Mycroft admired how remarkably quickly Harry got himself under control. The news of their son being the incarnation of the same Dark Lord who had murdered his parents was shocking, but Harry was extraordinary in his ability to twist his thoughts to match his own feelings.

For Mycroft, it had always been obvious: their son was going to change the world to suit his desires, and their job as parents was to make sure his desires didn't involve another world war, genocide, or the subjugation of another people.

He liked to think they'd been doing alright with that, all things considered. Finding out their son was in many ways an adult trapped in a child's body simplified and complicated things. There wasn't much shaping left to be done, and yet—

The Dark Lord was surprisingly un-megalomanic. A boy of eight, content to focus on his education? Life would have been monumentally easier had Eurus shared that drive. Sherry wanted to learn for the status, prestige, and just for knowledge's sake. Eurus wanted to learn as it served her purpose, whatever that was, and she didn't give a rat's arse what academic hoops she wasn't going to jump through.

While Harry grappled with the fact that he unconditionally loved a mass-murderer, Mycroft settled on feeling grateful that their son was on track to graduate Cambridge suma cum laude one day. For Mycroft to still hunger for a speck of Mummy's approval was admittedly shallow and childish, but as Harry was teaching them all: it was what it was. Feelings didn't always make sense.

Their son had yet to feel the need to murder them in their sleep. Mycroft tried not to think too hard about that.

It also wasn't sensible to remind himself of the little boy with curious grey eyes and dark curly hair. It wasn't wise to think about the Holmes boy who had never gotten the chance to attend Year 1, let alone university.

One night, Mycroft had gotten himself very, very drunk and listened to Harry's tales about everything Sherlock Holmes could have been. A brilliant deductive mind. A facetious asset for Scotland Yard. An antagonistic baby brother, and fuck if that hole in Mycroft's chest didn't ache and ache like it had been ripped right open again. It didn't even do him the honour of hurting like when Sherlock had been freshly dead, in those two days of burning hope that the firefighters might still walk out of the ruins carrying a boy who was burnt—but alive.

Mycroft had been young, naive, stupid. He'd thought that the world was his oyster, a game of backgammon played between himself and the forces that be, one clever move at a time between a series of great people that wielded total control.

Mycroft had been wrong. His hopes had been dashed. Father had survived his jump from a burning second floor window. The firefighters, after three days, had come from the house carrying a Sherlock-sized blackened corpse.

There was nothing to gain in crying over it, Mycroft reminded himself. He poured a dash of milk into his tea and wiped his eyes dry. "Anthea," he said into the intercom, "arrange for a car to the Kuwaiti embassy."

There was work to be done. Moves to be made. Choices of carefully considered opportunity costs; what was the weight of a human life?

Some, Mycroft knew, were worth more than others. In the back of his mind he heard them playing like an orchestra, 55 million instruments coming together as a cacophony of right and wrong.

Mycroft had come a long way since being that little boy struggling to find his place. There was a game of backgammon being played, but above that was another layer of chess, and above that a game of Go. A series of great people wielding their control based on incomplete information, wagering that they were doing more things right than wrong.

Mycroft knew he was a pawn just like the rest of them.

.oOo.

Sirius Black steamrolled his way into their flat without so much as a by your leave. Mycroft wanted to complain about the loss of privacy, but Harry had never complained about Eurus' place in their lives either.

Watching Harry clear the last of his things out of the room that was now Sirius', Mycroft scowled. "I'm not sure there's enough space in my wardrobe," he said. "I hadn't realised you've quite that many possessions."

It wasn't the space he was worried about. That was what undetectable expansion charms had been designed for, of course.

Harry answered only with a warm smile. He did not say that Mycroft was being unreasonable, or cruel.

They had been married for four years, but they'd been sleeping in separate beds for almost all of it. Even in the Holmes manor they had twin beds side by side. Harry had never mentioned consummating their relationship, and Mycroft had been very happy to keep it that way.

He followed Harry back to his room, watching the final stack of folded shirts disappear into a drawer that couldn't reasonably fit them.

Then they both turned to face the bed. Harry drew his wand, and Mycroft clamped his lips shut. He considered if, should Harry cast magic on it, he would manage to jump in front of the spell.

The king-sized four poster was the first indulgence Mycroft had granted himself when Her Majesty's Government sent the first cheque. He'd since updated the mattress into a beauty made of cashmere with ergonomically aligned springs. There was a perfect divot right in the middle where Mycroft fit. There were no circumstances in which magical alteration would do anything but ruin it.

Harry turned and, his face twisted in concentration, twirled his wand for a complex conjuring. A queen sized bed appeared in front of the window, sheets and all.

Mycroft did not hide his little sigh of relief. He reached out with his handkerchief, patting the sweat from Harry's brow. The new bed had drapes of its own and the wood grain matched Mycroft's. "Thank you," he said.

Harry answered only with a warm smile.

.oOo.

People did not deserve to be shipped off to prisons guarded by soul-sucking monsters, Mycroft thought as he cradled his steaming cup of English Breakfast tea.

There were only a few exceptions to that. Those who tortured others to insanity for the sake of their own enjoyment might deserve that fate. Or people who acted on their wholehearted beliefs that muggle-born magicals deserved to be subjugated.

Blinking at Sirius, Mycroft added to the top of the list those people who were chipper and chatty at six in the morning when Mycroft just wanted to drink his bloody tea in peace.

Sherry, thank the Lord, agreed. He silenced his godfather with a jab of his wand and a glare that rivalled Mycroft's own.

They sipped their tea in quiet companionship. Mycroft buttered a slice of bread. Sherry drizzled honey onto his Weetabix. Sirius tried and failed to start another conversation.

Harry came rushing out of their bedroom late, as usual. He kissed the top of Sherry's head, kissed Mycroft on the cheek, smiled at the offered toast, and rushed them all out the door. Sirius remained behind, eyes wide and blinking.

It wasn't until lunchtime that Mycroft wondered if anyone had bothered to un-silence him.

.oOo.

He kept waiting for the moment where Sirius would become insufferable to him. For Sherry, that point was reached within a week, while Harry had managed to hold out for a month. Medusa liked her new doggy companion well enough.

Sometimes in the evenings that used to have been just his and Harry's and sometimes Sherry's, Mycroft watched Sirius and Harry chattering about magic and felt a pang in his gut. It was dark green and it roiled when Harry laughed or when Sirius reached out to touch Harry's shoulder.

"You're being ludicrous," Sherry had advised, not even looking up from the book he was reading.

"Is that Necromancy?" Mycroft had answered, leaning closer to study the gruesome diagrams on the open page.

He'd gotten a raised brow instead of a proper reply.

Nonetheless, Mycroft had felt thoroughly chastised, and he'd spent the night looking from his bed over at Harry's by the window, wondering when they'd both stopped closing their curtains.

He didn't own the man, nor did he have any right to decide how Harry spent his time or who he chose to spend his evenings with. He even found the word for the novel emotion eventually: envy.

There used to have been many evenings when he and Harry had sat together late into the night, sharing a bottle of Merlot, talking and laughing about nothing, nonsense, and everything in between.

Mycroft watched his husband spend time with another man, and all he could do was have feelings. Why was he having so many feelings?

"You really should try talking to him about it," Anthea had advised. "I've never seen you so…"

She waved her hand in a way that unhelpfully encompassed all of him. Mycroft looked down at himself and felt his face flush. His shirt had come untucked, billowing from under his waistcoat like some vagabond.

"You must think me terribly silly," he told Anthea, grateful that she'd turned to look out the window while he put himself back to rights.

"I think you're being the most human I've ever seen you," she said with a kind smile. "And I doubt anyone else around here has noticed. Don't you worry, boss."

"Very well." Mycroft lipped his licks. He thought of how, back home in their bedroom, he'd be confronted with Harry's failure to hang his towels correctly post shower, to the socks that never made it all the way into the laundry hamper even when Mycroft had moved it a foot away from the wall to compensate for Harry's aim. The sink wouldn't have been wiped post shave. The curtains would be open almost all the way, but not exactly perfect the way Mycroft liked them.

He thought about how he'd miss all of it soon, when Sirius left for France and Harry returned to his own bedroom again.

"I believe," he told Anthea, "that I have feelings for the man."

"Mycroft, you've literally been married for four years."

He wasn't sure why she'd said it so fondly. "No Anthea. I mean, I think I like him. The thing people sing songs about. Butterflies and envy and all that rot. I find myself overcome with the sudden urge to forgive him all his idiosyncrasies."

Anthea was smiling. "That's really great, boss," she said. "So you like-like him now. What are you going to do about it?"

Mycroft pondered that for a bit. He couldn't very well change how he felt now that he was feeling things, any less than Harry could convince himself to stop loving their son just because Sherry was the Dark Lord.

The thought made his heart beat more rapidly. He recalled how he'd watched Harry come out of the bathroom with his charm-dried hair standing on end like the bobble on a hat. Mycroft hadn't even worried about the position of the towels or the laundry, entirely overcome by something welling up in him, what was it with all these feelings? Just thinking of the scene was making it pool in his chest again like molten swiss chocolate.

He licked his lips, looking resolutely out the window so he could pretend not to see the smirk on Anthea's face.

His chest ached and his heart continued to demonstrate its new propensity for arrhythmia.

Mycroft Holmes had never before felt so out of control.

.oOo.

It turned out he needn't have worried all day about what to say, because when he came home it was to the news that Arcturus Black was likely not going to wake from the coma he'd fallen into.

Harry seemed to know exactly what to do, wielding his family stationary like he'd been born into this life rather than being raised in an under-stair cupboard. Sirius moped about as a confused dog. Sherry relished in his new haul of books looted from the Black family library.

Bellatrix invited herself to tea.

She didn't even acknowledge that he was there in his office with the door ajar. Mycroft had heard Harry's stories about the mad witch who had been their son's right hand man in another version of events.

She looked startlingly normal for a sociopath, but Mycroft knew all about how those could fool you. He did not bother to pretend he wasn't eavesdropping, standing to peer out at the four of them about to needlessly ruin his sitting arrangement.

He watched as Harry once again seemed to know exactly what to do, defusing the situation and promising to send his mad cousin back to Austria where she'd be neatly out of the way again.

Something in the back of Mycroft's mind started humming like a piccolo in a violin concerto. But these were magical affairs, and international ones at that. While Harry sorted his people out, Mycroft returned to the stack of paperwork he'd brought home with him. He texted Anthea to keep an eye out for anything peculiar and sighed. The Royal Princess' pending divorce would not wait.

.oOo.

He came back looking like a ghost.

Actually, Mycroft had seen ghosts. Harry looked worse.

He was also moaning. "What have I done, what have I done?"

"Sit," Mycroft said, taking his husband's hands and lowering him onto the settee. The crack of apparition had been so loud that neighbours would be worried about a gunshot. Mycroft began patting Harry down. "Did you splinch yourself?"

Sherry was suddenly there, wand pointed right at Harry's face. Legilimens, he cast. Mycroft clutched Harry's hands to stop himself from smacking his son. Their skin, where it met, was blotchy and white.

The spell was over very soon. Sherry stepped back, lowering his wand almost absently. He cast a summoning spell and caught the potion vial that flew from his room. "A calming draught," he announced, then dumped the contents into Harry's mouth.

Mycroft could smell hop and valerian root before Harry swallowed.

"He's fine," Sherry said, and Mycroft still wasn't sure if it was safe to let go lest he punch the boy. "It was a shock, that's all."

In, one two. Out, one two three four. In—

Sherry was sitting in Mycroft's armchair wearing his pyjamas and a frown. He was tapping his wand absently against his knee, not even looking at them.

The breathing helped Mycroft's heart rate settle back into something reasonable, if a bit swift. Before him, Harry started to collect himself from the effects of the potion.

"You just apparated over a thousand kilometres in one jump," Sherry said, sounding impressed.

"I wasn't really thinking," Harry mumbled.

Mycroft wasn't ready to let go of him just yet. "Sherry, would you fetch us some tea?"

The boy rolled his eyes and flicked his wand towards the kitchen. They watched him cast Aguamenti and boil the water in three cups before adding bags of chamomile. Mycroft was glad he hadn't summoned any honey to save them that mess.

"I know where Eurus is," Harry whispered, his eyes still fixed on the steeping tea.

For a second, Mycroft was sure his heart stopped. His world consisted entirely of the words forming on Harry's lips.

"They're living in the Black house," the lips said, "Eurus, Bellatrix, and Gellert Grindelwald."

They're living in the Black house.

"Mycroft, you're hurting me."

He looked down at the hands he was crushing in his own and let go. He felt numb. "Sorry," he whispered.

"Fascinating," Sherry said. "Eurus broke out Grindelwald? That's—that makes sense, actually."

Mycroft wished he'd shut up for a moment.

Eurus, Bellatrix, Grindelwald. Two sociopaths and a Dark Lord. "Is she alright?"

Harry shrugged. "Looked like it, dunno. Eurus is the kind of person who usually comes out alright."

Usually. Except when she was blaming Mycroft for the death of her dog. Having replaced Johnny with a convicted fascist really wasn't a step up. "What are they even doing together?"

"Oh, isn't it obvious?" Sherry sighed, tapping his wand against his thigh so fast it was sparking. "Grindelwald is your punishment, Father. Or at least it started out that way, and she's not the type to change her mind. I bet they've been laying the groundwork for a move against Dumbledore, and all the ensuing chaos will come crashing onto your plate.

"As they say, a dish best served cold." Sherry smirked, looking very pleased with himself.

"He's a murderer," Harry whispered. He'd taken up his cup and was fiddling with the teabag.

"So am I," Sherry said. "Eurus and Bella too. I'm sure they're getting along just fine."

"Sherry, please don't." Harry's cheeks were wet with tears. Mycroft wished he'd stop having a crisis, because he was busy having a crisis of his own and didn't have it in him to lend emotional support at that moment.

All those years, wondering what his sister had been doing. All those fears if she was even still alive.

"Sorry, dad."

Mycroft looked at the two of them. His husband and son exchanged weak but genuine smiles.

"What are we going to do?" Harry asked.

Mycroft knew they'd be facing this as a family. He didn't want to think about what they'd be facing exactly, or who would be on the opposite side. "I'm not sure," he said, "But we're going to figure it out together."