"I'm kinda on a deadline, here, Peg." Bucky warned. "I'm hoping that you have a way to contact the Howlies. The kids need training and Morita was the best at hand to hand."
"He's already here." Peggy replied. "So are Falsworth and Dugan. We meet up, every year and as I knew you were hoping that the Veil would send you to Scotland or England sometime this year, I agreed to host the boys."
"Fabulous." Bucky grinned. "Now all we have to do is tell them about magic and convince them to help out."
His grin made both Tonks and Carter groan.
The three Howling Commandos looked around in excitement and interest, as the portkey landed them in a lush garden.
"We're really somewhere else…" Dum-dum grinned.
"Hey, Dum-dum!" A long-forgotten voice called.
The three men spun around and saw a familiar face.
"Black." Dum-dum laughed. "So, you're a wizard, huh?"
"Yep." Sirius nodded.
"And the kids are, too?" Morita asked cautiously.
"They are." Sirius waved off to one side. "They're over there."
The old soldiers looked where Sirius pointed and saw a tall black man putting four teens through a series of spellcasting drills. Lights of different colours left their wands and impacted on a quartet of timber dummies.
"The darker girl and the larger lad need to work on their aim." Falsworth offered.
"Will you work up a training schedule for us?" Bucky knew that Falsworth had been in charge of the Howlies' scheduling.
"I can do that, but I'll need a better idea of what each of us are doing. What we're going to be teaching them."
"I can help with that." Moody grunted as he and the others joined them.
"Hi." Harry said. "Thanks for coming and agreeing to help us."
"You might be thanking us now, but that won't last long." Morita warned.
Harry grinned. "Why do you think I'm saying it now?"
Sirius barked a laugh as Hermione reached out a smacked Harry's arm. "Behave."
"Laugh while you can, you won't have the energy from tomorrow, onwards." Falsworth told them.
"Not tomorrow." Bucky said. "Tomorrow, Sirius and I are getting married."
"Married?" Dum-dum asked. "You really want to marry him?" He asked Sirius.
"Oh, yes." Sirius nodded.
"I've been told that I have to go and get Director Carter, she wants be here." Tonks said.
"I don't see a problem with that." Sirius nodded. "It's not like she'll know where we are or be able to get back here. Muggle tracking devices will be knocked out by the portkey before she even leaves home."
Moody squinted and huffed but finally nodded.
"The only issue I have with assisting in the training of the youngsters," James Falsworth spoke in an accent very similar to Sirius', "is that Dum-dum, Morita and I are old men, now. Of the three of us, I'm the youngest and I turned eighty-three last month. Morita's two years older and Dum-dum is almost ninety. If Barnes hadn't gone with Black, even he'dbe in his late seventies. We're not kids, anymore."
"I can show them most of the moves, but some are just beyond me, now. Arthritis is a bitch." Morita added.
"You saw me walking." Dum-dum said. "I'm going to need a hip replacement soon. I can tell them what to do, but I can't show them."
Moody growled, they'd been so close to having decent tutors for the kids.
Sirius was looking at Bucky, a thoughtful expression on his face.
"What? What're you thinking?" Bucky asked.
"I lost eleven years coming through the Veil." He replied. "You lost nearly five." He turned to Moody. "Do de-aging potions work on muggles?"
Moody's smile was a frightening thing. "They do. As does skele-gro, pepper-up, blood replenisher, most nerve- and musculo-regens, invigorating draught and all of the amortentia family."
"How long does a de-aging potion last on them." Remus asked. "Most magicals burn through it in a matter of hours to a few days, at most."
"For muggles it tends to last months, not days." Moody answered. "And it reverses itself in stages, if given a booster during one of these stages, it can last for a year or more. The downside is, when it wears off, completely, the muggle can't use it again for a full moon cycle."
"If we're going to do something like that," Falsworth said, "we're going to need a medic."
"School's out." Harry grinned. "Do you think Dumbledore would lend us Madam Pomfrey?"
"Nah, lad." Moody shook his head. "Pomfrey's only worked on kids for the last twenty plus years."
"And I doubt she's ever had cause to work on muggles." Sirius added.
"What about mum?" Tonks asked. "She's got her healer's badges and is also familiar with muggles, she works in our local hospital during emergencies. They think that she's a specialist from Leeds."
"And she's worked with both the Order and the DMLE before," Kingsley said, "getting her to take an oath before she's given too many details, isn't all that unusual."
"Plus, the apothecaries are used to her getting muggle- and squib-friendly variants of the healing potions, so getting them shouldn't be an issue." Moody nodded.
"Shall I go and ask her?" Tonks asked.
"Yes." Moody nodded again." I'll go with you and get her oath before we come back here. Black? See to rooms for everyone and put aside a couple extras, they might not stay but have a room for them just in case." He turned to Tonks. "Come on, Missy, let's go." He waited until she nodded before apparating away.
"If we're looking at bringing in some others?" Harry asked. "Can we get someone that can teach us how to use a sword or knives or something?"
Sirius and Kingsley shared a hurried and almost silent conversation.
"The only one that we know of that can teach you properly, is Flitwick." Sirius warned. "Are you sure you'd be okay with that?"
"Flitwick's fine." Harry nodded after exchanging glances with Hermione, Neville and Luna. "He's also a Duelling Master. His height might be a problem, though."
"Transfiguration." Sirius said. "As long as he stays to scale, increasing his size is not going to affect his abilities."
"Wicked." Harry grinned.
"Are we going to have time to study everything?" Hermione wanted to know.
"You'll be fine." Falstworth said. "We'll target each session to match your current ability and most sessions will be one-on-one. That means that you don't need to be hesitant or embarrassed by your friends, you don't have to push yourself to keep up with someone else, nor will you be held back by someone else."
"No studying at the level of the lowest student, you'll all study at your own pace and each subject will be altered to get the most out of you." Morita went on. "As we progress, you may be told to drop a subject, you may be given new ones, or you may be told to specialise in a particular weapon or skill. Until we know what you are capable of, right now, we can't do that."
"The first week with be mostly test you." Falsworth warned. "Then the hard work will begin."
"And this island also has a limited time dilation capacity." Sirius said. "Limited in that, one week is stretched to four, but then it takes a week to recharge the rune crystals."
"How long will that net us?" Falsworth had been given too much information for him to do the math.
"Summer holidays are eight weeks" Sirius answered. "We'd be able to use the time dilation crystals four times, turning four weeks into four months, then there's the four weeks that are needed to charge the crystals. All up, we'd have nearly five months, twenty weeks to be exact."
"How does that work, Sirius?" Hermione asked.
"It slows down the effects of time within the area set out by runestones linked to the time crystal. People can still apparate in and out, they'll just be dizzy for a bit on incoming, outgoing seems to be the same as normal. Portkeys won't work, the time connection clashes with the charm sequences used to create them."
"Can we learn to apparate?" Neville asked, he wasn't as hesitant to put himself forward as he had been before joining the D.A.
"Flitwick's licenced to train and register you for that." Kingsley said. "Should Remus ask him, or should I?"
Sirius bit his lip as he thought. "Probably better for it to come from Remus, we don't want to hint at anything official. Tell him to speak to Dumbledore if he has any queries."
"Why not ask him to meet you in the Headmaster's office?" Luna said. "That way Professor Dumbledore can provide assurances that what we're doing is for the war effort and that he knows and approves."
Remus and Kingsley both nodded.
"I'll give you a copy of the Secret to show him." Sirius said and headed for the house. "Oh, hey, come one in. I got a pair of elves from Hogwarts, Dobby and Winky. Dumbledore said you'd know who I meant. Winky insisted on being bound, her health was too fragile not to." Sirius paused in a doorway, as he saw the distaste on Hermione's face. "Did you know that without being bound to a family or somewhere with a large influx of magic, elves die? They use the bond to balance their magic, without the bond their magic gets unstable and wild and will eventually shatter and kill them." Hermione gasped in horror. "Which is why Hogwarts takes in any elf that turns up there. Dobby, however, he's different, the abuse that the Malfoys dished out on him, caused an abnormal alteration in his magic. Dobby doesn't need a family bond, he's converted it to a friendship bond, that lets him work for whomever he wants and he can be paid for it, all without negating his bond to Harry." He entered a large and bright office and crossed to a desk, opening draws and pulling out parchment.
"Me?" Harry asked.
"You." Sirius nodded. "He used your freeing him from the Malfoys to initiate a bond. He had to alter the bond as only a Head of House can offer a bond and while you are the last Potter, you can't take your Head of House position until you are seventeen." He wrote as he spoke.
"Head of House?"
Sirius frowned at Harry. "Surely Dumbledore explained this to you?"
"Nope, never said a word." Harry shook his head. "I know nothing about the Potter family. I didn't see a picture of mum and dad until the end of first year, when Hagrid gave me a photo album. I still don't know where they lived or what they did for a living or anything else, other than I look like dad but with mum's eyes."
Sirius groaned. "Bloody hell, Albus…" He turned to Remus. "Tell Albus that I need to have a word with him. And it bloody well better be today." He held out a slip of parchment to Remus.
"Will do." The werewolf took the parchment and headed for the apparition point.
An hour later Tonks and Moody returned with a woman that Harry assumed to be Tonks' mother, who was introduced as Andromeda Tonks, nee Black. Sirius said she was the sane sister of Bellatrix Lestrange and Narcissa Malfoy, who'd run away from home at sixteen and married a muggleborn called Ted Tonks.
Andi, as she insisted on being called, took the three Howlies away and after giving them general health scans, said that they would be fine to use de-aging potions, that the potions would actually increase their overall health even after the potion wore off.
As she was dosing Morita, Dum-dum had an interesting suggestion.
"We should do this to Peggy, she can teach the girls to fight, too. How to bring down a man and keep him down. You said it might help with other health problems? She's forgetting things."
"We can correct that." Andi said. "Alzheimer's and dementia can be pre-treated against."
"I'll go ask her." Tonks said and ran out the door.
She was back inside half an hour with Peggy and a suitcase of clothing.
"Do you really think this will work?" Peggy asked, clearly nervous.
"Oh, yes." Andi replied. "We've a fair number of cases we've used it on. In many cases we only de-aged a person by a few days, but we do have documented cases of de-aging muggles and magicals by years and even decades."
"Auror Tonks said that it wears off, after a limited time?"
"It does." Andi nodded. "Magicals burn through the potion in a matter of days, if not hours. Muggles, however…? It can last for months and if a booster is given at the correct time, a year or more."
"Is there a permanent version?" Peggy asked, tilting her head, to look at Bucky.
"There is, but it's only used in very rare cases." Andi said. "Usually when someone has received a traumatic head injury."
"Um… excuse me?" Neville raised a hand. "Why wasn't something like that used on my parents?"
Andi blinked and blinked again before frowning. "I… don't… know…" She mused.
"If Gran okays it, can we bring them here and try it?" Neville asked. "Dad was an Auror, too. That would give us two more Aurors, if Moody, Tonks and Kingsley had to go back to the Ministry."
"I'll speak to… who's their primary healer?" Andi asked.
"Miriam Strout is in charge of the whole ward, but Kyle Ambrose is their main healer." Neville answered. "He has been, since they were first admitted."
"Ah, that explains a lot." Andi sighed.
"It does?" Hermione asked.
"Ambrose is a long-term care specialist not a trauma healer, neither is Strout." Andi explained. "I'll go and talk to Augusta and we'll see what we can do. But… Not until you four are stable."
"Very well." Peggy nodded. "Where do you want me and should I change first?"
Four hours later Andi sighed and sat back. "Well, it seems we have a problem, Miss Carter, gentlemen."
"And that problem is?" Peggy asked, her throat still raw from screaming.
"You aren't a muggle, you're a squib." Andi said. "And that changes how your body reacts to the potion." She sighed. "I'm sorry… The changes were a little more extreme than expected and are… permanent…"
"Meaning…?" Peggy's face was hard and set.
"You're ten years old." Andi said. "And we have no way of reversing it. Unfortunately, you're going to have to grow up like any other ten-year-old."
"I'm…" Peggy snarled, took a deep breath and closed her eyes. For a few minutes that's all she did. When she opened her eyes, she spoke. "I will need to speak to the current director of S.H.I.E.L.D, he will need to be made aware of my age alteration. And I will need someone that is, on paper at least, my guardian."
Everyone turned to look at Bucky.
"Me?" His eyes widened in shock. "Why are you looking at me?"
"It can't be one of us." Morita said. "Dum-dum and I are American and Peggy's English. Plus once the de-aging potions wear off, we'll be back to being old men. You've been permanently de-aged. And you're marrying a wealthy British wizard, you keeping the squib child of a deceased friend, will be a one-day wonder, then it'll be forgotten. Us? Not possible. You? How else are you going to get kids?"
"I am not a child." Peggy snapped.
"No, you're not, but only those of us here, know that." Morita reminded her.
"Dammit." Bucky muttered.
"Bugger." Peggy swore at the same time.
The following morning shone bright and clear, not a cloud in the sky and as the island lay between the English west coast and the Irish east coast, the weather was liable to change at any time. But right now, it was a beautiful summer's day and it was time for a wedding or the magical version, thereof.
Albus Dumbledore stood in beside a delicate table and took a deep breath.
"Wait!" Sirius said.
"What now?" Dumbledore muttered, forgetting that he'd cast a minor sonorous charm on himself, earning him a laugh from Harry and Neville.
"We can't do this without McGonagall." Sirius whined. "I thought I could but… I can't."