A/N: Review responses for Chap 26 in my forums as usual. This, too, is a brutal chapter.

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Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Sacrifice

Daphne Greengrass strutted through school over the next week with a satisfied smirk. At meals she sat at the Slytherin table and laughed and joked with Draco and Pansy and their circle of friends. Further down the table, Astoria Greengrass huddled in a miserable lump and picked at her food.

The Prophet gave all the details, of course. The article heralded yet another joining of the Potter and Black families. The family tree they produced showed the fact that, because Alphard Black and James Potter shared the same grandparents, the Elder of the Black Coven and James were first cousins, making his daughters by Cassandra Greengrass Harry's second cousin.

Rather than decry the dangers of consanguineous unions, the article applauded Luna's decision to join her husband with a pureblood witch of such high standing and to place such a witch over his Muggleborn wife.

"That doesn't send a message to the other Muggleborns, does it?" Hermione muttered.

"Well, since all Muggleborns are witches, and there are far too many witches and not enough wizards, it is not surprising that discrimination would be open and institutionalized," Luna pointed out.

The five of them ate at the Gryffindor table that Monday when the paper came out. The bonding of Harry and a Greengrass daughter was scheduled for that coming Saturday. "So, how is this going to work?" Harry asked.

"The contract specifies that the Greengrass daughters are to present themselves for bonding at the appointed time, and then I as your First Wife will pick the one to bring to the altar. The terms of the contract require that the bonding be witnessed."

Harry's stomach dropped. "Witnessed?"

Luna nodded and blushed faintly. "Dame Cassandra required it specifically. It's an antiquated tradition, even among purebloods, but it is still perfectly legal. Fortunately, since the witch joins the wizard's coven, Dame Branwenna will witness."

"I'm not sure…" Harry blushed. "I'm not sure I can perform with an audience."

"Never stopped you before," Hermione pointed out with a patently false smile.

"That's different. You could join in if you really wanted to."

"You know, I'm not sure I'm old enough to be listening to this," Justine said.

Hermione snorted pumpkin juice. "Say that again with a straight face, I dare you."

Justine grinned and stuck her tongue out.

"You know, it's possible that Astoria could be just as bad as Daphne," Hermione then pointed out. "Abuse doesn't always mean the victim is good."

"No, but it also means she wasn't conditioned the same as Daphne," Luna said.

"Hermione if you'd seen my vision, you'd know that Daphne has killed before," Harry said. "Sergeant White talked about it—the look in a person's eyes after they've killed. I don't know who or why, but Daphne has taken a life before. I don't think Astoria has."

~~Firebird~~

~~Firebird~~

They had three meetings of the Firebird's Army that week, and Harry clung to those meetings as his means of staying sane. Defence Class had become unbearable since his attack on Draco—Narcissa behaved like a tigress protecting her young, and Harry lost points just for breathing, and had two more detentions just in that week. Fortunately, Dumbledore's mandate overrode her wishes and the detentions were served again with Snape.

On the Friday before the bonding, she concluded the class by taking another twenty points from Gryffindor for Harry's handwriting. "Perhaps a proper witch will bring you back in line," she said in an offhand manner as he left the class.

That night, Harry, Hermione and Luna moved their things to another suite—one outside the married wing completely. It was exceedingly rare for a wizard to bond more than two wives in school. In fact, it was usually only one witch who poached a wizard and whose family demanded immediate marriage. The marriage suites were ill equipped to handle a match of three or more.

And so Harry and his family were moved to one of the many unused faculty living quarters around the castle. The one they moved to once belonged to Dumbledore himself when he taught. He had all four wives at the time, and so the suite was larger than most—in fact the suite had four small rooms off a central sitting area that had a small kitchen and a much larger loo.

The loo itself was confusing for Harry. It held two water closets, two large cast-iron tubs and a tiled shower large enough for five. It actually reminded him of the Quidditch locker room more than anything.

The sitting room had two large sofas around a cosy fireplace, while five desks occupied the walls. Each bedroom had an expanded wardrobe that could serve as a changing room and a large bed, easily large enough to sleep four—such a bed occupied each and every room.

"I don't want to think about what used to happen here," Hermione declared.

"Perhaps you should think about what will happen here in the future," Luna suggested.

Hermione blushed scarlet.

"But not tonight," Luna said. "Harry, tonight you must sleep alone. It's in the contract, and is traditional, or so I'm told. Hermione and I will be in other rooms. I'd recommend a dreamless draught."

"Good thinking," Harry agreed. "Luna…neither one of us ever saw Astoria in her visions before. Are we doing the right thing?"

"Visions are lines of probability," Luna said, blinking at him. "I never saw myself whole again either, but it has happened. Sybil would be the first person to tell you not to let our visions dictate our decisions, Harry. We make our own futures. Any vision we have from now on will feature Astoria because we chose to make her a part of our lives."

She reached up and kissed him tenderly, and then with a serene smile took his hand and guided it up under her shirt. "Do you feel that, Harry? It's only been a week, and they're already larger."

"Wow," Harry said. "They really are."

"Her hormone production is making up for lost time," Hermione said. She leaned and kissed Harry as well before she took Luna's other hand and said, "Come on, Luna. Let's go to sleep."

"You'll stay with me?"

"Yes."

Lune smiled brilliantly at the other girl, and holding hands they disappeared into one of the other rooms. Harry watched them go and sighed. "A dreamless potion and a cold shower: That's what I need."

~~Firebird~~

~~Firebird~~

Harry woke with a start and stifled a shout at the sight of the ancient witch leaning over him. "Who are you?" he shouted.

"Dame Drusilla Hughes," the old witch said in a dry, crackling voice. She pulled the bedcovers back to reveal Harry in his shorts. "I'm here on behalf of the bride's family to ensure you abstained from relations last night. Hold still, boy."

She passed her wand over him and Harry winced at an uncomfortable squeezing of parts best left un-squeezed. The old witch nodded. "Very good. Stand up, boy."

"But…but…"

"Don't make me wait, boy!" she snapped. "Do as I say."

Angry but not sure what to do about it, Harry stood as the old witch walked around him. "You're magic's still too strong," she muttered. "You've bonded twice, you should be weaker."

"That's why Luna decided it was time for a third wife now, rather than waiting," Harry said quickly.

"Good to know the lass isn't an idiot like her thrice-cursed mum was," the old witch said. "Very well, boy. Clean yourself. Your First Wife has been given your clothes for the ceremony. You've contracted for a traditionalist ceremony, and you will play your part or the whole lot of you will suffer. Go."

He left the room a step in front of the old witch but then sputtered when she followed him into the loo. "What are you doing?"

"Marking sure you do nothing that would jeopardize the bonding," the old woman snapped. "Who knows what you wizards are thinking when your wives bring witches you don't know to you. One would think you'd just learn to just close your eyes and enjoy it, but some fool wizards try to sabotage themselves or the ceremony."

"I won't do that, I agreed with Luna."

"You're agreement is irrelevant, boy. Decisions like this are for the women alone. Now strip and clean yourself!"

"Not with you…"

She flicked her wand, vanished his clothes, and banished him into the shower. When he tried to pull the curtain, she vanished that as well, and since he had no wand to stop her, she had him completely at her mercy. He sputtered angrily, but by this time he was already naked and she'd already seen him.

Her cold, burning eyes watched him with open amusement and, more sickening than that, open appreciation as he washed his hair and body.

"Piss, boy," she said.

"I don't need to go," Harry lied. In point of fact, he had to go so bad his bladder hurt.

"Wizards are fools, the whole lot of them," she said, laughing as she did so. She hit him with a another spell the moment he started leaving the shower, and he had to run to the water closet when he felt himself losing control of his own bladder.

In the relative safety of the water closet, he relieved himself of both his bladder and the need to curse the hateful old witch. He very much wanted to stay where he was, but he just knew the old witch would not hesitate to barge in and drag him out. So, as naked as the day he was born, he stepped out of the loo into the larger wash room.

"Go to your wife and dress, boy," Dame Drusilla said. She stepped to one side with her wand in her hand and watched him walk by with a smirk on her cracked, ancient lips. He could feel her eyes on his arse as he walked passed.

In the common room, Luna stood in a plain white dress of a slightly thicker fabric than what she wore to the Sabbat. She also wore the silver circlet in her hair with the triple moon. She held a plain pair of white draw-string pants in one arm, and a white blouse in the other.

"Sorry," she said softly.

"You could have told me."

She shrugged. "I didn't know they'd enforce that clause."

He pulled the loose white pants on and tied them tight around his waist, and then slipped on the ridiculous blouse. He had no idea how to secure it, so Luna showed him how to tie the corners to the opposite waist until it crossed his chest. Luna stepped back, pursed her lips, and then ducked into the room she shared with Hermione.

She emerged moments later with a comb and worked on his still wet hair. "Where's Hermione?" Harry asked.

"The Mudblood has no part in today's affairs," Dame Drusilla said as she walked in. Despite her age, her hearing seemed to work just fine. "She has been ordered out, I don't care to where."

"She's with Justine," Luna said. She finished his hair and nodded. "We're not allowed our wands," she told him softly. "I think they're going to try something, Harry. Be ready."

Harry nodded.

"Come along, then," Dame Drusilla said.

The ancient crone led them through the halls of the school past occasional clumps of students who stared openly at both Harry and Luna in their white clothes, and the silver circlet Luna wore. Neither of them spoke to anyone they saw, as was tradition. They continued finally into a wing they had never seen before except on the map. The halls were lined in torches, and the ceiling hung much lower than the rest of the castle, low enough that Hagrid would not have been able to walk here. They emerged from the passage into a large, high circular room shining with sunlight through stained-glass windows. The windows depicted scenes of what looked like Nordic gods fighting and, to Harry's astonishment, fornicating. The room held a single, bed-sized stone altar with four large burning candles at each corner. He had no doubt that each pointed in the proper cardinal direction.

The Greengrasses stood at one side of the room. Cassandra Greengrass had the same aloof cold beauty as her elder daughter. Daphne wore a nearly diaphanous white gown that clearly showed the outline of her breasts, while hinting at the glory of her sex. Her circlet was more of a crown glistening with precious stones, though it too was decorated by the three moon symbol all witches wore in formal bondings.

As much as he feared her, Harry felt his body respond to sheer, breath-taking beauty of the woman. Worse yet, Daphne noticed since his plain white trousers hid nothing at all, and smirked in satisfaction.

Next to her stood…a horridly unattractive blob with a bent circlet on her unkempt, lanky head. Astoria looked awful, with dark rings around her eyes and a barely visible bite mark on her neck just under the line of her thick, wrinkled gown. Her skin gleamed with oil, not from scents, but from a failure to bathe. In fact, he could smell her rank scent from the door. The closer he got, he also felt something else emanating from her—a sense of revulsion so profound it almost made him sick.

He realized the girl was surrounded by revulsion hex; the magic hovered about her like sickly strands of piss-yellow magic, throbbing with hateful intent. Next to Astoria and the magic that surrounded her, Daphne stood like an angel in white, her body flawless to the male eye. Her scent was subtle and floral, but now that he was looking strictly with the eyes of an Aether, he could also see a subtle magic about her as well, similar to what he remembered from his glance at the French Veela last year.

Just as her sister was cursed by revulsion hex, Daphne was covered with an attraction charm.

Behind them, Cassandra Greengrass smirked happily as the old crone joined her. "The boy followed the traditions," the ancient witch said, "and I saw him prepared with my own eyes. With a member like his, your daughter should be well-serviced. He is ready."

Opposite the Greengrasses, Dame Branwenna stood with her arms crossed and an unhappy look on her face. To her, Cassandra Greengrass said, "Per our agreement, Dame Branwenna, I present the daughters of House Greengrass, both of suitable age and good standing in the Sabbat and direct issue of Alphard, Elder of the Black Coven. Let the First Wife choose wisely."

Luna too was affected by the wards around the two girls. "Harry," she said, struggling to maintain her calm, "which would you choose?"

"It's not the boy's choice!" Dame Drusilla said.

"It is if the First Wife says it is," Branwenna said calmly. "We chose the candidates, but I see no harm in letting him select which he would prefer if his wife should wish it."

"I don't mind," Cassandra said mildly, confident in the outcome.

Daphne smiled alluringly and puffed out her chest. Harry looked at her and couldn't deny an almost overwhelming desire to reach out and cup the all but bare breasts outlined so enticingly by her sheer, virtually see-through gown. When he looked at her flawless face, however, he thought of his first train ride to school, and how she worked with Malfoy to try and cheat him out of a bet; he thought of the powerful vision in Divination, and the way her face did not change expression whether she was shagging him, or murdering Luna and Hermione.

Looking into those eyes, which even in her smirking face seemed cold and empty, he wondered if she was the way she was because of how her mother raised her, or if there was something intrinsic to her humanity that was missing or broken.

He forced his eyes past the revulsion wards of Astoria and saw that she too was broken. She stood with her head bent, her shoulders slumped and her whole posture screaming of subjugation and pain. Dame Cassandra had stacked the deck as much as possible while adhering to the word of the contract; but there was no doubt she intended Daphne to be his second wife, and soon after that, his only wife. It would secure her the Potter and Black fortunes that Sirius had given him, since Alphard was Elder of the coven, but the money went through Sirius's line.

He realized, perhaps for the first time consciously, that this was Narcissa Black's intent all along—to remove the undesirable witches from Harry and re-bond him to dark witches. Just from the way he was treated this morning, he knew that under the current roles husbands had only as much rights as their wives deigned to give them, and with Daphne that would be none. He easily imagined her bringing her friends in to have their fun with him, or bond him as additional wives.

Strangely, he felt no anger. In fact, the lack of anger felt oddly liberating to him. Instead, he smiled at Daphne, who beamed back at him and turned to better show her breasts. He turned away from what any other boy would have killed for, and looked once more at the 'ugly' sister in front of him. He reached up a hand, tracing the lines of the revulsion hex.

"What are you doing, Harry?" Daphne asked. In her voice he heard confusion and a little concern, but not affection.

"The interesting thing about being a tactile Aether," Harry said softly, struggling himself against the contrasting wards, "is that you don't always need a wand to affect standing magic." He clasped a line of the revulsion magic and pulled, using his touch and magic to pull it free of the girl. The effect was instantaneous as the urge to flee diminished immediately. Even Astoria herself straightened, and he realized that her mother had tied the hex to the girl's own tiny magical core. She was still filthy, beaten and rank, but no magic caused him to be sick at the sight of her.

"Daphne, you are one of the most beautiful girls I've ever seen," Harry said, not bothering to hide his examination of her body, just as the ancient crone did to him earlier. "Seeing you like that makes me sure that you'll be able to poach whatever innocent, ignorant boy you want. But…"

"No!" Daphne said with an angry growl. She reached up and tore her dress off and stood completely naked before him.

Harry felt paralyzed by some deep, internal force that grabbed him by the balls and held tight, flowing with terrible heat up his chest, neck and face. His very magic reached out for this stunningly beautiful, nude witch. Her own magic had the same effect on her body, stiffening her nipples and swelling and reddening her sex in anticipation of him.

And then something happened. Just like his third year, when the Dementors were closing in, he felt a wave of utter peace descend upon him. In the back of his mind, he heard his mother's voice whispering to him, "You are stronger than her."

Harry looked back to the confused and frightened Astoria. Daphne screamed. "Look at me, Potter!"

Harry, though, kept his eyes locked on the smaller girl. "Luna and I will never hit you. We will never hurt you. If you accept this, you will be a part of our family."

"LOOK AT ME!" Daphne screamed.

Harry winced but otherwise ignored her as he reached down and took Astoria's limp hand. "Luna?"

Now that the revulsion ward was gone, Luna smiled serenely at him and the younger Greengrass. "We have chosen Astoria Greengrass to be the second wife of my husband in accordance with the marriage contract," Luna said.

"So mote it be," Branwenna said, not bothering to hide her smile.

"No!" Daphne screamed. She reached into the long tresses of her immaculately curled blond hair and pulled out a small iron dagger. "You little whore!" Rather than attack Harry, she attacked her own sister.

Only, she never got within a foot; a banishing curse struck her in the centre of her naked stomach and sent her flying toward a stained glass depiction of Freyja copulating with a giant. Cassandra and the crone, Drusilla, both cried out as Daphne blasted through the glass, her eyes wide with pain and terror; suddenly she was gone.

By then, Harry pulled Astoria behind him to Luna and placed himself between the two girls and the witches, but it was not him that Cassandra pointed her wand. "You killed my daughter!" she screamed as she cast a curse at Branwenna.

The ancient witch flicked it aside contemptuously, but did not cast back. "I defended a witch of my coven, girl," she said, her voice dripping disdain. "The First Wife of my wizard chose his bride as required by a contract you agreed to. Did you not read the provision that gives us the right to defend what is ours? Astoria is ours now, and we will defend her. Your child died by her own hand when she attempted to murder a chosen witch of the Lloyd Coven. I'll pay your Wergild—don't worry. You'll get your gold. But if you declare feud or vengeance, I shall have you both before the Sabbat. Don't think I didn't see what you were doing, or that your eldest had a knife at the wedding altar!"

Virtually trembling with rage, Cassandra hissed, "You haven't heard the last of this."

"Perhaps not, but magic and tradition are squarely on my side. Now get out. We'll fulfil the terms of the contract, I'll witness the bonding. Go see about your daughter's body. If I remember correctly, it should be in the water of the lake by now, if the grindylows haven't eaten it already."

Cassandra's eyes widened in horror as she ran out of the room with a cry. Drusilla lingered. "Blood on the altar bodes poorly for the wedding," she said darkly.

"A knife in the bride's hair doesn't bode too well either," Harry said.

The old witch stared at him. "You're trouble, boy. When you come before the Sabbat, I'll remember this day. There will be a reckoning."

When the other witches were gone, Astoria collapsed to the floor with her hands over her face, crying. Branwenna sighed and then wearily sat down on a bench. "Morgana's teats, I've seen better ceremonies! I knew that woman would be trouble."

"Thank you, Dame Branwenna. You probably saved all our lives."

Luna, meanwhile, kneeled down beside the crying Astoria. "It's over, now."

Her tears changed swiftly to rage. "Mum's going to kill me, you ugly cow!" she screamed. "You've killed me! I'm dead because of you! Why did you do that? It was supposed to be Daphne!"

"That's what your mum wanted," Luna said. "But for us, it was always going to be you."

"But why?"

It was Harry who knelt down on her side, roughly grabbed the fabric of her lumpy, wrinkled dress, and tore it at the neck to reveal a blackened bite mark, and below it an angry red welt. "Because of that!" he said. "I've been bullied, Astoria. I've been beaten up by people who hated what I was and didn't want to see who I was. That day in the library, when I grabbed your arm, I saw. I saw what has been happening to you."

All colour fled from her face. "You didn't see anything."

"I saw," Harry said again grimly. "If I had to marry a Greengrass to have Luna restored, then I wanted to marry the one who needed help the most. Remember what I said, Astoria. I will never hit you, and neither will Luna."

"What about your Mudblood?"

"She might kick your arse if you call her a Mudblood," Harry said, "but she'll never be cruel to you, not like your mum and sister were."

Astoria looked down. "It doesn't matter anyway. I can't marry you—I'm not a virgin. Tradition said I have to be."

"But the contract didn't, child," Branwenna said, her face now brimming with compassion. "I am to be your dame now, child. You'll be joined with us, and you'll be the better for it. But not now—you need some healing and a bath. The day is still young, and the contract didn't specify a time. Come. Let's get you to the Hospital Wing."

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Author's Note: Very special thanks as always to Teufel1987, JR and Miles for beta reading. If there are any major faux-pas, they are entirely of my own doing.