Thank you Roofuls and nateyeh for the brainstorming, editing, and britpicking help.
.oOo.
"Oh my God, this day has been exhausting," Harry said. Well, he hadn't said the words, but he fell onto the settee in a way that made it self-evident.
Mycroft turned down the volume on the television and took a deep breath. "Do you want me to rub your feet?"
Harry opened his eyes and stared. Mycroft felt himself blushing. "Mycroft, have you been taking relationship advice from Anthea again? Because you really…shouldn't."
For all that Harry was complaining, Mycroft had at least accomplished making him smile. "My apologies. And yes, it was Anthea's suggestion."
"We've gone five years of marriage without you touching my feet. Let's not start now, yeah?"
"Quite." The evening news had shifted to sports, so Mycroft turned it off. "Do you want to talk about your day, perhaps?"
"Not really, no."
Mycroft waited. Harry always wanted to talk about his day.
"I told Dumbledore to piss off today. It felt great, until he hit me with those twinkling eyes. I swear, it's unnatural. Probably uses a spell."
"What did he do this time?"
"He was gloating about how he got Augusta Longbottom into office. She was my candidate. Actually, she was my second choice after Albus burned Horatio McAllister. But I hate it when he starts gloating, in his Dumbledorian way. So I commended him on his choice of Defense Professors this year, and he huffed off."
"I'm sure Albus Dumbledore hasn't huffed in his life." Mycroft chuckled at the image. If only the old man could act more like their teenage son and less like a massive thorn in their side.
"If anyone can bring it out in him, it's me or Sherry. And by the way, I'm still annoyed that none of you thought to tell me about Gellert being at Hogwarts. I know you're all very clever, but it's so dangerous. We could have sent him to," Harry shuddered. "Well, maybe not Durmstrang, but there's still Beauxbatons."
Then, he raised his wand and summoned them a tea tray.
"Thank you, dear." Mycroft said. He passed over Harry's mug and took a digestive. "Sherry told me that he specifically wanted to spend a year at Hogwarts. You said our responsibility as his guardians is to enable him to follow through on sensible choices."
"Also, to stop him from reforming the Death Eaters," Harry muttered into his tea, "or from going on a murderous rampage to topple the government I worked so hard to reform."
"You must consider the facts of it. He lost one of his followers to Grindelwald. For someone as posessive as Sherry, that must have stung. I believe it gave him the kick to the rear that he needed to begin taking a more proactive approach to Wizarding Politics."
Harry sighed. "When Albus and Gellert are involved, I'd rather not be proactive at all. Let the two of them shag it out or duel it out between them."
Mycroft coughed. He did not want to picture those two in any kind of carnal act, least of all one he had participated in himself relatively recently.
"Taking his NEWTs is sensible, at least. We raised a sensible kid, Mycroft. Between him an Eurus, we at least got something right."
Eurus was settling down, Mycroft wanted to protest, but he knew things with his sister would never be so simple. As for their son, Mycroft had talked to Sherry at length before he'd left for school the first time, and again after the Christmas break. Harry wouldn't understand it, but they'd spent many hours weighing the advantages against the disadvantages of the ageing ritual, they'd made plans upon plans and a whole set of contingencies once they'd realised Gellert Grindelwald would be teaching Defense. Harry might be more laissez-faire, but Mycroft would never have approved the endeavour if he hadn't believed it would work.
"Sherry said he was done being a child who cannot participate in the game. He also expressed concern over Albus' wand being won by Gellert should the two duel. In the end, he asked for me to trust him." It had been such an odd question to ask.
"And?" Harry propped himself on his elbow, looking right at Mycroft again.
"And I decided that I'm going to trust him. Don't you agree?"
Going by the lightness on Harry's face, it had been the right thing to say. Mycroft leaned forward to take another digestive.
.oOo.
"I don't know what to do," Mycroft said. It might just have been the first time he'd ever said those words. Mycroft usually prided himself in his ability to know, and in his problem-solving abilities.
Harry would have said, "There's a first time for everything. Tell me what's wrong."
Sherlock's grave said nothing. The white marble looked cold and dead, though at least Mycroft's breath wasn't fogging. The ivy had starting to climb the stone—Mycroft would tell the gardener to fix it.
"They've been toying with each other. Moriarty and Eurus. And for some reason, Eurus is letting it happen. I think she actually, legitimately, genuinely cares for Doctor Watson."
Perhaps Sherlock would have nodded earnestly, while half his attention was still on whatever experiment he was conducting. It had been so long ago. Mycroft had forgotten if his eyes were the same blue as Sherry's. In his memories, the two boys had melded together.
Sherry would have said, "There's a first time for everything. Tell me why not knowing is a problem."
Mycroft sighed. He crouched down and broke off the bothersome ivy shoots himself. "Caring complicates things. I wasn't anticipating how intertwined things would become. I was following them around, you know. It was supposed to be my lunch break and I spent it stalking my own sister over the camera network.
Anthea had walked in, seen the mayonnaise Mycroft had spilled on his tie, and commented, "There's a first time for everything."
He'd felt so embarrassed. Not the stalking, nor the sauce, nor by Anthea witnessing him, but all of it put together painted an unsettling picture of a deranged man.
Mycroft had always prided himself on his unshakable sanity.
"I just want her to be safe."
The marble stared blankly back. 'Like you wanted me to be safe? Look at me now.'
"She's going to get hurt," Mycroft said. "Moriarty is going to use Doctor Watson against her, because she's made the mistake of caring, and Eurus or Joan or both are going to suffer for it."
Harry would have said something about metaphorical nest-leaving, and that it was a normal part of life to let the people you loved go.
Harry hadn't seen Eurus and Doctor Watson kissing each other goodbye in a way that looked all the more intimate for that it appeared to be routine.
Mycroft didn't want to be the kind of person who found out about his sister's relationship via the security cameras he'd stationed outside their home.
"I know what I have to do," Mycroft admitted, giving the headstone a fond pat. "I don't want to do it, mind."
Harry was fond of saying, "Sometimes there comes a time where we have to choose between what is right and what is easy."
Mycroft took a deep breath, then let it out.
"You're right, of course, little brother." Mycroft picked up his umbrella. "It's time I let her make her own mistakes."
He walked away from the tombstone, towards his waiting car. In the back of his mind he could hear the sound of an orchestra warming up before the conductor arrived.
"It's time," he said as he got in. "Let's go."
.oOo.
"I got another therapist, you see," Sirius said.
Mycroft set down the London Gazette and sighed. Sirius took this as an invitation to sit on the settee across from him.
"Sirius, who exactly do you think arranged for your new therapist after your failure to get along with the first one?"
"Ah. Yeah, right. Sorry."
Mycroft glanced at his watch. Anthea would be coming to pick him up in ten minutes. He'd been meaning to catch up on what the newspaper had been telling his people to think. Possibly, the day had come to replace the head editor with someone a bit more sensible.
"...thinking it's time to mend bridges," Sirius finished.
"I see." Mycroft looked at how the man was wringing his shirt and deduced that the subject matter was Remus Lupin. One day soon, he was hoping the two men would surmount two decade's worth of unresolved sexual tension and just shack up already. At the very least, the Holmes family were all very ready for Sirius to finally, finally move out.
"So, do you think you could get me his address?"
Even in human form, Sirius had puppy dog eyes. "I'll ask Anthea." Mycroft did not point out that Sirius could just have sent an owl. "You'll be wanting to stay in the house in France again?"
Sirius nodded. "Harry isn't really talking to me. I was hoping…"
"You're a grown man, Sirius."
The way said grown man was helplessly twisting his fingers together made him look like a chastised schoolboy.
Mycroft sighed. "It's not that Harry hates you, it's that he wants you to take accountability for your own actions."
"I visited their graves! The people I killed. I left them flowers."
Good Lord, this was pointless. "Right." Mycroft looked at his watch and stood. "I'll have the Black House sorted out for your stay by Easter at the very latest. Now, if you'll please excuse me, my car is waiting."
Sirius grinned his usual beaming smile and bounded off to his room in the form of a big black shaggy dog. Mycroft chose his big navy umbrella to coordinate with his houndstooth tie, wondering how he of all people had ended up responsible for Sirius Black.
Love, he reminded himself, was a strange force that led men to do curious things.
.oOo.
She hadn't said a word, but he could feel her eyes on him. Mycroft looked up and jumped.
"Luna, sweetheart, how long have you been standing there?" He opened his arms and pushed back from his desk so that she could climb onto his lap. Her feet were ice cold as she tucked them against his legs.
"I didn't want to bother you," she said. The Lovegood genetics had held true for her, leaving her hair platinum blond even though her eyes had gone as green as Harry's. They'd waited until after Christmas to blood-adopt her, with Xenophilius' approval. Mycroft had thought she'd be as clever as the rest of the Holmes, but the effect on Luna had been a bit different than expected.
"You're not a bother," Mycroft said honestly. "I was working on something boring, anyway. Did you have a bad dream?"
A normal Holmes would have resented the implication of being disturbed by something as inconsequential as a nightmare, but Luna was only a quarter Holmes, and she'd never been normal to begin with.
"Papa, what do you know about prophecies?"
Where was Harry when you needed him? As far as comforting frightened children and providing hot beverages went, he really was the better man for the job. If Mycroft were a wizard he'd have summoned a tea set, but alas.
"Let's go and make up some hot chocolate, alright? That's what always helps me when I have bad dreams."
She climbed off him obligingly and took his hand. "You have bad dreams, Papa? What about?"
Usually, it was some combination of governmental collapse, civil war, or his loved ones dying. "Nothing you need to worry about, little moon." He sat her on her bed and put socks and slippers on her feet. Medusa got a quick head-scratch before Mycroft lead Luna to the kitchen to make the promised cocoa.
As usual, Sirius had put the empty milk bottle in the fridge. Mycroft tossed it without bothering to be annoyed, then helped himself to Harry's soy milk instead.
Luna waited until the soft click-click-click-whoosh of the gas stove before she piped up. "I dreamt of a war, where everyone was dying. You and Papa Harry and Daddy and Medusa and Mummy and Sherry and Eurus and—"
"Luna, sweetheart." Mycroft handed her a tissue, ignoring the way the hairs on his neck were standing on end. "Your Mummy died in a terrible accident, but the rest of us are just fine. It's alright."
"But you're not going to be alright if the war comes!"
"Shhh. Shhh, it's okay." He wanted Harry to come and have this conversation instead of him, but Harry wouldn't be back until noon the next day. "You said if the war comes, not when. Logically, that means there's a no-war scenario that we can focus on." He stirred the cocoa powder in and turned down the flame.
Luna wrapped her small hands around her mug. Mycroft sat down facing her and smiled in a way that he hoped she'd find reassuring. Talking to actual children was much harder than the adults he so easily fooled every day.
"There's a prophecy," Luna said. "The chosen one has to vanquish the Dark Lord, or we're all going to die." She looked at her cup, poking at the film on her milk before taking a sip. "I don't want you to die," she said to her cocoa.
Talking to children who divined prophecies they shouldn't know about was even harder. Mycroft pulled her onto his lap and rubbed her back slowly. "I don't want us to die either. I can't promise anything, but I'll talk to Harry and Sherry and the Dark Lord so we can maybe get this all figured out. Alright?"
Luna put down her empty mug and snuggled into him. Mycroft was glad to have such a soft belly to hold her against. The one time he had been hugged by his father, he remembered how uncomfortably bony the man had been.
"Let's get you back to bed, Luna. I know they're intimidating, and we can't rule out that you're Seeing things, but right now your only job is to get some rest. Trust the adults to sort this one for you, alright?"
He could feel her nodding against his shoulder.
"Sweetheart, I love you, but you're going to have to walk. I don't have Harry's upper body strength."
She giggled. Mycroft brought her to her room and heaved a collossal sigh once she was safely tucked in with her dog there to guard the cold from her feet.
.oOo.
"This was an unexpected request indeed," Gellert said. He was steepling his fingers in a way that looked rather villain-esque, or at least it would if they weren't in a bakery.
"Quite. I wanted to make sure the agreement we had still held."
"Any agreement was between myself and the Black family."
"Congratulations are in order, of course. Your son must be, what, five months old by now?"
Gellert grinned. Mycroft helped himself to the man's cheesecake, seeing as he was too busy appearing intimidating to eat it. "Ernst-Heinrich Grindelwald was born the week after the equinox."
Mycroft very quitely groaned at the implications. "Fantastic. Give Bellatrix our best, if you would."
"You did not just for this request a meeting."
"Like I said, I'm hoping to clarify the terms of our inter-familial alliance. After all, we are in-laws, and family is important."
"Interesting that you should say such a thing, when your sister was so determined with the punishment of your family."
"Quite." Mycroft took another bite of cheesecake and washed it down with a sip of tea. "I'm not talking about myself and Eurus now. I'm more concerned about the pending civil war you've been inciting. My youngest daughter has been worried that we're all going to die horrible deaths sometime soon."
"There is no need for a war. I only wish to punish Albus." Gellert said the name with such softness.
It made Mycroft's stomach clench. He offered it more cheesecake in consolation.
"One could argue he's being sufficiently punished by the muckraking in the media, and the chaos you've been causing at his school. His good name has lost a great deal of its goodness. I imagine he won't be continuing many of his positions of office come the summer Wizengamot session. Isn't that enough?"
Gellert laughed. "Your son, the eldest, he approached me just the other day asking for the closer alliance. He seems as sure as myself that Albus requires much further punishment, until the man's life is destroyed as he once destroyed my own. I think I would have the decency to visit him in his prison more than once a year, however."
"Wouldn't want to miss the chance to gloat." It was something Mycroft had observed certain people felt the irrational need to do. It wasn't enough for them to be clever, or to get away with a brilliantly executed plan, if nobody was there to witness it.
This was what separated the clever from the truly brilliant. At the end of Mycroft's career, he intended to retire from nothing more prestigious than a minor ministry position.
Grindelwald grinned. "You have my word that I am upholding my end. So long as your husband continues his working, there will be no war from me. I only want Albus in a prison cell. And you should tell your child not to stand in my way. Or, the breaking of our truce will come from him."
The trouble with Sherry was that nobody could tell him what to do. "Why did you turn him away? I would have thought you have a common adversary."
"Bah. He is a child still." Grindelwald sneered. "He is foolish and impatient and understands nothing of personal matters like revenge."
If Grindelwald had called Sherry a child to his face, then Mycroft wasn't surprised at all Luna was predicting a magical war.
"I see." Mycroft stood, catching his chair before it fell. "Thank you for agreeing to this meeting. I'll have to talk to my family now to ensure we're all on the same page. You have my gratitude."
He made sure his hands were calm as he laid two twenty pound notes on the table, picked up his umbrella, and left.
