Author's Note: As shown in the previous chapter, I did consider a version of the story where Dumbledore's obliviation was the end of his plotline, with him going after and succumbing to the Ring Horcrux like in canon, and in dying putting a permanent end to that conflict, after conveniently making sure that Voldemort really was gone. This didn't make it into the final draft, but it was the last big thing I changed before posting. Here, you can see how the Epilogue looked immediately before I decided to make that plot change, as an interesting case-study not only in how I would have handled it (mostly in the background), but also on what little things changed in the final proofreading draft after. It's mostly the same, but only mostly. I think the chapter and the story overall work a lot better and feel more complete with the version that was posted, and this one kind of shows why.

Eight Years Later

The ring of the Floo woke Harry up around noon. He flailed around in the bed, his arms passing through empty space to come to a rest on an extra blanket, and he had all but settled back in to doze when the Floo ward sounded off again. Someone wanted to come through.

"I'm coming!" he yelled, knowing that nobody could hear him. He stumbled out of bed, into the bathroom, and out of the bathroom again with a comfortable bathrobe. There were advantages to sleeping in one's boxers, but those advantages did not extend to meeting unexpected guests in a timely fashion.

"What's up?" he asked, crouching down in front of the Floo in the living room of his flat. It was a cozy little place, very well-kept and within walking distance of the Ministry, smack in the middle of Diagon Alley's newest high-density housing space. Expansion charms made space very inexpensive, but there was something to be said for a home that was no bigger than it needed to be, especially when it was only temporary.

The head of Sirius Black stuck through the flames. Sirius, usually about as fond of mornings as Harry was, looked like he had already been up for a few days without rest. "You said you'd play the owl for these letters," Sirius told him. "Still willing?"

"Bet you're regretting inventing Wizarding spam mail now," Harry said, without an ounce of sympathy.

"It was your mum's idea, I only put it into practice," Sirius said, pulling back from the fire and returning. "Nobody bothers sending howlers anymore, so I consider it a net gain. Look through these and pick out the ones you can deliver today without too much trouble. I'm stuck doing the rest."

Harry accepted the massive stack of fancy addressed envelopes and scattered them out on the rug without further ado. "I've got the day off," he said. "I can do all the ones for Hogwarts," that was easy, "and Neville, and if I do this one I can probably get out there for these," he trailed off, still sorting letters. It would be a hectic day, but he could take at least half of these envelopes off of Sirius' hands. "Are these all of them?" he asked.

Sirius, who was waiting in the fire, shook his head. "Nah, but I got most of the fancy high-society ones going by verified Goblin Delivery. I'm not sending you to play courier with the snobs."

"I appreciate it." They would probably look down on him if he showed up at their manor doorstep with letters, no matter how fancy. "I can take these," he said, indicating the smaller of the two piles, though not by much.

"Nice. Busy day?" Sirius reached out for the rejected letters. "Not as busy as mine, but you know…"

"Big event next week, plenty to do at home," Harry said. "Yeah, I know. Try to sleep sometime before next Friday? Mum won't mind too much if some random, inconsequential detail is out of place."

"It must be perfect," Sirius intoned. "The sacrifice will accept no imperfections if the world-ending ritual is to be performed…"

"If you end the world, it will be because you tripped over someone else's ritual and set it off," Harry quipped.

"That burn is going to keep me up at night," Sirius complained. "Say hi to everyone for me!"

"Will do." Harry shut the Floo grate and went into the kitchen to fix himself something to eat. His first stop would require a visit to the international travel department and a long-distance portkey. Never a good idea to do all of that on an empty stomach.


The day-trip portkey deposited him deep in an unpopulated magical wildlife preserve in India, after a quick stopover in the Indian equivalent of the Ministry to confirm that yes, his translation charms were working, and no, he did not intend to stay more than a few hours. Border-crossing in the magical world was refreshingly straightforward, though it helped that he was a known international traveler. Being in and out of Britain on a monthly basis had its perks.

He quickly found Neville's base camp, by merit of following the clearly laid-out magical signal flares. The forest was ominously dark and something slithered through the trees behind him, but he made it to a ring of tents without any kind of incident.

Neville was there, in the clearing in the middle of the tent ring, setting up something with a lot of moving parts that spewed water everywhere but on Neville himself. Three Indian wizards were working on similar contraptions on the edges of the camp.

"Harry!" Neville cast a spell at the device that cut off the water flow, then strode over to clap Harry on the shoulder. The years since Hogwarts had been good to him, and he towered over Harry, taller than he had been only two months ago. Unnaturally tall.

"Uh, Neville?" Harry had to look up to meet Neville's amused gaze. "Did you get stretched out or something?"

"Embiggening potion, it'll wear off in a few months," Neville explained. "Some of the fauna around here… You've got to make like Hagrid and wrestle it to the ground, otherwise it will never recognize you as a threat and leave well enough alone. What brings you to the camp? We're not set up for the Mirage Vine yet, so there's nothing to see."

Harry looked around the dense, magically-brimming forest. "If this is your idea of normal, I guess not," he said. "Here, invitation to the thing. Can you make it?"

"Finally set a date?" Neville asked, pocketing the letter. "I'll make time. Is Susan going to be there?"

"Yeah, probably. Is that going to be an issue?" Harry asked.

"We parted on good terms," Neville dismissed. "Just didn't want to be surprised, is all. It'll be great to get back to Britain!" He clapped Harry on the shoulder again, sending Harry reeling. "Sorry."

"I'll be okay… once the bones knit," Harry told him. "What are you doing here, anyway? I don't recognize these things. Are they just magical sprinklers?"

"Glad you asked!" Neville grinned at him. "Fancy lending a wand?"

Harry had a few hours to kill before his portkey took him back to Britain, so he rolled up his sleeves and took out his wand, the Acacia and Unicorn wand Olivander had matched him with after he lost his original wand to Voldemort. "What do I do?"


Later that day, after a soaking, return portkey trip, quick lunch, and change of robes, Harry apparated to Hogsmeade and walked the path from the village to the front gates. Hagrid was out and about, trimming the weeds around the gates. "Harry!" he boomed.

Harry smiled at the similarities between Neville and Hagrid, shoulder clap and all, and thanked his own foresight for healing up the bruise from Neville's greeting before coming here. "Afternoon, Hagrid," he said. "I have some letters to deliver." He shuffled through the letters until he got to Hagrid's. All of Hogwarts' teachers had one, given the nature of the event. Most of them had provided advice or an all-out consultation at one point or another, Hagrid included.

"Ah, was wonderin' when these would come," Hagrid said, taking his invitation with exaggerated care. "Go on in, they'll know you're here. Mind the wards, they're a mite ticklish if you set 'em off now. Bill gave them a tweaking that hasn't come out quite right."

"That fills me with confidence," Harry said to himself as he stepped through the gates. He felt what Hagrid meant immediately; when the half-Giant said ticklish, he really meant 'abominably itchy'. The wards, an invisible but tangible force, held him as if in a thick slime mold for a good five seconds, during which he had the uncontrollable urge to scratch absolutely everywhere. After, a Hogwarts elf popped up in front of him, not one step onto the grounds of Hogwarts. It caught him mid-scratch, thankfully on his nose and not somewhere more embarrassing.

"Master Harry Potter is an animagus," the elf said brightly. "Is Master Harry registered?"

"What if I'm not?" Harry asked, intrigued. This was new.

"Is Master Harry registered…" The elf looked from side to side, then leaned in, with the effect of seeming to be whispering to his kneecaps. "On the 'unofficial' list for practicing students?"

That was new too. "No…" he said. "But I am registered with the Ministry, as it happens. I was just curious. Why the separate list?"

"There have been students caught by the wards who were not Animagus yet, but wanted to be," the elf explained. "No changing to spy or sneak, Hogwarts will know!"

"I understand." The elf popped away, and he was free to continue on to the castle. He wondered if the Weasley twins knew yet that their prized map, passed down to him in their last year, was serving as the base of Hogwarts' new security system these days. Probably not. They hadn't filled his home with fireworks in protest… yet. Gone were the days of students sneaking around after curfew with impunity. Also gone were the days of an animagus infiltrating every nook and cranny of the castle without being noticed, whether they were evil or benign, so it was a tradeoff.

Once in the castle, he walked a meandering path aimed vaguely in the direction of the Great Hall, where he expected to find most of the people he had letters for. It was not the most efficient path, for sure. Theoretically, he knew what the most efficient path would be, but a massive stumbling block was put on that almost immediately when the corridor he had expected to turn down was simply not there. Five years since graduation was a long time for a castle like Hogwarts. Long enough that not everything was where he remembered.

The halls were curiously empty, it being the summer. The students had left or graduated only a few weeks ago, and the many moving paintings and portraits were mostly still, unstimulated by the boring, unchanging passages with no students to crowd them and cause chaos. He saw no one, and heard no one, until he eventually reached the Great Hall.

Inside the Great Hall, he found most of the castle's summer occupants. The staff table hosted a collection of familiar faces. Professor McGonagall was there, and Sprout, and the Defense Professor who had broken the streak of one-year professors in Harry's seventh year, Bill Weasley. Slughorn was there, an amusing addition whom Harry didn't care much for on his own merits… But he was there because Snape had been forced out, also in Harry's seventh year, so his presence was a welcome one.

Harry walked down the table, greeting his old Professors and giving them their invitations. He spared a wide smile for Professor Sprout, his old head of house, and deftly avoided being entrapped in Slughorn's ramblings. When he reached the end of the table, "Prof–"

But it wasn't Professor anymore. "Headmaster Flitwick," he corrected himself, holding out the last of the Hogwarts letters. "Your invitation, from my mother."

"Very good, thank you Harry." Flitwick leaned forward to take the letters. "I'll get the rest of these where they need to go. Was there a problem with the owls?"

"No, she thought this deserved a personal touch, and I was free," he explained. This batch of letters could have been mailed, all mail sent to Hogwarts got through eventually, but the updated security procedures did slow that down by a few days sometimes. It was easier to give them out in person.

"I can only speak for myself, but I will be there." Flitwick looked down at the staff table, and received a chorus of agreement.

That was Hogwarts, done. Harry didn't linger. He had many other places to be.


The Minister was busy. Then again, the Minister was always busy. Harry hadn't come to see the Minister, he was here in the Ministry – on his day off, no less – to see the Minister's Undersecretary.

"You'll need an appointment," the Undersecretary's secretary told him, entirely unamused by his presence. The fore-office leading to the Undersecretary's office was empty apart from him, Harry, and many stacks of parchment lining the walls. The door to the Undersecretary's office itself was firmly closed.

"I'm not here for a long meeting," Harry assured Ernie Macmillian. "How's the job going, by the way?"

"I'm this close to a good position in the foreign relations department," Ernie admitted, holding his hands a few centimeters apart. "Don't ruin it for me." The Hufflepuff looked right at home behind his desk, but Harry could hear his eagerness to be anywhere else.

"They promote secretaries to foreign ambassadors?" Harry asked, intrigued despite himself. He hadn't expected to see Ernie here. In the Ministry, yes, but this wasn't really the place one would think to find a scion of an old Pureblood family, even now. Things hadn't changed that much yet.

"New policy," Ernie explained. "Everyone who wants to get an important position has to spend at least six months in a menial position, public-facing. It's a massive pain, but it did thin out my competition, so I can't complain."

"Swings and roundabouts, I suppose." Harry didn't have a letter for Ernie, but he could still extend an invitation. "You know the big thing Lord Black is doing, right?" he asked, referring to the person Ernie was more likely to have heard of. His mum wasn't a mystery in the wizarding world anymore, people knew of her, but she wasn't a public figure either.

"Everyone has heard," Ernie confirmed. "Is that why you're here? I can pass on an invitation. The Undersecretary is very busy today. No joke, he's been in here since before I came in this morning and he'll be here after I leave."

"If you can get me a day pass to Azkaban, I can leave the letter… Along with a warning not to work too hard. His brothers might kidnap him for his day off again." Harry handed the invitation to Ernie.

"Azkaban? Oh, right. Yes, I can get you that." Ernie leaned down to retrieve something from a drawer under his desk. "Policy is anyone with a good reason to visit can go. The Aurors are on alert and we've got to start training them for more active guard duty some time. More visitors is an easy way to start with that, without having to go through the Wizengamot."

Harry waited, looking around the office, while Ernie filled out a piece of parchment. He hadn't been in the Ministry back when Fudge was still in office, but he thought he could tell the difference now that he was out and Marchbanks – an ancient witch who had been in charge of the education department – was in. She was good enough to run the country on a daily basis, of that there was no doubt, but everyone knew she would be stepping down soon. The lower levels of the Ministry were filled with people hoping for higher positions in the coming shuffle, young people.

The political side of things wasn't his cup of tea, not even close, but from what he heard from Sirius, things were going well. It wasn't a revolution, bloody or otherwise, but it was a definite changing of the guard. It helped that the old guard were suffering many minor and not so minor misfortunes as of late…

"Here you go." Ernie handed over a stamped, filled-out card. "Good for any day this week. Give the Aurors a little scare, if you could?"

"Maybe," Harry said, though he had no intention of doing that. They could get their training from someone paid to bait their wands into action. His plans for today would be totally derailed by any number of disfiguring or debilitating hexes. "Say hello to Percy for me." The Undersecretary might be a busy man, but he would find time for this event. Nobody would want to miss it.


Azkaban would always be a dreary, unfriendly place. Even on this sunny, otherwise pleasant afternoon, the dark fortress' angular walls and old, imposing stone construction sucked the light out of the sky, reducing the water around it to a gloomy twilight.

Harry checked in with the Auror guards, got his pass inspected, and noted that the security at Azkaban was tighter than that at the border in India. Unlike foreign countries, he almost never came here.

"I'm here to speak to the researchers," he told them. "Not a prisoner." Pettigrew and Barty Crouch were both somewhere within these dark walls, but he had no interest in them.

The Auror checking him over frowned. "I'll take you to them," he said, "but be careful. The Dementors don't like them, or anyone associated with them."

"No surprise there." The guard laughed sourly at him, and they were off. The lower levels of Azkaban were the least gloomy, with the fewest Dementors and no prisoners at all, the short-term cells permanently empty as of a few years ago. Many of the cells now lacked bars, leaving the corridors lumpy, misshapen things with cell-shaped holes in the wall every few paces. It was bright outside, but the oil lamps secured on the walls burned only fitfully, and all natural light died more than a few paces from the originating window.

The Auror led him up a few levels, to near the center of Azkaban as a whole. As they ascended the last flight of stairs, the Auror's little chipmunk Patronus – unobtrusive and so small Harry had barely noticed it up until this point – ran ahead, disturbing a swirling wall of cloaks.

"Monsters," the Auror muttered, using his Patronus to clear out a path between a scrum of at least twenty Dementors. "Back to your posts! Go bother someone who deserves to deal with you!"

The Dementors leaned away as the Auror's tiny Patronus swiped at their faces, running on empty air. Harry had his wand ready to cast his own Patronus – a badger, much to the delight of anyone who wanted to make jokes about Hufflepuffs – if it became necessary. The cold, creeping dread of Dementors began to seep into him, dragging his thoughts down–

But they pulled away as he and the Auror passed by, unwilling to provoke the warden, and then they were at a solid iron door set into the corridor with much paler stone flanking it, obviously a new construction set down in the middle of an otherwise empty corridor.

The Auror produced a key and opened the door, ushering Harry inside. The Dementors swarmed, attempting to shove their way in too, but the chipmunk Patronus blocked the way. The door swung shut, was relocked, and then a second door in front of Harry opened of its own accord.

"Come in, watch your step," Ginny called out. Harry ventured into her and Hermione's laboratory, taking in the sight of a place he had only heard described before today.

It was a retrofitted guard station from back when there were enough prisoners to warrant using more than a few floors of the prison at all times. The room was only twenty paces across, a square open space with low ceilings. Thick orange carpets covered the stone floor everywhere except for a narrow path leading through the room and to a massive, deadbolted iron door set into the opposite wall. There were no windows, and the walls were lined with alternative chalkboards and tapestries, the boards filled with Arithmantic and Runic formulae while the tapestries depicted varied nature scenes. In one corner there was a small table piled high with food, the kind one saw at parties. In another, a tall bookshelf was only half-filled with leatherbound journals and tied bundled of parchment. Books, spread-out parchment diagrams, and piles of iron chains littered the carpet everywhere else, producing a maze of clear and cluttered spaces for the unwary foot.

The domain of any serious magical researcher was already inherently a strange place, but Ginny and Hermione had turned that up to eleven in their recent study of Dementors. Harry understood why it was this way, he already felt less unnaturally depressed, but that made the combination of a homely living room and academia no less jarring.

Hermione was nowhere to be seen, but Ginny was busy reshelving books. "Harry, what brings you to this miserable rock?" she asked lightly, brushing her hair out of her face.

"You and Hermione, what else?" There was nothing in Azkaban he cared about, save for them.

"We do have a home back in non-Dementor-infested London," Ginny reminded him.

"I'll be busy tonight, and I thought now would be a good time to see this place." He waved her and Hermione's invitations about and set them on the food table, next to a cheese platter. "What are you doing today?"

"Testing a few theories," Ginny said, carefully picking her way through the mess to meet him at the table. "In basic terms, Hermione is torching the inside of a Dementor with a magical blowtorch and measuring how much the surrounding cell heats up. We know how much heat the torch puts out. We can tell how much is going into the air around it, and the chains. Subtract the latter from the former, and what do you get?"

"Hang on, it's been a few years…" He mimed counting on his fingers. "How much the Dementor heats up?"

"No!" Ginny exclaimed. She took her letter and opened it. Elsewhere in the room, the Auror who had brought Harry in was staring at one one of the rune-filled chalkboards, thoughtfully tracing the runes outlined there with one finger.

"No?" Harry asked, as it didn't seem she was going to explain.

"No," Ginny confirmed, putting the letter down. "We'll be there. Your mum will have to put up security to stop Hermione from showing up ten hours early. You would think the Dementor would heat up, wouldn't you? But if it did, we would just have to throw it in a solar oven to destroy it. Anything that takes in heat can take in too much heat."

"Right?" He was following. This stuff, the conceptual overview, that was easy. It was all of the rigorous magical theory underpinning it that made his head spin. He was more of a practical wizard.

"Come see." Ginny led him across the room to the other bolted door. "My break is over, or close enough," she added, slamming the heavy bolt back. "Two coming in!" she yelled.

"Clear!" Hermione yelled back.

Beyond the door was a small, bare room the size of a broom closet, with one wall charmed transparent to show another room of the same size on the other side. Hermione was in the closer room, watching a pulse of magical light emanating from her wand, while in the other a Dementor was wrapped in chains, trapped above a single jet of violet flame. It was uncomfortably warm in Hermione's size of the chamber.

"Not a thing," Hermione reported. "If it's absorbing any heat at all, it's at magnitudes too small for our monitoring spell. Hello, Harry," she said after, only belatedly noticing his presence.

"As expected," Ginny said, likely for Harry's benefit. "Did you try the phoenix ash additive yet?"

"I was waiting for you." Hermione flicked her wand, throwing off the monitoring spell. It impacted the clear wall in a burst of light and stuck there. She pressed a quick kiss to Ginny's forehead as she shuffled around to make room for them both. "From three?"

They both counted down, and the flame turned a pure, flickering white when they hit zero. The Dementor, which up until that moment had been hanging mostly still in its ridiculous cocoon of chains, started to struggle against its bonds. The flame didn't appear to be doing anything to it, the frayed cloak wasn't burning or moldering away, but something about the flame made it very unhappy.

"That's promising," Hermione said as they watched. Her monitor spell was glowing faintly blue around the edges. "There's a heat discrepancy. Harry, do you feel any change in your mood? We're too acclimatized to make objective assessments."

"No, I don't think so," he said, after a moment's thought. "It's hard to tell."

"Not getting any data on whether the fight or flight response in the Dementor affects its output, then," Hermione said. "Something for another day. We're one step closer to figuring out how to destroy these things."

"Speaking of another day, Harry brought our invitations," Ginny told Hermione. "Come look."

"We need to run this until our Phoenix ash supply burns out," Hermione objected. "But thank you, Harry. I'll be there. You can stay and watch, if you like."

"No, I've other things to do." Including, but not limited to, delivering the last letter in his pocket. "You two stay safe." It worried him, seeing them so close to Dementors, even if the balance of power was firmly on their side. He stepped out of the monitoring box, back into the bright, well-lit main room.

"We wouldn't be here if we didn't have ten different security systems," Ginny told him. "Dementors can't even enter this room. We know how to keep them away, it's destroying them that's a puzzle."

"It's true, they set up the same wards on the guard stations," the Auror from before added. "If you're done here, I need to get back to my patrols."

"I won't keep you much longer." He looked to Ginny. "I would say good luck, but I know luck has nothing to do with this."

"Damn right it doesn't," Ginny agreed. "We'll be in Hogsmeade this weekend. Same time, same place."

"See you there." He was looking forward to it. He was also looking forward to not being on Azkaban, but everyone who set foot in the prison felt that way. Maybe it wouldn't always be such a viscerally depressing place. Hermione and Ginny were working on getting rid of the main cause. But as Wizarding Britain's most serious prison, he doubted it would ever be a pleasant place, either.

Thankfully, the rest of his day promised to be easy and enjoyable.


Harry made it back to his flat with half an hour to spare, plenty of time. He had stopped off to get Muggle takeout, in lieu of actually cooking something, but that just meant he had time to change his robes – again – and clean up the flat. With food on the table, a few cleaning charms took care of the mundane chores, and he busied himself picking up the junk he wasn't willing to just vanish.

Two left boots went into the closet, as his job was not kind on footwear and some finicky transfiguration could turn them into one good, matching set of boots. The cups stacked up on the side table by the couch went into the sink, and since he had no idea what was in them that made them resistant to scouring charms, he left them there. The art supplies laid out on the desk in the bedroom lined up and fell into order with a flick of his wand, organized and nearly arranged by ascending color. Muggle pens and pencils, quills and colored inkpots, clean parchment, spelled parchment ready for the creation of moving pictures… The whole lot was easy to organize, and he could see the surface of the desk underneath when he was done.

The Floo flared, fire flaming up to disgorge a beautiful witch in Ministry Unspeakable robes. Her hair was fully silver, dyed to perfection, and her smile was as wide and entrancing as ever.

"The Pygmy Erumpents are still alive," she informed him, stripping her robes as she walked into the bedroom. "You missed Fawley throwing a fit about the requisition for more time-resistant glass. He doesn't like my project much."

Harry followed her into the bedroom, helpfully retrieving her robes as she dropped them. Carelessly scattering things about the flat was Luna's way of saying she was tired, without actually saying it. He had expected that. "I got take-out," he told her. "Fawley can go stuff himself."

Luna pulled on a much thinner, more comfortable set of robes. "Did you have a good day traipsing all over the world?" she asked, pulling him in for a brief kiss. Her fingers found his hand and she clasped it.

Harry relaxed into the kiss, but Luna broke it just as suddenly, moving away to drop something from her pocket on their bed. "Yes, and it's looking like everyone can come," he said.

"None would miss it, not even the ones who would rather it never happened," Luna said sagely. "I hope Taylor has adequately prepared. Did she ask us?"

"Ask us what?" He went out into the dining room to serve out their food. His engagement ring flared weakly over the entire bag, so he hit it with a strong warming charm. That fixed the problem, thankfully. Food poisoning was the last thing he needed.

"If we are coming," Luna said simply. She took her plate and went to stand at the window in the kitchen, looking out at a magically-provided view of an arid desert. The sun was setting there too, and Harry had to admit that it was a very nice view. He went to stand next to her with his own plate.

"Of course." He slipped her invitation into the neck of her robes. She laughed at him. "I haven't opened mine yet, though, it could be a disinvite," he teased.

"That would be a good way of ensuring we came early and stayed late, if not worse," Luna mused. "I would bring the failed Sandworm subjects from last year's early trials. They would eat all of the books."

"Hermione would kill you before Taylor could get to you," Harry joked.

"Anything that eats books would want to eat her too," Luna retorted. "Or perhaps I would simply cast a Fidelius over the entire building and make a random Muggle the secret-keeper, then have you obliviate me of all knowledge of what I did or who the Muggle was."

Harry whistled. "That is cold."

"She disinvited me," Luna reminded him.

"As if she would ever do that." If anything, Luna and his mum got along too well. She had adapted suspiciously quickly to the more antagonistic atmosphere of working in the Department of Mysteries, and he saw echoes of his mum's advice in the way Luna handled disgruntled coworkers. She did it with her usual airy grace, but there was a distinct, practical direction behind her actions.

Call him crazy, but he would rather his quirky fiancee not become too much like his mum. He loved her just the way she was.

"Planning on bringing the Dire Wings to the party, then?" he asked. "They would make good conversation pieces."

Luna smiled mysteriously. "I will bring something. What, though… Won't that be more fun as a surprise?"

"I'll charm the closet to hold any possible beast, then," he said dryly. "Just don't bring a bottle of accelerated time. You know the mess those make when they break, Mum would force us to clean it up as payback."

"Is someone still sore about last month?" Luna asked, setting her plate down on the counter, food untouched.

"A little?" he admitted. "It was very convenient, how you accidentally stepped into that patch of temporarily slowed time and couldn't help us clean all day." Glass charmed to accelerate the time between it and another piece of glass facing the other way was a ridiculously complicated mess-making material when it shattered. Thousands of pieces of still-enchanted glass, laid out randomly on a flat stone floor casting the effects between every other piece of glass and accelerating any caught in between… They ended up having to disenchant each shard of glass, one by one.

"It was an accident…" Luna turned to look at him, instead of the nature scene out the window. "But this isn't."

She leaned in to kiss him, and he met her halfway, absently discarding his plate on the counter next to hers. The food could wait.


"Can't you be nervous?" Sirius pleaded. "Please? Instead of… this?" This was a big day. One he and Taylor had worked toward for years. He was nervous, and he was just the guy funding the thing. This was Taylor's show, and yes she was multitasking like crazy, standing in the middle of the venue casting marking spells at the walls while simultaneously checking a hundred different things with her bugs, but she was cool, calm, and collected. It made him feel more frazzled by contrast.

"This is the victory lap," Taylor told him as she aimed her wand at the third floor balcony. "I was nervous during that ridiculous Wizengamot hearing. I was nervous when Nott set a small army of House Elves to sabotaging the construction, and I couldn't be here to stop it myself. I will not be nervous tonight, and I'm not nervous now. Is there a mimicry enchantment on the third floor banister?"

"Oh, sure," he grumbled as he went up to check the aforementioned banister. "Nothing to worry about tonight. Total victory. Not like half the old geezers who tried to stop this from happening will be in attendance. It'll all be safe and they'll take it with a smile and a compliment." The stairs were nicely enchanted to only be four steps between landings no matter the vertical distance traveled, so he got to the banister in no time. A simple diagnostic charm revealed the enchantments on it, and sure enough, it was missing the subtle illusion enchantment that was meant to display an illusory wax candle atop it, like all of the other banisters.

"How did you even notice this was wrong?" he mumbled as he set about fixing it. The charms hadn't been activated yet.

"I see everything," Taylor whispered in his ear.

"Gah!" he jumped, then remembered some of the other features of the building. "Ha, ha, ha. Scare the poor, sleep-deprived, long-suffering–"

"Long whining," her voice continued in a conversational tone.

"Long everything," he agreed. "I will accept that descriptor."

Taylor's laughter echoed around the building as he went up onto the fourth, highest floor and walked out to lean over the balcony and look down.

He really was tired, but tonight was the night. The end – and the beginning – of Taylor's 'empty nest project.' Or so he called it, when she wasn't around to scowl at him.

The building was big, a full four stories in size. The center chamber was hexagonal, for warding reasons that went over his well-educated but not fanatically knowledgeable head, and only the first floor was a proper floor. The second, third, and fourth floors consisted of balconies all around the hexagon, looking down. As of right now, that was all that was accessible, but there were five secondary sections of the building, one for each side of the hexagon except the front. Everything was made of heavily enchanted marble, and the ceiling was nigh-unbreakable sloped glass, giving the entire building an airy, open feel with filtered sunlight illuminating the interior.

Not everything was as it would be on a normal day, though. The walls were bare, lined with out-of-place wooden planks with nary a crack between them. The fake candles were part of a whole set of decorations, and down below he saw Taylor adjusting the exact dimensions of the circular tables being set up on the ground floor. All throughout the building, her bugs were undoubtedly working to check the special passageways and enchantments… somehow. A lot of the preparation was for this night, specifically. All of the base, everyday-use enchantments and wards had long since been set, giving the building the sort of magical ambiance one only got in heavily magical environments.

As magical buildings went, it was much more grand than, say, Madam Puddifoots. It was no Hogwarts, but nowhere but Hogwarts was. Neither was it like the Ministry, which was meant for a lot more foot traffic and hundreds of employees. Taylor had a bare handful of employees lined up to work here at present, all new Hogwarts graduates who happened to have relevant experience. There would be plenty of patrons, but not in the numbers somewhere like Hogwarts or the Ministry had to be designed for.

The open atmosphere, the architecture, and the purpose this building would serve starting tomorrow… There was nothing like it in Magical Britain. That was the point. Filling a big, obvious hole in the country, and stepping on as many Pureblood toes as necessary to do so.

Taylor waved her wand up at him, and a streak of blue light shot from her towards the fourth floor. He cast a Protego and blocked it. "Oy, can't a man sleep with his eyes open without getting marked up by spells?"

"You can Floo home if you're that tired," Taylor said, her voice a low, soothing presence just behind him, though he could see her down on the first floor. "Really. I'll probably be busy tweaking and checking things until tonight. You can sleep all day."

"I might just do that." Or, more likely, he would down a Pepper-Up and power through. Or both, with the Pepper-Up coming right before the secret main event… Yes, that would do nicely. "But what about you? You need to be in tip-top shape for tonight, and I'm sure you already double-checked everything." He moved to examine one of the many wooden barriers obscuring the walls, checking each enchantment with a cursory swipe of his wand and revealing charm. They were all there.

"Are you asking me to go to bed with you?" Taylor whispered.

"Now, now," he chided her, ignoring the shiver that ran down his spine at her tone. "What would all of those stuffy noble types think? I must remain the perfect picture of an eligible bachelor for… some stupid reason." Probably because they couldn't stand to see someone having fun when they were stuck in their arranged marriages. "You should have heard the lecture Narcissa tried to give me about 'curtailing rumors before no woman in good standing would lower herself to marry you'. I tell you, I so regretted not meeting her in a Muggle truck stop for that, it would have made the whole thing so much more entertaining."

"Why do you still talk to her?" Taylor asked.

"Can't tweak her nose about the Malfoys falling from grace if I never see her," he answered. "She still thinks someone cast an undetectable misfortune curse on Lucius."

"That would have been simpler than what you did." Her voice was still right next to him, though she was down on the ground floor.

"True. Less fun, though." And requiring at least one major sacrifice, so not an option anyway. "But let's not talk about the Malfoys. It's killing the mood." The 'don't worry about tonight' mood, but it was only a hop, skip and jump from flirting as a distraction to actual flirting, and then from there to the things that had the witches gossiping and the older wizards disapproving.

"The mood?" she whispered in his ear. It wasn't real, she wasn't actually right behind him–

He yelped when her real, very much there arms wrapped around him from behind. He had been ambushed!

"You must like being surprised, it happens so often these days," she told him.

He relaxed in her grip, shamelessly enjoying the close contact. "When it comes with being felt up by a beautiful woman, I can learn to roll with the punches. Also, this whole building is keyed to you. Not fair. I don't have a building helping me pull pranks."

"Make one," she suggested.

"I could, couldn't I?" His fingers traced the runes on her arms, mindlessly following the intricate patterns. A drop of blood from his hand could suborn either arm to his will, but she trusted him not to do that, even for a prank. That trust was hard won, easily lost, and then much harder to earn back, but he had earned it, in the end. It and more.

They weren't married, engaged, or officially together in any capacity, despite throwing out all sorts of signs that they were more than business partners and good friends. That bothered the prude old women and resentful old men he had made it his life's work to aggravate and inconvenience, and also neatly sidestepped some of the more problematic aspects of him being the only Black male left to continue the line. Magic involved in generations of ancestors focused on continuing their legacy at all costs was… difficult to work around, and in this case essential to avoid. Taylor was working on that, because she was working on everything magic that she didn't yet understand, but not urgently. They had all the time in the world.

Unofficially, out of sight of the public to keep those amusing rumors from being confirmed or denied, they were together and had been for going on three years. She was the woman for him, eldritch aura and quest to find immortality to satisfy the voice in her head included.

Thus, Taylor's arms around his waist, and his realistic appraisal of whether or not 'go to bed' was likely to include activities other than sleeping. Even though, if he was being honest with himself, it probably shouldn't. He was dead tired, and nothing was worse than the mind being willing but the body deciding sleep was more appealing. If it was just the preparation for the party he would have been fine, but add in the curveball Taylor had thrown into the mix at the last minute? He was all for seizing opportunities as they presented themselves, but three hours of sleep a night was taking it's toll.

Elsewhere in the building, something crashed to the marble floor. He winced. "How about I bring Pepper-Up for two?" he proposed. "We can save the celebrations for later."

"You're getting responsible in your old age," she told him.

"I'm not even fifty, thank you very much!" He was still young and virile! Wizards didn't age as fast, anyway. Everyone knew that. She was the one searching for a moral method of immortality at the behest of her Ravenclaw assistant, not him. "It'll serve you right if the only acceptable cure for aging makes you all saggy," she grumbled.

"How did we get from sex to immortality?" Talyor asked.

Another crash echoed through the building, and they both winced. "I don't know what that is," Taylor admitted. "Nothing is falling, physically."

"Probably a smudged rune in the auditory enchantments. He shrugged out of her grip, raised his wand, and turned to her. "First one to find it gets to pick the–"

"Position?" she interrupted.

"I was going to say the place we order food from when we break for lunch," he claimed, the picture of innocence. "And you say I haven't corrupted you!"

"The only way to beat an incorrigible flirt is to outdo them," she said. "Really, though. You're on."

She apparated away, reappearing with a pop on the fourth floor.

"Hey!" That wasn't fair! She was keyed into the wards, he wasn't, and her apparating wasn't even technically real apparition, she was being side-alonged by her Ravenclaw assistant. She didn't even have to do the spin!

He sprinted for the nearest maintenance hatch. He would win that prize, whichever of the two she was referring to. Then he would get the Pepper-Up potions.


Knowledge was power. Especially here, in the world of magic, where a single old secret could be the difference between dying to a freak accident and living to fight another day, a decade later. Knowledge was also concentrated, in book form, in four places in Britain. Hogwarts, where the selection was curated and only children could go. Bookstores, which sold to the lowest common denominator. The Department of Mysteries, which was not open to the public. And finally, most gallingly, Pureblood libraries, private collections that were unevenly concentrated on certain subjects but often held singular editions or private research, the holy grail of advanced knowledge locked away from anyone not of that family.

This was a situation that had not affected Taylor personally. Not really. She had the good fortune to come into contact with a tradition-scorning Pureblood heir who gladly dusted off his family library for the purpose of her doing whatever she wanted with it. But it was a problem, and it did contribute to the power imbalance in the wizarding world, in Britain specifically. It also disproportionately increased the obscurity of dark and illegal spells, both in who knew how to cast them, and who knew how to defend against them.

There were other problems in magical Britain. Big ones, like their lumbering, ridiculous government. Like the corruption and bigotry that permeated said government, further hindering it. Like the way they treated normal, non-magical people as a whole. Those problems were ingrained, and they were societal. They could be fixed, but not easily, and not by a single dedicated individual or one master plan.

The solution to the lack of knowledge, on the other hand, was one Taylor found herself well-suited to devise and in the right position to implement.

She stood on the roof of Britain's first public library, her shoes squeaking against charmed glass, and looked up at the stars. Below, the guests were arriving. They were mingling, taking food and drink from the caterers hired for the event, and generally waiting for the event to begin. Most of them were people she either didn't know well enough to have an opinion on, or people she actively disliked.

Politics. Her opinion on the subject had not improved since her days in the Wards, back on Earth Bet. Thank Merlin she had Sirius for that. He didn't like it either, but he had been taught how to navigate the often backwards, occasionally mystifying waters of last-century political discourse. He was busy greeting the important guests at the door, decked out in dapper dress robes and his ridiculous talking hat.

She had her bugs in the special-made observation holes around the building, next to the output of a set of enchantments that channeled and relayed sound. Her listening ability was not curtailed at all by having to keep her bugs within the walls and out of sight, a necessity given the environment.

She let herself be diverted by listening to his greetings. They all followed the same pattern; he would bow to the person or people coming in the door, sweep his hat off, greet them with all of their titles, and then he would say something personal that came off as complimentary until a few minutes later when they actually thought about it, if they knew enough to realize they had been insulted at all. Even better, he performed each greeting with an unbearably posh accent the ones who knew him knew was fake.

"Lord Byron, it is so nice to see you in a place of fine repute, such a pleasant rarity! "

"Lady Zabini, it is a pleasure to see you on British soil! I hope you will take the time to peruse our natural biology section after the ribbon is cut, we have an interesting scholarly volume on the courting habits of Praying Mantises that made me think of you."

"Lord Malfoy, how is your son? Good, I hope? A shame he could not be here tonight, but from what I have heard this is not the sort of place he would want to frequent anyway, so it is eminently understandable."

Invariably, the posh witches and wizards favored Sirius with fake smiles and afterward gravitated towards others who navigated the same social circles, ignoring the less affluent among them. That was fine. They were only here because they would raise a completely avoidable stink if they weren't invited, and because it was fun to watch Sirius poke at them.

"Minister!" Sirius greeted an incredibly old-looking woman. "Please don't quote my Newt scores at me, I know them by heart! And Undersecretary, you're looking well!" Sirius nodded to Percy Weasley. "Your old school friends all look to be gathering on the third floor, if you're interested. It's a shame Hogwarts doesn't do class reunions."

Percy didn't take the offered escape from his Ministry duties to catch up with friends, electing instead to continue helping the Minister. Helping was indeed the word for it, as well; Minister Marchbanks was genuinely frail. Only the advantages of magic were keeping her upright and active, if Taylor was any judge of physical condition. Her mind might still be sharp, but her body was not cooperative.

Elsewhere, up on the upper balconies, the people she actually wanted to enjoy the party were looking around. She saw, again with her bugs tapping into observation and listening charms from inside the walls, that Harry and his friends had all gathered on the fourth floor.

"Have you been kissing your plants, Neville?" Luna asked. "Or is that lipstick?"

"Got nicked by a Fungal Thumper," Neville admitted. "My mistake, really, it was just spitting at a fly."

Ginny and Hermione were picking at the wooden blockades barring them from the books hidden behind. Based on the spell feedback Taylor could make out, they were within a few minutes of cracking the not-insubstantial protections keeping the barrier in place. Thankfully, Harry noticed them. "Hey, don't mess those up," Harry called out.

Hermione spun with a fierce blush, but Ginny just shrugged her shoulders. "We're not getting through those without alerting your mum anyway, it was a lost cause from the start."

"Tell your mum she's cruel, Harry," Hermione complained. "Walling all of that off…"

"Maybe she just knows you too well," Harry suggested. "How are things since I saw you last week? Did the Phoenix ash thing go anywhere?."

"Yes, and we think it's a big lead," Ginny said proudly. "We've been busy. How about you? Still enjoying a boring government job?"

"I'll have you know I just came from protecting the Wizarding world from an invasion of Pygmy Erumpents," Harry said seriously. "You wouldn't want that. They explode when they sneeze."

"It's fascinating what sped-up isolated evolution can produce," Luna sighed. "So many cycles of reproduction and mutation…"

"Don't get started on reproduction," Hermione said darkly. "Molly is in time-out, don't think I won't put you in time-out too."

"What's this?" Harry led Luna to a nearby four-person table, and she, Hermione, and Ginny took seats. "Please tell me she didn't put her foot in her mouth."

"That's too nice a way of saying it," Ginny griped. "You know the situation with the possibility of Weasley grandbabies as it stands, right?"

"No?" Harry said truthfully. "I don't really follow Weasley gossip. Are there any?"

"Well, let's go down the list, shall we?" Hermione said sardonically, leaning back in her chair. "Bill Weasley is still Defense Professor, and the only new people he meets are his students. He's single, though a lot of them want to change that. Charlie Weasley may as well be dating a dragon, for all anyone knows."

"We don't know if he has dated anyone since moving to Romania," Ginny added. "Best to assume he won't, or if he is he's got the good sense to keep it secret."

"The twins don't have steady girlfriends and aside from that prank last year, no kids," Hermione continued. "Percy Weasley is married to–"

"Justice!" Ginny interjected with a wicked smile. "Justice and cleansing magical Britain of corruption in all its forms."

"Yes, that," Hermione agreed. "Also, he's shagging the Minister on the sly."

Taylor mentally compared Percy – who was still in his twenties – to Marchbanks. She hoped that wasn't true.

"Uh…" Harry sounded like he wasn't sure whether he wanted to believe it. "You're joking? Please? At least tell me you don't mean our current Minister. Not that the last one would be much better…"

"I think Percy Weasley would be the power top if he was in a relationship with Cornelius Fudge," Luna said.

Everyone paused to not imagine that. Or if they did, to wish Luna hadn't said anything.

"It's a rumor," Hermione explained. One Ginny may have started."

Ginny crossed her arms and huffed. "Nobody believes it, but he deserves to squirm a little for what he did. He's dating Susan, for the record."

"Percy isn't in our good books right now, either," Hermione explained. "He's the one who provoked Molly by telling her he was using protection, and why he felt he had to explain that to her… Ugh. Do the math. How many Weasleys are looking likely to pop out grandbabies?"

One not dating, one probably not dating, two unwilling to be tied down, one in the beginning of a relationship… "What about Ron?" Harry asked, mirroring Taylor's own line of thought.

"Shagging every Quidditch groupie who can convince him she's interested in more than his fame," Ginny explained. "I'm more worried for him than the groupies, to be honest. They're taking advantage of him. No children as of yet, though."

"Right. So that leaves…" Harry looked at Hermione and Ginny, and at the rings on both of their fingers.

It had been a nice ceremony. A little touch-and-go on the Granger side, what with their Muggle grandparents not knowing about magic, but Taylor happily played interference for the couple. Molly Weasley cried a river and accidentally burned a few napkins while tipsy, but other than that they hadn't noticed anything amiss. Hermione hadn't noticed her grandfather's less than wholehearted approval either, because Taylor got to him first. By the time Hermione interacted with him, he had been intimidated into hiding his disapproval.

Taylor remembered that day fondly.

"Us," Ginny concluded with a groan. "Percy made her think about grandbabies when he denied the possibility of her getting any from him anytime soon. Then we walk in, ready for our weekly lunch with her and dad, while he skips out, mayhem caused and Justice waiting for him at the Ministry. She's got baby rabies now, and it's all his fault."

"She brought it up," Hermione continued. "We were looking into adopting. As something for the future, once we're done working on the Dementor problem. I made the mistake of telling her that."

"As it turns out," Ginny sighed, "adoption 'doesn't count.'" She scowled at nothing in particular.

"Really?" Luna asked. "She said that?"

"That's the least of the things she said," Hermione confirmed. "Apparently, we are to find a willing donor, both get pregnant at the same time, and move into the Burrow for the duration of the pregnancies as well as the next eighteen years afterward so she doesn't have to part from her new grandbabies for as long as possible."

Harry's eyes bulged. "Did she really mean that?" he asked.

"We'll find out in a month when her time-out ends and we talk to her again," Ginny said grimly. "Maybe she'll realize she was out of line. Maybe not."

"Isolation does tend to kill off Nargles," Luna said sagely. "If it doesn't work, just ignore her."

"I'd rather not, but we will if she makes us," Ginny agreed. "How about you? Taylor pushing you to tie the knot yet?"

"Taylor agrees that a seven-year engagement is a magically advantageous number," Luna replied. "We are only on year three, she would not want us to cut it short."

"She's been great, of course," Harry said. "No pressure, and no out-of-control longing for grandchildren."

Taylor wondered if now would be a good time to announce her presence… But no. Magical intercom pranks were reserved for Sirius. They wouldn't be as funny if she did them to anyone else.

"There wouldn't be," Hermione laughed. "She's far too busy."

"Where is she, anyway?" Harry asked, finally taking a moment to properly look around the balcony. He did not, of course, see her. She was on the roof, and the glass ceiling was charmed to not show any obstructions directly in contact with it, in case she ever figured out how to integrate computers into a high-magic environment and needed some sort of antenna for communication purposes. There was no way anyone knew where–

"Up on the roof," Luna said serenely.

Scratch that. Luna knew, somehow.

Taylor decided that it was time to go down and get the main event out of the way. Everyone she was expecting had arrived. She descended the backdoor stairwell installed in the roof of one of the secondary wings currently closed to the public, reaching the ground floor without interacting with anyone. From there, she unlocked the door to the main chamber from the inside, slid through, and relocked it behind her, slipping out into the gathering of witches and wizards.

Many saw her immediately; her arms were distinctive. When the vampires said no covering, they didn't mean that the runes had to be exposed to light, or air, or any simple physical dependency. They meant it in the conceptual sense, which was much harder to work around. Most of the time she simply went around in sleeveless robes and kept a wary watch over any possible source of fresh blood, but for a fancy-robe occasion like tonight, she settled for simple fishnet opera gloves to match her sleeveless robe. Blood could seep right through and the runes were visible, so the gloves did not count as concealment.

Her arms marked her apart from the crowd, and those who knew her knew why she was here. "Miss Hebert," a short wizard in a gaudy tophat greeted her. Dedalus Diggle, a wizard of some renown and no apparent profession, a member of the Order of the Phoenix in the first war. "How are you on this fine night?"

"Excited," she said honestly. "Though you might not be able to tell just from looking at me."

"You have the 'stern head librarian' look down," he assured her. "It will only get better with time. Did you have old Madam Pince give you tips?"

"Not on the look, but yes." Taylor pointed her out, having already been well aware of her presence. "If you want to compare, she's up on the second floor. The ribbon-cutting will be soon, though, so don't go too far."

"Ha! Good luck to you." Diggle disappeared among the crowd as much taller, more severe woman took his place opposite Taylor. This one, Taylor knew fairly well.

"Andromeda," she greeted. It was said she looked a lot like her insane cousin in Azkaban, but Taylor mostly knew her for being a healer who constantly rebuffed Sirius' attempts to drag her into anything resembling Black family business. "Is your daughter here tonight?"

"Possibly as a guard for the Minister, or possibly she decided she wished to get drunk in the company of her own age group," Andromeda said noncommittally. "Has Sirius given up on making me the Black Wizengamot representative?"

"No, and he will only push harder now that we've got this pushed through." Sirius did not like being a member of the legislative body. Too much responsibility, even when he was using it for his own gain.

"Then I'll continue avoiding him," Andromeda concluded. "Are you and he finally going to tie the knot now that this has been worked out?"

Taylor blatantly ignored that question. Even if she was willing to give an answer to Andromeda, who was an acquaintance at best, it wouldn't be given here, in the middle of a crowd of people who would like nothing more than to tarnish her reputation in any way possible as petty payback. "I hope you enjoy this evening," she said formally.

Someone muttered behind her, something that would have completely escaped the notice of a person without practically limitless multitasking abilities and a relay system of bugs connected to listening charms throughout the entire building. She was ignoring most of the inane conversations, but this?

"Lord… Nott, is it?" she turned, smiled coldly, and met the gaze of the man who had been her chief enemy in the fight to obtain all of the necessary legal niceties for setting up Britain's first public library. She knew very well who he was, but he bristled at the implication that he was unimportant enough to forget. "I appreciate the advice, but I don't think you're very qualified to give it, what with all of the unfortunate incidents plaguing you of late."

She wasn't good at politics, but there wasn't much political about spending a month spying on a stuck-up arse in his manor, suborning one of his many house elves with a few clever lies, and sneaking in to acquire blackmail material, which then mysteriously found its way into the Ministry the day Nott once again put a bureaucratic chokehold on her library.

Nott's face might as well have been carved of granite for all that he reacted, but it made Taylor feel a lot better to have said that. She edged through the crowd, stopping for a meaninglessly polite smile and handshake along the way.

There were not her people. Some of them were likely Death Eaters. Others had ties to the Death Eaters, or to pureblood causes that led back to the Death Eaters. Others were simply stuck-up snobs.

And yet, there was a perverse pleasure inherent in having them here. This building was her attempt at fixing their rotten society, and few of them truly understood that.

The clock struck eight, harmonious chimes echoing through the open space, off the marble floors and wooden blockades lining the walls.

Taylor made her way to the back of the ground floor, where the door to the central secondary wing was blocked by more wooden barriers. Sirius was already there, transfiguring a chest-high set of steps, two poles on top with a red ribbon stretched between them.

"After you." He let his hand brush against her arm as she passed him, reassuringly warm. "No tricks this time, I made it myself."

"All the more reason to suspect tricks," she whispered.

"Not tonight," he replied.

She ascended the steps, stopping at the top, and looked out at the crowd she was now head and shoulders above. The balconies of the second, third, and fourth floors were lined with watchers. Harry's friends were up at the very top, looking down.

"Tonight," she said, and her voice was carried to every single ear by the library's enchantments, "we gather to celebrate the opening of Britain's first public library. It is not publicly funded," not yet, that was too much of a leap for the financially conservative Ministry which was not used to paying for any libraries at all, "but it is open to the public and the same rules will apply to all who enter this building. Heed those rules, treat the books, the building, the librarians, and the other patrons with respect…"

She lifted her arms. Elsewhere, her bugs physically gnawed through the sheet of parchment serving as a runic anchor for hundreds of ongoing conjurations. All of the wooden blockades hiding the walls from sight disappeared.

"And all of the magical knowledge of the library will be open to you, any day, for as long as you wish," she concluded.

The shelves of this central chamber were already lined with books. Hundreds upon hundreds, organized by subject and author, some common and some so rare there was only one copy in existence.

"First floor, general magic principles and general information," she announced. "Second floor, magical history and a selection of magical fiction. Third floor, advanced magical studies, treatises, and papers. Fourth floor, reference materials. Lists of spells, textbooks, dictionaries, atlases, books on language, books on culture." Books from the Muggle side of literature, sorted in without any indication of their origin. Biology, Medicine, Anatomy, Economics, Mathematics, Physics, the whole lot. Not that she would announce that, no, let it be discovered on its own, just like it would be discovered that there was no 'restricted' section in her library. Not even for the truly dangerous spells and magic.

It sounded risky on paper, making such things available to everyone, but in truth they were already available to certain families, who used and abused them at will. This was only leveling the playing field, and unlike with powers, knowledge of a magical concept allowed for the development of magic intended to negate or counter it, something that was sorely lacking at present.

"There are five more, larger wings to the library," she continued. "These are not open to the public today, and they will be expanded and opened as the space becomes necessary. Your donations have ensured that two of the five wings are in the process of being sorted and prepared for the public. Tonight, please feel free to browse what is currently available! It's not Hogwarts' library yet, but you may be surprised by what we have that Hogwarts does not."

She let that settle in. The crowd was quiet, not because they were composed or unimpressed, but because she had activated the auditory enchantments that dampened anything below a yell to a low murmur.

"Now, a few words from the man behind this. Sirius Black." She swiped her hand down, snapping the ribbon, and stepped down to let Sirius up.

"I won't talk long, because the longer I talk the likelier it is that I'll say something incredibly ill-advised," Sirius began jovially. "That was Taylor Hebert, head librarian of this fine establishment. Make no mistake, I might have spent the money and donated the entire Black library, but she rules this place. It was her idea, the many innovative enchantments making it possible were mostly inspired by her proposals, and when it comes to security, she's the one I trust to ensure we don't lose all of our books by the end of tonight."

The crowd laughed, and Sirius smiled widely. "I've got to thank the other old and exceedingly noble houses of this and that," he continued irreverently. "You know who you are. Your personal libraries may be lighter, but don't fret, it's all right here whenever you want to look at it. We appreciate your donations!"

The scowls that graced certain faces in the crowd were amusing, to say the least. Some had truly donated of their own free will. Others had been convinced to part with books for fair prices, or not-so-fair prices. But he ones who were angry were the ones who had conveniently fallen on hard times and been unable to refuse a helping infusion of gold at exactly the right moment. Those people all happened to be former Death Eaters, and they all happened to be much poorer now than when Taylor had first heard of them.

The library's advanced magic collection leaned heavily to the dark side of magic, but Taylor had great ambitions for that changing once people like Hermione and Ginny had free access to all of that dark magic, and a desire to develop proper countermeasures.

"I could go on," Sirius said. "I could spend all night talking about how we got here. The boring budget meetings I for some reason had to go to despite giving the project a blank check, the even more boring legislation that had to be passed to allow us to publicly show all of the 'family heirlooms' my books were classified as, the meetings with contractors, with security, with the Minister, with Hogwarts professors, random wizards off the street with noise complaints… None of it was particularly difficult or noteworthy, but all together, there's a reason we're only opening up now! If it were up to me we would have installed a Floo in the Black Library, removed the old curses and called it done! But no, we had to do it properly, and now we're here… So who the hell wants to listen to a speech? Go, explore, stick to the open areas because locked doors are locked for a reason, there's nothing interesting behind them."

Sirius swiped his hand down, then actually looked down. "Taylor, you didn't conjure another ceremonial ribbon," he stage-whispered.

In response, Taylor took her wand out and fluidly conjured a ribbon, flinging it at him. He deftly snatched it out of the air, took one end in each hand, wrapped it around the poles. Then he cut it with a cutting charm.

"Told you, let me talk for long enough and something will go wrong," he told the crowd. "Party on!"