Lily smiled as she took in the chaos going on around her; her family laughing and joking around. The last six years had gone by so fast that she could barely believe it. The time had been filled with both good and bad moments, but with the good eclipsing the bad. Her 'triplets' and their overprotective 'big brother' had made sure of that. With a quiet sigh Lily remembered how her twins had turned into triplets.

They had later learned that on the same night as Dumbledore came after the twins, someone also came after the Longbottoms. Lucius Malfoy and Bartimus Crouch Jr had been caught using crucio on Frank and Alice Longbottom, while Augusta had been incapacitated and left to watch her son and daughter-in-law get tortured. Barty Crouch had been sent directly to Azkaban where he later died, while Lucius had managed to weasel his way out of any repercussions by saying that he had been imperio'd. And while that might be true, she suspected that the man behind the curse was not the one that the public believed it to be.

The home-invasion had left Frank and Alice cursed into insanity, unable to recognize even their own son, and made Augusta suffer a mental breakdown that left her unable to look after her grandson. Lily had quickly stepped in as Neville's godmother to take over custody, and thus her twins had become triplets. Her children immediately took a liking to the other child, even taking it a step further as they grew older by changing their appearance to match with their 'brother'.

After settling the custody issue of Neville, Lily, Petunia and Dudley had gone to Gringott to see if the goblins knew of a way to restore their magic. Something they did. More amazingly, they agreed to help with restoring Petunia and Dudley's magic. It was during this process that another shocking truth was revealed to them; neither Petunia nor Lily were an Evans by birth. Their biological parents were Tom and Bellarose Riddle. Or more known in the magical world, the Dark Lord Voldemort and his Dark Mistress.

Lily had to admit she had been nervous to learn that. Especially when the goblins told them that their parents needed to be part of the restoration ritual. The fact that the Light Lord was rotten did not meant that the Dark Lord was any better, and right then they could not afford to face a war from both sides. But Azrail had stood by her side and told her to do what her gut instinct told her to do, and that no matter what happened he would stand with her. And it turned out that all her worrying had been for nothing. Tom and Bella had been ecstatic when they reached out to them, and they had learned that once again it was Dumbledore that had been the villain behind the unwilling separation. Once the Riddles found out about what the so called Light Lord had done to their oldest daughter and grandson they were beyond furious, and with their support it was not long before both Petunia and Dudley had access to their magical core.

When all the immediate concerns had been taken care of the adults sat down to discuss what the best course of action forwards should be. That was when they learned several interesting facts; Severus Snape was Tom's inside man, playing Dumbledore's spy. Lucius was in fact one of Tom's main supporters, but the torture of the Longbottoms had been staged by the Light side. And finally someone had created what Tom believed was a golem and Dumbledore's spirit was possessing it. How it had been done, or by whom, none of them could explain, but Severus was trying to find out without blowing his cover.

They all agreed that it would far too dangerous for Lily to stay in Britain with the children, and that under no circumstances would they be doing their schooling at Hogwarts with Dumbledore's influence being so great there. Many different countries and locations came up as suggestions, among them were America, Romania, Bulgaria and France, but they were all discarded for one reason or another. In the end they decided that the best school for the children would be Valhalla Skole for Fródleikr og Seiðr, which was the Scandinavian magical school. On paper the school's curriculum was much more advanced than Hogwarts, something Lily was approving of since Hogwart's lesson plan had been a disappointment for her. And while there were not much news to be found about the nordic magical society, in fact there had not been a war between dark and light in over 200 years, that in itself was a point to them.

Once the school and continent was settled, they had to decide where they wanted to make their home. They quickly ruled Denmark out for being too close to Britain, and Finland because they had one of the world's most difficult languages to learn. So the choice stood between Sweden and Norway, not that it made it any easier. Norway was 1,33 times bigger than the United Kingdom, and Sweden even bigger with its 441 370 km2. Lily had managed to reduce that areal greatly by falling in love with the pictures of northern lights and the midnight sun. In the end, after much arguing, they had all agreed to let chance decide for them by throwing a dart at a map.

And that was how they ended 350 km north of the Arctic Circle. Near Tromsø to be exact, on an old, smallish farm called Holemark Gård. They had transformed the barn into a guesthouse for whenever Tom, Bellarose, Sirius or Remus came to visit. Petunia and Dudley had received the original guesthouse as their own home, while Lily and Azrail had taken the main house as their own. Not that it stopped the children from spending almost every day and night together.

Their first order of business after settling in their home was enrolling the children into one of the daycares which were one of the prerequisite for them to later enroll into Valhalla. They were astonished when they discovered that the children already in daycare was a mix of purebloods, halfbloods, muggleborns and muggles, or magiløse as they were called in norwegian. A bemused teacher had to sit them down and explain that magic was an open secret in Norway. Exactly how that worked out she had still not completely understood, but miraclus it did.

With the children squared away during the day time, learning history, reading and writing norwegian, and playing with all the other children, the adult could concentrate on their own studies. Only speaking english was good for now, with almost the whole Norwegian population able to communicate with them in that language, they knew that if they wanted to fully integrate with the people here they needed to speak the native language. But instead of doing it the hard way, like their children or the muggles, they cheated with magic and took a wit-sharpening potion which made learning about the norwegian language and culture much easier.

"Lils?" her sister's voice brought her out of her reminiscing, and she looked around to see all four hellions ready to go. "Everything ok?"

"I am good." Lily smiled at her sister, "I just can't believe that they are already old enough for school."

"Me neither." Petunia laughed and looked at the children that were now staring at them impatiently. "The years truly have rushed by."

"That they have." Lily agreed. "But I think we need to get moving before the hellions get too impatient."

The sisters exchanged a humorous smile before ushering the children towards the floo and the magical alley that was waiting for them on the other side.

Translations:

Valhalla Skole for Fródleikr og Seiðr - Valhalla School for Magic and Spells

Magiløse - Magicless (pl.)