Alduin had been right: Cho wasn't particularly keen on coming to Travers Manor, and so they only met once during the holiday, in Diagon Alley, and both were in a rather sour mood.
"Do you know what you want to do, then?" Cho asked him a bit impatiently.
Harry shook his head. "I mean, I thought we could maybe go look at brooms...and got to Flourish and Blotts? And then maybe Fortescue's..."
"I think it's a bit cold for ice cream," Cho muttered, which wasn't wrong – the weather was unpleasant, with light drizzle falling from the sky, which didn't improve their mood any.
Nevertheless, she took his hand and they did go to look at brooms, and it was fine, but they didn't really talk much. Harry tried to discuss the brooms specifics with Cho, but she mostly answered in monosyllables, and so Harry gave it up as a bad job after some time.
Next they headed to the bookshop, and it was starting to look a bit better: Cho found some book by an author she loved, and she recommended it to Harry so vehemently that he decided to buy it on the spot, which in turn made Cho give him the first genuine smile of the day. After that, they browsed companionably for a time, showing each other what they found, both the interesting and the bizarre.
But then they came across Hermione.
Harry greeted her with enthusiasm, and she talked about the new books she found, and then reminded Harry of the promise he made her to show her Alduin's favourite bookshops, and Harry enthusiastically agreed to take her there. It was at that point that Cho cleared her throat, and Harry turned to her a little guiltily. "I'm sorry, I should have offered that to you as well, I keep forgetting about it for some reason...anyway, let's all go there, all right?"
Hermione grimaced. "You can just give me directions, Harry, really, I can go there later..."
Harry rolled his eyes. "Are you planning to come here again during this break?"
"No," Hermione admitted. Being from a Muggle family, Harry knew it was more complicated for her to get to London.
"There you go, then," Harry closed the discussion, and they paid for their books and headed outside into what had turned from a drizzle into actual rain.
Harry showed them the two shops he knew from Alduin, but in case of the second one, Hermione never went further than the door before bidding them a hasty goodbye, so Harry went inside with just Cho.
It was only then that he noticed that her mood has worsened again, and she was no longer really willing to discuss the books she found with him, back to answering in monosyllables. Harry had no idea what to do about it, and when they left the shop, remembering she didn't feel like having ice-cream – neither did Harry, much, to be honest – he suggested going to the Leaky Cauldron.
"Yes, that's very romantic," Cho muttered, and then a bit louder, said: "I think I'll just go home."
And before Harry could protest, she bid him goodbye and left him standing in the street without as much as a peck on the lips.
Harry walked to the Diagon Alley Floo point feeling even more frustrated than when he'd arrived, angry, most of all, that this ruined date cost him his time with his little cousins.
At least he showed Hermione the shops, he supposed. It wasn't completely wasted time.
Still, he stayed morose for the rest of the day. Even Wynn throwing a temper tantrum later that day, when he was told he had enough flying for one day, was not as upsetting as that failed date with Cho. Or not to Harry, anyway. Alexandra looked like she was very close to losing her calm, a prospect which terrified Harry, since he had never seen her without it.
He took a break for two days, staying at home with the boys as his mood steadily improved, but then on Monday before returning to Hogwarts, he finally arranged to meet his godfather properly for the first time.
Harry waited in the drawing room with Alduin and Alexandra for the man to be showed in for an afternoon tea. When he finally entered, Harry had to admit he certainly looked better than when he'd seen him in the autumn, or even in the newspaper pictures. He got a haircut and was shaved, and had on new, well-fitting robes. He looked at least ten years younger, and it was suddenly difficult to believe that he was the same age as Professor Lupin.
"Hello, Harry," he said with a smile.
"Hello," Harry returned, as Alduin nodded at their visitor and called for tea. "How are you?"
"Better than I have been for a good long while," Sirius replied with a grin. "What about you?"
"I am well as well," Harry replied formally, then added with a smile: "I'm glad to be home from Hogwarts for a while, and to spend some time with Wynn and Edric."
"Yes, you said so in your letters" Sirius said, one corner of his mouth turning up. "I feel like I should meet these children, since they really must be something extraordinary to hold so much of your attention."
Alduin frowned slightly, but Harry beamed. "They're great! And so cute, too. And you should see Wynn on his toy broom! He can spend hours on it."
"Then he's exactly like you when you were little. And not at all like your cousin, I dare say," he added.
"I had a toy broom, too?" Harry asked in surprise.
Sirius' smile softened. "Yes. I gave it to you for your first birthday. I didn't see you often at the time, what with your family being in hiding, but Lily's and James' letters assured me that it was your favourite gift. See, when you want to be the kind of star player you are, you have to start early!"
"In that case, Wynn's going to be awesome!" Harry replied, and could barely hear Alexandra's muttered 'Merlin forbid' in response.
"I see that your amusement is well taken care of," Sirius continued. "Is there anything I can help you with?"
Harry shrugged. "Not really, I think. I mean, unless Herbology or Magical Creatures were your best subjects at Hogwarts?"
"I was never that great at Herbology, but Creatures, well, that's different. Why, are you having trouble there?" Sirius asked curiously, sounding a bit surprised.
Harry shook his head. "Not exactly, but they're subjects neither Alduin nor Alexandra really know that well, so I was wondering if, if I have questions, I could turn to you."
Sirius frowned a little. "Well, sure, though my best was Transfiguration. I didn't mean just school, though."
He might not have, but school was really the only thing Harry felt comfortable asking Sirius for help about at this point. He sipped his tea to get out of answering.
"How are Ron and Neville?" Sirius asked. "I used to know their parents. I guess I still know the Weasleys, but I haven't spoken to them since I was locked up."
"They're well, as far as I know. Oh, that reminds me-" Harry half turned to his cousins. "Ginny wrote to me. She's trying to decide about her electives, and since everyone complains about Divination so much, she says she'd prefer something else to combine with Creatures. What would you recommend?"
"It depends where she feels her strengths are," Alexandra replied. "I'll write to her. Certainly either Runes or Arithmancy, but only she can decide what is better suited to her."
"Or she can just take Muggle Studies and be done with it," Sirius pointed out.
"I don't know what the current quality of that class is," Alduin remarked, "but in our times, it would have been scarcely better than Divination."
"I think Ernie McMillan takes Muggle Studies?" Harry said, trying to think of someone among his friends. "I could write and ask him if he'd recommend it..."
"Do you really want to talk about school?" Sirius asked at that point, exasperated.
Alduin and Alexandra clearly judged that as their cue to leave the room, allowing Sirius and Harry to talk in peace for a time, as they'd told Harry they would.
"Are you really okay with spending so much time with their kids?" Sirius asked him once they left. "You don't have to babysit them for them, you know."
Harry scowled. Before he could say anything, however, Sirius put up his hands. "Okay, okay, clearly, you are. I just want to make sure Alduin isn't taking advantage of you in any way."
Harry set his jaw. "Look, I know you have some problems with him, and my dad had some, too, but he always treated me better than anyone else."
"Then I'll say no more about it," Sirius promised, "at least unless I see something to make me doubt him. But now, tell me about your dates with that pretty Ravnclaw!"
Sighing, Harry recounted the sad story of their last date. Sirius laughed when Harry got to meeting Hermione, and stated with certainly Harry wasn't sure whether to trust that Cho was jealous of Hermione. As for the rest, though, it seemed to be a little hard for Sirius to enter into his feelings about preferring to spend time with his cousins to spending time on a date.
"You said she was pretty, right?" He asked when Harry tried to explain his lack of enthusiasm.
Harry decided to give it up as a bad job. "What are your plans now?" He asked to change the topic. "You've been very vague in your letters."
Sirius laughed. "That's because I have very little plans. I want to buy a new house, and sell the one I have. That's what I'm sure of. Beyond that..."
"You want to sell the old Black house?" Harry asked, surprised.
"Yes."
Harry hesitated. "But...isn't it a pity?"
Sirius snorted. "Trust me, Harry, I only have the worst memories of that place."
"I know, but..." Harry thought about how to explain why it seemed wrong to him. "It's very old, isn't it? Some of your relatives must have been happy there."
Sirius grimaced at that. "I don't know and I don't care. They were a terrible bunch."
That made Harry frown. "Oh, come on! My great-grandmother was a Black. I'm sure she wasn't terrible."
Sirius rolled his eyes. "I see Alduin taught you your family tree. Well, perhaps not she, but it's not like I remember her staying in the house."
"I know, but what I mean is..." Harry tried, once again, to put his feelings into words. "There are family memories there, aren't they? It just seems a shame...I'd give a lot for the Potter Manor to still stand, you know."
Sirius sighed. "If you didn't have school starting again soon," he said, "I'd take you to see the house, to prove you wrong. Once you saw the place, I'm sure you'd agree with me."
Harry latched onto this. "Then wait until the summer at least? Then you can take me there, and maybe you're right, maybe after I see it, I really will agree with you."
Sirius agreed to that, and Harry was able to bid him goodbye with a feeling of a job well done.
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Wynn's second birthday party was the first opportunity for Harry's ancient family friends who were already at Hogwarts to see Edric. Harriet and Susan immediately pronounced him to be extremely cute, and both claimed the right to hold him at least for a while. The rest was less keen, and Ron, as usual, showed complete lack of understanding for Harry's tendency to spend time with his cousins, leading Harry to think he'd get on with Sirius just wonderfully.
Wynn was the star of the day, though, and though none of his gifts were as sensational as the toy broom last year, they were interesting to see. There were the usual piles of clothes and children's books, of course, but beyond that, there were also toys, many of them quite ingenious.
The universal favourite was a toy wand that produced various plush toys when Wynn waved it around.
"Can't he stick it in his eye or something?" Neville asked a little worriedly.
"Don't worry," Alexandra reassured him. "There are spells on it to prevent just that."
The rest of the afternoon, Wynn toddled on the lawn by the food tables, waving his wand to raucous laugher, and Harry watched him from where he sat with his group of friends.
"They grow up fast, don't they?" Kiara asked, watching him as well.
Ron snorted. "You sound like our mum," he said.
"Well, it's true!" Kiara defended herself. "I still remember Harry excitedly telling me he had a new cousin one evening in the common room...and now he's running around talking and everything, and there's a new baby."
"And Edric isn't all that small any more either," Harry agreed. "I mean, three months make such a huge difference with babies, you know?"
"How long until they can play together, do you think?" Harriet wondered.
Harry thought about it for a moment. "I remember Alduin or Alexandra telling me something about when children learn to play together...I don't really remember when it is exactly, but I know that she said during the summer Wynn wasn't yet ready for it, so...I guess more than a year at least."
"That seems like a long time," Harriet commented, surprised.
"Well, Wynn has other children to play with, doesn't he?" Neville pointed out, motioning to Geralt Ollivander, who was chasing Wynn around the lawn.
"Hopefully Edric will have some too, when he's bigger," Harry muttered. There didn't seem that many children born in the last year among the Ancient families.
"Oh, he will!" Gamila assured him. "Haven't you heard? The Odgens have had a baby boy a few days ago."
"And there's my cousin, Primula, she was born quite recently," Edmund pointed out in his usual quiet voice.
Harry grimaced a little, and tried to think of a way to draw attention away from the fact that, in spite of the recently improved relations, Alduin's son was unlikely to spend too much time playing with Eliza Prince's daughter.
Thankfully, at that moment, Ron groaned. "Can we please talk about literally anything else than babies?"
A few people looked like they agreed with him. "Harry told me you take Muggle Studies, is it true?" Ginny asked Ernie, clearly latching on the first idea of conversation in her mind.
"Yes." Ernie looked like he felt on much firmer ground here than with baby talk. "Was there something you needed to know about Muggles?"
Ginny shook her head. "Not exactly. I could always ask my dad about that. I just wonder if I should take that class."
Ernie launched into an extremely detailed description of all they did, one that made Ginny look slightly desperate. "Okay," she said, "and what about Arithmancy, does anyone here take it?"
Roger and Horatio, equally grateful to be out of the children territory, were there to assist her with that, and it didn't take them long to convince her it would be a subject much better suited to her needs.
Harry thought about the particular panicked look on Roger's face when babies were talked about, and was a little taken aback to realize it was probably because they were both sixteen now, Roger fast approaching seventeen in fact, and really not all that far from the age his own parents got married, and so not that far from having children themselves.
He shook his head a little at the idea. It seemed like it wasn't just babies who grew up fast.
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It was just a day after Wynn's birthday that Ginevra Crouch came to see Alduin. He was surprised: usually, visits between adults were kept to a minimum during school breaks, so that families could focus on their children come back from Hogwarts. Edmund wasn't at Hogwarts yet, of course, but Harry was, and Ginevra would normally respect that.
She looked tired and tense, however, and so Alduin rushed her to a parlour and called for tea before he took her hand and asked what was going on.
Ginevra, to him, was perhaps the most tragic fate of those who survived the war – aside from the Longbottoms, but then the question was whether that could even be called survival. But Alduin's own tragic story with Eliza, he felt, paled in comparison with the choices Ginevra had made after the war and with which she now had to live every day. And she had been one of his best friends during Hogwarts, even if they grew more distant over the years of his come and her marriage. So if Alduin could help her in any way to shoulder whatever new burden she had, he would.
"It's my daughter," Ginvera said, her voice trembling a little.
Alduin blinked. "Daughter?"
"Yes, daughter," Ginevra replied, her voice firming. "Whatever my husband insisted on, I'm done with it."
"Have you had a child with someone else?" Alduin wondered. It'd surprise him – with magical contraception so easy to arrange, it was rare for unplanned pregnancies to happen – but he certainly wouldn't begrudge her that, given the circumstances.
"No," Ginevra said, and now she was firm and determined, "you know her. You've known her for years."
It took Alduin a moment, and then he took a sharp breath. "Jonathan insisted on hiding it?"
"Yes," Ginevra said bitterly. "Until she was fourteen, he said, until she was really certain, let's not make waves."
"And you accepted it?" Alduin asked in some surprise. Had someone suggested something like that about one of his children, they'd find themselves at the business end of his wand, whether it was a stranger or Alexandra herself.
"Elizabeth accepted it," Ginvera corrected tiredly, and Alduin assumed that was the name her daughter chose for herself. "Her father convinced her it was best that way. You know how shy she is, and he told her everyone would be staring at her and how unpleasant it would all be."
Alduin had known Jonathan was a bit of an idiot, but he had no idea the man could be that repulsive. "Perhaps she wouldn't be that shy," he said sharply, "if she hadn't been forced to live like a boy!"
"You don't have to tell me that," Ginvera said with a headshake. "And besides, I think most people have a pretty good idea, really. Not you – you were asleep – but before Elizabeth became explicit about how she felt and what she wanted, she wore long hair a lot, and she tended to play with dolls quite often. It was only when she was six or so that Jonathan realized what was going on and began to convince her to present as a boy." She sighed. "I feel like I should have done more for her, I do, but..."
Alduin pressed her hand. "I'm sure you did what you could." Then he smiled. "Did she pick the name Elizabeth for her aunt?"
Ginevra smiled in response. "She did. They're similar in nature and I feel Eliza always understood my daughter better than I did. Gods know I tried, but we're so different in nature..." She shook her head. "When her father started to put pressure on her, I wanted her to shout who she was from the rooftops, but she was simply horrified at the idea, and it was Eliza, in the end, who convinced me to let it be for now. But after your son's birthday party, Elizabeth couldn't stop crying, and finally she told me she couldn't do it any more. So we're done with secrecy, and I told Jonathan that if he tried to discourage her any more, I'd leave."
Alduin took a sharp breath. Divorce, in Ancient families, was almost unheard of, and never threatened lightly. But he could absolutely understand why Ginevra chose to do it now, and he rose from his chair to pull her into an embrace.
"It's going to be all right," he promised. "I'll do anything I can to help."
"Thank you," she said on an exhale. "I'd like to come over with her, if I can, so that she can get used to the new role...Mercurius knows – he's known the whole time – and so does Isobel, but if you could tell a few other people from the Ravenclaw circles at least, I'd be thankful. I don't want to have to do it all myself, but Elizabeth has asked me to get the news out among people. She doesn't want to do it herself."
"Of course. I'll tell Alexandra, and her brother. I assume Mercurius will tell Patritia and Isobel will tell Abdullah, but...what about the Shacklebolts? I'm completely certain they'd be a safe family for you to visit with her, too."
Ginevra gave him a grateful smile. "Then I'll trust your judgement," she said. "I should go – I don't like leaving Elizabeth alone too much these days – but...thank you."
"You have nothing to thank me for," Alduin assured her.
As he accompanied her to the Floo, he thought about how Ginevra, of all people, didn't deserve to have such a complicated life, and how Jonathan was seven different kinds of an idiot and if there had been a way to cut him socially without affecting his wife and daughter as well, Alduin would do it in a heartbeat.
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AN: I'd just like to note that the Crouch child was always meant to be trans, from the very beginning of my writing of this story. JKR's recent transphobia just made me push the reveal a bit forward (originally I meant to wait until Elizabeth was a teenager – but then again, when I planned that I also knew less about trans kids than I do now, so apart from feeling every Harry Potter fanfic should have a trans character now as a fuck you to JKR, I'm also happy to make this change because I'm happy to have Elizabeth live openly sooner, and being able to start Hogwarts as her true self.)
My idea is that with magic, any body changes would be much easier than in the Muggle world, and so as a result transeness would be more normalised and accepted, but still far from being completely so, because most relatively traditional societies, like the wizarding one is, would, I think, have some degree of trouble with accepting transitions from one category to another, be it Muggle-Borns, who go from Muggle to witch or wizard, or trans people, who, when they can and choose to, go from presenting as one gender to presenting as another. I hope that came through at least a bit in that scene.