really.
His power seemed to electrify the air around him like the taste of ozone before lightning strikes.
He pulled the metal star from his robe as they moved through the cave that they had almost crawling through at points opened up into a grand archway.
Andromeda read another and Narcissa translated, "Truth."
The truth.
Narcissa remembered a dream she had had quite some time ago, and a haunting female voice that filled the darkness, Merlin believed.
Narcissa pushed in front of Harry, and he didn't fight her, just stayed at her side a step behind as they hurried forward, stepping into blue lit darkness.
Stepping into her dream of water, darkness, and blue, rippling all around them. She followed that peal of laughter, an echoing truth, and when she hesitated, and almost fell backward, Harry caught her.
Her sisters caught them, and they pushed forward as a united front into another world.
The sounds were strange here. Echoing as if the world was a cave.
"So, you've come."
Narcissa already had her wand out and Harry growled, "Where is my son?"
A woman stepped out of the darkness.
"Is that truly the only question you have for me, my knight?"
She was beautiful. Her hair was ebony, her skin porcelain, her eyes the vivid blue of cobalt, and she was looking at Narcissa's husband as if she meant to eat him.
Narcissa gave a growl of her own, "Where are the children you stole from us?"
"Stole?" Morgana echoed, her voice echoing around them in the darkness, a void, a tight cave, an ocean, a pond. "They are safe, you simply needed an extra push. I must admit, Harry Potter, you were more stubborn than I expected, more selfish. I picked you because I thought you would be more generous- well, I suppose every human is bound to be a little disappointing."
"Cute," Harry said, "But I don't care what you think."
"Your wife did," Morgana said, "well, the other one. I must admit this one is prettier."
Narcissa sneered, "The Great Morrigan, resorting to stealing children and taunting a man about his wives."
Morgana smiled at her, "If you don't want him, I am more than pleased to take him off your hands. Merlin was rather good at his craft, less good at other things."
Harry took a step forward, "I will play whatever word games you want but give me back the children first."
"You promise?" Morgana asked, batting her eyelashes.
"Yes," Harry said
Even as Andromeda warned, "Harry." But Andromeda ended up grabbing Bella's arm. But before Bella could cast a curse as the stones beneath them turned to water and they were drowning.
It was darkness, it was cold, they held onto each other.
Suddenly there was streaking light all around them in that cold darkness as stars blurred past them. Water turned to air and then turned to earth as the ground itself rose to catch them.
The soil churched and then they were spat out on the grass. Bella was spitting obscenities.
"Children," Andromeda said dryly, "I only count one."
Narcissa looked up as Harry opened his arm toward the group of mostly animals. Because Andromeda was right, there was a wolf, a puppy, a dog, a stag upon which two cats were sitting on its antlers and Lily Evans on its back.
Harry hugged the puppy tight who had immediately run to him when they landed, which Narcissa knew was Teddy and only belatedly realized the larger wolf must have been Remus.
Though he didn't look anything like a werewolf.
"Are you all alright, Lily, James, Sirius?"
Narcissa gaped, "They are animagi?"
Harry was cradling the wolf pup in his arms and Teddy seemed to have already fallen asleep in his father's arms. He looked at the other wolf, "Remus… I like the new look."
The wolf gave a little yip, and Lily said, "Teddy bit him and when he transformed it was like the animagi."
"Yes," Morgana said, appearing out of the colour of the sky, the light of the oversized moon making her glow, "The Little Wolf's bite will only affect other werewolves, as now will the the Student Wolf's bite. Their curse is an adaptation and magic learns from others. In a metamorphmagus, a born werewolf found the cure. So good to be ahead of the curve on new developments."
Narcissa touched Harry's shoulder, stroking Teddy's fur, it was a miracle. When Harry had told her that Teddy had shifted her heart had broken, thinking of all the pain their son would have to live through.
Andromeda touched Narcissa's shoulder and Bella…
Bella had her wand pointed at Morgana, "Let us go."
Morgana smiled, showing her teeth, and said in a sing-song voice, "No, no, no, promises were made, promises must be kept."
Harry stiffened, but passed Teddy to Narcissa.
That small gesture, that he would trust her now and here… She loved him, and she was pretty sure he loved her, but they hadn't been together long and their marriage hadn't exactly been romantic.
But Harry gave her Teddy, his baby, trusted her to keep his son safe, and it meant the world to her, because she knew there was no greater act of trust that he could ever give to her.
"I promised to speak with you as long as you liked, but let them go."
"Harry," Andromeda warned.
Narcissa said nothing, knowing that getting the children out had to be the number one priority.
"But I've been so lonely," Morgana pouted, there was a wickedness in her eyes, a creature pretending to be a human woman. But there was too much magic infused in her being to mistake as human.
Narcissa couldn't explain the feeling. If she closed her eyes, she could still sense Harry, the wind and electricity of his power. But Morgana was like infinity contained in a visual form.
Narcissa didn't believe in gods, not the real ones, but Morgana was the first being she had ever met to make her think that maybe there were being who existed that were close enough to divinity.
"Let them go," Harry said, "you only brought them here because of me. You had the goblins bring me and Teddy to this time so you could have leverage over me."
"This is true," Morgana said, "You've no idea the things I've done to get to this moment. I have the power to bend time and reality itself yet so few have come here. Even when given blatant instructions. It's why I simply didn't appear to you and tell you where to find me. You humans, thinking you're so clever, but you need to 'find' the information yourself, denied answers to be pushed to so much as lift a finger in finding something greater than yourselves. Such fragile egos."
"Let them go, Morgana," Harry said.
She smiled again, baring her teeth in a way that marred her beauty and revealed the monster beneath, "So eager to be alone with me? Oh, Harry, my darling."
The stag stirred a bit and Narcissa glared at him, and the stag froze, the others had the sense to stay still, to not draw attention to themselves.
So of course, her oldest sister made to do just that.
Bella stepped -stomped, forward and Andromeda caught her around their oldest and least wise sister's waist. "You bitch, you want to pick a fight with our family?"
Morgana sighed, "Very well, this conversation does grow tedious." The inhuman woman snapped her fingers and suddenly a swarm of pixes, smaller and more insect-like than the ones Narcissa knew swarmed them, dust coming off of them like pollen.
Narcissa summoned a shield charm and curled herself bodily around Teddy's tiny furred body, but the shield charms from all of them combined did nothing to hinder the sparkling dust.
Teddy woke with a sneeze and they were torn from the otherworld back into their own at the entrance of the cave.
Meow.
Narcissa found herself on her butt beside her sisters, and assortment of animals, plus a motley of cats.
"What's with the cats?" Sirius asked as he transformed back into his human form.
"Where are we?" Lily asked.
"Ireland," Narcissa supplied, scratching Teddy behind the ear which the puppy seemed to enjoy, leaning into her fingers, a silly expression stretching his lips back, his left paw thumping with the movement.
"Why didn't we fight her!?" Bella demanded.
They all stared at her.
Sirius was the one to say, "Because Bells, she could have killed us all before we could have done anything. She wasn't human and she controlled everything in that place."
"What was that place?" Lily asked.
"Underhill," Andromeda said, "the Irish and the Scotts used to believe it was the land of the fairies, the Sidhe, the nature spirits, where all the magic in the world resided."
"What do we do now?" Bella demanded, crossing her arms and looking pissed. There were deep shadows under her eyes as she was still recovering from giving birth. Even the way she crossed her arms under her breasts underscored the physical discomfort she was in.
"We go home and trust that Harry can handle it," Andromeda said.
Bella gaped at her, "We came to help him."
"We are helping him," Narcissa said, stepping forward to reach her free hand down to Remus, winding her fingers in the warm ruff of his neck. "By staying safe and away, we allow him the freedom to act."
To not hold back.
She disaperated away. Her sisters following her lead and taking the other children with them.
Aside from Lily's cat and Regina, they left hundreds of guardian felines to meow at the Harvest Moon.
Harry stood in a field greener than he had ever seen even in the bleached light of a silver moon.
The creature that stood before him and he watched it warily, "You wanted to speak with me?"
She grinned, gliding forward in a gown that was more shadow than fabric. She let her stalk around him, "I wasn't kidding, I'm certain you would be a better shag than Merlin."
Harry merely raised a brow, "And to think the fairytales write you as such a romantic."
"Arthur was gay, painfully romantic, but Merlin did more for me than he ever could."
"Fascinating," Harry said sarcastically. He was so relieved that Teddy and the others were alright he didn't even care about the fairytale he had fallen into.
"I'd be better than Naomi."
Harry stiffened, stepping back from her, "Explain what you did to Teddy and I. Genetically we have four parents each."
Morgana threw her head back and laughed, "Clever bit of magic that. Wasn't it?"
"What did you do to us?"
"A simple duplication spell. Your parents were the tricky part really, making golems of them that existed only bare you into the world. I split your soul between a mirror reality, made a few tweaks, a bit of time magic, and then dragged your soul, and your son's soul back together again in this reality, utterly shattering the mirrored reality I based the golems off of."
"What?" Harry asked, feeling like a first year having Hermione explaining the Wizarding World to him for the first time.
Morgana gave the same long suffering sigh Hermione used to give, "You've time travelled before, you've been in two places at once, have you not?"
"Yes."
"Then think of this as a parallel growth. Instead of having an older you relive the same timeline, I split your soul so you could grow up between two lives simultaneously. It took a lot of planning on my part, but then I've been much limited with nothing to do over the endless centuries."
Harry gritted his teeth, "You split my and my son's soul?"
"Yes, the biology aspect was an interesting side effect, I must say. I can't see the future, you see, unless I'm manipulating it, but then the future isn't really the future anymore because it's changed."
He took in a deep breath, "What did you do to Naomi?"
"Nothing, I didn't discover her until she discovered you. Funny how fate works. I needed you and someone who had already found me fell in love with you. That's when I decided to do to your son what I did to you. You were originally a Potter before you were a Peverell, but your son was originally a Peverell before he was a Lupin. I do love magic, don't you?"
Harry wanted to stab this woman.
"What did you do to Naomi? Why is Voldemort afraid of you?"
Morgana hummed, stroking her hand through the sky, moving the moon as if she were adjusting a lamp, "Naomi came here once, though she did not have the power to do what your Dark Lord feared."
"Releasing you?" he guessed.
She shook her head, "No, not just me, magic. The mystery of how magical children born to non-magical parents, the existence of magical creatures, of the origin of all magic, it all starts here."
"If you have all the magic in the world," Harry began, "and you can act on the outside world, why can't you free yourself?"
She shrugged, "Lost wars, broken vows, Death, he's a bastard by the way, and other factors. It boils down to a wizard needing to bring balance to the world."
Harry raised a brow, "And why would I do that?"
"Because I didn't kill your son?" she asked sweetly.
"Blackmail will get you nothing," he stated.
She waved his remark away, "I heard your conviction, you mean to free me to spite your little Dark Lord."
Actually, he meant to free the magic, not her. The longer she spoke, the more certain he became that she, whatever she was, thought she was a god -or a goddess he supposed. But having dealt with Voldemort since he was eleven, he made it a point in his life never to assist creatures with the delusion of godhood. "What exactly will happen if I free you? What was Voldemort so afraid of? Assuming he doesn't know about you."
"He doesn't," she conceded, "He is afraid of releasing magic, of letting it balance with the mundane world. Not only would it result in the birth of more wizards and witches around the world, it would rebirth many creatures that have been long forgotten. Species of creatures that are extinct in your world would be reintroduced."
"And what would that do to the mundanes?"
Morgana laughed, "Not as much as you think, the mundanes will invent their own rationality to the extraordinary just as they always have. Cults may form, but in large part, we will coexist as we always have. Only in the last few thousand years wizards and witches thought to control the memories of their non-magical counterparts. Humans are stubborn creatures; they really need not worry over the issue of exposure as much as they do.
"Besides that, with the heart of magic pumping magic back into the earth, the ley lines reopened, illusion magic will be easier. We will be hidden in plain sight, even dragons may live in the peaks of mountains, near human cities and never be sighted. True, it may set the technology back a bit, but the humans don't know what they are doing uprooting the resources of the earth that were meant to age undisturbed."
Harry didn't know why that all sounded so appealing to him, but it did.
Additionally, knowing that Voldemort didn't want it made it more appealing.
Which is when it hit him, why the magical creatures were in on this conspiracy, "Wizards wouldn't be the top magical being anymore, would they?"
Morgana laughed, "Give the man a prize."
She was standing in front of him, stroking an ice cold hand down his cheek, putting her other hand over his heart.
He felt the cold of her skin, glacially cold even through his robes.
"The time draws near, you have the star, you have the magic," she purred, "Free me, Harry Potter."
Harry took a step back from her, "I thought my name was Henry Peverell?"
She snorted, her hands dropping, "Come, Harry, there is no pretense here." She threw out her arms and the field and the sky and moon shattered, reformed, a forest, a tundra, the ocean.
Every element, every home, every disaster, every hope and every death.
The potential of everything.
This was the heart of the world.
And somehow, at some points, or perhaps many points over many different means, humans had choked the lines of the magic, kept it from flowing.
Magic was neither good nor bad, but it was real, and this well of energy and potential belonged to their planet and belonged to reality.
Whatever came of it, it was not for humans to stop or cage.
Magic was like water, it was not meant to be left stagnant.
Morgana laughed, "I see it on your face, in your eyes, you know, you understand what Merlin never could.
Harry cocked his head, "I have just one more question?"
"Anything, my love," Morgana said hungrily, greed and excitement agitating her features, disturbing her human mask despite her all too human longings.
"Why didn't Naomi release you?"
Morgana's face froze for half a heartbeat before she recovered, "Because she didn't have the power."
Harry smiled, "Liar."
Anger twitched her lips, darkened the blue of her eyes and reflected like that of a cat, only in an iridescent shade of red and deepest purple.
It chased real fear into his gut as he had felt before the Black Sister had taken the children away to safety.
"Naomi," Morgana said, "Didn't like me. Nor was she brave enough to change the world. But you are not afraid, are you, Harry Potter?"
Harry held his hands out to his side, though he never let go of his wand. The star he had returned to his breast pocket some time ago.
"I am exceedingly afraid, but like Naomi, I'm no fool."
"But you'll free me, won't you, Harry?" she purred, "My brave child."
"You're the one who led Voldemort to Naomi. We lived a secluded life, we contacted no one in the Wizarding World, he shouldn't have been able to find us."
Morgana's red lips flatted, "It wasn't my intention, I was merely trying to motivate her to act."
"Like you tried motivating me. Endangering my loved ones, splitting souls, kidnapping my son and my students?" he asked in a light tone that belied the ocean of rage building inside of him.
"It wasn't just for me, Harry," she explained in a cajoling tone, "it's for the world, for the greater good."
The dam broke inside of him, he was so sick of being used by those who thought they were greater than anyone else, thought that his life, his happiness, that the very lives of his loved ones meant nothing in the face of 'the greater good.'
"My home. You're the one who started the fire," he said, putting the last bit together. The visions, the mind fucks, the riddles, all tied back to this crazed being playing god from her ill-guarded prison.
"I couldn't let you just go on with your life as you've been trying to do so valiantly. O, Mr. Potter, for Outstanding effort, remarrying, having an ever growing family, all before fulfilling your purpose. I needed you to pursue the mystery, to seek revenge against the Dark Lord who murdered your wife, your parents, who set war upon a future world that you can save by acting! By releasing magic, you will change everything!"
He smiled, "By freeing you, I will change everything, and have my vengeance?"
She smiled, a beautiful smile that Harry didn't trust at all, "Precisely!"
Harry turned his wand on her and roared the spell of his nightmares, "Avada Kedavra!"
Sometimes to destroy the monster, you had to become one. He thought he heard Naomi's voice whisper in his ear, The only way out is through.
The Morrigan's expression turned to horror. She didn't die like a person, she died in pieces, flaking away starting slowly at the fingertips.
"No," she breathed, "you weren't supposed to kill me, you were supposed to free me." She looked truly shocked, "You were supposed to be a good man."
Harry smiled bitterly, "Your mistake, I'm not a good man, I'm a good soldier. And I will not be releasing you onto the world. I will not let you get away with fucking me over or daring to put my loved ones in harm's way."
He believed that killing was wrong, he would even agree that what he had done to the centaurs was barbaric, but to protect his family, there was nothing he wouldn't do anymore.
"You wouldn't have killed Dumbledore."
"No," he agreed, "despite it all, no, I wouldn't have," unless he tried doing the same to Teddy.
"I don't understand," she said, staring down at herself as she flaked slowly away into the night, returning to the ashes.
He watched her coming apart with grim satisfaction, "Dumbledore made me a martyr." He met her gaze with nothing but apathy in his heart, "You, Morgana, made me your enemy."
"But you were willing to die before? Why not again?" she stated in confusion, her last words as the back of her vanished into the night, her long inky hair appearing to burn away without flame.
So, he said the last words she would ever hear, answering the question that she was perhaps too inhuman to understand even when facing her own mortality, "Because I have so much to live for."
AN: Please, please review or share your reactions with me on the content of this chapter? Please?