Chapter 2

Guardian of the Sword

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Harry Potter, 35 years of age, sat in the Library looking over a book of recent magical history. He was in Ireland, at Kilkenny Castle. Harry smiled, remembering the day he and his family had moved in... rather forcibly...

"Harry!" Hermione laughed and gasped at the same time. "What did you do to that poor tour guide!"

"Oh, I sent her ahead... a couple years..." He grinned and waved his hand, repapering the walls.

"Harry, that's dangerous! You shouldn't abuse your power like that!" But Hermione was only pretending to be bossy, she knew Harry kept strict codes on how and how not to use his considerable power.

"But she was so annoying! She kept talking about interior decorating and bugging the hell out of me."

"Well, you did take over the castle that her historical society..."

"Screw the historical society." Harry encircled her in his arms, making the statement sound like an elopement scene. He kissed the tip of her nose. "This castle deserves the people who are living in it."

She laughed again. "You, and me, and Fiona?"

He pulled her even closer. "You're worth more than this castle -

Harry stopped remembering. After five years, remembering her was still painful. Instead, he turned his thoughts to how he had came to know of his powers - the day he had defeated Voldemort.

The mirror on the wall only laughed, and beckoned without moving or speaking. Harry and Lord Voldemort, trapped in her spell, stepped forward and through the glass. A kaleidoscope of images paraded in front of him, coming so fast that Harry hardly had time to make sense of them. He saw Hermione for a second, then Ron, and a flash of Sirius. Harry wished that one could have stayed longer. And with that tiny longing, he suddenly realized that all of the pictures were, in fact, memories, and they all reflected himself. They were the thoughts that made up… Harry. Something snapped and he was looking across at himself, standing free in white space. "Good luck, Harry Potter," his reflection said, then there was the sound of shattering glass.

He was standing before the mirror, but instead of his reflection, he could see a large red rose, with molten gold running down the stem like blood. Touch it, the mirror said. It is the soul of Tom Riddle, who did not withstand the Test of the Mirror, as you did.

Harry reached out and touched it -

And from that point on, Harry had never needed a wand to do magic. He could turn himself invisible, he could transform into any animal at will. He was still exploring the vast extent of his power, though as Hermione had mentioned, he placed strict codes on himself of misusing it.

Harry heard running footsteps along the corridor. He smiled, knowing his daughters would be up about now...

"Daddyyyyyy!!!!!!" A fourteen-year-old with long, black hair cannoned into his back.

He laughed. "Fiona, aren't you getting a little old for that?"

"Nope!" Her eyes were a bright, happy green. She laughed, too.

"Ugh, then I am getting too old. Get off me!" She slid off and bounced into a chair. "Where are your sisters?"

"Cora's having breakfast, the others are still asleep." She got up and looked over her father's shoulder. "What are you reading?"

"Oh, I'm not really reading." He grinned. "Just... remembering."

"Mom?" Fiona looked serious now, and sad. Of all four sisters, Fiona had been struck worst with Hermione's death. She had only been nine, a terrible age to lose a mother.

"Well, not really." he grinned wryly. "Come on, let's join Cora at the breakfast table. Haven't you eaten anything yet?"

Harry and Hermione had four children, now the only light of Harry's sad life. The oldest, Fiona, was fourteen. She had the capability of acting childish and serious, shadowed by her mother's death but determined not to let it consume her.

The next was Cora, a mischievous girl of twelve. She had her mother's brown hair and love for order, but her father's emerald eyes. She had a bit of a wicked streak in her, and was the perpetrator of most midnight excursions. Harry permitted two a year, though he never told this to the girls.

Then there was Fiachra, ever a puzzlement. She had been named after a girl in an old Irish fairy tale, about the children of King Lir. She was a mysterious 11-year-old girl with short black hair and chocolate brown eyes, loved to be immersed in a fantasy tale or a walk in Celtic Ireland. She mainly kept to herself, preferring to harbor her hopes and fears inside. Harry could see too many of his faults in her, and thought maybe her mother's death at such an early age (6) had triggered these feelings. Yet she continued to shrug off any help or advice.

And then there was little Adonna. Only nine years old, she was the sunlight of Harry's life. She had been too young to remember much of Hermione before she died, and this shined through in her sunny, optimistic attitude. She knew how to make people laugh, and often her gold hair and sparkly green eyes would pop up at the most unexpected times.

~

Aori Chandler seethed. She had been angry for quite a while now, several months in fact, but she had wanted more information before she acted. "Thank you, Draco. You have been most helpful."

Draco Malfoy, 35, nodded and grinned. "You pay well, Aori." Then he turned and left the room.

Yes, he thought. I was right. She will stop at nothing to give Harry the pain and torment he deserves.

At one time, Draco had had the upper hand over Harry. But when the Malfoy Manor burned down in his sixth year at Hogwarts, and left his family with hardly any money, and him with a burn scar up the left side of his face, he was forced to see things from a different perspective. Most of the Malfoy's fortune had been in property, portraits, furniture, and obscure Dark Arts objects. All these had been lost, and the Malfoy name was hardly any good any more.

At school, he had been laughed at and tormented, especially by Harry and Ron. He was no longer appreciated in the Slytherin house, and he became silent and withdrawn. Then Harry had defeated Voldemort, and the Malfoys had no one left to turn to. All the Death Eaters were being hunted down, and nothing seemed to fit.

So, displaying the proper Malfoy cold-heartedness, Draco had taken the remaining money, left his father in the dust (his mother had passed away in the fire), and gone off to become someone.

And now he was stuck in service to an insanely jealous woman who would stop at nothing to hurt Harry - or, more precisely - his children.

~

The sword had once been Godric Gryffindor's. It was the very same sword that he pulled out of the hat in his second year. However, after his fight with Voldemort, the sword had changed. It was Hermione who noticed it first.

The light of the common room fire was warm and comforting, but Harry stared blankly without seeing anything. Hermione longed to put and arm around his shoulder and say everything's going to be all right, but she had no idea if that was true. Harry hadn't really said anything after his strange battle with the Dark Lord.

As she watched him carefully, she noticed something funny about the sword strapped to his belt. "Harry," she said. "Look at your sword…" He snapped out of his reverie and glanced at his sword belt. He immediately saw what she meant. The metal, once silver, was now bright gold. Some of the patterns had changed. But most importantly, when Harry drew it from it's sheath, instead of the name Godric Gryffindor…

"Harry… it has your name on it."

Harry loved his sword. When Hermione had passed away, he infused it with power to protect his children, so as long as the sword was in his possession, no one could harm them. He kept it under a strong spell, locked away in his room.

It was this item that Aori so desired – for once she had the power of the sword, there was no stopping her destroying what Harry loved the most.

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The first chapter was more like a prologue… now starts the real story…