That Was Part of the Plan

by LysandraLeigh

One year has passed since Lyra (formerly Bellatrix) Black traveled thirty years into an alternate future. Unfortunately, this means she's expected to go back to boring Hogwarts for more boring normal people stuff. Except, there is that Tournament thing. And Angel Black. And her muggleborn girlfriend. And maybe an international incident or two... Never mind, should be fun.

29. Samhain — Death's Bitch

Lyra couldn't think of anyone who would want to use the Tournament to kill Harry who wouldn't have just used blood magic to kill him any more than Sirius or Harry, so she and Sirius had spent the better part of the walk out to the Senior Woods trying to come up with other reasons someone might've entered him in the Tournament that weren't just killing him.

They'd really only come up with two options: because they wanted to embarrass the shite out of Harry, or because they wanted to somehow exploit the terms of the Tournament to hurt or disable him. Three if they counted that some people would think it was absolutely fucking hysterical to make Lyra and Sirius try to figure out how to deal with an unknown potential threat to Harry that didn't actually exist. (And there was no real point even considering that, because they still had to act as though there was a threat, just in case.)

The only thing they could think of off the top of their heads that the Goblet was known to do to people for violating the spirit of its geas that you couldn't do with blood magic was make someone a squib. Granted, they might be dealing with someone who didn't know that, or just wasn't very good at blood magic, since they wouldn't exactly have needed a lot of experience or expertise to enter Harry in the Tournament. The exact end-goal might not be to make him a squib, but exactly what their hypothetical enemy was attempting to accomplish was irrelevant if they had entered him with the idea that they'd get the Goblet of Fire to fuck him over more seriously than they could themselves.

See, it sounded like the Goblet wouldn't punish someone who couldn't compete. (Much to Harry's disappointment, however, it probably would punish someone who thought to get himself kidnapped or knocked unconscious so that he couldn't compete.) Sirius was pretty sure that it was the spirit of representing their school to the best of their ability that mattered with these things (not that there was actually a rulebook or instruction manual for the Goblet lying around somewhere). And presumably anyone who knew enough about the thing to know how to get it to choose a Fourth Champion would know that, too, so Lyra kind of doubted the name-enterer was trying to seriously fuck Harry over at all.

It looked like the most likely end-goal on the part of their opponent was to embarrass Harry. Lyra wasn't sure if they realised that fucking with Harry was actually challenging her, but that didn't really matter any more than the fact that she didn't really know whether the other side actually knew they were even playing a game. She was still going to play and she didn't like to lose. Assuming that was what they were trying to do, the logical opposing strategy would be doing her level best to make whoever entered him — and probably also Fleur and Krum, collateral damage — look like bloody idiots instead.

The obvious way to do this was to make Harry win.

Lyra was pretty sure that playing by the spirit of the rules meant that if she just did things badly on purpose to throw the thing, she'd be fucked — not that she was very good at doing things badly on purpose anyway — but if she found ways to demonstrate her (and by extension Hogwarts') superiority while simultaneously making it much easier for Harry to technically, officially "win" (like taking apart the pre-Tournament task for the Weasleys), that was fine. Even if she technically, officially "lost" the Tournament itself to Harry, she would still be representing her people to the best of her ability — being able to manipulate a contest was arguably more impressive than just winning it — and she'd be winning the real game.

Harry had his doubts about the wisdom of treating this like a game, especially since the other side might not be, but that was silly — it obviously was, regardless of what anyone else thought. It wasn't like she wasn't going to take it seriously, all the best games had real consequences if you lost. That was what made them fun.

But there was nothing more to be done about it tonight. In fact, Lyra was fairly certain there was nothing more to be done until they found out what the tasks were — she'd seen some of the plans, yes, but only the ones Hogwarts was proposing, and she didn't even know if all of those had been settled on and finalised. So there was no reason not to go enjoy the Samhain Revel with everyone else.

Though, Lyra was kind of surprised how many people had actually turned up for the ritual. Not just a lot of people from Hogwarts she wouldn't have expected — Slytherins and Ravenclaws and even the occasional Hufflepuff from families that didn't hold with Tradition at all — but a fair few students and professors from the other schools, too, and even Michael and Vicky were there.

Angel, Selwyn, and Flamel were there, of course, and Cassie. It seemed Dumbledore didn't care to reconnect with his baby sister, because he wasn't. (Kind of rude, she thought. If anyone owed the dead their remembrance, it was him — how many had died fighting for him? Yeah, a lot.) Maïa, Gin, Blaise, and Rachel had met them at the edge of the Forest — them being Lyra, Harry (who was definitely coming and they'd be asking Persephone to keep an eye on him now, as well as just saying hi), Zee (who joined them after seeing Karkaroff and Maxime off with Dumbledore) and Sirius.

That one surprised her. Not because Sirius didn't believe in the Powers — of course he did, he was a Black — but she distinctly remembered him saying he didn't want to talk to his dead. Something about feeling guilty for getting sent to Azkaban instead of dying like they all had, she didn't really get it, but she'd long since recognised that that sort of thing did tend to inform normal people's decisions (and Sirius was very much a normal person in some ways), she hadn't expected him to change his mind. Especially since he'd also said something equally inexplicable about not wanting to maybe run into his parents — Lyra would be thrilled to run into Cygnus's spirit, she could mock it for being a dead, completely impotent worthless arsewipe, now, instead of just a worthless arsewipe. In fact, she might have to specifically track 'him' down and do that, it sounded like fun.

"I'm still really not sure about this, Lyra," Harry hissed at her, standing beside her in the circle of witnesses.

It was Sirius, on his other side, who answered. Just as well, Lyra wasn't really good at being reassuring, but again, weird. "I know I was kind of iffy, when I was writing about the Introduction ritual, but you definitely should be here. Death is...universal. It's...nice, being a part of something bigger than yourself and knowing, absolutely no question, that you belong there."

Lyra would have to take his word for it, she tended to be kind of...in the ritual, but not part of it. She'd always figured it was because of whatever Eris had done to her mind — she'd never been possessed at this thing herself — but it might very well be because she didn't belong to Death in the same way humans did. (Yep, still kind of weird, thinking of herself as a non-human being.) While it was true that Eris would herself eventually fade back into Magic in the same way human souls did, she was pretty sure that "Lyra" would be long gone by then, her soul subsumed into Eris's being when she died. (She distinctly remembered Eris telling her that Death could suck it, that Lyra was her dedicant.)

"And how is that different from the Introduction ritual, exactly?" Because that was actually on the very, very short list of things she actually felt like she was part of, not just kind of playing along, and she didn't see any reason Sirius (or Harry) didn't belong with Magic as well.

Sirius shrugged at her. "Clearly I'm just in a more decisive mood tonight."

Yes, you're mine. And it's a little of both. Bella's memories of it are more like you feel around the Dark.

"But— I just don't like the idea of magic taking me over, okay?"

Weird. Wait. Does that mean Bella's not yours in the same way I am? she asked, even as she rolled her eyes at Harry. "That's what you're being so weird about? Just don't let it, then."

"Don't let it? You told me last year you bloody well get possessed by ghosts at this thing!"

"Spirits, not ghosts, very different things — and you really don't get what it means to be a legilimens, do you?"

There was an odd hesitance to Eris's response Lyra didn't know how to interpret. In the same way, but not to the same degree.

How is that even possible?

"What? But, Blaise—!" He cut himself off, probably doing the telepathy thing they did approximately all the time.

Harry wasn't nearly as good at carrying on two conversations at once as Lyra was. She jabbed him in the arm with a fingernail to get his attention back. "If you don't want to let them into your head, don't let them in, just let the magic flow through you physically. You don't even have to dance if you don't want to."

Eris's amusement shivered through her. You really aren't the same person, obviously.

Oh. Well...she guessed that made sense. Especially since Bella wasn't above forcing her to sleep and fucking with her head so she didn't get to experience the most fun part of the Madness.

"You do have to be here to pay your respects, though," Sirius said. "The Dark said Persephone's expecting you, and you don't stand up Death. Especially not when She's given you as many second chances as you've already had."

Are you sticking around to say hi to Kore? Death was one of those entities who had come to encompass so many deities over the millennia that she wasn't really part of "their" pantheon anymore. (Though she and Eris generally referred to her by her Greek face, the one they were most familiar with, she wasn't only Persephone.) It wasn't like anyone ever really forgot that Death existed, and there were only so many ways it could be interpreted, so there were aeons of continuity there, influences from practically every people who had ever existed. She'd probably been the first Power to be more accurately described as a single entity with many faces she could wear than as dozens of distinct entities — the Deathly Power could simulate the personalities of the various Aspects of Death, but they were all one, continuous, unfathomably vast consciousness.

Death was complicated like that, though also simple, in a way — in Death all things were one, after all.

Lyra's Eris wasn't really part of the Greek pantheon either, though. She had inherited some of the earlier Greek Eris's memories because she did hold some continuity with her, but that Eris had died — mostly faded away, with no one acknowledging her — centuries ago. Lyra's Eris was more acutely aware that they could die than she thought most gods probably were — it was rare for them to think about, for lack of a better term, their own mortality. Most of them, Lyra gathered, didn't have a very real comprehension of what it was to fade into obscurity. Eris did, so she could be...weird, about Death. In an even if I hold a degree of undeniable respect for her and wouldn't dare tell you not to give her her due, I don't want to talk to her, so if you'll excuse me, I'll be...anywhere but here sort of way. It was one of the things Eris was more human about than Lyra.

No, Eris said, not elaborating until Lyra noted that fact, and then only with, Well, what else is there to say? It's not as though you and she don't both already know how I feel about the whole concept. Give my regards to Lily, I'll be entertaining myself elsewhere.

Fine, whatever.

Lyra's sense of Eris's attention focused on herself faded as the Master of Ceremonies started the ritual. This year it seemed Thane Rowle had gotten the job, the same Thane Rowle she still owed some form of payback for his role in her little end-of-term adventure last year. (She really should come up with something fun for him — caloris jinxes were child's play, she'd had worse for leaving the table without being excused, but transfiguring aqua fortis to try to melt her face off, that definitely required some sort of redress.) The phrases he used were exactly the same as those Lew Bones had used back in Nineteen Sixty-One, though there had been some changes in the ritual since her time.

Particularly noticeable was, after the sacrifice of life (a black rabbit this year), Mallory Prince made the final offering to draw the Veil, slicing her own arm and throwing the blood-covered athame into the fire — and then, as the magic was under way, followed it, standing in the midst of the deathly flames, chanting the usual invocation, inviting the Dead to join them, to dance and make merry, feel the heat of life and share in the celebration of the eternal cycle, revisiting and remembering together what they once were and so on and so forth, but then going further, offering not only feeling — the cut, the blood spilled, was symbolic of pain, and by extension human emotion, the true sacrifice similar to the one Lyra had made to Eris, albeit more temporary — but herself, inviting not only the Dead but Death to walk among them, if it so chose.

Using herself as a vessel.

That was different.

As the dance began around her, magic tingling in her veins, Witnesses turning and stepping and clapping as one, spirits streaming through the fire, flitting among them, Sirius and Maïa and everyone else leaving her and Harry standing alone at the edge of the clearing, she found herself wondering aloud if Kore ever actually took them up on it.

"Not usually, no." Lyra turned to see a green-eyed, red-haired apparition, rather more solid-looking than most of the spirits dancing with the celebrants. She wore a simple, brightly-patterned chiton — gold with jewel-like flowers, orange and purple and a rusty autumnal red, and ivy, its leaves in the process of shifting colours, chased around the edges — and her presence was more than any brief, mortal spark, something incomprehensibly big (even by Lyra's standards), threaded into the magic spread through the clearing and stretching away into nothing (everything). "It was a good thought, but we don't like possessing humans who don't know what they're offering, and they usually don't."

And she clearly didn't need to, anyway.

Harry beside her blinked in confusion and shook his head, as though that would help him literally shake off the effects of the magic — or perhaps as though he couldn't quite believe he was seeing his mother standing there before him. Which she wasn't, actually, though she did look like her.

Persephone clicked her tongue as though in annoyance, her image rippling and shifting to an unfamiliar, round-faced girl, younger than Lily had been when she died, and wearing strawberry-blonde plaits that made her look younger yet. "Happy?" she asked an approaching spirit, her tone far too tolerantly amused to mind having apparently been asked to change her appearance.

Understandable, Lyra guessed — she wouldn't have any trouble telling the goddess from the actual spirit of Lily Evans, but it might be confusing for Harry. And he looked confused enough without two visibly identical entities standing in front of him. Well, not quite identical. This Lily was wearing a more modern muggle dress, the skirts long and heavy, in a blue so dark it was almost black, speckled with white like stars or (since it seemed more densely speckled toward the bottom) falling snow — more the sort of thing Lyra would expect Persephone to wear in Hades than the last-gasp-of-summer costume she'd actually appeared in.

"Thank you, Kallisti," she said distractedly, reaching out to lay an insubstantial hand on Harry's face. His own rose to cover it as though he could actually feel it. (Could he? Lily did seem more present than the other spirits, though Lyra couldn't quite put words to how, exactly.) "Harry... You've grown up. I know I shouldn't be surprised, but it's one thing to know, and another very different thing to see you standing here in front of me."

"Lily? I mean...Mum?" His voice cracked slightly, getting unwontedly emotional.

"Yes, love. Though to be honest, I never did quite get used to that. Being called Mum. If you want to call me Lily, that's fine."

"How— What's going on?" he asked, looking from her to Persephone and back.

"Oh, you know how it is — gods impersonating you when they bloody well know you need your face tonight. Harry, love, meet my Lady Persephone."

"Er... Hi? Um, I mean... Lyra!" he hissed at her. "What do I say?"

"Great party?" Lyra suggested. She hadn't greeted Persephone at all, given the way she'd just walked up and started a conversation it hadn't seemed necessary. "We're not exactly petitioners in the Hall of the Dead at the moment, no need to stand on formality. Well met, Lily. I'm Lyra. Persephone, Eris sends her regards and requests that I make her excuses because she can be weirdly human sometimes, and the idea of dying kind of wigs her out."

Kore rolled her eyes — looking for all the world like any of Lyra's cousins being told they weren't invited to dinner with some distant relative, as though this was anything other than a minor relief. "We know. We know Harry, too, actually. And not just in the we know all things way, we've actually met."

"We...have?"

The goddess nodded. "Several times, though of course you wouldn't remember. The first time you were a babe in arms, and the last few you didn't actually die, just got a bit turned around at the border. Young souls tend not to remember that sort of thing very well."

"I— You mean...I almost died? But... I mean, I guess with the basilisk, right? But...more than once? When else?!"

"Ah, well, I hear that blood ward did trigger that one time," Lyra pointed out.

"And last year, with the dementors, when you fell from your broom," Lily added. "You didn't exhaust yourself instinctively slowing your fall, you exhausted yourself healing yourself instinctively. Or, well, with a nudge in the right direction."

Persephone nodded. "Yes. And of course, Lily brought you to me when you were only a few months old. She was so proud of herself — like a little cat showing off her first kitten. Adorable."

Lily went very red. "Kallisti! You're embarrassing me in front of my son!"

"Nonsense, there's no shame in loving your child. Though there is shame in terrible puns — she asked me to be your godmother...literally."

What, really? Wow. Just...wow.

It was kind of a well-known fact that ritualists tended to be insane, and Lily Evans had had a certain reputation, but asking a god you weren't even dedicated to to play an ongoing, personal role in your kid's life? Asking Death Itself? Asking for a blessing, yeah, sure, that wasn't entirely unheard of — generally wouldn't be asked of Death, but— Asking a bloody Power to co-parent with you, though? Lyra was not easily impressed, but that might be the most impertinent thing she'd ever heard of anyone doing, ever. "Did you say yes?"

Persephone raised an eyebrow at her. "What do you think?"

Lily snorted at the memory, or maybe just her younger self. "She told me I was being very silly and human, and a bond of godparenthood would be more of an open statement of commitment than admitting that I was dedicated to her in all but name and also might kill me early, because that kind of binding is not intended to be nearly so asymmetrical. But she did promise to look out for you, Harry, love," she added, turning to her son with a fond smile.

She'd promised. Persephone. Had promised a mortal that she would look out for her child. And her only objection to being his godparent was that it would probably have killed Lily?

"It's hardly a great burden, pointing him back toward Life occasionally." Did... Did Persephone actually sound slightly defensive about that? Why would...?

Oh. Oh... "Are you fucking with me?"

"Er. What?" Of course Harry had no idea how completely absurd his mother was. (And that was completely absurd coming from her.)

"Gods don't just do favours for mortals because they ask, Harry. At least, not mortals who aren't theirs. Which Lily wasn't, was she?"

"All that lives is mine," Persephone said coolly.

Lyra smirked. "That sounds suspiciously like a no, Lily never did actually dedicate herself to me. Just saying."

This time it was Kore who went a bit pink. Lily laughed at her. "I didn't dedicate myself in life, no. But I'm certainly hers now."

There was something suggestive in her tone, as though that was a hint of some sort.

"So, you dedicated yourself when you died?" Harry guessed, making a valiant attempt to keep up with the conversation. Even though— Wait, no one was telling him that was ridiculous? But... "But...how?" Yes, that! "I mean, Lyra told me people kind of just...become one with the universe, when they die."

"Some more than others," Lily explained. "I gather that the closer you are to Magic before you die, the easier it is to persist within Death. Especially if you have an affinity for certain Aspects. If one of them decides it wants to keep you as an independent consciousness, stop your soul from assimilating, it can."

"Does that happen like, a lot, or...?"

"Ah, no. I guess eternity can get kind of boring when you're pretty much everything, but most people aren't really...good company, I guess. If you're a god. Too much awe, not enough snark."

"So...Persephone just decided she wanted to keep you...as a companion?" Lyra asked, eyes flicking from spirit to goddess and back again, a smirk tugging at her lips.

Lily shrugged, nodded.

Well, that brought on a whole new, interesting subtext to Lily apparently calling Persephone 'Kallisti' — most beautiful. "I can't decide if I like a comment about Kore being Harry's step-mum or you being death's bitch even more than Bella better," Lyra giggled, barely managing to make the words comprehensible. "Little Jamie was so out of his league."

Kore rolled her eyes, didn't dignify either comment with a response.

"James was a good man, Lyra," Lily said, more firmly than she would have expected. "Marley was right — he deserved someone better than me."

Lyra was going to say define "better" (or maybe define "good"), but Harry actually managed to get a word in first. Even if that word was just, "Er." He followed it up with, "How does that work? With James. Is he still around, too? Because, I mean, I'd kind of like to meet him, too, you know?"

"He isn't. Or, not in the same way Lily is," Persephone said delicately. "I could bring him here tonight, but..."

"But?"

Lily was far more blunt. "Well, it's not really his scene, is it?"

"Not his scene?"

"I never did manage to get him here when he was alive. Sirius came a few times, even, and he was actively trying to reject the Blacks' traditions. But Jamie never really believed in all this. The Potters had been progressive for ages, celebrated secular versions of Christian holidays and everything."

Lily gaped at her for a second. "But... How?"

"There's a certain strain of thought in progressive magical theory—" Lily began to explain.

But that was not what Lyra meant. "Yes, yes, I know, they think we're all delusional, brain-damaged, whatever— I mean, Jamie's mother was a Black. Yeah, Dorea was fucking weird, but I know she knew Magic. And he married you!"

Lily gave a helpless little shrug. "If someone doesn't want to see the truth, they're not going to see it — even when it's possessing their fiancée and saving their bloody life."

"The point Lily was trying to make," Persephone interrupted, "was that James would likely find it very disorienting to be brought back to this side of the Veil as a distinct consciousness."

Harry wilted. "Well, I guess maybe we shouldn't, then..."

"No, actually, we definitely should. I already had a bone to pick with him about disowning Liz, but I demand an explanation of how Dorea Black's son could be a bloody atheist!" She glared at the goddess. "Are you going to do it, or do I need to actually invoke him?"

Persephone gave her a look, reminiscent of Dru's you're being a petulant child expression, which Lyra assumed meant something similar. Though she imagined that pretty much everyone seemed like children to Death, so maybe it was more like, I suppose I will tolerate your silly mortal foibles, but I'm not going to help you.

"Seems like kind of a petty reason to force consciousness on him to me..." Lily said. "I mean, what good is yelling at him going to do?"

So, do it yourself, was what she was hearing? "Maybe I'm just a petty bitch like that."

"She gets like this, sometimes, when she thinks someone's being stupid for no reason," Harry explained, but Lyra wasn't really listening anymore.

She retrieved her dueling knife from the Shadows, cut her left palm just enough for a few drops of blood to fall to the ground. "James Charles, son of Bellatrix Dorea, son of Charlus Georgius, I summon you. By your name and the blood we once shared, as the Veil grows thin between this world and the next, get your fucking arse over here, I want to talk to you!"

"I...don't think that's how that's supposed to go," Harry said. "And what happened to never let anyone have your blood ever or I'll go all psychotic First Daughter of the House of Black on you?"

Lily explained, saving Lyra the trouble. Convenient, since she was in the middle of an invocation, shouldn't really stop to answer questions from the floor. "Blood spilled with intent, as Lyra is doing, is different than blood spilled without intent — that can be used for practically anything. This is already...dedicated, to its purpose."

"...Right. Speaking of my blood being used to enter me in this stupid Tournament, you kind of keep an eye on me, right? Do you know who entered me?"

Ooh, good question. "Hurry it up, baby cousin. I'm not getting any younger!"

"Well, yes, but..."

"But?"

"But if we tell you, you're far more likely to die sooner than if we don't," Kore informed him.

Good answer. Probably the only refusal she could've given to prevent Lyra trying to annoy the information out of her. (Though it was probably also true, Death was one of the more honest faces of magic. Too damn old to see the point in lying.) "Jamie, if you don't get over here right now, I swear by all the gods and Powers..."

James Potter's form began to coalesce as she made her third demand for his spirit to present itself. (It didn't really matter how rudely she called for him, just that she did it three times — most rituals, she'd found, could be stripped down to a few key components, and incredibly basic necromancy was no exception.) He looked around, clearly as disoriented and confused as Persephone had expected. Understandable, maybe, she guessed, the Dance of the Dead was still going on, the clearing lit by the flickering blue flames of the bonfire, shadows wavering as the Dancers circled it, spirits flitting between them. If he really hadn't ever come when he was alive, she supposed he might not have any idea what was going on at all.

"Lily? What's going on?" he asked, turning to the only person in the immediate vicinity he obviously recognised. "The last thing I remember... Where's Harry?!"

Lily raised an eyebrow at him in a very Snape-like expression of exasperation, pointed at Harry. "Yes, James, I'm quite well. Lovely to see you this fine evening."

"Well excuse me for being concerned about the wellbeing of our son when last I knew, you were supposed to be taking him and running— Where is he? What happened? I thought I got— Am I dead?!"

"Yes. We both are. For the last thirteen years. Harry's right here, he wanted to meet you."

"...Harry? My god, you're— You're all grown up! You— My son! I—" He stepped toward Harry, moving as though to hug him, though his spirit wasn't nearly physical enough for that. His hand passed right through Harry's shoulder, his disappointment much more tangible than his 'body'.

"Ah... Hi, James. It's, um...nice to meet you. Sirius talks about you all the time."

"Dad, Harry. Call me Dad," Jamie insisted.

"He passed the can you say 'dada' point a few years ago, James," Lily quipped.

While Lyra thought this was very funny, Harry apparently didn't agree, gaping at Lily as though he didn't recognise her. "Er, sorry, Dad, it's just, Lily said I could call her Lily, so—"

James scoffed, throwing a glare over his shoulder at his wife's spirit. "Yeah, well, not surprised. Lily never wanted to have kids."

"I never said I never wanted kids, James, I said I didn't want kids in the middle of a fucking war! When we could die at any bloody moment! Which we did!"

"Yeah! We did! Apparently! And if we'd waited to have kids, House Potter would be dead, so who gets the I told you so, here? Me! I think it's me!"

"Hey!" Lyra interrupted. "I don't care if you were right, you don't get any I told you so's! You're not here to retroactively destroy a marriage that ended thirteen years ago, you're here to explain how the fuck you can possibly be a bloody atheist! And also, while we're on the subject of House Potter, why would you disown Liz? There were only two of you left in the House by that point, you moron! And Liz was fun! She was the only Slytherin prefect with a sense of humour!"

"What? Who— Are you— Did Sirius have a daughter? Is Sirius still—?"

"Sirius is fine. He's over there somewhere," she gestured vaguely at the Dancers. "And no, Sirius is my cousin, I thought we were done with that question by now!"

Lily put on a terribly exasperated expression, directed both at James and Lyra. Probably because she knew exactly how tedious these next few minutes were going to be. "James, this is Lyra, formerly Bellatrix, Black. She's from an alternate dimension, thirty years in the past."

Sure enough, Jamie's reaction was immediate horror and a small degree of panic. "Bellatrix as in the Bellatrix?"

Lyra snorted slightly. "No, the Bellatrix is and always will be Henry's Bellatrix. Care to guess again?"

"You know what he meant, Lyra, stop being a twat. Yes, Ja– Dad, that Bellatrix. Except, um...not quite. Alternate universe Bellatrix. She's, um..."

"Still a teenage version of the Blackheart! What the— Harry, Son, do you— You can't possibly know the things she did, if you did, you wouldn't— Even if she's not the same exact person, I'd bet anything she's just as mad and dangerous as our Bellatrix, you shouldn't be anywhere near her! Lily, back me up on this!"

Lyra glared at him. As though he had any right to object to her presence in Harry's life! He was fucking dead! He wouldn't even be here if it weren't for her! "Actually, Other Bella is considerably better at controlling the Madness and all mature and shite, so I'm probably more mad and dangerous than she is. Her hobbies are just...bloodier. Generally speaking. If acromantulae still don't count."

"You're not helping, Lyra!" Harry snapped. "And of course acromantulae still don't count, acromantulae are never going to count! They're giant man-eating spiders! They tried to eat me, once!"

"Why were you around acromantulae?" James asked, his tone oddly urgent, given that they clearly weren't anywhere nearby now.

Lyra ignored him. "Did I know that?" She shrugged. "Fine, acromantulae don't count. Bella's hobbies are bloodier."

("Lily! Did you not hear me say back me up, here?!")

"It doesn't matter, you're making a terrible impression, you know that, right?"

"And I should care...why? You know Jamie's dead, right? His opinion of me doesn't count for shite."

("Lily!")

Lily clicked her tongue impatiently. "Don't get your knickers in a twist, Jamie. I'm not backing you up on Lyra being bad company or an inappropriate friend for Harry—" ("Thank you!" Lyra interjected. At least one of Harry's parents was sane!) "—for the same reason he was around acromantulae. I, unlike you, have been keeping up with current events, and Lyra is the most responsible person who seems to have any interest in looking out for our son."

"But— Is Dumbledore dead? And I thought you said Sirius was fine! He's not fine and dead, is he?!"

"Oh, for fuck's sake, James, I'm not going to fill you in on everything that's happened in the past thirteen years! Remember it for yourself!"

"What do you mean 'remember'?"

"He is fine, he was just in Azkaban because he was stupid and overconfident and really, really sucks at murdering people. And even if he had been around when Harry was little, I don't know if you ever noticed this, but Siri barely knows how to take care of himself. You would not want him raising your kid," Lyra informed him. Both spirits ignored her. Rude.

"I mean, James, that we're dead. We're part of the collective consciousness that is the Dead, and therefore have access to the memories and knowledge of every person who has ever died, or will ever die — though I wouldn't recommend trying to remember shite that hasn't happened yet right off the bat. If you want to know what happened, take two seconds and think about it. "

"Pretty sure I would rather have been raised by Sirius than Petunia," Harry volunteered, breaking the glaring contest between his dead parents, but not before James's eyes went wide. Apparently he'd figured out how to remember things.

"Yes," Lily said coldly. "You see, now, why I might be generally annoyed, at the moment? I died to ensure that our son would be safe, have a chance to live a normal, happy life, without the threat of bloody war hanging over him, and not only did I not manage it, from where I'm standing it looks like the Old Goat has done his best to sabotage my plan every step of the Powers-damned way!"

"Er...I don't think he meant to," Harry objected (weakly). "I mean, he didn't do it to spite you, or to make me suffer, he just..."

"The road to Hell, Harry, is paved with good intentions. And there are not enough good intentions in the world to make up for leaving you with Tuney or putting you in a position where you had to defend yourself from a fucking basilisk with a fucking sword!"

"Basili... What the fuck?! I mean, well done, Harry, Christ that thing was a monster! But what the fuck?"

"Yes, exactly! And by what twisted excuse for logic did it seem like a good idea to fight that thing?" Lily demanded, rounding on Harry.

He glared at her, clearly furious at the implication that he'd done something incredibly stupid in fighting for his life. "Well, maybe if you're already dead, dying doesn't seem like a big deal, but what was I supposed to do? Let it fucking eat me?!"

"Right?!" James exclaimed, leaping to his son's defense. "I mean, be reasonable, Lils, I can see wanting to throttle Dumbledore for letting things get so out of hand, but you know you would've done the same as Harry if it was fight or die!"

"Yes, but it wasn't fight or die! I would've gotten Sev to help instead of that useless twat Lockhart, maybe looked up a few spells to control snakes first, and if I still somehow ended up in the Chamber of Secrets alone and unarmed with a Riddle horcrux and its dying victim, I would definitely have threatened to kill little Gin myself before he could finish subsuming her soul."

James and Harry stared at her with identical expressions of appalled shock. James, presumably more familiar with Lily, recovered first. "Why the fuck... Did you even know what a horcrux was when you were twelve?"

"Leverage. And no, I didn't. But he obviously needed the little Weasley girl, and it was obviously taking some time for him to do whatever he was doing. Removing her from his influence would be the logical way to stop him. Granted, he might have tried to get the basilisk to kill me before I could kill little Gin, but I suspect he would've been unwilling to risk it accidentally getting her as well, and it did take some time for the snake to arrive after he called it, so that would've been plenty of time to get into position to use her as a human shield. I think he would've been open to negotiation."

"Oh, right, I forgot I married a mad, death-obsessed dark ritualist pretending to be a real person!"

"Real person, James? Really?! What exactly makes you a real person and not me? Being so sympathetic to people trying to kill you that you won't try to kill them first? You knew exactly what I was when you married me! You saw me channel the everloving Dark Itself! What the fuck—"

Lily's tirade didn't end there, but Lyra was distracted by Angel appearing at her back (again) in a soft shiver of dark magic. There was some trick she was doing, Lyra didn't know how, to keep her magic mostly outside the mundane plane, she thought. It didn't feel nearly as strong now as it was when she and her stupid mind mage had made their entrance yesterday — hadn't really, at any point since, even when she had them isolated in time, earlier. (Which had been really fucking weird, the shadows all prismatic... That didn't really capture it, but it was the only way she could think to describe them with one side moving in the fourth dimension, and the other not.) But this close to her, Lyra could still feel it. That was most of the reason she didn't immediately pull away from her.

She didn't really like physical contact just for the sake of it, and especially not from people she'd barely met. She'd pretty much written off Zee's (and Blaise's) obsession with touching people as a Zabini thing, like using smell and touch to communicate was a wilderfolk thing, right up until that night she and Sirius (and Blaise and Harry) had gone on an adventure in muggle Los Angeles and gotten drunk and experimented with muggle drugs. Now she was writing it off as some kind of brain chemistry weirdness. But even when she was high, she still hadn't wanted to touch anyone she didn't already know fairly well. She did actually want to touch Angel, though, which was weird. (Even the fact that she recognised it as weird as she did it didn't stop her from leaning into the sisterly embrace.)

"Someone was talking about me," Angel offered, by way of explaining her presence. (Not that she really needed to.)

"Angelos," Persephone said, "I have to say, I didn't expect to see you here tonight."

"I didn't expect to see a House Potter domestic tonight, and yet here we are. Are you doing that on purpose?"

At first, Lyra thought Angel must be talking to Persephone, because she had no idea what she was talking about. Even after a few seconds, though, Death failed to answer. "Er...what?"

Angel giggled. "Right, I'll take that for a no, then. Really just makes the whole thing more amusing."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"That would be telling, wouldn't it?"

"The child has a right to know what she is, Angelos."

Lyra felt the witch's sigh against her back. "Fine. I guess. It's funny, though, watching people around her figure it out while she considers herself nothing out of the ordinary."

In point of fact, Lyra didn't consider herself to be ordinary, she was obviously exceptional in any number of ways. But she was fairly certain that she wasn't that different from the average human, or at least the average Black. She craned her neck to glare at Angel. She was only a few inches taller than Lyra, but still slightly behind her, made things awkward. "You brought it up! What are you talking about?"

"Mmm. What do you think it means to be an Avatar?"

She had a sneaking suspicion that this was going to be one of those conversations like What do you think it means to subsume darkness? One of those, surprise, you're way less human than you thought conversations. "Well I thought it just meant being kind of low-key possessed all the time, but I'm guessing you're going to tell me I'm wrong."

"You're not entirely wrong. Anyone dedicated outside of the Covenant, or anyone dedicated under it to an Aspect they don't naturally resonate with, that would be the first step toward becoming an Avatar, and a pretty big one at that. But still only the first step. Actually being an Avatar means you are entirely indistinguishable from your Patron. Your desires are their desires, in accordance in every way. You wield their power and speak with their authority, but you don't really exist anymore as an independent entity, becoming more like an extension of your Patron inhabiting your body."

Lyra was pretty sure she didn't get it. "But, aren't all dedicants extensions of their Patrons?"

"No, dedicants are worshippers. They further their Patrons' interests, but they are still their own creatures. I am an Avatar of the Dark. In a lot of ways, I am the Dark. We grew out of most of the traits that distinguished the human Angelos Black from the Dark hundreds of years ago. Bella is a dedicant of Eris. Even though her soul resonates with Eris and they're in constant contact, she values her autonomy too highly to let the distinction between the two of them grow fuzzy. You, on the other hand, are a baby Avatar. Lyra Black is still her own person with her own interests and desires, but the division between Lyra and Eris is growing less and less obvious. Case in point: Bella would think it horrifying if I were to tell her that she was losing herself to Eris; you think it's perfectly natural for you to grow more similar to Eris over time, and still don't get why it should be a big deal."

Well that was...perfectly accurate. "Are you reading my mind somehow?"

"No, in some timelines you say something to that effect instead of just thinking it."

So, Angel could see other timelines? Weird. Really fucking neat, but weird. But Lyra could bug her about what that was like later, she would be here all year. "Well why should it be? It's not like Eris and I don't disagree on shite."

Angel shrugged. "Ask Bella. But most of the shite you and Eris don't agree on, you'll grow out of eventually. Even I mellowed after a few decades, and the Dark is a lot more hands-on than Eris when it comes to causing conflict and destruction. The manipulation and anti-Statutarian maneuvering Bella is doing right now, or you turning this Tournament into a political powderkeg, is actually a lot more her speed than leading a war from the front lines."

...Oh. Well, it wasn't like Lyra didn't know that — Eris pretty obviously disapproved of her risking her life just because it was fun, and that probably was the biggest source of disagreement between them, but... She still didn't think she understood. Even if they did agree that Lyra running off to play in riots was a bad idea (which, objectively it probably was, but Lyra didn't care, she needed to let go every once in a while, or she'd actually go insane), that wouldn't make them the same person any more than Lyra and Bella were the same person. She didn't feel like she was losing herself or whatever. And she hadn't missed Angel saying she was only the Dark in a lot of ways, not all ways, so obviously one could be an Avatar without entirely losing one's human identity. Lyra belonging more thoroughly to Eris than Bella did, which she presumed was what Angel meant about her caring more about maintaining her autonomy, also wasn't anything she didn't already know. But Eris had said that was a difference in degree not in the fundamental relationship between them. "So, for practical purposes, what does that mean? Like, why should it matter?"

"Oh! Right! Got off track. Powerful magical beings have an effect on the magic around them, a sort of gravity to their presence. An influence. That's the reason sorcerers are so inherently fascinating, and also why more powerful mages are less likely to be affected by them — they have their own gravity, kind of balances things out. Avatars, being an extension of a much more powerful magical being than any human sorcerer, have a similar effect on ambient magic, though it tends to be more subtle, affecting only the aspects of magic they're most closely related to. You're only a baby though, you have more influence as a fledgling sorceress than an Avatar. I doubt normal humans notice your presence making them any more arrogant or impatient or generally antagonistic at all. Spirits tend to be more easily swayed, though." She shrugged lightly, nodding toward Lily and James as though this wasn't an absolutely fascinating bit of information about the nature of magic.

Lyra was definitely going to have to think about it more later, consider how it affected the model she and Maïa had been developing for their book. "And you can do this on purpose?"

"Oh, sure! But Sarah tends not to like me starting wars for funsies, and then we get in fights, and last time we destroyed like half of the New England coast, and Mummy Dearest actually rewound that timeline to kill it, and she hates changing the past. She threatened to exile me to a pocket universe if we did something like that again, so...only if I don't get caught."

Who the hell had the power to exile the Dark? Before Lyra could ask, Persephone pointed out, "You do realise I'm right here, do you not, Angelos? And I don't like you going around causing mass disasters and wars for your own amusement either."

"I already promised Sarah I wouldn't kill anyone here, anyway. But yes, you can influence people on purpose. You can also stop influencing them, but you've been slacking on your focusing exercises."

"Focusing exercises are boring," Lyra complained, making an effort to feel out her own influence on the magic around her. It was easier than she thought it otherwise might be, given that they were in the middle of a ritual at the moment, lent a bit of regularity to the ambient magic that it didn't normally have. Not that being able to perceive the ripples her presence caused made it any easier to figure out how to stop. She could control the area her magic leaked out into (most of the time), but that wasn't changing the 'weight' of it, just making herself more dense. "Can I have a hint?"

Angel just giggled. Kore, though, offered, "Fold ambient magic around yourself, like making a shadow pocket out of a vortex." The fact that she demonstrated the effect was much more helpful than the actual explanation. And the consequences were almost instantaneous.

"Who the hell are you people?" James broke off his argument with Lily to demand of them.

A whisper of cold power crept through their little circle, Angel answering before anyone else could. "I am the god your mother forsook when she married your father and fled the House of Black. That is the Queen of the Dead, you're ruining her party."

"Oh, don't stop on my account," Kore interjected. "I do love a good drama."

Angel snorted slightly. She didn't address the comment, but Lyra could hear the laughter in her voice as she continued, "This is Lyra, my baby sister and also the one who summoned you, and the boy who looks like he'd very much like the Earth to swallow him whole at the moment is your son. Hi, Harry! Having fun with your little family reunion?"

"Er... Hi? And, um..." His eyes darted over to the very embarrassed James and still furious Lily.

"It's okay to say no," Angel assured him.

"Well, um, no, not really. Could you guys...maybe not fight?"

"Yeah, the only person who should be yelling here is me. Though, maybe I should be yelling at Dorea?" She'd kind of gotten distracted by Angel's arrival and thinking about magical theory and lost the fury that had led her to summon Jamie in the first place.

Angel made an affirmative little humming noise. "Charlie, too, but Doe didn't exactly fight to raise young Jamie here in the Dark. Honestly, I've no idea why she was so eager to get shot of the House, but she never did come back for Yule after she married out."

Lyra let out a huff. That was just ridiculous! If you were going to come back for anything, it should be Yule. Weddings and funerals and naming ceremonies were just boring social shite — even most of the other House rituals were pretty dull for Lyra, since she wasn't really properly involved in them. But Yule was actually useful and fun. And, "There's a difference between not raising your kid in the Dark and letting him become a bloody atheist! I distinctly remember little three-year-old Jamie being introduced to Magic, so—"

"Dumbledore got to him," Lily interrupted.

"Lily!"

"What? He did. Minerva might've been the one who talked about traditional witchcraft like it was little more than superstition in her Theory lessons, but she got that from Dumbledore — and I know you had that stupid metaphysics book he wrote."

"Well, there wasn't any evidence that couldn't have been produced by some method other than an independent magical consciousness, and—"

"—and powerless little boys like to feel like they have more control over the world around them than they actually do?"

"We are not having this argument again, Lily!"

"We don't have to, the very fact that you're standing here right now proves that I was right!" Lily said smugly. Lyra was starting to get the impression that she was kind of an antagonistic bitch all on her own, probably hadn't really needed any subtle magical influence to pick a fight upon seeing her husband for the first time in thirteen years. Not that there was anything wrong with that. Not at all. She grinned quietly to herself, thinking that Harry's mum was even more great than Maïa's (albeit in a very different way).

"Guys! Please?"

Both spirits broke off their bickering to look at their son, muttering shame-faced apologies.

Lyra glowered at them. "Well, fine, I guess I can blame Dumbledore for that along with everything else he's done to fuck Harry over but, Jamie, I also want an explanation for disowning Liz. And don't say it was just Charlus being a prick, you could've brought her back in when he died."

"She ran off to Aquitania to marry a veela! How much more is there to explain?!"

"Er, who's Liz, maybe?" Harry suggested.

"Liz Potter, a.k.a. Lise Delacour, Jamie's half-sister — she's about thirteen years older than him, managed to get herself disowned twice. Fucking awesome blood alchemist. Did Gabbie not mention her? I distinctly remember telling her you two are cousins..." She frowned slightly, thinking on the argument she'd had with Severus about the little veela. He'd flatly refused to convince Delacour to let her stay, but now that Fleur was the Beauxbatons Champion Lyra suspected Gabbie would just come back if she did get sent home, so.

"She did, yes, but I told her I didn't know anyone called Lise, because I've never bloody heard of her! Why did you tell Gabbie about her, but not me? I think I have the right to know if I have another aunt, Lyra!"

"Well, technically you don't, because she was disowned. But I assumed she'd died in the War. I didn't even realise she's still alive until Bella ran into her this summer."

Lily nodded. "Yeah, James never mentioned her to me. I didn't find out she even existed until I died."

"Why should I have mentioned her? She hadn't been my sister for years before you even started talking to me! We never lived together, I probably wouldn't recognise her if I met her on the street!"

"Oh, you would," Lyra assured him. "She got the Potter Hair. And you can't blame her refusing to play the stupid society betrothal game. I mean, the House of Black considers god-touched ritualists to be proper matches, but I'm pretty sure light progressives think they're just as bad as veela."

"Muggleborns are human, Bellatrix! We can't have children with bloody veela. It's not the same at all. And you know my mother would have had a bloody conniption if I'd brought home a muggleborn!"

"A, Lizzie is mad clever. She came up with a way to get around the biological incompatibilities, apparently — so, while you were worrying about having kids before you died, she already had three. And B, kind of proving my point about you making a bad match, but C, Doe might be upset that you brought home a god-touched ritualist, especially if she really embraced the whole light thing politically, but she wouldn't care that she's muggleborn. If Magic takes a personal interest in you, your kids are going to be mages, full stop. Being muggleborn is irrelevant." She paused. "Also, it's Lyra."

Jamie flat ignored her reminder that she wasn't at all the same person as Bella. "She wouldn't have known Lily was a ritualist! I certainly wouldn't have told her! I didn't know myself!"

"That is fucking dragonshite, James. I know Sirius told you he saw me at Samhain and Walpurgis!"

And that was also irrelevant, because, "You wouldn't have had to tell her. She was raised in the House of Black before the Covenant was broken. She'd have to be blind and stupid not to recognise that Lily had the Powers' attention, too. Why did you think Sirius liked her so much?"

Granted, it had taken Lyra a bit to put it together, she hadn't noticed when she first met Luna, but meeting Cassie and spending kind of a lot of time with her out in the Forest, away from the magical interference of hundreds of other mages, it was easier to notice a hint of specialness reflected in the magic around her. A vague attention-grabbing attractiveness, like catching a glimpse of something shiny out of the corner of one's eye. Not that she didn't recognise it when she did see it, just, she hadn't really been looking for it. Up to that point, she'd really only associated it with the Family. Looking back on it, she'd decided that it must be less a Black thing and more of a having-Magic's-attention thing, because in hindsight Professor Riddle had had it too, and Flamel and Dora. At first she'd thought it was because they were all ritualists, or especially charismatic, but Harry, Luna, and Theo having it kind of ruled those out.

But she was pretty sure Dorea would have noticed it on Lily. Lyra knew she was herself kind of unobservant when it came to shite like that, and if Doe were trying to get away from the Family's ritual traditions it stood to reason that she'd have been more sensitive to it.

Lily and James broke off their sniping yet again to give her matching looks. Harry too, actually. What the hell? "Why are we staring at me, again?"

"Because Sirius didn't like Lily, Lyra," Harry said. Which was completely baffling.

"He never did. Hated how Lily got away with being such a two-faced bitch all the time."

"I always thought he was jealous over Jamie, but yeah, no love lost."

Angel giggled, presumably at Lyra's confusion. "Are you sure?"

"Pretty sure, yeah. Even back in first year, he was a complete twat. Narcissa liked me more than Sirius."

"Yeah, before he even knew you were a two-faced bitch, right? And before Jamie decided you were the love of his life?"

James and Lily exchanged a look Lyra couldn't read.

"Yes..." Lily began, though she didn't seem to have anything to follow it up.

"But that was because you were determined to be friends with Snivels, and if you could be friends with a Slytherin that upset his whole I'm a Gryffindor so I can't possibly be anything like the rest of the Blacks attitude."

Lyra giggled at that one. "Well, someone was deluding himself. Or trying to, anyway. You don't start a years-long feud with someone you really don't like, and you definitely don't become the godfather of their child. You fucking flatten them so hard they won't even think of retaliating, or you ignore them as best you can like he does with Narcissa. You don't go out of your way to get their attention and then just prank them and try to sabotage their other social relationships, tempt them into playing games with you. That's the sort of shite you pull on cousins you actually like. Definitely friendly. Arguably flirting, even." Granted, a more antagonistic, Black sort of flirting than Sirius's usual Zee-like behaviour, but still.

Lily and James exchanged another look. Lily frowned, turned to Kore. "May I...?"

"Oh, yes, do. I can't wait to see what the little runaway puppy has to say about this pet theory of hers."

"Can't you just..."

Lily answered Angel's question, making a sharp gesture toward the Dancers. "Yes, she could just look ahead, but that would ruin the presentation of the drama."

"And we can't have that," Angel said, not quite drily, too much laughter in her voice. "You realise that's very silly, yes?"

"No, silly would be looking ahead, and then sitting through the exact same moment chronologically. You're just impatient."

Lyra definitely had to side with Persephone on this one. "Repeating things is really tedious."

Angel poked her in the temple. "Traitor."

Sirius wandered out of the dark a moment later looking rather disoriented. "Harry? Lyra? What's—" He cut himself off as he obviously recognised Death, bowing very respectfully. "My Lady, might I ask—" he began, only to be cut off again, this time by Angel's laughter.

"We're entertaining her," Lily explained. "I was the one who called you—"

But Sirius had turned to look at her when she spoke, which meant he'd instantly stopped paying attention because he'd also seen "James..." who was the love of his life. His sigh and the way he moved toward Jamie, as if he'd been summoned, was oddly reminiscent of both Lily and James being drawn to Harry.

"Sirius, I—" James's voice broke, overcome with emotion. "Harry said you were in Azkaban, that you– you tried to avenge us? Gods, I'm so sorry, I'm sorry I listened to Lily and didn't tell anyone we'd changed the Secret Keeper, and—"

Sirius looked like he was about to bloody well start crying, too, what the fuck?! "It's— It wasn't your fault, Jamie. Or Lily's. It was a good plan, if it wasn't for that fucking Rat — he fooled us all. I tried to kill him, I wanted to kill him, but... I'm sorry! I failed you, I suggested him, and I deserved to go to—"

"Paddy, don't ever say that! You didn't! Nobody— You were innocent!"

"I couldn't stop him, Jamie, and I left Harry with Hagrid to kill him after, and I shouldn't have — I shouldn't have let him out of my sight, and then— I couldn't even do that right!"

"We forgive you, Sirius," Lily said. "It was our fault as much as yours. I could have refused to move the Fidelius, James could've insisted we move back to one of the better-warded Potter properties. We could've told the Old Goat to go fuck himself like Frank and Alice did, and refused to sit at home making a target of ourselves. You could've gotten a sex change and married Jamie yourself—"

"Lily!" James glared at his wife as Harry gave his father and godfather a very confused look, and everyone else laughed. Honestly, it was more the presentation that was funny, not the suggestion. Lyra was entirely certain that if he'd thought James would be okay with him using that kind of blood alchemy, Sirius would've done it in a heartbeat. The fact that he didn't object kind of made that obvious. Or at least, she thought it did.

"Sirius would have been a much better wife to you, and you know it. My point is, there're a hundred things we could've done differently. This wasn't the worst possible outcome, and there's no point feeling guilty and crying over it now."

That Sirius did object to. "Fuck you, Evans, I'll feel guilty about it as long as I damn well please," he snapped, completely nonsensically. Lyra's understanding of guilt generally included that normal people didn't want to feel it at all. Granted, that understanding was admittedly kind of sketchy, but she was...pretty sure that was how it worked?

"Oh, yes, because wallowing in your emotions always works out so well for you..."

"I don't expect you to get it, cold-blooded fucking snake."

"Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and say he still doesn't like me," Lily decided.

"Why? Cold-blooded snake is practically a compliment."

"No, it's not!" Lyra had a momentary flashback to Sirius and Snape saying they hated each other in unison — which was funny, because Lyra was pretty sure Sirius liked Snape almost as much as he liked Lily. And then glaring at each other, exactly like Sirius and Lily were doing now. It was uncanny, really.

"Are you sure? Because from where I'm standing, this looks an awful lot like that I like you but I don't want to admit that I like you thing Maïa does all the time. What do you think, Harry?"

All eyes turned to the legilimens in the room. Clearing. Whatever. "Er... It's definitely not the same way Maïa feels about you." Well, obviously — Lyra wasn't entirely certain that the feelings Blaise described Maïa holding for her were even in Sirius's range of emotion. The tendency toward absolutes that went along with the Black Madness didn't really lend itself to that sort of nuance and internal conflict. And Sirius, unlike Maïa, had not been raised with a standard of ethics he had to overcome to be comfortable with the darkness in his own personality. It just kind of looked the same. "He really doesn't like her, but he does trust and respect her, and thinks they understand each other in a way most people don't."

"Yeah, okay, that's a better way to put it, but still pretty much what I meant."

Sirius's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Do I even want to know what you were talking about?"

"Whether Dorea would have been able to tell Lily was god-touched. I think she would have. I mean, you see it, right? That way magic kind of draws your attention to her the same way it does to us?"

"Er...I guess? I still don't like her, though."

"Well what do you call it then, when you keep picking fights with the same person and going back and forth one-upping each other and generally recognising each other's abilities and respecting each other as rivals and not wanting to end the game?"

Sirius hesitated. "...Nemeses? That's how you — Other Bella, I mean — refers to enemies that you..." He trailed off as he obviously realised that the word he was about to say was like. "Okay, fine, I don't have a better word, either, but that isn't what most people mean when they say like. Most people would say I hate her."

"If you hate Lily, then what do you call your relationship with Narcissa?"

"...A more familial sort of hatred? Mutual loathing? I don't know, is there a point to this conversation? Because now I'm out of the Dance, there are other people here I'd like to catch up with."

Lyra rolled her eyes as he sidled a few steps in Jamie's direction. "He's been dead for the last thirteen years. Almost as little has happened in his life as when you were being all bored and depressed in Azkaban. But fine, yes, that was all we wanted, you can go now."

Sirius was all too eager to do so, drag James away to talk far from Lily and Lyra herself, but James hesitated over Harry. "Don't take this the wrong way, mate, but..."

And Harry himself was obviously hesitant about asking to be excused to go with them, even though it was clear enough he wanted to that Lyra could see it.

Lily chuckled. "It's fine, love. But before you go, Kallisti, could you please..."

"I suppose. If you're certain. It was your sacrifice, after all."

"Well, yes, but I didn't realise Adrestia was going to physically atomise the bastard and get him mixed up in it, and then the Old Goat went fucking about with it — I think at this point it's doing more harm than good."

"Very well, then. Harry? If you would," Persephone beckoned him toward her.

"Er...what are you planning on doing, exactly?" he asked, moving toward her anyway, probably on instinct. (Death had a certain commanding quality to its presence.)

"Reversing a bit of soul magic Lily did to protect you from the mostly late Tom Riddle."

"But, um... Can I ask why?"

Persephone smirked. "Yes."

After a second Harry apparently realised he hadn't actually asked. "Oh, well, um...why? I mean, if it's to protect me..."

Lily was the one who answered. "It did its job. It was meant to use my soul to shield yours, protecting you from Riddle's killing curse — he had to use a killing curse, your crib was warded against anything less — and springing a trap to destroy him. But I didn't realise that after my soul was stripped away from you and his body was destroyed, part of his soul might get pulled into the ritual instead, unwillingly."

Lyra didn't think that was the end of the explanation, but the wizards didn't let her finish. "I knew it!" Sirius shouted, while James opted to object to, "You used our son as bait?! The fuck, Lily!"

"No, 'bait' implies that I wanted Mouldyshorts to break into our house and murder us and try to kill him! Which of course I didn't — any plan that involves sacrificing your own life is hardly an optimal solution. If we could've run, I would have. But we couldn't. And yes, I knew that it might come down to that, and planned accordingly, but it was a last resort! It wasn't like I would've done it if he hadn't backed us into a corner. And Sirius, you did not know, stop talking out of your arse."

"I knew you'd done some kind of mad bloody soul magic ritual and there were unintended side-effects! How else do you explain Harry being a parselmouth and a legilimens?!"

"Wait! Does that mean if you, um...get rid of the piece of Riddle's soul I won't be a legilimens anymore?"

"No, Harry, Sirius is being completely ridiculous. I guess it's theoretically possible to steal magical talents like legilimency from someone else's soul, but that would be such a ridiculously complicated bit of subsumption you'd probably have to be a master legilimens already to do it. And Parsel is inherited through blood."

"So..."

"Yeah, he could be a natural legilimens, but there haven't been any parselmouths in the Potter or Black families in centuries, Lily," Sirius informed her.

«He does have two parents, and you aren't one of them.»

"I don't know for sure, but I think I might've just been insulted," Sirius snapped back. James just stared in mute horror. Lyra giggled to herself, just slightly, because, oh, no, Jamie, you married a scary dark witch who talks to snakes! This is terrible! "Also, if you're a fucking parselmouth, why the fuck did you pretend to be muggleborn for ten bloody years?"

«You're a—» "You speak Parsel?!" Harry exclaimed.

«So, to be clear, cold-blooded snake is not a compliment? Because I think you might be obligated to take it as one.»

"Shut up, you, you're not nearly as funny as you think you are." Well, that was a dirty lie, Lyra could see an amused smirk pulling at Lily's lips despite her best efforts to subdue it. "Yes, Harry, obviously, and I was muggleborn, Sirius. There were four squibs who married into the Evans and Harrison families in the three generations before I was born. Any one of them could easily have carried the trait."

"Why didn't you tell me you could talk to snakes?" James demanded.

"Er...because by the time I realised it wasn't normal, I also realised it was one of those things mages are stupidly prejudiced about?"

Jamie, for some reason, didn't seem to believe her. Lyra didn't know why, it seemed perfectly reasonable to her that a muggleborn wouldn't know what was and wasn't normal before going to school. She hadn't had a great idea of what was and wasn't normal, and she'd been raised around magic probably more than James. Granted, she had known Parsel was a relatively rare inherited trait before she went to school, but she hadn't known basic shite like how low the general expectations were for an eleven-year-old's magical competency, and that other children weren't regularly subjected to 'Unforgivable' curses at the hands of their fathers. "You thought it was normal. Talking to fucking snakes."

"Well, I thought it was weird that they talked back. If you'd asked me before I ever talked to one, I would've guessed they weren't intelligent enough — the ones without their own magic, at least. I mean, mice are cleverer than snakes, and they don't really talk back. But in my defense, Pandora was a parselmouth as well, and Cassie used to talk to the more magical creatures, owls and unicorns and thestrals and such. And when we were kids, Sev seemed to think it was normal for mages to be able to talk to all kinds of animals. Kind of childish, we mostly stopped doing it before we went to Hogwarts, but not weird."

Sirius snorted. "Every time I think you can't be more of a freak, Evans..."

"Sirius!" Harry snapped. "That's my mother you're talking about!" (In concert with James snapping, "Sirius! That's my wife you're talking about!" They even glared identically...)

Sirius gave James the most condescending look. "James, if you don't get it by now— Fuck it, I give up! Harry, I know it can be hard sometimes to accept that your family are evil freaks whose concept of normal is so far removed from reality that mad doesn't really cover it, but that's something we all have to face eventually. It's part of growing up."

Okay, that was funny, even if Harry didn't seem to think so, glowering at Sirius like it wasn't perfectly legitimate to compare Lily to the mad freaks in their own family (Lyra herself included, she was sure).

"Every time I think you can't be more of a twat, Black... It's fine Harry, Sirius has been calling me a freak since we were eleven. It's practically an endearment at this point. And we're getting off track. Honestly, I've no idea what the effect of having part of Riddle's soul bound to you when his horcruxes are finally destroyed might be, so we're getting rid of it. It won't affect your magic at all, though it will make it much more difficult for you to dreamwalk into Riddle's mind. I know you'll be so disappointed about that."

"He's been doing what?" James exclaimed.

"James. Please don't make me explain the concept of dreamwalking. I know you know this. With part of Riddle's soul bound to Harry's, his mind is, metaphysically speaking, the closest one for him to wander into, regardless of how far away from each other they might be physically. They essentially have a back door into each-other's minds, so—"

"Yes!" Harry interrupted. "I agree! Get rid of the fucking thing!" Though as Persephone reached out a hand toward him, he apparently had second thoughts. "Er, this isn't going to hurt, is it?"

"No, dear," Kore assured him with peculiarly mumsy softness, which sounded odd coming from a girl who looked no older than Lyra herself.

She sort of waved her hand through one of Harry's but, unlike James's had when he'd tried to hug his son, the goddess's actually caught on something, tugging at Harry's soul, a spectral arm separating from his physical form. When it reached the point where he had to step forward and she kept pulling him toward herself, he did, his soul standing about a foot in front of his body (which itself remained standing with a blank, dementor-kissed stare). Unlike his physical body, however, his soul seemed to be wearing a sort of shroud, the remnants of Lily's ritual clinging to him, thousands of interwoven silver threads binding tattered, gossamer scraps of foreign soul-stuff — easily differentiated from Harry's green and gold-limned form by their darkness, and a completely intangible sense of corruption emanating from them. If scraps of a soul could rot, Lyra would say these had begun to do so.

"Ew! What the hell is—" Harry cut himself off, looking down at his arms, and then around at the rest of them, his eyes finally falling on his physical body. "What the— Am I dead?!"

"I don't think so," James volunteered. "Lily did something like this to Sirius, once."

Lyra definitely wanted to know that story — for one thing, why would Lily ever have needed to temporarily disembody Sirius's soul? And for another, how had she done it without permanently killing him? That was, like, mastery-level necromancy shite. And Sirius had just let her? And he still claimed he didn't like her? Normal people were fucking weird.

Persephone smiled. "No. Let's just get this bloody mess off of you, and you can go right back home." She tugged at the silver threads, apparently as gently as she'd pulled Harry's soul from his body, turning him around as she carefully unwrapped the shroud. The threads dissipated into nothingness as she did so, bundling the rotten pieces of Not-Professor Riddle's soul into a neat little ball. It only took a few seconds — less than a minute passed, Lyra thought, before she was guiding Harry's soul back into his body.

"Woah. That was...really weird."

"Feel any different?" Lyra asked.

"Er...maybe a bit lighter. You know, like a weight off your shoulders? Though, that might just be knowing I'm not going to have any more bloody nightmares, now."

"Yeah," Sirius said, sniggering slightly, "but now you have to admit you're really just sleeping with Blaise because you like sleeping with Blaise."

"Blaise? Girlfriend?"

"Er, boyfriend." (James seemed vaguely uncomfortable at that, which was bloody weird.)

"Come on," Sirius suggested, herding James and Harry away from Lily, Lyra, and Death. "We were going to catch up."

"Er, right. Um... Thanks, ah... What do I...?"

"Call Persephone?" Lyra guessed. "She does have about a thousand names, just pick one."

"That seems kind of...disrespectful," Harry hissed under his breath, as though that would stop Kore hearing him being all awkward. "No offence, Lyra, but I'm pretty sure I can't get away with treating goddesses like normal people."

"Aunt is the usual form of address for a godparent," Lily informed him.

Kore didn't actually object to that (which was also bloody weird), but when Harry only grew more awkward Sirius took pity on him. "Lady Persephone, Harry."

"Oh, um. Thank you, Lady Persephone. Er...if you don't mind..."

"Think nothing of it, child. And yes, you may be excused."

"My Lady," Sirius muttered, before resuming his sheepdog act. "Come on, Jamie, Harry, let's..."

"May I?" Angel asked, drawing Lyra's attention away from the wizards edging toward the trees. She was giving the ball of corrupted soul fragments a very pointed look.

Persephone rolled her eyes, tossing the thing to the Avatar of the Dark. "I suppose. He always was one of yours."

Angel caught it with a grin, though she didn't seem quite able to hold it, the ball falling apart into a viscous, semi-intangible thing in her hands, slipping through her fingers in goopy strings. She quickly moved one hand beneath the other to catch them, slowing their inevitable adherence to the law of gravity enough to lift them, giggling as she repeated the process several times.

Was it just Lyra, or did it seem like there was less of the disgusting soul stuff, now, after three or four quick passes? Peering more closely at the substance she decided, no, it wasn't disappearing, it was just...changing, somehow. Becoming lighter, less drippy — sublimating, maybe, to form a sort of...cloud, or miasma (she still got that same sense of corruption and ruin from it) suspended in magic in the hands of the Dark.

"What are you doing?"

"Mmm, lunch?"

"What? You're actually going to eat that? That's disgusting!"

Angel gave her a rather annoyed, confused sort of look. "Hypocritical much?" she said, obviously thinking Lyra's objection was to the whole consuming souls thing, which she was right, none of the Blacks had any room to judge on that front. Yule was basically the same thing, albeit with a soul rendered down by the House Magics to more-or-less just...energy.

Lyra had participated in the ritual death and cannibalistic consumption of five muggles' souls before she left to come here, and yes, it would be hypocritical in the extreme to claim she hadn't really, really enjoyed it. She hadn't really realised until sometime around Imbolc, but she kind of missed it. Getting the Dark to bless the Essence of Shadows before she'd started subsuming it last Yule had been overwhelmingly more of a rush in the short term, but it wasn't really the same sort of year-long boost as the Family ritual.

Of course, she'd fallen into Madness a few weeks later and hadn't really come down since, what with Walpurgis and playing off Siri over the summer, and then starting to come into her power. Obviously there were still times like coming back to school when she was really up, but she was starting to think that just channelling a lot more magic all the time was making normal a higher baseline than it used to be. Anyway, she hadn't really gotten the same sense that she was starting to drag since spring, but if she thought about it, there was a definite awareness that she could be a little faster, a little sharper — if she'd done the ritual like she was meant to. (Not that it was an option, with the Family Magic fucking shattered.)

But it wasn't actually the idea of subsuming of soul-energy that she was objecting to.

"It's all gross and rotted, I can smell it from here." Like eating fucking lutefisk or some shite, just, ew. Not to mention, they were just pieces of a soul, which seemed (somehow) subtly more wrong than just subsuming a soul. Like chopping off someone's arm to eat, but letting them live.

Lily laughed at her.

"What?"

"Soul fragments don't rot, Lyra," Persephone explained, also sounding slightly amused behind her patient tone. "Tom Riddle is very much a creature of corruption and domination. It is hardly surprising that you find his essence repulsive."

"He's also kind of orderly, or was before your little pet got to him," Angel remarked, tipping her head toward Lily. "And Eris fucking hates him for enthralling Bella. I bet that bleeds over a bit. If you think any of that means I don't like him, though, your understanding of the Dark is seriously flawed." That was directed toward Lyra.

She didn't think her understanding of the Dark was flawed, or at least not that flawed, she knew Angel would like bastards like Not-Professor Riddle and Cygnus and Bella, she'd just never realised how...unpleasant Riddle's soul would be. Especially since she liked being around Angel, and she seriously doubted there was less inclination to subjugate people in her soul.

Her confusion and uncertainty must have shown on her face (or else she'd just said something in one of the neighboring timelines Angel could apparently perceive), because the Avatar added, "Don't be all pathetic, now. I like you, too. Just, in a more chaos and conflict and impulsive madness way. Like I liked Lily in an infernal, deceptive way. Kind of. Sometimes."

"You say the sweetest things," Lily said drily.

Angel glared at her over the growing cloud of Not-Professor Riddle. "You called the Light, while I was possessing you. That hurt! And you always were too ambivalent for my tastes, anyway. Tom, on the other hand, knew exactly who and what he was, and he embraced my presence in his soul in a way vanishingly few mortals ever have. And even if he didn't quite encompass everything I am, either, he shaped Bella into the beautiful, deadly thing she is, and she's much closer. If she weren't so bloody independent-minded, I might actually try to poach her from Eris."

She paused, apparently finished with whatever she'd been doing to the fragments of Riddle's soul, examining the small cloud of moody vapour from multiple angles. It appeared, Lyra thought, to be trying to escape her hold, tendrils of it reaching out in ways that weren't really very cloud-like at all. "Did you...put him back together?" Lyra asked, fascinated. She'd never really looked into soul magic much, beyond a few techniques that were useful in cursebreaking (and she'd hardly ever practiced those). She had a suspicion this wasn't the sort of magic humans could really do at all, but that didn't mean it wasn't really fucking neat.

"Yep! And strengthened the connection between this half of him and the half still wandering around as a wraith. Or, well, I guess he's got a golem, now, but, whatever." She brought the cloud closer to herself, breathing it in like a fucking dementor.

It was weird, Lyra wouldn't really have expected a cloud to be able to express fear, but the way it had twisted, apparently trying to resist being inhaled, had a distinctly panicked air about it. Did it actually understand what was going on, somehow? "Is — was — that thing actually conscious?"

"Oh, he still is!" Angel said, grinning cheerfully. "I can't start integrating him while he's still tied to this plane. Or, well, I could, but only the part of him I'm holding. If I wait, I get a second marshmallow."

"Er...what?"

"It's a metaphor." Well no fucking shite, Lyra just didn't get the bloody reference! "When you finally break his anchors and his hold on his body, the rest of him will be drawn to me as well, and then he'll be all mine, part of me forever. Or," she nodded to Persephone, "as forever as I'll get to experience. Oh! Before I forget, Kallisti, I was looking for you because Sarah wants to talk to you about her ghost problem."

Lily scowled at her use of her pet name for Death. (Still fucking weird.) "You mean the fact that you keep murdering people in her house?"

"No, I'm pretty sure it's the ghosts she cares about," she said dismissively, turning back to Kore. "She wants you to let her exorcise them. Please don't? They're part of an experiment."

"You're...experimenting on ghosts? What are you doing with them?" Lily asked, sounding intrigued rather in spite of herself.

"Oh, now you've done it." Persephone rolled her eyes. "This is supposed to be a party, Angel. And while I don't approve of metamorphs refusing to die, I also don't approve of you killing people early just so you can torture their ghosts for fun."

"Research!" Angel insisted.

"You know you could just ask about how ghosts work," Death pointed out. "It's not like it's a big fundamental that would be telling sort of secret."

"Yes, but if you just give me the answers, I'll never really learn anything," Angel said, very smugly.

Kore groaned. "Where's... Did you say 'Sarah'? Bloody metamorphs always changing their names..."

Angel ruffled Lyra's hair in farewell before skipping the two steps to the goddess and linking their arms together. "I know right? It's just ridiculous! Especially since she always uses names that are so bloody similar." Rather than pull Persephone into the Shadows, she kept skipping, dragging her along by the elbow.

Lily, who stayed with Lyra, rolled her eyes. "Silly goose."

Lyra failed to hold in a snigger. "Kore or Angel?"

"Er...both? Honestly, I still find it kind of weird how human they can be, these powerful, fundamental forces of the Universe. And I wanted to know what she was trying to do with the ghosts, too!"

"Can't you just remember it?"

"Not really, no. Ghosts are just impressions in local magic, they don't really die. And the Dark is a lot bigger than me. Time and space don't mean that much from my side of things, but I'm not fully assimilated myself, so they do still apply in a way they don't for the Dead in general. Things that happen further away from my own entry into Death are more remote — harder to access. And Angel belongs to the Dark, like that version of Riddle now belongs to her. The Dark isn't going to die probably until the last conscious being dies, it's pretty fucking fundamental to sapient life itself. But that's very far away, it might take the rest of your lifetime and your children's for me to reach it."

Oh. Neat. Wait, "Children? Who the hell ever said I would be having children?"

"Er...your wife? I might not be able to see your memories, but a century or so isn't really that far."

Well, that was just disconcerting as hell, was what that was. "How far is far?" she asked, deliberately changing the subject away from the children she might or might not have, even if wife implied she didn't have to actually be pregnant, and there was obviously going to be blood alchemy involved, and— Wait, WIFE? I wasn't planning on getting married, either! Though, she guessed it wouldn't be so bad, binding herself to Maïa. Their Houses were already practically joined, if in a rather less equal way than marriage implied, and Maïa was rarely boring, so... She almost asked something along the lines of, why would we bother making it official, but hesitated — talking about her own future just smacked of fate in a way that made Lyra very uncomfortable — and decided to continue changing the subject instead. "I mean, you can't by any chance tell me how the Black Family Magic came about, can you? See, Sirius and my elf, Cherri, kind of broke the fucking thing, I've been trying to fix it all year. Or, well, I've kind of been distracted a lot, but I've been planning on trying to fix it all year."

"Er...I definitely can't tell you tonight. A couple millennia isn't like, last conscious being dies far away, but it's not exactly nearby, either. And the answer would probably take longer to explain than we really have. I mean, aren't most Family Magics built up over centuries? And the Blacks were into more esoteric shite than most Houses even before they dedicated themselves to the Dark, their Family magic is bound to be more complex."

Lyra sighed. "Yeah, I figured out that much, at least. Or, well, Theo recently mentioned that the wards on Ancient House kind of menace him whenever he's there unsupervised, and I don't think most House Magics are animate enough to do that sort of thing independently. And that's just one fragment of the Family Magic."

"Wait, really? Oh, that's so cool. Kind of weird none of the Blacks in the last few centuries really understood how their own Family Magic worked, but I guess I can't really blame them. I mean, I never made a point of getting to know the Potter Family Magic, it was always just kind of there in the background."

"I know! It's really fucking annoying, honestly! I've been working my way back through the grimoires, but kind of a lot of shite was lost when the House was razed before the Covenant, and everything we still have from before the accretion effects became really obvious is missing all sorts of details that would've been common knowledge at the time, probably, but no one does fucking coven magic, anymore! And it's not like they were really studying the process anyway, so what they did record isn't necessarily useful."

"So, wait...you're just trying to fix it? Replicate the original process and put the pieces back together like they grew up from the beginning?"

"Well...yeah? What else would I do?"

Lily's spirit shrugged. "I don't know, build something completely new? I'm sure you could find some way to incorporate the more conscious fragments to maintain some continuity, but that's got to be easier than trying to knit the old pieces back together. It's never going to be the same, anyway."

Well, yeah, she knew that. There wouldn't be a new Covenant, for one thing, but she had been in a sort of fixing mindset, as far as she could. Looking back on why she'd originally thought that was the way to go, she realised she'd decided that it would be easier to fix than replace back when she'd first arrived and realised what Sirius had done. There was Black Family Magic before the Covenant, Sirius's actions hadn't really destroyed it completely, just put a few major fractures in it. But then Cherri had shattered it with the shock of her re-orienting it away from Sirius, and she'd realised that the blood wards were strangling the individual shards, so she'd had to break them, and yeah, at this point, it might actually be easier to start over.

Not that she had any idea how to do that, but it would mean she could stop researching thousand-year-old ritual practices and fighting her natural inclination to break all of the things rather than restore order to them. (She couldn't even conceptualise her attempt to fix the Family Magic as restoring its autonomy.) That last bit was probably a major part of the reason she'd been having so much trouble actually focusing on the project, because she suddenly felt much more enthusiastic about the whole thing.

"Has anyone ever told you you're a fucking genius, Evans?!"

Lily's spirit actually looked slightly taken aback for a second. "Not that enthusiastically, for sure."

"No, seriously, that's a great idea! I have no idea how I'd do it, because the only shortcut I know for creating that sort of complex magical construct is human sacrifice, and Sirius definitely wouldn't go for it—" She was going to have had to find some way to deal with that, anyway, given the old traditions of the House. (She had managed to figure out that they'd been making sacrifices long before they'd dedicated themselves to the Dark). "—and grafting together a bunch of separate semi-animate ward schemes and integrating them into a single entity like they should be is something I've never even heard of anyone trying to do—" She was pretty fucking certain Ciardha would tell her it was impossible, actually, like trying to cut a property out of one Family and integrate its place-bound magics into an existing Family without restructuring both ward-schemes completely, which with wards as developed and integrated and concretic as the various Black properties, would completely destroy them. Not that something being impossible had ever stopped her doing it before, but— "Necromancy!"

"What?"

"Well, technically it wouldn't be, but soul magic, or, obviously the ward-shards don't actually have souls, but—" Unless they did...? What even was a soul, really? "—the wardcrafting equivalent — actually, like what Angel just did to Not-Professor Riddle — that's the way to integrate them, all the pieces — I just need to design a ward— Or, well—"

"Oh! Right! Okay, I get it. But would a ward be able to do something like that? I mean, it would have to be able to kind of subsume the extant pieces, right?"

"Well, no, not a new ward, I was originally thinking some sort of septarian bridging to bind them together, but that won't work — but the elements to do something like this are already there, I just need to pick one of the shards and bolster it enough that it can overtake the others, and...facilitate contact between them somehow—" And also between it and herself — all of the shards recognised her, but it wouldn't do to have her control-shard gaining enough independence that it could choose not to, and, well, it was a very real possibility that she personally didn't have the dominating sort of personality to force it to comply with her will — if she had to center the House on Bella to make this work, she was going to be livid... "I don't know, I'd have to figure that out, I don't really know enough about soul magic or what the shards are, and how far I can alter them without completely destroying them, but... Evans, this could work!"

"It could. I mean, I don't know all that much about wardcrafting, but I did a lot of reading on soul magic, trying to come up with a way to foil the Killing Curse, and obviously that sort of thing is a lot clearer from this side of the Veil, and the difference between living consciousness and emergent consciousness is— Well, I shouldn't really say, because that would be telling, but..." She paused for the briefest moment, just long enough for Lyra to notice. "It's a difference of degree, not kind. That's the only hint I can give you, and only because there are other living people around you who already know." Who? "But if you want, I can help you figure it out."

"Wait, what?"

Lily's spirit grinned. "Summon me, bind my spirit to a book or something. I won't remember anything I learned after dying, because those aren't really my memories, but I bet I knew a lot more about soul magic than you when I died, anyway."

Oh. Well that was...pretty fucking awesome, Lily fucking Evans just volunteering to help her figure out this mad, impossible problem — out of all the people who'd died in the course of Not-Professor Riddle's stupid war, she was the one Lyra thought had sounded most interesting. But on the other hand... "Didn't Kore keep you around because she likes your company?" Annoying Persephone by stealing her favourite pet was probably a bad idea...

"I'm informed that I would still be hers. See, the thing about summoning spirits is, it's only ever really Death you're talking to. Death limiting itself to the memories and personality of a single individual, but still Death. I'm not entirely independent of Kallisti any more than you're independent of Eris. So, I'm pretty sure she'll still be able to talk to me if she wants to. Just, might be a bit awkward, since I won't remember everything that happened after dying. Though, it's not like that stopped her from dropping in on me occasionally when I was actually alive, so. Yeah, she's fine with it."

"Oh. Well, then yes, obviously. Though it'll probably have to wait until Yule — I'm going to have to figure out how to bind you in some form you can still communicate with me which, yeah, there are rituals for that, just, my knowledge of necromancy pretty much taps out at spill some blood and demand the presence of a spirit three times to talk to them." And she did kind of have a Triwizard Tournament to deal with, in the meanwhile.

"And prepare a vessel. Something like that diary of Riddle's would be good, though I'm pretty sure he was actually using glamours to facilitate his half of conversations. I'm not a good enough mind mage for that."

"Eh, that's fine. I'm sure I can figure something out." There were probably already solutions to that problem out there, as well. Actually, Theo might be able to point her in the right direction. For all she had more experience just kind of existing alongside the Powers, he was a much bigger high magic nerd than she was. She didn't really do rituals, other than this and the Unbinding. (And Yule, obviously, until last year.) If she and Eris wanted something from one of the other Aspects, they just asked. Like, directly. But she knew that was mostly what Theo had been looking at in the Black library. She made a mental note to ask him, probably tomorrow — Witnesses tended to be a bit absent for a few hours even after the Revel concluded.

Lily grinned again. "Oh, you will. Now, though, I'd kind of like to go catch up with my son a bit, before Jamie and Sirius fill his head with too much absolute nonsense."

Right, yeah, probably a good idea. "Before you go, can you summon Cygnus for me?" she asked. She'd rather not re-open the cut she'd made earlier if she didn't need to. Especially since she didn't care to claim shared blood with the rapist bastard. And she hadn't missed that Lily was the one who'd summoned Sirius out of the Dance. Compared to that, calling a specific spirit was nothing. It was practically the whole point of the ritual. "Mocking him for being dead and impotent sounds like a great way to spend the rest of the ritual."

Honestly, why Sirius didn't want to see his dead parents, Lyra would never understand.

Lily rolled her eyes. "You're ridiculous, you know that, right?"

"Please?"

The witch didn't really answer, her form simply receding toward the boys, who had established themselves around the edge of the clearing nearly out of sight, but as it did, another familiar spirit shimmered into existence, scowling down at her as though itching to take a swing.

He seemed...smaller, than she remembered. Older. Much like Ciardha had, when she and Eris had peeked in on her old universe that one time, really. Again, it was probably just because she was bigger now than she had been the last time she saw him — or at least more powerful, and significantly less human, even if she wasn't much taller — but it still kind of took her aback. The way he sneered at her, though, like she was too stupid to just fucking stay down (and not trying to make the point that he couldn't make her) — that was exactly the same as it always had been.

She gave him a sharp grin as he opened his mouth, undoubtedly to say something degrading. Her apparent confidence caused him to hesitate, almost-but-not-quite imperceptibly, which was just...satisfying in a way she couldn't really describe. And she hadn't even started in on him, yet.

Her grin pulled wider, almost enough to hurt. This was going to be fun.

---

So, Death basically considers human life to be the best soap opera/telenovela/drama. That's a thing.

And yes, Angel did compare waiting patiently to consume the entire soul of a person she likes to the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment. I find this hilarious.

I completely failed to take notes while proofing this chapter, so that's pretty much all I've got. —Leigha

Personally, I'll never cease to find it amusing that, when Lyra learns she'll be marrying a woman eventually, her immediate assumption is that it's Hermione. Because, who else? (Silly girl, you're fourteen, honestly...) —Lysandra

We're finally done with Samhain! Yay! —Leigha

We don't really have a buffer anymore, future chapters will come as we have them. —Lysandra