Disclaimer: Harry Potter and his world belong to J. K. Rowling.

Notes: Harry's adult children: Victoria, Margaret, James and Beth. Adam Bourne is his stepson. Nicholas Abercrombie is a grandson. Harry's staff includes Melissa & Jason Wiley, security guards.

Chapter 7:

Sunday, July thirty-first, Harry's birthday. He was seventy-two. He sat in the sunshine talking to Margaret. Nicholas, her eldest son, was off riding one of Harry's horses. Margaret was asking him whether he was tired of Nicholas living with him, but Harry said that he very much enjoyed his company. That his house was big, and often lonely. That he liked having him there. Margaret thought that it was a safeguard, too. Harry Potter needed protectors.

An awkward figure turned into the driveway. From their distance, it looked deformed, but as it became closer, they could see that it was the slight figure of a girl, with a large backpack. One of the security guards, riding a horse, cantered over to the walker, wand by her side just in case.

There was some brief conversation, and Melissa Wiley looked in the direction of Harry and Margaret, and then back at the girl. The girl looked the image of Harry Potter in a female form. She was very young, only about sixteen, Melissa thought, and spoke with an American accent. She trudged tiredly, although she had put a spell on her backpack so that it was much lighter than it looked.

Melissa slipped off the horse, and walked with her to where Harry and Margaret waited. Harry rose, and held out his hand. She had the look and feel of family, although he'd never met her before. She introduced herself as Cissy Diefenberger, and said nothing more, staring at Harry, and at Margaret. "Please, sit down," Harry said.

Cissy slipped off her backpack, and sat, joining them at their table. Harry didn't believe in uncomfortable garden furniture, and the chairs and table were as comfortable as any that were normally indoors. When the setting looked too worn from the weather, he'd vanish it, and conjure a new setting.

Cissy still didn't say why she had come, and Harry asked her how she had found him.

"I don't know," she said. "I had a feeling, and then some-one down the road said that the Potters lived in the property with the high fences."

Harry observed to Margaret, "Lucky it's not so easy for everyone to find the place," and he offered Cissy a plate of sandwiches. Cissy took one gratefully, and ate hungrily, following it with several more.

It was Margaret who finally leaned forward, and asked her why she had come.

Cissy said simply, "My parents are dead, and I think Mr. Potter might be my father, so I came here."

Harry looked at her. She certainly had the feeling of family, although the strong resemblance to himself was more obvious to his daughter than it was to him.

"How old are you, Cissy?"

"I was sixteen two days ago."

Gently, he said, "Then I'm afraid that I cannot be your father. I was married to Luna then, and there was no-one else."

"Are you sure? They say that you go with lots of women."

"I'm sure," he said.

"I have this," she said, suddenly delving into a plastic bag in the side of her backpack, and Harry looked at a shipboard menu, and a small photograph of a young man with his leg in a cast. He turned over the photograph, and in faded pencil was a note, Bellamy. He looked at the evidence, and said, "Susan." He smiled at Cissy. "I think you must be my grand-daughter."

But Cissy shook her head. "My grandmother's name wasn't Susan. My mother's mother was called Toni Schuster. Her maiden name was McKay."

Harry looked at Margaret. "Margaret, am I old enough to be a great grandfather?"

Harry as well as Margaret was calculating, and finally, they nodded together, and Margaret said, "Barely."

"The woman I knew was called Susan McKay," said Harry. "I knew her when I was twenty-one, and it was on the ship that brought me back to England. I had my leg in plaster."

He indicated the small photograph. "That was me," and he smiled at her, "Are you going to live with me?"

"I have nowhere else to go."

Harry rose. "We'll go choose a bedroom," and Cissy noticed for the first time that he carried a cane. She followed him, feeling awkward. She had not expected such immediate acceptance, and found it difficult to think of this man as anything like old enough to be her great grandfather, although she knew that her mother had married very early, and had died very early, too.

Nicholas cantered up on a chestnut mare, and Harry introduced him to Cissy Diefenberger, his cousin or some such thing. Nicholas slipped off the mare, and shook her hand.

Melissa had been hanging back, but now she, too was told that Cissy would be living with them, that she was his great grand-daughter. Melissa looked at the very close resemblance between the pair, and thought that the connection had to be a lot closer than that, but politely greeted the girl.

Cissy smiled at Melissa, she thought she could be a friend, and she would love to learn to ride a horse. Melissa took the reins of Nick's horse for him, and Nick picked up Cissy's backpack.

Harry still slept in a large downstairs room, that had been converted to a bedroom when he'd been very ill. He'd never got around to moving back upstairs, and Cissy had a choice of upstairs bedrooms. She chose one with a large window that looked over the gardens. Nicholas put down the backpack, and watched her as she looked around her with an air of relief.

A half-grown tabby cat came in, sniffed at her, and hopped onto the bed, purring.

Cissy was weary, and when Harry showed her where the nearest bathroom was, and told her she should do exactly what she wanted, even if that was to go to bed for three hours, she thanked him. They left her alone then, and she went to the window. The whole place was bathed in sunshine, and seemed to wear an air of peace and contentment. She thought she could be very happy here, and she sat on the bed, and stroked the kitten.

In the next few days, Harry learned that part of the reason she had thought that she might be his daughter was that no-one could undo her spells. And she conjured a table for him, and he was stunned to discover that he couldn't vanish it, even when he raised the level of his magic to that of the small extra effort he needed in his spell-breaking sometimes. He thought he would need strong magic to vanish that table, and he couldn't use strong magic any more. They continued the experiments. Harry conjured a table, which Cissy could not vanish.

He had her try and do magic without a wand, but she made no progress at that. Only Beth, aside from himself, could do that, but it appeared that Cissy had as much, or nearly as much, raw power as himself, and she was only sixteen!

"Do you have any telepathy?" he suddenly asked her, but she shook her head, "I don't think so."

Harry thought that even so, he might finally have found a pupil he could teach to break spells. But she was only just sixteen, he reminded himself, and probably should go to school for the next two years.

Cissy agreed that she needed to return to school. She wanted to be a healer. She had been to Kandidria School of Magic, in New York. It's where she had seen Harry Potter, as he gave a series of lectures, the student audience becoming bigger with each one. People had started commenting on how much she looked like him, and then her father died suddenly, and she had no home to go to. Her mother had had four younger brothers and sisters, but they had all died young, two as children.

There were no living relatives on either side. Her father had been large and blonde, and she was small and dark, with green eyes, like her mother. When she found records that indicated that she had been conceived several months before the wedding, she had started wondering.

Harry gave her the option of continuing at Kandidria, or going to Hogwarts. She chose Hogwarts, and Harry arranged it for her.

Cissy already knew that he worked as a spell-breaker all over the world, and was intrigued by the idea. She thought that could be something she'd like to do when she finished school.

Harry was in Brazil the following week, and Nicholas rode with Cissy. Cissy had been given a well-behaved palomino pony for a start, called, unsuitably, 'Mustang.' Harry had brought him home one day from a neighbour's property. Mustang had been a show pony, but was left neglected after an accident that left him with a missing eye and a scarred face. But he was easy to ride, had a smooth gait, and the loss of an eye didn't seem to affect him, except that he habitually held his head slightly to one side. The two young people enjoyed themselves together.

Margaret was intrigued by the girl, and while Harry seemed perfectly happy to accept her as his great grand-daughter, and leave it at that, Margaret wanted to investigate further, and she quizzed Cissy about her ancestors, and checked records.

Finally she spoke to Harry, alone, and asked him whether he'd ever known someone called Anna Klein. Harry said that yes, she was German, and a tourist when he met her. Margaret was looking at him. That explained it, she'd thought that Cissy had to be closer related than great grand-daughter. Her father asked innocently, "What's the matter?"

"Cissy," she said. "I think you must be her grandfather, as well as her great grandfather!" She showed him the family tree she'd worked out, and explained, "Cissy's mother was your grandchild from Susan, but then she married another who could have been your son."

Harry was looking at her, upset. "It couldn't be. I was always so careful!"

"Not careful enough, it seems," and unusually, Margaret was critical.

"I was always so careful!" said Harry again. "And why did they have to find each other? One was German, one American. And Anna. She said she couldn't have children! And I never went with inexperienced women. Anna was thirty-five. And after Julia, I always worked the spell! That's yet another illegitimate child! It can't be right!"

Harry was both upset and horrified, and suddenly Margaret was laughing. "You must be pretty potent! And anyway, it looks like Cissy's all right. Just make sure she doesn't marry Nicholas. I think that might be enough in-breeding."

Harry was still upset, and Margaret said, "Don't look like that. It's not so bad, only really the equivalent of cousins marrying, and that's legal.

Margaret missed something. The one who married Susan's daughter, was also a son of Harry's, by an English woman, whom he knew when he was just seventeen. Harry was Cissy's great grandfather twice over as well as her grandfather. The weakness inherent in the breeding of half brother to half sister was why the children of the marriage died very young, and probably why the three who survived until adulthood were over-sensitive, and erratic in their behaviour. One of those children had been Cissy's mother, Iris. Purely accidentally, Cissy was the product of the sort of line-breeding that is often used in pedigree animals.

It was not that Harry had left that many children scattered around the world, it was more that when they met, they tended to feel an immediate attraction.

Margaret emphasised to Harry that he had to tell Cissy as soon as possible, but in his embarrassment, Harry left it until the day before Cissy was due to go to Hogwarts, and by then Cissy and Nick were going every day to a certain thick grove of trees. It was not so much that they thought they loved each other, but they certainly liked each other, and they both loved sex. Luckily, competent witches never have accidental children.

Harry felt thoroughly guilty, and thought that maybe he should give up sex. He seriously contemplated it for at least five minutes, and then went to visit Anthea instead. Anthea was great company, and she still only had the child that she'd had when he met her. It had to have been a fluke. He was always extremely careful. As well as the spell he quietly worked straight after, the muggle women had their own methods, of course. And as he'd said to Margaret, he never went with inexperienced women.

Angus O'Brien was the manager of St. Mungo's, and the President of the Guild of Mediwizards. He had just had another polite refusal on behalf of Harry Potter, to an invitation to an Awards Dinner. They'd been trying for six months to get Harry to something like that. They wanted to make him an honorary member, in recognition of his healing work. Even when they'd dropped hints about an award, there had been consistent refusals. It seemed that Potter no longer went to any formal functions at all, and this time, hot-tempered Angus swore, pulled out the carefully prepared parchment, and ripped it into shreds.

There had been a change in feeling toward Harry since the Ministry had so treacherously attacked him. In the newspapers these days, he tended to be referred to as 'Our Harry,' and there were respectful articles on his spell-breaking, his lectures, and he was featured in the social pages whenever they had the slightest opportunity. There were quite a few opportunities these days, as he socialised widely, vanishing though, if there was any threat of speech-making. Affectionate tales were told of his eccentricities, usually exaggerated. Various young witches boasted that they'd been to bed with him, but they lied. He still avoided witches.

There were no more demonstrators calling him 'Monster,' - not since a confrontation had resulted in most of them sprouting tentacles, and two others having to be rescued from a state of rigid paralysis.

They were not rescued quickly, either - the ambulance team who had been called, had regarded their placards, and had loudly decided that they'd best just check with base first, that they thought they'd left the paperwork behind, and didn't think they could act without it. Harry was very amused when he heard about it. He'd been in Finland at the time.

The old scandal of an unnatural relationship with his daughter had almost died. There was no evidence, and there was obviously no foundation. He was known to be on excellent terms with Beth and Jeremiah, and baby Kate was undeniably brown.

October, and Healer Ben Weasley returned to England, with his bride Hilde, who was also a healer. It was at their welcome home party that Harry was finally presented with the re-written parchment indicating that he was an Honorary Member of the Guild of Mediwizards.

Harry accepted courteously, showing considerable, if insincere, gratification, and asked Barbara Bancroft at the first opportunity if this meant that he could do without a mediwizard present when he worked his cures. She answered firmly, "No, Harry, it doesn't; - would you like another caramel slice? They're very good."

Cissy settled down easily at Hogwarts, and was working hard. She had been put into Gryffindor House, although the Sorting Hat had taken a long time.

Harry's guardianship of Cissy, who looked so much like Harry, and casually explained as a relative, added to Euan's conviction that Harry Potter should not be invited to teach at Hogwarts. While Euan had a profound respect for him in many ways, and liked him very much indeed, he had definite information that Harry had been sexually involved with his own daughter, from a witness to some indiscreet play on an apparently deserted beach. There were also known to be two illegitimate children, Helmer and Julia, and now there was Cissy, whom Euan thought was probably a third.

Yarns were told about his non-stop series of girlfriends, the source often the aurors who kept so close an eye on him when they were overseas. Euan thought that, admirable as Harry was in many ways, he was lacking in moral standards, and when one day, he heard a couple of the senior Professors laughing at the way Harry Potter had needed a chaperone to protect him from the girl students, he was even more convinced. As a responsible headmaster, Euan decided that Harry should not return to Hogwarts.

Harry did some more lectures at a couple of American schools. There was a school in California that he liked very much indeed. Zefron School of Magic had only its high wall and a short strip of grass separating it from the beach. It was not like Hogwarts with its ghosts and its history, but Hogwarts didn't have a beach. He was not wanted at Hogwarts, and he knew he could find a position at Zefron any time he liked.

Nicholas left him, and started working in Germany. Margaret had told Nick about Cissy's ancestry, and while it had not become serious between them, he thought it more prudent not to see her again until one or other of them was safely married to someone else.

Harry enjoyed himself these days. There were no attempts to kill him, not even the occasional attempts at poisoning that had occurred in the past. It felt like such freedom that aurors would not appear to keep an eye on him wherever he went.There were a few places overseas where Franz insisted he not wander alone, but that was only reasonable prudence, which he tolerated. His door was still guarded at night, and if he got up after a nightmare, and unless he insisted otherwise, the guard would accompany him as he walked off the upset.

But often, just being able to be alone if he wanted, was sufficient, and he liked all the aurors who were on his team, and enjoyed their company. It was undeniable that it was safer when two men walked along strange streets at night, rather than one.

It remained peaceful at his home, and as Harry had known, Andrew did not return.

**x**

Harry didn't want to be left without horses again, and he wanted to continue the line of Sheba, so used Kintu, a daughter of Kinship, to breed from. Horses were so short-lived. It seemed that he just had to turn his back, and they were old. Jumbuck was gone now, also Corio and Kinship. Others were long gone.

He still had several grown or nearly sons and daughters of Kinship, as Jimmy Carr had continued to breed from her while he was gone. But Jimmy didn't have the contacts that Harry had, and only Kinsman had a famous racehorse as a sire. The horses were useful. Jason and Melissa Wiley used them to patrol, as they could get to potential trouble quickly.

But it continued peaceful, and after a while, they began to turn their attention to gardening, as security guards before them had done. Kevin's terriers did such a good job with their barking when visitors came that constant vigilance again seemed unnecessary. Jason and Melissa acquired a dog as well, after Harry brought home a poodle so neglected that her coat had to be shorn off. He still brought strays home now and then, and a poodle was no problem to take care of when one could just wave a wand.

Bill Forrester was still manager, although over eighty, and Chris Barnes second-in-command. Chris was no longer a city boy, although he would never acquire the extensive knowledge of landcare that Bill had.

Margaret Brown competently ruled Harry's wealth, which had grown with successful books and lecture tours, as well as his spell-breaking. Chrissy now did most of his correspondence, becoming very good at tactful excuses for not attending functions that Harry didn't like. She ran his wardrobe, too, and he found new clothes appear when needed, and when he bought things himself, they would often quietly disappear. Harry knew that everyone thought that he had bad taste, but still was invariably attracted to bright, bright colours. Only his cape was always plain black.

The only real discontent was that Harry felt a frustration every time he wanted to cure someone, and had instead to refer them to Beth. Luckily, there were not many of those, as each time he felt a renewed temptation. Maybe, he always thought, it would be all right this time. But the remembered pain had been extreme, and Hermione said that his life had been in danger besides. He resisted the temptation.

There was still a hole in his life, but the sadness of loneliness had been there so long that Harry never thought about it these days.

The months went peacefully.

**x**

Cissy left school after her final two years. She had excellent results at NEWTs level, and was accepted for training as a mediwizard.

Harry bought her the horse of her choice. It was an incredibly expensive, and very beautiful, black Andalusian. It was a mare, as Cissy thought it would be nice to breed from her later.

They played with their magic together, and Cissy learned to make dragons in the air, both of them in gales of laughter as they made their dragons fight and play. Together both Cissy and Harry tried to make their spells 'softer.' It could be a problem when spells could not be broken. But neither had any success, and resolved instead to try and make them with a specified time limit, which was easy for Harry, but Chrissy was still working on it.

**x**

Wednesday afternoon, at Ben's practice, and both Ben and Hermione were present, to watch as Cissy attempted to break spells. None of the patients had refused when previously contacted - Harry was seldom refused anything these days... Jebedee had heard what was in the wind, and he was also present as an extra observer. Melanie was the rostered observer, and Brian guarded outside.

The first patient had antlers, a fairly standard problem. It seemed often to be the same spells over and over that could not easily be broken. Harry waited and watched, as Cissy waved her wand, and chanted, "Finite Incantatum."

Three times she tried, and Harry listened and felt, and then he explained, using vague words that Cissy somehow seemed to understand anyway. The spell broke, and Harry gave a yell of sheer joy, and hugged his grand-daughter. "You can do it!" And he shook the hand of the surprised patient, and ushered him outside.

There were ten patients that day, and Cissy cured four of them. Harry felt carefully for the spells she failed on, in spite of her perseverance, and tried to work out what they had in common. He was taking notes, as the last waited, patiently, until Hermione reminded him that his patient was not yet cured.

"Oh yes, sorry," he said, scarcely glancing up, although remembering to pick up his wand.

The man lost his pig snout, his ears and his curly tail, which must have been most uncomfortable to sit on. The man still stared, as Harry seemed to have forgotten him again. The cure had been so casual. He felt almost cheated. But it was certainly good to be without those unwanted decorations, and Melanie was very polite as he was ushered out of the room.

He tried to thank the great wizard, but Melanie was saying soothingly, "Yes, send him a letter, he always answers if you just send him a letter..."

Harry was looking at his notes. "Can you read that?" he finally asked Ben. And Ben said No.

"Neither can I," admitted Harry. "I'll have to get one of those transcribers that reporters use."

And then he looked at Cissy, who was waiting hopefully for more praise. "You did brilliantly," he said. "Brilliantly!"

Jebedee was smiling, and offered her his hand. "Well done," and with the additional praise of Ben and Hermione, Cissy felt very good.

By the time she started her mediwizard training six weeks later, she was curing three quarters of the patients who were booked in for Harry. Harry finally saw the end in sight for the constant obligation that he felt for the patients that no-one else had ever been able to cure. For years, he had resisted that obligation, and gone away when he chose. But he was the only one, and he always felt guilty when he didn't do it. Now, finally, there was another...

It took four years to become a mediwizard. He was not free yet...

***chapter end***