','

If you stay long enough, we might have a battle.
That's very kind of you, but I must be going . . .
Why?
Because I am following a white rabbit.
. . . why?
Well, I—, I'm curious to know where he is going?
– Alice in Wonderland, 1951

','

An Old and New World
by Lens of Sanity

','

Aftermath: 99% End of the Beginning

','

"Harry, Harry Potter,
"He's the greatest guy in his-tor-ree.
"In the School of Hogwarts,
"Deh-lah-core is naked in his beeeeed."

"Way to stay classy 'Arry," Fleur's voice was muffled with sleep. "It did not even rhyme!"

Harry did not even bother to pretend he was doing anything other than the obvious. "I've been working steadily toward this since you called me 'Leetle boy' back fourth year. It is simply good to know even you bow to the inevitable awesomeness that is me."

She was probably going to make some scathing comment, but Harry casually kissed her, forestall such pointlessness.

"You 'ave really been trying since the very beginning?" asked Fleur.

"Yeah," said Harry. "I think so anyway. Although my reasons for doing so may have shifted a little over time."

"You remain the weirdest person I 'ave ever met," Fleur told him after a while. She sounded amused more than anything. Amused and disbelieving.

"You're hardly a bastion of sanity yourself." She turned her head and raised a perfect eyebrow in questioning. "Stop and think about how you act around normal people for a minute. You walk into a room expecting everyone will stop and look at you, I saw you abusing Veela allure against that poor Israeli waiter last night. You were trying to get us served faster, but still..." He was going to continue but she was glaring at him. "I don't mean it's a bad thing, I do it too, so does Dumbledore, and Luna. People don't count as real people, unless they treat you like a real person..."

"'Zat is hardly the same as holding your nation to ransom, or fighting an unstoppable monster using a white rabbit animagus form."

"You would be surprised... I can get away with stuff like that, so I do it and get away with it," Harry said thoughtfully. "You do just the same only in different ways."

They were both quiet and Harry simply enjoyed the sensation of her soft skin, and the gorgeous scent of silky platinum hair. "I find it hard to believe the lengths you go to mess with people, especially me!"

Fleur spoke that last firmly, gesturing vaguely toward a book on his shelf. Titled 'Sex which will get you into Heaven: the Super-Christian's Guide', Harry had attempted to apply advice written in that book following their real date—under the sky and stars on the roof of Hogwarts Castle once again—with predictably dreadful results.

That was not what she was talking about however. No, the book was written in French. A language which Harry spoke fluently, only using Bon-Jow-Ah, and Mercy Buckets when in the girl's presence. He'd been doing it consistently since the first time he'd met Gerard Delacour during the diplomatic function, and she'd never twigged on.

"Well, you are equal to me when you have a wand in your hand Fleur Delacour, but I have no intention of ever going easy on you..." He paused and scraped his teeth against her pale and lithe neck. "Understand?"

She kissed him again, something Harry was sure he'd never get used to, and then responded simply, "Oui, merci beaucoup."

','

Harry was in search of lunch late on Sunday morning. So, brunch maybe? Whatever. Tam would be training with Bellatrix as she always did at this time every week, learning all kinds of Dark Arts way beyond what held any interest to Harry. They'd been doing this since fifth year and it never occurred to anyone that they might stop now Voldemort had been defeated.

Similarly Hermione and Albus were occupied, the Apprenticeship Bond lasting until she'd learned everything she could from the old man, and if things were going the way Harry suspected, she'd be the leader of the free world in only a few short years. In all honesty she'd do a marvellous job, and once she was firmly entrenched he'd be able to sell all of the Hermione pornography he'd recorded with Luna. At a premium no less.

Fleur was in France, futilely trying to undo the damage caused by Malfoy's Draught of Distrust, and Sirius was with his mother, having been suckered into babysitting duty. Harry had finally settled on Janus—one of Saturn's moons—for Bella's next kid if it was a boy, and she'd gone with Luna if it was a girl. Not because Bellatrix believed "Yellow" to be dead, but because she thought it was a pretty name.

The upshot of all this being that Harry had nobody save Snape to talk to while breaking his fast.

On a whim he strolled over to the Griffindor Table. "Mind if I sit here?"

The small group was stunned by this perfectly ordinary question, and simply looked at him with wide eyes. Fleur got this treatment all the time so he refused to be dissuaded on principle alone. "Sure Harry," the redhead agreed after a while, "what have you been up to?"

"Not much Ron, just grabbing some lunch, I had a pretty hard night." He smiled at the vaguely remembered faces of the other Griffindors and noticed one girl's eyes were a similar colour to Bella's. "Are you a close relation of the Blacks? Erm, Lavender right?" She looked down and turned a weird shade of red so Harry didn't press. "What you been doing with yourself Ron, you're on the Quidditch team aren't you?"

"Er, yeah—" Ron said strangely. "McGonagall made me Captain, I even got into the Spring Leagues with the Appleby Arrows this year."

"Not the Cannons?" Harry asked in amusement.

"Nah. They're still the best team, but the training is better up North," Ron told him, on firmer ground now they were discussing a familiar topic. After a while he asked, "Did you really sneak into the Harpies changing room to commiserate when the Tornados beat them in the final two years ago?"

"Yeah, I've always been a fan of the Tornados, and Wilda Griffiths looks just as good wearing only a towel as you'd think she does."

"Why are you here?" one of the younger kids exploded after this comment, and Harry quelled him with an intimidating glare. "—I just mean, you never really talk to anyone, why come here now?"

"Well... all my friends are busy doing important stuff, and I was interested in finding out what happened to Ron—" Harry told the kid trying to quell his annoyance. "You know, he once helped me battle a swarm of acromantula, and took down a massive cursed chess set. I did know him back in the day—" He turned back to the youngest Weasley. "How has school been treating you? Tam not being too much of a bitch I hope?"

"Erm," he started awkwardly. "Yeah, fine I'm doing both the Herbology and Astronomy NEWT because I did so well on my OWLs."

"Nice," Harry smiled, it was good to see the guy doing so well for himself. "I passed NEWT Artithmancy last term, so Septima... I mean Professor Vector, has me studying to sit my MULE by the end of the year."

The stilted and kind of uncomfortable conversation went on for a while, with the other students occasionally attempting to make some comment or other, but basically being weirded out by the whole thing. Eventually Tam flopped down across from him and ignored the collective greetings of 'Hello Professor Riddle' and other such foolishness.

"What happened?" asked Harry.

"I hit accidently hit Bellatrx with something we were working on and she cannot stop singing that filthy 'If You Seek Amy' song Luna taught her," Tam admitted. "We decided to call it a day."

"Okay," he said, simply shrugging it off. "Any thoughts on getting Luna back by the way? I've come up with nothing."

"She's dead Harry. Gone. Why can't you just accept that?" The redhead pressed forward. "Even if she survived, she has been in an alternate dimension with an Eldritch Abomination for more than half a year. It will have killed her or she would have died of starvation by now."

"She is not dead!" Harry stubbornly insisted, completely oblivious to the students who were listening in. "Look, I've been thinking about it. The Time‑Turner must have some magic on it that forces paradoxes out of the universe. You know... the kind of thing that stops the world from cracking like an egg..."

With a huff Tam decided to just hear him out, it would be faster that way, and she could point out whatever huge flaws were in Harry's reasoning. "Fine, tell me your ridiculous theory."

"Alright, okay. So the Time‑Turner explosion ripped open a big hole, and some kind of universe repairing monster snatched Luna and dragged her into, I dunno, a Hell Dimension or whatever you want to call it," Harry began. "This hell dimension would be similar to, but distinctly different from, the Daemon Dimension we opened up back when we were trying to kill Malfoy..."

"Okay."

"So all we have to do is come up with a way to slash a portal to the same universe Luna is in, being careful with regards to the temporal axis, so the thing opens up only a few minutes or seconds after she arrived."

"And we what? Kill the tentacle monster, and drag Luna back into our universe?"

"Why not?"

"Are you two mental?" Ron exploded. "Daemons, tentacle monster? What the hell, is this the kind of thing you guys do in your spare time?"

"More or less," Harry agreed, casually waving away the Griffindor's concerns. Turning back to his friend he asked. "You gonna help?"

Tam closed her eyes and seriously began contemplating bashing her head against the table a few times. After a moment she came to the realisation this gave her a little leverage. "If I help bring Luna back, will you help me go through with my heist idea?"

Harry mulled over this demand a few times in careful consideration. They would piss off a whole host of people if they couldn't pull it off without a degree of finesse, and if they went through with her idea they'd make one incredibly powerful enemy. Fuck it, who was he kidding, he would probably have done it eventually anyway.

"Deal," Harry spoke first.

"Deal," Tam replied with a smile, and a large measure of finality.

"But Luna first."

','

It took them nineteen years.

Nineteen.

Though with the number of portal mishaps, botched ritual summonings, and Time‑Turner explosions... coupled with phases of life spent dead, petrified, or flat out frozen in time... Harry Potter and Tamsyn Riddle had long since lost track of the number of subjective years lived. And that wasn't even getting into the vaguely flickering instincts borne of memory capped lifetimes growing old in an alternate dimension. Or running across analogues of their friends and family who didn't have so much as a wheelbarrow, let alone a plan.

For simplicities sake, it was easier to go by calendar year... and that meant eleven months shy of two decades.

So now, Harry and Tam were striding side by side up this windswept mountainside, finally having tracked down a legend that might help. They were fully kitted out with the best gear they could lay their hands on, and armed with not only their brother wands of phoenix feather, but their backup foci which worked exactly as well as the primary.

In Tam's case it was a Gregorovich wand that appeared to be ash at first glance, but was in fact fifteen inches of Yggdrasill with a core of Voldemort heartstring she'd won many years ago from Hermione in a duel.

In Harry's case, his backup wand was a custom job made for him specifically, also by a former Death Eater named Gregorovich. It was eight inches of sapient pearwood and a core of tail feather taken from the greatest and most powerful owl in history; his old familiar Hedwig.

Even now, years later, Harry's friends occasionally had to talk him out of resorting to time travel in order to change what had happened to her.

Some things you just never get over. That was life unfortunately.

They entered a darkened cave and were met with a booming voice of fire and menace, echoing hollowly from the other side of a tear in the very fabric of creation. The guy sounded like he could use a lozenge, and Harry with a heroic level of restraint managed to prevent himself from saying so out loud.

"We wish to prove ourselves worthy," Tam began hastily, knowing too well that it was only a matter of time before Harry's self-control failed him. "Should we pass your challenges we request a portal to rescue our friend."

"It is agreed," boomed the voice, and the redhead shot another quelling look in her companion's direction.

A door of stone around one-hundred and fifty foot high split open and the two walked into a large arena with a moderate level of confidence. Harry already had his Vorpal Sword out, the legends having suggested they'd probably have to kill something. Not long after the door slammed shut a little pussycat stalked its way over to them.

"We have to kill a pussycat?" Harry asked incredulously. "The thing is tiny."

"That's not a pussycat Harry," Tam said, noticing her magic was blocked. "And it's not tiny, it's far away."

"Really? Oh, it has two friends, you can never have too much p—"

"They aren't pussycats, they are Nundus."

"Ah. Righty-ho then."

','

"Do we know the cure for Nundu's Breath?" Harry asked, having recently taken a big lung full of the purple mist and getting kind of worried.

"We are immune to all known poisons Harry," Tam tiredly replied, bent double and attempting to catch her breath. "We're both Parselmouths. Nundu's Breath isn't a big deal."

"People who speak parsel are immune to poison? Since when? And how did I miss something like that?" Harry asked, ignoring the booming otherworldly voice, and therefore missing whatever its instructions had been.

"It's a bloodline trait. Would you please not ask stupid questions Harry, I've just killed a Nundu with my bare hands, I'm a little tired." The strengthening ritual she'd gone through years ago was totally worth sacrificing her crappy 'grass snake' animagus form, that was for sure.

"Well I killed two Nundus with my big sword, and I'm not tired at all," Harry taunted, in his 'I'm cooler than you' voice. As a direct result of his mocking, Harry almost lost his head to the first of an army of half-naked, snatching, bird creatures swarming them. "Great, Harpy Ladies."

"At least we get to fly," Tam told him, the two taking to the air, utilising an ability learned from Voldepotter during the same battle they lost Luna. It had taken them more than five years to figure out how to do it, and a further three practicing before they became at all skilled."Ignis Maxima!"

The navy blue sphere of fire, hot as the surface of the sun, barely missed Harry's head as it took a Harpy right off the man's back. "Be careful where you shoot that stuff. Ignis Maxima!"

There was a whole flock of these purple and white feathered creatures, and their sharp-sharp claws looked kind of dangerous. Harry and Tam swooped and dived throughout the gigantic arena, superheated balls of flame unleashed from brother wands in right hand, and backup wands in left. If you ignored the fact the monsters were mostly avian, the things were actually pretty attractive, very firm and bouncy.

It was off-putting was what it was.

"Ignis Maxima! Bloody hell, there is just no end to the damn things," Harry whined, soring into an Immelmann loop as Tam barrel rolled out the way of his fireball. They really weren't coordinating very well.

After a ridiculously long time spent throwing the same spell in all directions, the Harpies were all down in burnt chunks of meat. The smell was mouth-watering, and had a strong semblance of roasted duck. Totally inappropriate as Harpies were supposed to be sentient!

"Well that was easy," Tam said dryly.

Glaring beneath the burns and all the talon cuts on his face, Harry didn't reply. Just because he was better at slaying the big impressive monsters, and she had better aim, did not mean Tam should rub it in his face.

"I mean. I did not even get hit once," said the redhead it in an offhand way. "How about you?"

Harry was saved from answering by the door they entered opening with a loud grating of stone on stone. They limped off, hitting one another with a broad spectrum healing charm which, for whatever reason, a person could not apply to one's own body.

Once they were through and the door swung shut, Tam and Harry found themselves face to face with a large ornate mirror. A seven foot tall serpentine figure without a nose stepped out of the absent reflection. The wizard looked to have gone through the wars, what with the scarred face and green-ish metallic arm. Neither recognised the maple wand in the man's hand.

"W-we have to kill Voldemort again?" Harry stuttered. They were good but—but Voldemort? That was not a good sign.

"At least we cannot die."

"Erm—, well you see..." Harry began, as they both started trading shots with an opponent they were not at all certain they could beat.

"What are you not telling me!?" Tam shouted from behind an overcharged Bunker Shield.

"Well, er—," he trailed off, palming, dodging, and diving away from curses of unimaginable power. "I think the nature of these challenges means we..." then he just blurted "—we maybe can die, y'know... a bit."

Tamsyn got a transhield between a lightning fast Killing Curse, and banishing the rubble back at her foe, decided to do something truly horrible to Harry for keeping that little titbit from her.

"I fucking hate you Harry Potter; Sectumsempra!"

','

"Avada Kedavra!" Harry and Tam bellowed raggedly at the same instant, directly opposite from one another, with Voldemort in between. The first time they did this he ducked, and Priori Incantatem had gone into effect, but this time he was struck in the chest and face.

"Thank the gods for that!" They said it in chorus, both breathing heavy in relief.

"Told you we wouldn't die," Harry finished, after a while spent doubled over getting his breath.

"Hey, we killed Voldemort..." Tam realised. "We really are just as awesome as we claim to be."

"Champions, you have completed the Triad," declared the hollow voice of fire and menace. "What Boon do you request?"

"We already told you at the beginning," Harry shouted irreverently. "We want a portal to our friend Luna, and you've got to keep the damn thing open until we get back." Then he finished with a stern, "No locking us in there!"

There was a slow build, energy of inhuman, cackling intensity, and it kept on increasing and increasing with a powerful billowing wind. Wracked from all sides the two victors braced themselves doing their best to stay on their feet. After a while the universe itself tore, ripped open to reveal nothing but a gaping blackness of infinite depth.

"That's the good stuff," Tam said with a smile, causing Harry to nod simply. "After you..."

They walked into the void, another world, another reality entirely, and at first there was nothing to see save darkness. Even the ground they walked on was black, with no sky or stars, or altering topography. There wasn't even any wind.

"Well this is exciting," Harry commented with all the sincerity in creation.

Tam's watch had been going haywire ever since they'd entered this plane of existence, so it was a long, if indeterminate length of time later, the two began hearing clattering noises in the distance. They picked the pace up to a jog and eventually came across a battle, it wasn't like they crested a rise or anything, but the darkness simply ended abruptly causing a similar effect.

"So when Luna described it as a 'Tentacle Monster,' she really meant 'Eldritch Abomination,'" Tam summed up the sight, while turning green, clearly holding herself from vomiting by force of will alone.

Harry eased his phoenix wand in hand. "Is it just me or does looking at that thing kind of hurt your sanity?"

Tam nodded. "Charge?"

"Charge."

','

"Dissecare Si!"

The secret to fighting this monster was to not look at the whole thing all at once... under any circumstances. Stick to smaller parts, and the flailing impossibility that was its limbs. It had also taken them long enough to discover a spell which was effective against it in any real way, given most cutting, slashing, and butchering curses were bouncing off its slimy hide.

Luna was back on the ground, hands and arms gesturing with purpose, setting in place another one of her Seals. A barrage of blue and black torpedoes started pouring out from her open hands, time and time again, splashing and bombarding the nightmarish monster at a frightening pace.

"Dissecare Si!" Tam screamed a curse which was neither her usual Dark Magic, nor Hermione's White, but one of the advanced mainstream magics Harry was so adept at using. It counterpointed Luna's attack and the black band, a jagged saw of magic joined with Harry's identical spell, separating a few more thrashing appendages. The battle turned in the trespassers' favour, and in a short but intense few minutes the abomination had been chased away, out of sight and hopefully far, far away.

That's the last we'll see of him. Harry itched to voice his thought aloud, but in a random flash of the obvious, decided to not tempt fate too soon.

Luna was in the same clothes as she'd been wearing way back when they'd fought at Châteaux Delacour, though they were mussed up and torn in quite a number of interesting ways. Luna looked exactly as Harry remembered her, and she was just as alive as he'd always said she would be. He would have gone over and said something, but the blonde woman was a little preoccupied with her own thoughts...

And for some reason she seemed a touch angry.

"Look, I've got the freakishly long, bright yellow hair..." Luna ranted, stomping around backwards and forwards "—the gigantic silvery eyes which don't even look realistic, and the lithe voluptuous waist, on top of the unreasonably pale skin. I'm fit and toned, and look a lot younger than I really am!"

Their blonde friend began yelling at the end of her tirade, not even yelling at them, just the unfairness of the world in general. "Erm, Luna..." Tam tried.

"And you grab me around the neck and ankles and wrists, straight into your evil hell dimension. And I am completely at your mercy!" She was shouting again. "I mean, what the hell, you were trying to kill me! What is wrong with you?"

Then the apoplectic rage drained away as if never there, and in a tiny, slightly hurt voice she stated the only explanation which made any sense. "It's because I wasn't wearing my Japanese schoolgirl uniform wasn't it?"

Harry moved toward the friend he'd not seen in so long and gave her a comforting hug. "It's okay, it's okay, maybe next time." He whispered in her ear, patting gently on her back.

"It's just I've been waiting so long," Luna told him tearfully. "What if I never get violated by a tentacle monster Harry. What if it never happens?"

The old friends simply stood there for long minutes in a close embrace, they were in no hurry now the danger had passed, and it was best to simply let the blonde woman regain her composure. Eventually they broke apart, dusted off their clothes, and took in the surroundings.

"Well now that's over with we need to figure out a way to get back to the portal," Tam stated to the ether.

"I believe that will be quite easy," Luna gestured over her shoulder. Each one of Tam's footprints were lit up in red, and each on Harry's in green, clearly marking the path they'd walked on the way there. "Any more questions?"

Tam glared at the blonde a bit, but her heart wasn't in it and the trio began the steady, plodding jaunt back to the "real world." After a time Harry asked an obvious question, hoping to move the conversation along. "Why are you carrying that severed tentacle?"

"I think it will make a wonderful wand core."

"You do not even use a wand though Luna," commented Tam.

"Yeah, I know. But I always thought that if I did, I'd want one crafted from some cool and obscure material—tentacle monster for instance," Luna told them. "That way I can go around rubbing in people's faces the fact I have a much more awesome wand than everyone else."

Harry and Tam both looked down at the sticks in their left hands and winced slightly at a comment which hit annoyingly close to home. "Ah, but you'd have to have some cool obscure wood too," Harry defensively added.

"I was thinking I'd use Valyrian Steel," responded the blonde, much to his dismay at such an awesome idea. "A metal wand. That would be even cooler than Albus' wouldn't it?"

Damn. Harry and Tam both thought at the same instant.

','

"So you're saying you eventually managed to defeat Voldemort without me?" Luna asked once the trio were back in the open air and windswept mountainside. The sky was surprisingly bright so everyone was wearing some retro sunglasses to make the sight less glaring.

"As one of the challenges required to open a portal we had to defeat a reflection of him again earlier today," Tam told her.

Tilting her head to the side Luna asked, "How did you do it originally if you don't mind telling me?"

"Hermione got a second Blood Protection Guardian, when I'd suckered Voldemort into killing me..." Harry replied. "We captured his noncorporeal form, basically injected him into a baked potato, and I ate him."

Luna couldn't suppress a snort. "Time travel was the best thing I ever did. There is nobody else on Earth who would come up with something as off the wall as that." Striding confidently down the nonexistent path she asked. "Out of interest, did you end up killing Severus?"

Harry groaned and Tam couldn't stop a cackle of amusement.

"He's married to my aunt."

"Petunia... Snape?" Luna stated, blankly staring at the distance for a while as she processed this. "That's just too funny." She proceeded to crack up herself. Wiping a tear from one eye the blonde eventually pressed, "But you do know the truth?"

"About Lupin?" asked Harry. "Yeah. Snape was too helpful in ending the war though, and it was so ambiguous we just gave him a pass."

"Siri wouldn't have liked that."

"No, I had this whole murdering a simulacrum with Padfoot idea, but Snape never went for it," said Harry.

"Fifteen is pretty close to the age of consent, it's not like the man did anything you'd kill anyone for though..." Tam tried to offer the voice of reason. "I lost my virginity at twelve for crying out loud."

"Wait. You think he killed Remus because he slept with an almost fifteen year old Slytherin girl?" Harry asked his brother. "That was a thinly veiled excuse at best. Snape killed him because the opportunity came up, and he thought he could get away with it."

"I lost my virginity before I turned fifteen, Harry." Luna told him "So did you."

"But he was a Professor," Tam stated. "It was an abuse of power." When her two companions gave her incredulous looks of disbelief she simply admitted. "What? I love hypocrisy, deal with it."

They trudged further down the mountain.

"It doesn't even matter," Harry said eventually. "That was all years and years ago, and I promised to give him a pass so it's not like I'm going to do anything about it now... Besides, he's married to my Aunt Petunia, that's gotta count as ironic punishment or something."

They were only about a quarter mile from the edge of the archaic Apparition Net, so the walk wouldn't take too much longer.

"Years and years?" Luna asked. "How long ago did I kill Helga?"

"Oh, erm..." Harry trailed off a touch embarrassed. "Coming up on twenty years ago this spring."

"Twenty years?" she choked. Doing the maths in her head, and working out the various timelines, Luna came to a conclusion. "Can I borrow some money? I have something time dependent to do."

"Time dependant after two decades?" asked Tam.

"Yeah, I might have to alter someone's memory and perhaps kill their wife, but I need gold to purchase clothes and a few other things."

Harry reached for his wallet and pulled out a small bag from the magically expanded space. "That's only fifty Galleons."

"More than enough, and I'll pay you back," Luna said, taking the gold with a thankful smile.

They trio passed the Apparition Net, and just before Luna cracked away Harry called, "It's the first in three days, will you try to meat us at King's Cross?"

"No problem."

There was a muted pop and Luna was gone.

','

High necked t-shirt, which on closer inspection was almost transparent, tiny skirt that was only decent thanks to parallax error, and hair tied high and back showing off her jawline and the nape of her neck; Luna looked one part trampy, and all kinds of salacious.

In the end she'd not been forced to murder or memory charm anyone, for which she was quite thankful. It was two days since her rescue and she was in a large bookstore in the magical section of Manchester, the predictably named Eturn Alley. After a little bit of spellwork and some heavy lifting, two of the stacks in the back of the shop were subtly closer together.

After two hours staking out the magical creatures section a tall blonde man came in and began browsing the shelves. Quite by accident, when the two had been attempting to pass one another, Luna and the man found themselves pressed up against each other in an embarrassingly intimate manner.

"Oh, excuse me Miss..." said the blonde man, attempting to ignore the hand firmly pressed up against his crotch, and the feel of the woman's rock hard nipples digging into his chest.

"Oh, I am so sorry," Luna said distractedly. She was noticeably failing to rectify the embarrassing situation. Eyes lighting up in realisation Luna gasped, "You are Rolf Scamander aren't you?" The rubbing and close contact got worse as the blonde woman unsuccessfully attempted to shake his hand. "I read your article in Magizoology Digest."

"Erm, really?" The man, Rolf Scamander, squeaked lamely. Close proximity to the strange girl was causing him blood flow issues.

"Yes really," she said happily. "Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Luna Lovegood‑Scamander. I am a time traveller, and you and I are married."

"What?"

"Look Rolf, I have recently been rejected kind of brutally—" By a sexy, betentacled, Eldritch Horror no less. "You should offer to buy me coffee and we can go have a big old pile of crazy monkey sex for the next few hours."

"What?"

The poor man didn't stand a chance.

','

On the first of September 2016 Harry Potter was standing on Platform Nine and Three Quarters with the spectacular part magical creature Fleur Delacour wrapped around him in a piggyback. She'd lost the bet and decorum be damned. Fleur had once again refused to dye her hair red as a forfeit and Harry began to nurse the suspicion that she knew, on some level at least, that actually colouring her hair would make him disappointed in her.

He was surrounded as he usually was by his closest friends and family, a horde of kids running around, and people pointing and looking at his group, holding whispered conversations discussing whether that really was The Hermione Granger.

With a pleasant smile on his face Harry moved over to a light-blonde couple and their eleven year old son. "Good morning Draco, Astoria, what a pleasant day." Astoria nodded in a guarded way and Harry turned to the youngest Malfoy. "Hello, little Scorpius. My what big green eyes you have."

"Yes, my mother tells me I take after my maternal grandfather," Scorpius said in cultured tones, running fingers through his messy black hair.

"Avada Kedavra!" Harry yelled at the top of his lungs, causing Lord Malfoy to fall dead to the floor, and Harry to laugh loudly. "Bwahahaha! Dark Lord Potter triumphs once again."

"Harry?" Someone shook him a little as they said this, and his mind returned to the present. "Harry, you were miles away."

"Sorry, pleasant thoughts y'know?" He blinked a few times and looked over to see the kid didn't really have green eyes and messy black hair at all. "Very pleasant."

"Who are all these children?" Luna asked him again. "Wait, you guys decided to breed? Weird."

"Yeah, a friggin' swarm of the damn things. We even hassled Albus into siring an Heir. The two ginger kids are Ariana and Asriel Dumbledore," he informed his friend, glancing over at the shaggy blonde haired man who looked positively ghastly. As though he'd been through something he wasn't quite ready for the previous night. "It seemed best to have them all at the same time. Thomas Riddle is starting fifth year and a couple of mine have already graduated."

"Okay," said Luna, simply taking this in stride. "If you are at all interested, the shell shocked man to my left is my husband Rolf."

"This is the guy Helga killed in the old timeline?"

"Yeah."

"You were married Luna?" Fleur shouted in his ear with surprise and Harry winced. "Je demande pardon mon amour."

Harry let down the woman who was definitely not his wife, walking off in search of this year's newest addition to Hogwarts. He passed a few families he halfway recognised, several crowds of people who looked at him with various states of wariness, and one outright comment about not having enough health insurance to be on the same platform as him.

"How are you feeling Brie?" Harry asked the eleven year old platinum blonde who looked the splitting image of her mother. "Excited?"

Little Miss Delacour split off from the conversation she'd been having with her cousins and gave him a hug. "Yes, and a little scared maybe, but I have been looking forward to this for so long. It will be fun."

"That it will," Harry said ruffling her hair. "I had to give up your surname to keep you out of Beauxbatons, so I hope you enjoy yourself." Absorbing that little titbit the girl eventually just smiled. "Now, what have I told you to remember?"

"Don't abuse the Dark Arts until forth year."

"Right..."

"If I duel anyone I better win."

"Good..."

"Don't catch pregnancy."

"And most important of all?"

"If the opportunity comes up, and I think I can get away with it, I am to kill Scorpius Malfoy."

"That's my girl," Harry said with a proud smile. "Get on the train, you're going to be late."

His youngest ran off with a bounce, and Harry stood there just watching in silence for long minutes. Eventually the train rounded a corner and the last trace of steam evaporated in the autumn air, he was about to make some kind of inane comment or other when Tam interrupted his thoughts.

"Bee Aye eM... BAM; Brie Alice M—"

"What!?"

"—alfoy." Tam licked her lips. "Five Galleon says she's married within ten years."

"You do not even fucking joke about something like that!"

"Five Galleons I can convince her to name her firstborn son Harry Malfoy," Hermione sniped, making things worse.

"You two are not funny," Harry stated firmly.

"Five Galleons I can convince her, the middle name should be in honour of young Draco's godfather," Albus said, getting in on the action.

"I hate all of you so much!"

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Author Note: Right, okay. There's an Epilogue, and I'm toying with the idea of a stream o' conscious 'Loose Threads', author notes, omakey, 'cutting room floor'... thing? Whatever happens, the next update might be a double but it'll definately be the last. I do need to go through the story one last time before that however, formatting the whole thing for PDF and KINDLE, and maybe making a few last minute changes.

Any suggestions for stuff I should be changing, now's the frickin' time :P
– Peace

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