A/N: I don't want to do many of these, but there have been many reviews asking about Sirius. This will be covered in story come third year, but to keep you going there are 3 main reasons he is still locked up. 1. They can't prove he is innocent 2. They can't be sure he is innocent, there was at least one unidentified traitor in the Order 3. Fighting to free one 'known Death Eater' would have destroyed any chance at getting any others put away.
Enter Act 2:
Getting to lie in and mess about outside for most of the day were all well and good, but that wasn't why Harry, Neville and Susan had been so excited for the holiday. They were still very nice of course, at least for the few days that their families tolerated their slackness but, honestly they could get away with quite a lot of that at Hogwarts anyway. Instead, it was the prospect of all of the fun things that Hogwarts didn't allow them to do.
As always, Susan spent most weekdays either at Longbottom Manor or the Potters' house, as Amelia's job as head of the Department for Magical Law Enforcement was a full time job and then some, and she didn't want to leave Susan alone in their house any more than necessary. Yes they had a house elf who could make sure the young girl would be kept safe, but in Amelia's opinion, that wasn't the same as actual human contact. This meant that in the end the three children probably spent more time with each other than not, to the point where more than once the adults had referred to them unironically as honorary siblings.
Keeping three children occupied and out of trouble, even without the possibility of magic, was not a trivial task. The easiest and most productive way the adults had found to do it was to tire them out with something instructive and fun. Therefore they quickly settled back into the pattern of teaching different subjects. Lily covered Potions, Charms and Transfiguration, mostly working to undo the damage done to their skills and enthusiasm after a year of Snape. While she wasn't going to turn down the opportunity to help them now and could see the logic behind it, Lily knew that she would have loved to have been able to practice over the holidays when she was in school.
The Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery stated that non-accidental magic could not be performed without the presence of a qualified witch or wizard. This was because, especially with more unstable developing magic, accidents were quite common and there needed to be someone on hand who could fix them, or in the worst case scenario get them to St. Mungo's. A secondary justification was that the adult was the one legally responsible ensuring the Statue of Secrecy was upheld, and this was one of the primary reasons that muggle raised found the enforcement of this law disproportionality focussed on them. While Lily couldn't argue with the logic, she was still irritated at how this allowed those raised in the wizarding world another advantage over their peers.
Augusta was beginning to move away from just teaching history and customs to more interactive lessons on politics. As a member of the Wizengamot, she was obviously given copies of motions that went before that body. Starting with some simple, older ones, she created exercises where the children were assigned different positions on the issues to argue for, and then discuss which arguments would appeal to which people and why. In a few years she intended them to be analysing legislation as it was being proposed, and perhaps helping her in planning her own political moves, in preparation for them taking over their family seats themselves upon graduating from Hogwarts.
Remus, as the only man involved in this, got made responsible for most of the more physical lessons. While Lily was occasionally roped in to make up the numbers, he was the one responsible for making sure the children kept active, with various basic ball games and games of tag both on the ground and on brooms. Not only did the wizarding world hold that a healthy body was important for a healthy mind and so healthy magic, not that indolence wasn't often chosen instead, but they all agreed that at least Harry had an excellent chance at making the Ravenclaw Quidditch team in the current year despite his age. Most obviously this would carry a lot of prestige within the school and be an excellent way to get to know other students, especially in the older years. Probably more importantly however, at least from Lily's point of view in wanting to push her son to the height of his potential, even before being confronted with the possibility of Voldemort returning with a vengeance, the magical and mental skill required for Quidditch were widely applicable outside the sport and regular practices would be an excellent way to to hone these. There was a reason after all that Quidditch was the undisputed top sport in magical Europe.
Now that the children had started school, Remus also branched out. His high NEWT scores and the side jobs he had managed to scrounge in magical pest handling had made him the most obvious choice to teach Defence Against the Dark Arts, something that was sorely needed given Quirrell's thoroughly uninspiring performance over the past year, possibly deliberately so in hindsight. It was these lessons that the children had been looking forward to most ever since they had been promised over the Christmas holidays.
"Now, I know you are all very excited for this, but it will only work as long as you do exactly what you are told." Remus lectured the three children sternly, suppressing a smile at how they were practically vibrating with anticipation.
"What I am going to do is demonstrate the spell. I am then going to cast it on each of you for a moment so you can actually feel what precisely it does. Then one by one you are going to try and cast it at the wall. Then we are going to do the same with the counter curse. When I am satisfied, you are going to move on to casting on this goat. Say hello Betty."
"Baah!"
"Finally, when I am convinced that you are capable of casting the spell and countering it without any side effects on the target, I will let you practice on each other. Like many spells, this will require several sessions, so don't be disheartened if you don't get far today. This will be a project for the entire summer, and perhaps beyond. Needless to say, there is a reason that these spells aren't taught at Hogwarts for several years, and if I hear about you using them outside of an emergency, I will not be pleased. Understand?"
"Yes Remus." "Yes Mr Lupin." "Yes Mr Lupin."
"Alright. The first spell I am going to teach you is the Full Body Bind Curse. This spell targets the victims joints, snapping them into a particular position and locking them. This is one of the most useful spells for temporarily immobilising targets which are physically strong or especially flexible as it overrides control of their own body. Its weakness is that it is a direct magical effect on the body and it still leaves the target awake. This means that even if the target doesn't have their wand, or is even unable to cast magic at all, willing themselves to be free will still direct their magic to fight off the curse, and they will have the advantage of contesting the spell inside their own body, so it will tend to wear off quickly. Allow me to demonstrate. Apologies Betty. Petrificus Totalus!"
A jet of light shot from Remus' wand and impacted the goat, which immediately went completely stiff, legs fully extended perpendicular to the body and neck extended in front. While the jerk did set it wobbling, four feet meant that it settled down without toppling over.
"Like with many spells, the general dispel 'Finite' will disperse it, but you are better off using the specific counterspell .Watch. Articulus Solvo!" The moment the goat regained control of its own body, it let out a bleat of alarm and tried to bolt in panic, just to be pulled up short by its tether. Remus then tagged it with a cheering charm and it seemed to calm down a notch.
"Are there any other things that you think you should be aware of when casting this spell?" Remus asked. This was meant to be a lesson after all, so he might as well get their brains working.
Neville started. "It has quite a long incantation."
"You are correct. You should never rush an incantation, especially for a spell you are trying to cast on a living target, and at seven syllables, this isn't an emergency, snap cast spell. Also, like most spells which convey an internal magical affect, it takes the form of a single bolt, which needs to hit clothes or exposed skin, meaning you are going to have to aim carefully to hit a moving target. Anything else?"
"Even though the goat … Betty? Was nearly in the same position as she is now, she still nearly fell over, and it didn't seem particularly comfortable." Susan offered.
Remus chuckled. "I have no idea what her actual name is, if she has one. I just decided to call her Betty. I just picked her up at a farmer's market yesterday. But for your point, yes both of those are important. Just because the spell isn't meant to cause any damage, never assume it won't. Because Betty here has four legs and was already in the right sort of position she stayed stable, but casting this on a human, or humanoid will most likely cause them to fall over. Especially if they are moving, and so off balance. Because for a humanoid the arms snap down to the sides, this tends to mean that they will hit the floor quite hard. I would recommend not using this spell on a muggle unless you can catch them, they will be propped up or will land on something very soft. Even for a wizard or magical creature, where magic will tend to make them more robust, be very careful on hard and uneven surfaces and don't underestimate the danger of them hitting their head hard, especially if they catch a corner.
He stopped for a moment to make sure the warning sank in. "Although most wild magical creatures have very thick skulls, so don't worry too much about them. You can literally drop a redcap head first onto solid stone from a second story window and it will just walk away. Finally, what you said about it being a shock. Remember I said this forces the joints to change position and lock? Well, I don't know how much research has been done about the side effects of this spell and I haven't looked myself, but I would also be careful if the target is in too different a position to the 'bound' one. Having the spell cast on you feels as if your limbs are being wrenched into position, and I wouldn't be surprised if that could pull or even tear something. Probably no damage a potion and a night's rest couldn't fix, but something to be aware of. Lastly, as this targets joints, it will have no effect on targets which have no internal skeletons, so don't bother casting this on flesh-eating slugs or giant insects."
Remus raised his wand again and cast at the ground around the children. "Right. As I promised, the next stage is I am going to cast the spell on you. Harry, as you didn't provide any suggestions just now, you have volunteered yourself to go first. Congratulations. Now, I have put a cushioning charm on the ground, so you don't need to worry about falling over. Just let your arms hang by your sides and relax, it will make this more comfortable. Petrificus Totalus!" Harry's arms and legs snapped straight and, after rocking back and forth for a moment, he slowly began to fall backwards, picking up speed as he fell until just before he hit the ground, the cushioning charm caught him and deposited him gently on the grass.
"Now, I want to think very carefully about what being hit by the spell felt like, and what it is currently doing to you. This will help you form the curse correctly yourself." Remus left Harry lying there for about a minute before he relented and freed him. Both Susan and Neville had to fight the urge to giggle, because they knew that they would be next.
Over the course of the summer, this process was repeated with several other defence spells: the disarming charm, the stunning spell and a weak, wide area banishing spell for pushing back large numbers of small opponents. Occasionally if the sessions fell on weekends, Amelia would also help out, as while she had been working desk jobs for over a decade now, she was still on the books as a qualified Auror and kept her skills sharp. They probably could have covered more than this but for two reasons. Firstly, there was a reason that these spells were taught formally in later years when the students' magic was more powerful and their ability to control and shape it was more intuitive. Secondly, the adults just wanted to give their children a little bit of extra ability to protect themselves if they ran into events like the previous years again, not to arm them so they felt comfortable seeking out or even creating trouble.
The summer wasn't all just lessons and laughter. There were two distinct events that broke from the established routine. The first of these happened on the evening of Harry's birthday. He had been having problems with his mail for the better part of a month by this point. Letters he had written or addressed to him had been disappearing, seemingly ripped from the owl mid flight. It had gotten so bad that they had started routing letters from his various friends through Neville and Susan as they were seeing each other almost daily anyway. This mysterious interference culminated once Harry was just going to bed on the evening of his birthday, sleepy after the events of the day and feeling stuffed full of cake.
He had just turned the light on and was crossing the room when he stopped with a small shriek of surprise. There was something on his bed. No. Someone. It was a small, humanoid creature with pale skin, massive floppy ears and eyes so big that they seemed to take up most of the room in its head. It was a house elf, wearing from what he could tell, was a dirty pillowcase. While his family didn't have one, both the Longbottoms and the Bones' did, and while they took pride in not being noticed as they worked, especially around guests, by this point Harry still knew them quite well. But this house elf he didn't recognise.
"Oh! Harry Potter sir!" It exclaimed in a piping voice. "It is such an honour to meet you at long last. To see the Great Harry Potter in the flesh, Dobby has been wanting to do this for so long!"
Even if he had been wide awake, Harry would not have been prepared to deal with this, and he just stared in confusion. Eventually the expectant gaze boring into him brought him to his senses enough to blurt out the first thing that came into his head.
"Who are you?"
"Dobby sir. Dobby the house-elf."
"Ok Dobby. Nice to meet you. What are you doing here?" Harry tried.
"Dobby has come here to warn you sir, warn you about things happening. Bad things."
"What sort of things? Actually, wait a moment. MUM!" Harry yelled.
"What dear?" Came the reply from downstairs where Lily was busy tidying up.
"Can you come up here? There is a house-elf on my bed that wants to warn me about something."
"Wait what?"
Lily came hurrying up the stairs, wand drawn and burst into Harry's bedroom. Dobby jumped off the bed and visibly cringed as the wand was trained on him.
"Ok, apparently I did hear you correctly. Who are you and what are you doing in my house?" Lily demanded of the elf.
"Dobby is Dobby madam. I am here to warn the Great Harry Potter madam. Should I punish myself?" Dobby suddenly lunged across the room and started banging his head on the chest of drawers. "Bad Dobby! Bad Dobby!"
Harry recovered first and physically dragged the elf away from the offending furniture. "Stop that. Please?"
Dobby burst into tears and started wailing. "Harry Potter asked Dobby please? Harry Potter is so kind. He is even greater than Dobby imagined. Nobody has ever said please to Dobby before. The stories don't do the Great Harry Potter justice sir!"
"What stories?" Harry asked and then immediately winced. The enthusiastic shrieking was already giving him a headache and he didn't want to extend this conversation any longer than absolutely necessary.
"They say that Harry Potter defeated You-Know-Who when he was just a little baby. Some even say... " Dobby leaned in closer and whispered conspiratorially, "they say that Harry Potter is so great that when You-Know-Who tried to come back again the Great Harry Potter defeated him again."
"Do you mean Voldem-"
"Don't say his name!" Dobby recoiled and covered his ears. So did the Potters, but that was more to do with the pitch and volume of the elf's scream. "Harry Potter must be so brave, but poor Dobby isn't. Don't say his name."
At this point Lily wrenched herself away from the dilemma of whether to grab some alcohol or check to see if she had accidentally dropped some hallucinogenic potions ingredients in the cake mix to re-join the conversation.
"Right, I think we have established that you like my son. You said you were here to warn him. What about?"
The elf turned to her and seemed to calm down a notch. "There are bad things going on at Hogwarts this year. It is too dangerous, Harry Potter can't go."
"What sort of danger? It is targeting Harry specifically? How do you know?"
"Dobby can't say madam. Dobby just knows that there is a terrible plot being planned for Hogwarts this year. If Harry Potter returns to Hogwarts then he will be in mortal peril."
"How would you… is this anything to do with your family?" Lily guessed.
Dobby shook his head vigorously. "Dobby can't say madam.
"Is it just Harry? Are you warning anyone else?"
"There will be great danger for everybody, but Harry Potter especially. Dobby will never forgive himself if the Great Harry Potter gets hurt."
"But my friends are all at Hogwarts. I can't leave them all in danger too" Harry burst out.
"Friends that never write to Harry Potter sir?" Dobby said slyly.
"Yes they have, just some of their letters weren't… hey, have you been taking my mail?" Harry demanded.
The house elf reached into his pillowcase and produced a bunch of envelopes. "If Dobby gives back the letters, will Harry Potter promise not to return to Hogwarts."
"They have all already been re-sent and received." Lily dismissed. "What I am more interested in is how you managed to intercept the letters. In fact, while we are on the subject, how did you find and get into Harry's bedroom to start with?"
"Dobby has been looking out for Harry Potter Madam. Dobby's family sometimes sends Dobby to Diagon Alley, and one day Dobby saw madam and recognised her from the picture in the paper and followed her here. Then when Dobby had free time, he watched the sky around Harry Potter's house for owls Dobby did."
Brilliant! Lily thought. An obsessive stalker house elf with far too much time on its hands. Just what she needed. At least he seemed to be trying to help, she shuddered to think what could have happened if he was malicious. She needed to have an urgent talk with Amelia about what precautions they could take against other house-elves now. Right now she just needed to diffuse the situation without driving this lunatic to anything more drastic.
"We can't make any decision right now." She informed Dobby kindly. "But thank you for the warning. I promise that we will take it seriously. You had better get back before your family notices you are missing."
"Yes Madam. Thank you madam. Dobby will be going now."
With that the elf clicked its fingers and disappeared. Lily turned to Harry. "Go to bed. We will discuss this with the others when we go round to the Longbottoms tomorrow.
The final consensus was that the house-elf was obviously unstable and was unable to provide any evidence to back up its claims. The warning alone wasn't enough to justify the trouble and disappointment of trying to remove Harry from Hogwarts and his friends and then organising sending him somewhere else a year late with a month to prepare. That was without considering the outcry and fuel for the petitions to have Harry placed with a 'proper family' that the withdrawal would spark. They would just have to send a letter to Dumbledore and make sure everyone kept their eyes and ears open. In any case, they were busy enough with the second event of the holiday, the one that was planned.
Amelia, like many overworked office workers the world over, didn't get much holiday time, so when she had the opportunity to take time off, she wanted to make it count. This was compounded in her case by the byzantine and backstabbing nature of Ministry politics meaning that as a department head leaving her demesne unattended for too long would cost her. Of course, also the fact that she was a woman and effectively a single mother didn't help either, any whispers about her being 'unable to cope with the demands of the job' carried far more weight than they would have otherwise. Hence Amelia's desire not to merely have a holiday, but to Go On Holiday.
Now that their children were beginning to develop their mature magic, options were opened up beyond discreet days out to the mundane world. It was now safe for them to take long distance portkeys. That didn't mean that they could instantly travel anywhere in the world, expense and paperwork aside the longer the distance the greater strain the traveller had to endure and even and even for many adult witches and wizards the most popular route across the Atlantic involved stopping at Iceland and Greenland along the way. They instead broke their journey up into two stages, with a couple of hours break to recover in the middle. It was still with far less fuss or fanfare than any mundane travel methods the group of seven arrived at their destination.
When planning this holiday, the adults had decided they wanted somewhere where there was much to see and do in both the magical and mundane worlds to get the most out of the trip. They also didn't want to go somewhere that would involve a lot of travelling about given the children's ages, but instead where there were just short walks and frequent opportunities for sit downs and ice cream breaks. They finally settled on Istanbul. As the seat of first the Byzantine and then the Ottoman Empires it had been home to one of the largest magical communities in Europe for over fifteen hundred years.
It was at times like this that Lily blessed the friends she had made. This would be her first trip abroad in her entire life, first her background, then the war and finally Harry keeping her firmly rooted in Britain. While in the mundane world, especially these days in a cosmopolitan city, getting around with just English wasn't impossible, the magical world was very different. Without a magical equivalent of the European colonial powers, the magical communities of the world retained their local dialects, even if it had fallen into disuse in the mundane population around them. Most magicals rarely travelled far outside of heavily structured events like the Quidditch World Cup so there was no real concept of a dominant international language, instead visitors were expected to speak in something the locals recognised. Fortunately, two of the group could do that.
A lifetime of being the model of an aristocratic witch had required Augusta Longbottom to be familiar with many languages that legacy family texts, written, bought or stolen by one's ancestors possibly centuries ago, could come in. Even if most families didn't actually have much need for much beyond a smattering of Latin and Old English, there was no need to let everyone know that and linguistic breath was a sign of class. Of particular importance at the moment was her fluency in Greek, which while not the day-to-day language of magical Istanbul, was understood widely enough to still be useful. In addition, as in much of Europe, those places that catered specifically to tourists made sure their employees could speak French.
Amelia Bones was even better off. As the Aurors were the elite of the magical law enforcement, they were tasked with the most challenging cases, such as those involving international crime or unknown magic. To prepare for this Auror training both at the start and throughout one's career involved a large focus on languages to liaise with foreign colleagues, eavesdrop on or interrogate suspects and decipher written evidence and communications. Hence she was perfectly fluent in Turkish. It didn't hurt that for some reason magicals seemed to have an easier time learning languages than muggles. For example it was rumoured that as the head of the Department of International Relations, Bartemius Crouch, could speak over two hundred, including several never meant for human vocal cords.
With this help at hand, everything went as smooth as could be. Stepping out of the international portkey arrival pen, they first made a beeline to the New Arrivals desk. As well as picking up the standard series of pamphlets for useful phrases, local attractions, places to eat and sleep, rules for going into the muggle world and general advice, Amelia also introduced herself and provided a rough outline of what they were planning to do. After all, even off duty she was a senior British Ministry official and it was easier to spend a moment observing some formalities now rather than potentially dealing with a diplomatic incident further down the line.
Diagon Alley was in fact very unusual in being situated in the historic city centre. While most historically important cities had magical communities, they tended to actually build their enclaves out in the surrounding countryside. This had many benefits: cheaper, more space to expand, more independent from the muggle authorities, better standard of living, less likely to be caught as collateral damage in wars, fires, riots and so forth and generally more freedom to be magical without having to constantly check over your shoulder for muggle neighbours. Although much to their inhabitants' intense irritation, many of these settlements had since been surrounded by the rapidly expanding suburbs.
Not unusually for places with long histories and extreme cultural shifts, the magical population of Istanbul didn't all live in the same place. When the city of Byzantium had been renamed New Rome, the new capital of the empire, the magicals who flocked there primarily settled on a nearby magical island in the sea of Marmara, which had been intermittently lightly populated for much of recorded history. Despite their nominal acknowledgement of the rule of the emperors and that many were directly employed by the imperial administration, magicals have a habit of ignoring rules because they are so hard to enforce, and especially for the final centuries of decline they became functionally a self-contained nation of their own. For this reason they were pretty much unscathed by the eventual fall of the empire. When the waves of Turkish migrants arrived following the seat of Ottoman power, strong cultural and ideological differences led to the newcomers starting a new settlement further inland from the city. While eventually the barriers were worn down and the populations are relatively homogeneous, there remained two geographically distinct population centres, although the latter had more recently mostly relocated further north along the Black Sea coast to escape the oncoming urban sprawl.
The arrival point was on the island, as due to its age and comparative security that was where most of the infrastructure and governance was based. For the first day, after the tumult of preparation and the magical and physical drain of the portkey travel, they just signed into their lodgings, dumped the bags and flopped down on the beach to recover. On the other side of the island to the fishing docks, air freshening charms could only do so much.
The next day everyone was up early and raring to go. Well, the youngest three anyway, the adults just had to accept that they were waking up at half past seven in the morning, or half past four British time whether they liked it or not. Magic could do nothing about time zones. Once the children had been held still for long enough to be fed, made presentable and recited the rules one more time, they set off.
It had been decided to start with the Muggle side of things, as that would provide context for much of the magical history. They met up with their guide outside the Ministry building (they wouldn't have to worry about finding their way around, the locals didn't want unattended foreigners causing incidents through ignorance) and hopped into the public floo to the city centre.
Over the next few days they followed a similar pattern, visiting the sights and museums in the morning, stopping at a café for lunch and spending the rest of the day relaxing on the beach. The children were enthralled. Even aside from the impressive buildings, majestic views and compelling stories, was just the experience of being in a cosmopolitan city. Aside from a few day trips to London and Blackpool, they had all led very sheltered lives. Due to their low numbers and ease of travel, living in the wizarding world often ended up quite isolating. Even wizarding settlements like Godric's Hollow or Hogsmeade were rural villages. Spending several days walking around a seemingly endless metropolis teeming with people was an experience they wouldn't forget quickly. To add to this, everything was so different. The people looked, spoke, dressed and behaved quite unlike others that they had seen, even for muggles.
Their favourite parts of course, given their age, were the stories of violence. They eagerly lapped up the bloody stories of the imperial courts from their guide, of betrayal and murder and banishment and blindings. And that was before you considered the magical world. There was one particularly exciting, and frankly implausible, story concerning the sons of two powerful rival families who eloped together the evening before one was to be married off to secure an alliance. Both families offered high rewards for their errant scions' return as well as setting off in pursuit themselves. After a hair raising tale of disguises, deception, escapes, unscrupulous merchants, helpful street urchins and the inevitable exotic harem, they returned home on the back of a dragon they had tamed declaring that nobody could keep them apart. Three days later one of them was poisoned and the other then took his own life. Bedtime stories in the wizarding world weren't for the faint of heart.
Probably what excited them the most though, partly because they got to see the actual physical proof, was told in the magical museum, where the local aristocrats could show off the artefacts and treasures that they had inherited for the adulation of the masses without having to actually let poor people into their manors. The pride of the collection was a collection of damaged suits of enchanted plate armour and weapons.
The Middle East had experienced the separation of magic and mundane several centuries before Europe. In part this was due to the near constant structure of large empires in the region from Persia to Egypt throughout history meaning the magicals were more organised. Partly it was due to the sudden regime shifts in those empires providing the impetuous for the magicals to get their own way. The final push was the chaos and destruction of the crusades from the west and invasion of the Mongols a century and a half later from the east. This left the Byzantine Empire with magical superiority in their conflicts, if they could persuade their wizards to actually fight for them. When Sultan Mehemed the Conqueror planned to capture the city and destroy the Byzantines for good, he knew that he needed help. Large bribes, both upfront and promises of spoils of war, eventually persuaded a group of wizards to join him with the role of hunting down and subduing their opposite number. On the other side, the last Emperor had consolidated the few magicals willing to risk their lives in what was generally seen as a lost cause into his personal bodyguard. The entire group, himself and his muggle retainers included, were kitted out in every scrap of enchanted equipment the Imperial Armoury had gathered over nearly a millennium and a half. When the walls were overrun and the city was falling around them, they rampaged through the streets, seemingly untouchable by mundane means. Finally, exhausted, they were cornered by the Ottoman wizards and made their bloody last stand, the notched blades and rent armour claimed as trophies for display.
According to their guide, while changes in warfare and fashions in the rest of Europe had rendered enchanted smithing a forgotten art, there were still a few active workshops in Istanbul. There were no magical settlements in Greece proper due to the spectacularly dangerous wildlife, even the Cretan Bulls were infamous wizard-killers, let alone the chimeras, manticores and cerberi. However, there were always a handful of the desperate, brave or reckless who tried to carve out a life there, or just visit on a hunting trip, and when going up against over a tonne of near magic impervious carnivore, there was no substitute for solid enchanted steel. Incidentally, the guide added, if they happened to be interested in buying anything, then he had a cousin who worked in one of the workshops and could offer them a good deal.
Lily smiled later that day when the children decided to grab some sticks and try play fighting as sword wielding wizards. She would miss this when they grew up. At least she had the camera on hand, so it was recorded for posterity. Still the holiday was swiftly drawing to a close and soon they would be back in England and then back at school, so her cheering them on was purely selfless encouragement for them to enjoy the carefree fun while it lasted. So she told herself.