AN: Sorry for the delay, but the next chapter's here now. Some people were asking me to tone down on all of the 'astral' stuff, and even I have to agree, it was getting a bit out of hand. It's not going to disappear, and there'll be some underworld stuff as well coming up relatively soon, but I'll focus more on other things, and have that as an aside thing, okay? Also, a lot of people have asked about how Lily is taking everything, and that played a part in the end bit of this chapter, hope you guys like my interpretation of things here.
Beta'd by: The trolling SnarkLord
Chapter 21 – Inside Lily's Head
Harry sighed. "You have really ridiculous luck." He said, as he saw Rose land on Free Parking, again, and collect all of the money that had been collected there. "I'm really starting to think that playing Monopoly wasn't the best idea."
Loki laughed at Harry. "I don't think it would matter what we played, the dice seem to like her a lot more than they do you."
"You're not doing any better than I am." Harry dryly retorted, looking pointedly at the small amount of money Loki currently had in front of him."
"She's mopping the floor with all of us." Isis huffed, as she and Bast had only a little more money than Harry and Loki did. She perked up then as an idea occurred to her. "Can we make this strip monopoly, putting clothes forward when we run out of money?" She asked, looking intently at Harry, lust clear in her eyes.
"No." Harry shot her down. "None of your pervy stuff in front of children." He gestured towards Rose, who gave him a flat look in return.
"You're barely older than I am." She grumbled.
"And she's been doing this ever since first year too, when you were eleven years old." Loki added.
"I rest my case." Rose nodded her head, a slightly smug look crossing her face.
"Perverts." Bast commented, her eyes flickering between Rose and Isis, both of whom puffed up proudly at her insult, though as Isis had a far larger bust than Rose – who didn't have one to speak of – it had a lot more of an effect than the young girl.
Harry grumbled something inaudible under his breath, before raising his voice to normal again. "We are not doing 'strip' anything. We are playing a normal game of monopoly… one that Rose is currently dominating."
Loki snorted. "Nice choice of words."
Isis huffed and leaned over to Harry in order to wrap her arms around him. "No one dominates my Harry! He dominates others, and he can dominate me any time." Her voice became low and sultry by the end, her hands starting to slip into less appropriate places.
She yelped as Harry reached out and touched her, a spark of electricity jumping from his hand to hers. Letting go of him, she pouted and gave him her best puppy dog eyes… which didn't move him in the slightest.
"Oh, come on, Harry, we're all alone here." She pleaded. "Let me get my snuggles, please."
"We're not alone, there's Loki, Bast, and Rose here too." He pointed out. Of course, Reinforce was currently inside him as well, and the Unison Device really didn't know how to feel about the unicorn's advances on Harry, and her uncertainty was even worse when she was inside of him when Isis was doing her flirting.
"I'm not going to stop just because my fellow familiars are here. Heck, they're welcome to join in if they want, maybe me and Bast double-teaming you would work, the stacked, mature woman, and the flat-chested loli." Harry was worried, Isis looked like she was seriously considering that. "Of course, I don't care who's around, I'd try and seduce you in front of the Queen of England if she was here."
Harry sighed. "The problem is that I actually believe you would do just that."
"There's no 'believe' about it, she would do so." Loki chuckled. "In fact, she'd do it because she's in front of someone important. You are well aware of how she tries to fluster you all the time, so picture how hard it would be to remain polite and calm in front of royalty while Isis is doing her best to try and get a reaction from you."
"I'm trying not to think about it, thank you very much." Harry grumbled in reply.
"Oh, just shut up and lose already." Rose interrupted them, slightly gleeful at how she was clearly winning the game they were playing.
Harry continued to grumble under his breath, but took his turn anyway. He pouted slightly when he landed on one of Rose's more expensive properties and had to hand over a significant chunk of what little money he had left. Rose's cackling didn't make Harry feel any better about losing as badly as he was.
"Anyway, Harry, Christmas isn't far away now. Do you have anything planned for the holidays?" Rose asked.
"Nothing specific." Harry replied, thinking of his plans, as few as they were. He would be testing his Pleiades golems using the standardised ranking 'exams' that the TSAB had, and he'd considered perhaps meeting up with some of his correspondents from Mahoutokoro that he'd been exchanging letters with… Oh, he'd also planned to take a closer look at those weird magical eyes that he'd taken from Grimmauld Place, but that was the extent of his 'plans'.
"There's a few things I plan on doing, but my schedule isn't packed, nor is anything set in stone." Harry added. "What about you, do you have anything planned?"
"I'm not sure." Rose shrugged. "I know dad's still hung up on talking with loads of 'important people', but no one's really said anything about anything else. If we're staying at Hogwarts over the break, I think I'd like to explore it, see what I can find. I mean, the castle is massive, it's magically expanded, and even without the towers there's seven floors to wander. With all of that, there really should be somewhere interesting, yeah?"
"Hmm, well I know a fair few interesting places around the school." Harry told her. "I could show you the Chamber of Secrets, the Room of Requirement, and a few other rooms that have a lot of focused magic there. In the Astronomy Tower, for example, there's a room that can 'record' a few days worth of night sky. It's rather dusty though, I don't think it's been used in decades, if not longer."
Rose frowned. "Why would a room like that be forgotten, it sounds like it'd be amazingly useful for lessons."
Harry shrugged. "I don't know, maybe a new teacher came along that didn't like it or something. Of course, I think it's more likely because it's not perfectly accurate, recordings aren't always exact after all, and magic can and does mutate over time. Maybe when the castle was new, it was good, but over time it became less accurate and focused."
"Magic mutates?" Rose questioned, having never heard that before.
"Of course it does." Harry confirmed. "It's one of the reasons long-lasting enchantments are so difficult, you have to put a lot of work into stabilising the spells if you want it to last a long time. Of course, more complicated also means more expensive, and artefacts from more than a thousand years ago that still work properly would be worth a moderate fortune."
"Huh." Rose made a noise of curiosity. "So how difficult is it to make things last a long time?" She wondered.
Harry thought about it for a moment, before answering.
"Well, that depends on the enchanter really. Though, I would expect an OWL student to be able to make something last several years if they tried, maybe a decade or two, and a NEWT students should be able to make something stick for half a century, depending on how complex it was." Harry suggested. "Anything more than that gets pretty complicated, and the magic in it becomes almost 'alive' in a sense."
Rose looked at Harry, and then towards the closest wall, remembering that she was in a castle that was over a thousand years old, that had randomly moving staircases, doorways, and passageways that warped all as part of the 'basic' stuff, that's without even thinking about all of the portraits, statues, armour, and special rooms with extra features.
"That's… a little creepy actually." She admitted.
"I thought so as well when I first read about it." Harry agreed. "Then I started comparing them to Tsukumogami, and I got rather curious about the whole process."
"What's a Tsukumogami?" Rose asked. "Is that one of those Japanese 'Yoko' things?"
"'Youkai'." Harry corrected. "Yes, they are. They're a type of 'wild' youkai that are 'born' from regular objects that have been kept for a long time. Well-known tsukumogami include tea caddies, sandals, musical instruments, mirrors, clocks, umbrellas, and many more."
"Wild yokai?" Rose prodded, paying more attention to Harry than the unfinished game of monopoly.
"In Japan there are 'wild' yokai and 'civilised' yokai." Harry explained. "'Civilised youkai' are those that live in structured societies like humans do, and consider themselves more socially developed than 'wild' yokai. A lot of civilised youkai have a humanoid form. Wild yokai, on the other hand, live more by their instincts and natural abilities. It's almost impossible to describe a wild yokai, because it could look like pretty much anything, and be capable of pretty much anything too."
Harry shrugged, amused by how interested his sister seemed. Maybe she was like him in that she enjoyed learning new things?
"Never mind that, you can ask me more later, let's just finish this game of monopoly before I start contemplating hanging myself." Harry said. "I can't believe I'm losing this badly."
Rose gained a mischievous gleam in her eyes. "Want to make it a forfeit game?" She asked.
Harry just gave her a flat look in return. "No, now let's just finish this up."
Rose just laughed at Harry's slight pout, and Loki chuckled along with her, but she nevertheless got on with the game.
xxxxx
It was about a week later that Harry saw his blonde-haired, red-eyed friend with a frown on her brow.
"Is something the matter, Fate?" He asked.
"Harry?" Fate blinked in surprise, having been rather too focused on her thoughts to notice him. "Oh, well, it's nothing major… I was just wondering, how and what am I supposed to get people for Christmas this year? I'm a bit unsure about where I might get something appropriate."
"Well, as third years, we can go down to the village on the weekends set aside for it." A slight grin began to stretch Harry's lips and a twinkle appeared in his eyes. "However, if you want to sneak out, I know a few ways we can do that."
Fate opened her mouth, almost instantly going to suggest they wait until they were actually supposed to be out of the castle, but then she closed them again and thought about it. Without as many students around, it would be a lot easier to get around the village without pushing through groups of people, and it wasn't like she wasn't up to date on all of her work. On top of that, it wasn't exactly dangerous, both her and Harry were strong mages, even if Harry seemed rather focused on golems and necromancy recently.
"I'm free right now." Fate started hesitantly, her eyes flickering up to meet Harry's.
"As am I." Harry said, though even if he wasn't, he could just send a clone in his place.
"Then… would you like to join me while I do some Christmas shopping, Harry?" Fate asked.
"I'd be glad to." Harry smiled warmly at her."I still need to do some shopping as well, I can't think what I should get for Bast or Isis. Maybe you could help me find something?"
"I'd be happy to." Fate smiled back at Harry.
"Then let's go." Harry put one arm around Fate's shoulders as he fell into step beside her. "Let's just get out of sight of the portraits and a simple Dimensional Transfer will have us in Hogsmeade in just a moment."
Fate nodded her head in agreement, quite content to spend time with her friend.
xxxxx
Fate and Harry weren't the only ones who needed to do some Christmas shopping, and one of those who still needed to purchase a few items was one Lily Potter. Just as Harry and Fate were looking for an out of the way corner to teleport to Hogsmeade – their actions doing nothing to quell the rumours about the two – a certain red-haired woman was browsing through Hogsmeade's branch of Gambol and Japes.
While it thankfully was nowhere near as bad James' penchant for mischief that the older Potter had during school, and still possessed, Brian still enjoyed little tricks and jokes. Maybe it was a 'boy' thing, just like how both Brian and James enjoyed sports, specifically Quidditch, and rolling around in the mud.
Rose was a lot harder to buy for though, even Lily had to admit that her daughter was, to say the least, somewhat strange. She also felt a little odd in that she probably had a better relationship with Brian than Rose, not that her relationship with her younger child was at all bad or anything. It was just so difficult to understand what she was thinking at times, and far easier to just let her have her freedom to do her own thing really.
As she was leaving a shop, a flash of light from a nearby alley caught her attention. Just as she was about to go and see what it was, two figures emerged onto the main street of the small village. Lily recognised them instantly, both of them had quite distinctive features after all.
The blonde girl had hair so bright that it looked like it had been washed in liquid sunlight, and red eyes that held such compassion and warmth that it was no surprise that about three quarters of the boys at Hogwarts all had a crush on her. Of course, none of them had managed to get close to her yet, and it was debatable if she had even noticed the attempts.
Her companion was also very distinctive. After all, his hair wasn't a single colour, what with the broad streak of silver it had, and his heterochromia didn't make him fade into the background either. The shadows under his eyes suggested he wasn't getting much sleep though, and was it just her imagination, or was he getting even paler than he was before, like the colour was being leached out of his skin?
Neither seemed to have noticed Lily yet… and the red-haired woman had to admit to herself that she was, at the least, rather curious about them. Of course, if she wanted to follow the two of them discreetly, she'd have to do something about her appearance, she did stand out a bit herself.
With that thought in mind, she drew her wand and quickly glamoured herself to give the appearance of someone two inches shorter with chocolate coloured eyes and dark brown hair. She jumped a little in surprise when, as she hid her appearance, Harry's eyes seemed to flicker around before jumping onto herself.
After a moment, he moved on, and Lily released a breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding. For a moment there she'd thought that he'd somehow sensed her spell, but that was unlikely. While there were people who were sensitive to magic, it was far from an accurate thing, and usually reserved to those who were either older and understood their magic better, or those with a massive capacity for mana, which made them more sensitive to shifts in the ambient magic.
"Any idea where we should go first?" The blonde one asked her companion.
Harry shrugged. "Not really, I don't know much about the village itself, just the history stuff I've read in books. I'm sure if we wander around we'll find something appropriate."
"Shall we start over there then?" Fate asked, pointing to the nearest shop, little trinkets glimmering in the window.
Harry simply nodded in agreement and started to walk over towards the shop, Lily covertly following after them. Several of the regular residents of Hogsmeade who had noticed the three had to force themselves to not laugh out loud at the sight, it was likely some sort of comedy routine in a play, especially with Lily's rather abysmal stealth skills.
xxxxx
Inside the shop, Fate and Harry were looking at some of the beautiful and intricate items for sale, some of them enchanted for a specific purpose or other. Fate had found a little puppy ornament that she found adorable, and was also supposed to be able to calm down wild animals as well.
"Nanoha always struck me as more of a practical girl than one who liked 'cute' things." Harry commented, checking over some of the enchanted items, looking for something that Nanoha would think was 'useful'. "Maybe we should look at sneakoscopes and things like that, or one of those lie detector orbs."
"Are they any good?" Fate asked curiously.
"They're alright. Obviously, they aren't perfect, but things like that, and magical mood rings, can give you a general idea about whether someone is lying to you, and if so how much they want to keep something secret. It won't tell you which bit of what they're saying is a lie, so deflections and insinuations don't show up on them." Harry replied.
"That sounds better than something like those necklaces that have shield charms on them. I mean, it's not going to be anywhere near as good as Raising Heart, is it?" Fate mused.
Harry snorted. "No, but then again, both types of shield only work against directed magical attacks, they won't do anything against enchantments or indirect spells, like sticking charms, or that gravity spell I found the other day."
"Hmm, you're right." Fate agreed. "Still, Nanoha thinks she's found a way to get around spells like that, so be prepared to lose next time we all spar together."
"How would she do that, some sort of automated finite spell?" Harry wondered. "Then again, knowing Nanoha, she'll just use raw mana to overpower my spell and shred it to pieces." He chuckled. "Well, anyway, I guess I'll find out sooner or later."
"I'm not going to say." Fate shook her head. "We all have our own little secrets. I'm sure that you have things you haven't used against us yet, especially given what you specialise in."
Harry laughed at her innocent reference to his necromancy.
"Of course I do." He admitted. "I also intend to go a step further soon. I remember you asking me about joining me for that, so you can come along with me if you want to, and maybe pick something up yourself."
Fate gave him a confused look for a moment, mentally going over what he might mean by that. It was several seconds later that her eyes went wide as she remembered asking that, when Harry went to the Underworld, to take her with him so she could watch his back.
That gave her pause to think about what he was asking. Harry already had contracts with several Astral spirits, and it sounded like he intended to forge some demon contracts as well. On top of that, he was asking whether she'd be interested in contracting with some demons as well.
"I'll think about it." She eventually replied. "I'd like to know more before I commit to anything, but… I'm keeping an open mind at least."
"Sure thing." Harry agreed with a slight smile. "Now, let's see if we can't find something for our friends here, do you think Zafira would like that bunny-shaped alarm clock over there, apparently it jumps all over you to wake you up in the morning?"
Fate sighed. "What is with you and tormenting poor Zafira with rabbit-themed pranks?"
"I'm not sure why it started, but it's fun." Harry shrugged. "I feel like it's, I don't know, something that's important to me for some reason. Besides, Zafira's reactions are always amusing."
Fate was almost tempted to roll her eyes, but refrained from doing so. She knew that, regardless of what she said, Harry would likely keep doing these sorts of things to Zafira, and the Guardian Beast was a lot more lively than he used to be as well. He seemed to really enjoy having someone treat him as a person, or at least a prank target, instead of the family pet, like almost everyone else did.
Harry's eyes glittered with amusement at her slightly exasperated reaction. "Come on, Fate, let's see what some of the other shops have. We can always come back later." He said.
"Sure." Fate agreed.
xxxxx
Lily stayed as far away from the two as she could while still keeping them in sight. A super-sensory charm allowed her to hear what they were saying, and… she honestly didn't know what to make of the two of them at all.
It was blatantly obvious to her that these two were familiar with each other, and had known each other for some time at that. However, she also knew that the blonde girl, and the two other Japanese students, had only come to Hogwarts that September.
So, Harry had been 'aware' of the three girls before they had come to the school. The question then was why they had come to Hogwarts instead of whatever school was nearest their country – Lily didn't actually know where any of the schools in the world were aside from Hogwarts and Beauxbatons – and why they'd only come now.
The alternative was that James' paranoia was rubbing off on Lily, and she was seeing things that weren't actually there. Harry was pretty friendly with a number of students, she'd seen that herself, so maybe these two had simply… clicked together.
Lily had to pause as she saw Fate's and Harry's hands brush against each other. The significance of that, as little as it was, wasn't lost on Lily, and seeing her first-born like this hurt her. She should have been there when he said his first word, when he took his first steps, when he first went to school… and when he brought home his first girlfriend.
She didn't even know what Harry's first word even was! The flesh golems they'd left behind to take their places would have known that, but she didn't. She could just picture it in her head, that copy of herself smiling brightly as it picked up her child, just as he spoke his first word, 'mama'.
If that had actually happened, and she found out about it, then Lily didn't know what she'd do. The thing her baby spoke to, even if he wasn't even properly alive at the time, just a corpse enchanted to move and act real, and not decay, was not his own mother, but a thing created so she could save her own skin.
Lily stopped looking at Harry for a moment, and switched focus to his blonde… friend. 'Fate' she was called, if Lily had heard right. The first thing about her that stood out to Lily was her long blonde hair, as even when tied up in twin tails, it still reached her thighs.
Her burgundy eyes were also rather striking. In fact, Fate was incredibly beautiful, Lily even felt a small spark of jealousy because of it. She knew that when she'd been in school she had been incredibly beautiful, it was the main reason James had been so obsessed with her, but she simply couldn't compare to this blonde child at all.
Was this Harry's girlfriend? The two were obviously close, very close, but Lily would have thought that Harry's unicorn familiar would have chased off any 'competition' for her master. That lewd and vulgar creature, that had somehow been created from a pure unicorn, had made her intentions towards Harry clear, and what sort of girl would stand for that sort of behaviour around their boyfriend?
Lily paused and pretended to check something out in a window display next to her when she saw Harry and Fate stop in front of another shop. They went in after a moment, though Lily didn't immediately follow them in, even she could tell that if she did that all the time it would be suspicious.
She sighed, feeling like Atlas with the weight of the sky on her shoulders. Why did everything have to happen to her? It just wasn't fair. When she was a kid, she'd been such good friends with Petunia, her sister, but then when she'd received her Hogwarts letter, everything had turned sour.
It had really hurt Lily for Petunia to call her a freak, and she'd turned to her other friend, one that was actually going to school with her! Severus had been amazing, he'd known so much, and he'd been willing to teach her that stuff too! Oh, Lily had known Severus had a crush on her, even back then, but she hadn't done anything about it. She hadn't liked him that way, and tried to keep him a 'friend', friend-zoned she believed they called it these days.
Of course, when she'd gotten to Hogwarts, everything wasn't as 'pretty magical princess' as she'd thought it was going to be. Magic was hard work, you had to know so much stuff, at least subconsciously, to get spells to work how you wanted them to. On top of that, her friend had been sorted into Slytherin and herself into Gryffindor, two houses that were supposed to hate each other as a matter of course.
She'd taken so much flack for trying to maintain that friendship, and it had worn on her. Then that arse Potter had pretty much marked as 'his', his girl, his conquest, his property almost. Her dorm-mates were jealous of her looks and popularity, but Lily never managed to get a boyfriend as no one was willing to face off against James Potter and his minions.
No, Lily's school days hadn't been pleasant, and that was before you took into account there was some sort of terrorist shadow war going on in the background too, and every kid in school had an opinion on that, if they didn't outright declare their allegiance at the top of their voices.
She'd been quite harsh when she snapped at Severus in fifth year after he called her mudblood, she could admit that herself, but it had just been too much. Of course, when she'd next seen James Potter, and the insufferably smug look on his face, she'd nearly hexed the crap out of him on sheer principle… but she didn't.
She couldn't know for certain if his reaction had been because her fractured friendship with Severus was finally over or something else, and there was really no way she could do something like that to James Potter and get away without punishment. He was popular, he was 'smart', he was a pureblood meaning he had connections, and he had his bloody 'marauders' backing him every step of the way.
She should have known years before then that she would eventually end up as his girlfriend, it was pretty much inevitable. He was too persistent, too willing to chase off anyone she showed the slightest interest in. Oh, he wasn't all bad, she knew that he had become an animagus for his werewolf friend, even if neither James or Remus knew that she knew.
Still, it was seeing that look on his face, and after forcing herself not to curse him, that she resigned herself to becoming his girl. She wasn't going to just let it happen, but there wasn't much she could do to prevent it from happening, so she might as well try and see the positives in her future boyfriend.
Things had been easier for her after she finally said yes to James. Most of her detractors backed off when she was 'officially' claimed by James, though not all of them of course. James' own parents, or at least his mother, didn't seem to like her, something about being suspicious that Lily was trying to marry rich.
Lily supposed she couldn't blame the woman, she was from a rich family with an illustrious history, so of course she should be suspicious of some common girl with nothing to her name but a certain degree of skill, especially in a world where things such as love potions existed.
Shortly after that, she'd graduated from Hogwarts.
Of course, she was also immediately on the front lines of the 'war' they were fighting. Being both a muggleborn, a skilled muggleborn at that, and a known 'associate' of James Potter, a very vocal detractor of the Death Eaters and their Lord Voldemort, she'd been in the thick of it.
For goodness sake, she'd come face to face with Voldemort himself on more than one occasion! As a teenager! Thankfully that stopped when James actually got her pregnant. She didn't really know how to feel about that at the time. There was still that resigned resentment she had for James Potter, not to mention just how bloody young she was, getting a baby at nineteen years old. Still, that baby was hers, her own flesh and blood that she carried inside herself for nine months.
Then came the day of birth itself.
'Complications' in birth they called it. She called it just more of her shitty luck. One of her babies was fine, completely healthy, the other had been accidentally strangled to death by the other's umbilical cord. She'd been so messed up by that it wasn't even funny.
Of course, just as she was suffering a breakdown, Albus bloody fucking Dumbledore just had to tell them about a 'prophecy' spewed by a drunken bitch that labelled her newborn child the possible 'saviour' of the wizarding world.
That had been it. She'd wanted out.
Thankfully, James hadn't wanted to hang around either. It turned out that fighting Death Eaters when there were lethal spells being fired at you wasn't as 'glorious' as he'd thought it would be. Well, that and losing his parents had scared the pants off of him as well.
She knew that he'd spoken with his friends about possibly fleeing the country, but Sirius was too invested in it, Remus felt he owed it to Dumbledore to do everything he could, and even Peter said he couldn't leave, saying that he had to look after his mother, and she would never leave the country of her birth.
Of course, James' desperation to get away had lead to him reading a few books that his parents probably wouldn't have approved of, books that had been put into storage, yet never actually disposed of. The result of that searching had been the flesh golems created from a bit of themselves that they'd had to cut off.
There had also been the… different version of that which required a 'complete cadaver', the one which they'd used on their dead baby. She didn't know quite why she'd gone along with that, the insane plan to turn their dead child into a magical bomb to take out Voldemort when he inevitably came after them.
Still, she'd done it, and then she'd escaped with her husband to Canada. There, she had lived a relatively normal life, but it just hadn't been the same. She didn't feel a connection to any of the people there, she still felt trapped and alone. In fact, she felt like barely a shadow of herself, barely a memory of the fiery redhead she'd once been. Now, she was just 'James Potter's wife', or 'Brian and Rose's mother', not Lily, not any longer.
The tinkle of a bell brought her out of her thoughts, and her eyes flickered over to the shop Fate and Harry had entered. It seemed like she'd been so lost in thought that she'd stayed right where she was long enough for them to finish in their and come back out again.
As they walked away from her and further into the village, she stopped suddenly, her hands clenched into fists.
For just an instant, as Harry's long hair had swished around him as he turned, she could swear she saw something different.
Instead of black and silver, his hair been coppery red.
Instead of being different colours, his eyes had both been green.
Instead of him, it had been… her.
But that was just her imagination, wasn't it?