Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter either. It belongs to its creator J.K. Rowling and probably Warner Bros. too. I'm not too sure about that. This piece of literature is simply the work of a humble fan. I also credit Jim Butcher for various themes, subjects, or references that I may use.

Author Notes: This is a Harry Potter crossover with the Dresden Files the book series. All my knowledge of the Dresden Files comes from the books. I've never seen the TV series. For the timeline that will be stated later. Thanks to the folks at DLP for help with editing.

Awaken Sleeper.
Chapter Twenty Five: In the Beginning
by: Water Mage

The Senior Council members' apartments were located past more security checkpoints than anything Harry had come across by far. The stone hallway that filled the underground headquarters opened into a hall twice as big as the Great Hall of Hogwarts. It was positively breathtaking with its marble floors and elegant marble columns stretching up to the ceiling that was covered with crystals filling warm light into the chamber. Even with his thoughts swirling, Harry had to admire the waterfall cascading down the far wall pouring crystal blue water into a pool, around which grew a plethora of plants, from rose bushes to small trees, and a white veranda overlooked the intricate little garden. Birdsong filled the air and it was all so very incredible, like something from a grand palace.

A balcony ran around the entire chamber, ten feet up, and all the doors along it were closed. Harry followed the Gatekeeper around the Ostentatiatory to a set of stairs that swept up the wall. They walked around the balcony until they came to a door made of solid black stone that could have been made of obsidian.

The Gatekeeper touched his hand flat upon the door. His fingers fitted into notches that receded under his touch. There was a series of clicks as his hand turned left and right twisting a combination lock hidden into the door face. There was one more final click, a whirl of noise, and the door opened revealing the room beyond.

Harry entered behind the Gatekeeper and looked around the first room they came to. Bookshelves lined the walls filled to groaning, from dusty tomes to handmade and handwritten texts, and other items occupied the shelves. Curious things from a jeweled scepter, a spear covered in dried blood to glass candles, and a handmade globe of the Earth but it included more continents and in different places. A chipped stone chalice that looked vaguely familiar to Harry took up a shelf on its own. There was dozens of wooden lock boxes with sigils on the exterior that took up an entire wall.

"What's the story with the boxes?" Harry asked.

The Gatekeeper closed the black door behind them. "That is best left for another time. And I believe you came for an entirely different tale."

He lowered his hood revealing he had thick, short hair that was completely silver, and his pale face held Middle Eastern features. A double scar ran down his left eyebrow down to his jawline and the eye beneath it had been lost. His remaining eye was dark brown and within shone the heavy weight of knowledge. Replacing the lost eye was an orb with a crystalline sheen that was reminiscent of Mad Eye Moody's piercing eye. Those mismatched eyes held Harry and he felt like his every secret was the Gatekeeper's to read.

"These are my private chambers," said the Gatekeeper. "Please sit."

The couch Harry sat in was old and looked like it might fall apart but still surprisingly comfortable. He settled in as the wizard retrieved something from a shelf. Harry watched silently as the Gatekeeper sat a glass cube upon the little coffee table and then took seat himself in a worn armchair. The cube was five by five and when the light from the crystals in the ceiling struck it Harry noticed that it wasn't glass at all, but some weird quartz that was similar to the Gatekeeper's false g.

Harry crossed his arms. "You promised me some answers."

The Gatekeeper stared at him for a moment, considering. "It is a complex story, Mr. Potter. Your answer involves not only your family lineage, but also a history of the world. To understand we have to start at the beginning. In the time of Before."

He frowned. "It's not the first time someone's mentioned that. The time of Before. Before what exactly?"

"Before there was light."

Harry blinked with surprise. The development rolled around in his mind. "Like before civilization?"

The Gatekeeper crooked the slightest of smiles. "Darkness was here first and it was absolute."

"What's this have to do with me?" He asked trying to wrap his thoughts around the sheer scope of the matter. He knew he was getting ahead, but he just didn't understand.

The Gatekeeper peered at him deeply and the slight smile evaporated. "Everything."

That quieted Harry.

The cube was picked up again and the Gatekeeper began to slide a face up and over, twisting and turning, and then it was when Harry realized it was a puzzle box. Prodding panels and sections of the box revealed new shapes from just a simple cube. It entered the final sequence under the Gatekeeper's practiced fingers, panels beginning to inexorably move into place under their own power twisting into the shape of a double pyramid, attached base to base. The Gatekeeper placed the bipyramid on the table again standing on its tip and with a murmured word and flick it began to spin on its axis.

"What's happening?" Harry asked as the room was plunged into darkness without warning.

"Behold," the Gatekeeper's deep baritone came in the dark.

Even as he spoke lights appeared in the darkness above. Tiny pinpricks of starlight that wasn't so at all for when Harry focused on them they blazed brightly in a moving trajectory and the air came alive with fire and noise. More explosions illuminated the veil of darkness revealing hordes of travesties fighting against armies of shining, ethereal beings wielding fire and ice and starlight.

The number of fearsome creatures grew exponentially in the next flash of firelight. Monsters of such form that defied description. They fought in no formation. Creatures swooped in on wings that stretched a city block, tails that were sharp as knives sliced open torsos, and claws and fangs were used with unforgiving force. They were a blasphemous host of ruin and they were overwhelming their enemies.

"Eons ago, after the time of the Old Ones, their would-be successors sailed across the cosmos and made this planet their throneworld. The invaders however found this world was not without its defenders."

Another fire flash blinded the battleground and this time Harry was witness to a different scene. A red bearded man raised his warhammer above his head and lightning fell from the heavens to strike the weapon. With a roar the man lowered his hammer and sheets of lightning poured into the advancing horde. And all around the battlefield was similar scenes of devastation and mayhem as gigantic men and women rained destruction upon the invading forces. They looked human but were too tall, too fast, too everything and were mercilessly ferocious. They brought to bear spears of light and chains of adamant that tore apart the bipedal and quadruped monsters like tissue. Through the thick black smoke Harry even made out familiar fey creatures, from trolls and ogres to centaurs, battling it out amongst the invading host of nightmares. It was all out war.

"This is the Battle for the Last Night."'

Bodies continued falling under the starless sky. It was chaos as the earth was scorched and the sound of fighting was as loud as thunderclaps. Another image. Another scene of carnage. Another horror. Another death. He almost couldn't even bear to look upon the fetid creatures. Something about them threatened to sheer his mind into pieces.

The battlefield changed again and a warrior maiden in bloodsoaked leather armor limped through a sea of fallen bodies, inhuman and human alike, and they were all withered husks. Each and every one of their decayed faces was frozen in horror. She whipped off her helm revealing a youthful face with tearstained cheeks that quickly began to freeze and turn to ice as they tracked down her face. With a gasp she clutched at her chest and keeled over. She threw back her head and screamed into the heavens. Her long black hair cleared out to snow white and round blue eyes changed into feline lengths.

Harry gasped. "Mab?"

A blizzard exploded into existence and winter had come, so had the age of ice.

"With the combined forces of the arcane, fey, divine pantheons and mortal will the invaders were driven back off this planet, from the Nevernever, away from the very universe."

"Outsiders?" Harry gaped, finally realizing what he was witnessing. "This is the war that banished them."

The Gatekeeper nodded from beside him as they watched like ghostly specters amidst the carnage as the allied forces drove back the invaders, the Outsiders. A tall man with thick gray hair and glowing white eyes clasped his hand at his side and a thunderbolt flared to life in a buzz of sound and brilliant blue light. With a mighty yell he hurled it into the ground and the deafening explosion was like the earth splintering to its core. A massive chasm fell open before the host of Outsiders front lines in a neverending abyss. All the while, hundreds of armored warriors at his back chanted and made warding gestures with their hands. The Outsiders advance was stopped cold by a barrier that flared to life in ripples of jade light extending all the way up to the empty night sky. They clawed and attacked and hurled themselves at the shield to no avail.

A pair of gates eclipsed his vision slamming closed on the awesome sight. And just like that the scene changed again to another point in time. Another place in history. The gates rose up in a monumental craftsmanship of glory and were held between two towers taller than even Heron Tower in London. Symbols on top of symbols, wards and sigils, were carved into the impressive gates in a network of protective spellwork more complex than Harry could make sense of.

"Who is that?" Harry asked, stepping closer to the man hammering away at the gates with a mighty warhammer, sparks cascading away from his every strike.

"Janus the Gatebuilder. Your ancestor."

Harry's focus sharpened with that bombshell. It was the warrior from earlier, the gray haired man who threw the thunderbolt and cracked the ground into a canyon. Sweat poured down his face but his blows never faltered. The Gatekeeper stepped to Harry's side and the expression was hard to read on his face but it looked a little like admiration.

"These are the Outer Gates?" Harry asked, unable to take his eyes away from the man hammering away.

The Gatekeeper looked at the massive construct. "One of the last great artifacts of a bygone age."

Harry blinked and suddenly the vision of the gates was reset to include a massive wall that stretched from their framework for as far as he could see into the distance. It was made of ice or crystal, a lighter hue of the same material of the colossal double doors, and was the completed construction of the Outer Gates. The incredible sight stood firm beneath a rolling, pitch black sky that tugged at his heartstrings like nothing before in his life. The Outer Gates vibrated with power, of warning, a song of caution for intruders—and it was familiar. This land was so much more than battle scarred plains: more terrible, more holy. He knew that this was his answer. To everything.

Something tugged at his memory…

"I've been here before," Harry said to himself, barely more than a whisper. And that thought alone made his blood run cold.

The Gatekeeper tilted his head to look at him obliquely with his good eye. "It is your legacy. Some called Janus a man. Others a demon. And some named him a god. What he truly was is a hero."

Harry marveled at the gates. "He really built this?"

"He had help," the Gatekeeper answered. "Yet it was Janus alone that wove the ancient spells into his creation. You see, Janus had a certain talent. Particular skills that he used in building the gates."

It was beginning to come together. "You've said I've seen the doorways? The paths and probabilities. Is that what you mean?"

"Janus built the Outer Gates using this principle and they don't just exist here at the edge of the universe within the Nevernever. Their protection extends across the extra planular domains."

"I don't understand."

"They are a multi-dimensional barrier," the Gatekeeper explained. "Its wards exist across countless dimensions carrying their protection to every reality anchored to this universe. All of space and time."

Harry frowned. "Unless someone summons them in."

The Gatekeeper nodded, his face was grim. "It takes an arrogant mortal to do so. And that arrogance makes them a fool."

"And this is what? My legacy," Harry shook his head at the sheer incredibility of it all. He ran a hand through his hair and for one full second he felt like there was no air at all, like he was suffocating. "If Janus wasn't even human and I can do all these things then what does that make me? What am I?"

When the Gatekeeper turned to look at him Harry was trapped under the power of those penetrating eyes. Harry was suddenly certain that the Gatekeeper's false eye was made from the same material as the Outer Gates. He didn't dare stare directly into them to trigger a soulgaze. Even then having the wizard's full attention was too much like Professor Dumbledore's once all-knowing gaze.

"When I look at you I don't see Harrison Potter," he said, quietly. "I see a whirlwind."

"Hooray," Harry ground his teeth and spelled it out for the wizard. "Am I even human?"

"Very much so," the Gatekeeper leaned his head back to stare up to the top of the wall. He didn't see Harry's shoulders slump with relief. "Whether through chance or fate both your parents can trace their lineage back to Janus. You are the product of a recombination of very specific and dormant genes." He turned that mismatched gaze back to Harry. "I have been watching you since the day you were born."

For some reason that didn't surprise him as much as it should. Harry crossed his arms. "Because I'm the Hammer reborn?"

"You are Janus come again. Your abilities are the same as your ancestor's. Janus could go toe to toe with fate and outmaneuver it. He stood at the heart of chance and could see the paths of possibilities from any given action," the Gatekeeper drew a circle in the dirt with his pale staff and then lines branching off from it. "Every reality was his to perceive."

Harry's stomach twisted, but he had to know. He had to ask. "Every reality? If you've been watching me then you must know that I'm not from here. I don't even know how I got here. I just want to go home."

It was the truth. More truth than anyone had gotten out of him in years. Even Aurora hadn't pulled such an honest confession from him.

The expression on the Gatekeeper's solemn face wasn't quite sadness but it was near enough. "When you discover the outcome of Harrison you will find the answer you so longingly seek."

It wasn't a straight forward answer but it was something, a start. It was more than he had before. He sighed. "So a war's coming."

"You will stand at the front lines with familiar faces," the Gatekeeper confirmed. "When the stars are right the Outsiders will return and all ready their servants are preparing the way. On that day we will be ready for them."

"You're talking about Oberon and his allies. His time is coming. We're on his trail right now."

A rueful expression came over the Gatekeeper's face. "You cut the head off a hydra and two more will take its place."

Harry let out a loud exhale and shook his head. "You make it sound so inevitable. The war, the Outsiders getting in, all of it. Prophecies are bollocks. I'm probably not even this hammer. I can't even get a handle on how my abilities work. It drives me mad. My little brother on the hand is a natural."

The Gatekeeper gazed straight at the silent gates looming ahead as he considered the detail. "Aiden is an abomination."

Harry spoke quietly to put all the weight he could into each word he spoke next. "Repeat that. I dare you."

Those mismatched eyes closed for a moment, and opened them again. His expression never flickered. The Gatekeeper continued looking upon the Outer Gates before them. Then he spoke, very quietly, "I have been watching you your entire life. And his as well." He turned to Harry then. "You know as well as I that Aiden Potter is a very abnormal child."

"Abnormal? Aiden colors outside the lines. When he's sick he likes 7-Up and not Ginger Ale. He loves heights and Saturday morning cartoons. And I swear if you ever harm a single hair on his head," Harry's eyes narrowed into green slits. "Run."

The Gatekeeper stared at him. It was not a friendly expression on his face. If he struck at Harry there was no telling if he could repel the attack before it could lay him to waste. Harry had seen firsthand the might of two of the Senior Council members and it took his breath away. His chin lifted. He wasn't the least bit afraid. If he had to match wizardry against the Gatekeeper then so be it.

"Careful," the Gatekeeper said. His voice was a deep, terrible thing. The force behind the word resonated across Harry's senses, an impact of wildness that felt like sandpaper against his flesh. The Gatekeeper didn't smile when Harry faltered, but his lips curled the tiniest bit. "As far as threats go, that was adequate. However my intention is not to incite anger. I want to warn you."

"I'm dying to hear this warning about my eight year old brother."

Harry knew he was being too defensive, almost aggressive. It was a distant sort of awareness. See, Harry had always been like this when someone put his family in a bad light. It made him lash out and fight and curse and hex. He always had a bad habit of wanting to protect those he cherished. When it came to his family that protectiveness was amplified in its fierceness.

"If you are a whirlwind then Aiden is the oncoming storm," he said. "Mr. Potter you have seen what he can do. You came into your abilities at fifteen and it drove you mad. Imagine a fetus being shocked to awareness while still in the womb, bombarded with innumerable paths of probabilities. A personality forming long before birth."

Horror dawned on Harry and was apparent in the widening of his eyes. "Before he was born?" He blew out a breath, tugging a hand through his hair. "I never imagined. I had suspicions—but this. . ."

"It was simply easier for Aiden to not speak when he was unsure if the reality he was in was his own. They call Janus the god of doorways and Aiden could see all them and all at once. Every possibility laid out before him."

"I knew it," Harry whispered. "He was living multiple lives at once. It's not foresight or divination. It's beyond even that."

The Gatekeeper studied his reaction, nodding. "The terrifying truth is his abilities mature as he ages. Aiden will wield mental powers capable of bridging space and time. He will possess absolute prescience. Either he will rise higher than Janus before or fall so much further."

"He won't," Harry said, razor sharp fast.

"Aiden's abilities were never meant for a fully human mind," the Gatekeeper warned him. "The strain on his psyche will worsen as he grows older."

Harry wanted to shake the wizard. He was talking about his little brother like he was some potential Dark Lord. "What are you saying? Are you telling me he might go mad?"

"I cannot say." The Gatekeeper's expression was rather worn. "My Sight is clouded when I look upon him. His fate is threefold. His mind will shatter under the strain. Or he will be a great force of good, a beacon of light of a new generation of starborn."

Harry's gaze never wavered. "What's the third future?"

"In place of a being of light, there will be a King, and he will be of fire and darkness. His presence will burn like a star in the sky and his name will be unholy."

"It won't come to pass."

"You do not think of this universe as home, but you think of him as your true brother," the Gatekeeper considered Harry thoughtfully. "You truly do care for him. The Potters, too."

He took a breath. "He's family. They all are."

Harry turned away, and in that moment, it all finally became inescapably, thunderously real. He realized, quite suddenly, that he meant it all. They were his family, for good or bad. He loved them.

"Interesting," the Gatekeeper murmured. "In your reality you must have been a force to be reckoned with. I've only met a few others with your willpower. One shares your name."

Harry shook his head because, of course. "Dresden."

"A worthy ally."

The Boy Who Lived studied their silent surroundings. "Nifty trick with the cube. I'm guessing it's a piece of the wall around the gates. It acts as some kind of temporal simulation, a bit like a pensieve, right?"

"Pensieve?"

Harry internally sighed. "Nothing."

"This place has served its purpose," the Gatekeeper said in his deep baritone. "Let us adjourn."

The tall wizard closed his eyes and was gone without fanfare. He simply disappeared, gone in the blink of an eye. Harry looked around the haunting landscape once more. Then he saw it as his eyes began to close. There in the distance, sitting on a mound of pale bones, was a young girl with blonde pigtails, and a Hogwarts uniform. In one hand she held a pair of omnioculars and in the other was a quill. She jotted down a line on the parchment perched on her lap with her little pink tongue stuck out between her lips in concentration.

"You," Harry breathed.

The girl caught his eyes when she looked up and burst into a wide smile. She gave a thumb up with ink stained fingers. Green eyes fully closed and the world lurched. Harry fell through the ground, and the ground stood firm. When he opened his eyes he was greeted to the sight of the Gatekeeper's meeting room.

He blinked coming back to his senses, his heart thumping wildly. "For fuck's sake."

No one could blame Harry for needing some fresh air. If that fresh air happened to be on a beach. In Greece. Well, it wasn't like anyone had the ability to stop him. He needed to clear his head and the summer breeze coming off the ocean waters was doing wonders. He slipped his sunglasses further on his nose and a lounged back on his towel to let the sunshine fully hit his skin. It was midday and there was a nice crowd of people, mostly families and a lot of teenagers, spread out amongst the sandy beach. If one of them looked at Harry they would see a young man, tanning, and perfectly content with his place in the world. They would never guess he was anything but and his thoughts were flying in a thousand directions at once.

As soon as the Gatekeeper's impromptu History of Magic lesson ended Harry rabbited. His eyes opened and he made a hasty excuse before he was bolting through the Hidden Halls. Not outright running, but his quick pace was damn near a jog. Harry was a lion at heart but lately he was realizing just how in over his head he really was. Still on the run from the Jade Court (the very, very least of his problems), prophesized savior/harbinger, future faerie king, etcetera. Really, the list went on and on.

And Aiden. What about Aiden.

The thought of Aiden being in the womb fully conscious and aware was terrifying. It made Harry's heart squeeze tight. And it hurt. Before his first breath his little brother was sentient to the world and his exact place in it. Bombarded with all his places in could've been realities and meanwhile worlds and neverwere universes. It was a shocking fate. It made him sick.

Harry would do everything in his power to make sure the weight of it all wouldn't crush Aiden. If Aiden was the oncoming storm then Harry would pave his way.

He closed his eyes and pictured twinkling blue eyes and blond hair caught in pigtails. That girl helped him when the Killing Crows unleashed their psychic assault on him and again she was there, in his mind, learning about Harry's legacy right alongside him. She wasn't a danger now, but soon enough—he didn't have time for that now. He could only juggle so much. In the future there would be a reckoning.

"How did you find me?" Harry asked, still lounging back with his eyes closed.

The reply was amused. "A lady has her secrets."

His eyes cracked opened into green slits that lazily looked over to his new companion. Aurora was lying back on a white towel wearing a revealing yellow bikini that showed off long legs and perfect curves. Strawberry blond hair fell over tanned shoulders and Harry admired her glamoured form. She looked softer like this, human, a little less blinding. Her Sidhe form was too dazzling at times. A form of lithe perfection that was too much for this world.

"You left me in a den of wizards." Aurora's expression was unimpressed. "That was not very gentlemanly."

"Really? You're giving me a lesson on class."

Aurora looked hurt. "What is that supposed to mean?"

Harry stared.

"I assume your dealings with Sir Rashid did not go well."

"Who?"

She looked at him like he was a particularly slow child and replied to him as such, "The Gatekeeper."

He slid his sunglasses down his nose and leveled her with an incredulous stare. "I'm sorry, I wasn't even aware he had a first name. We didn't exactly sit around and have tea and biscuits."

Aurora cocked her head. "I hope our children do no inherit your temper. You are terribly dramatic."

"Still gunning for that baby?" Harry questioned, completely straight-faced.

"And that child will be the red star of the morning, and their footsteps will shake the world."

A single eyebrow rose and Harry snorted. "Big dreams."

She gave him an opaque smile. "The Gatekeeper's news must have been troubling."

Harry rolled with the smooth topic change. He pushed his sunglasses on his nose and returned to lying on his back. He folded his arms behind his head. He let it mull around his head deciding on what to tell her. It was a long moment before he decided on going with the truth. At this point there wasn't much Aurora didn't know anyway.

"I'm the promised hammer for a reason." Harry took a breath. He opened his eyes and stared up at the sun, squinting behind tinted lenses. "Through both my parents I'm descended from Janus."

The air suddenly gained density around him and Harry recognized it as a pressure differential, and his eyes snapped to Aurora's shinning fae eyes peeking through the human glamour. He took in the sheer shock painted across her face.

"Half blood," she gasped.

The words made his blood run cold, and for the first time in a good long time, Harry thought he would open his eyes and be home. Another morning of thinking for just a split second that the last few years had been a dream and finally the sleeper awakened.

"What did you call me?" His voice came out dry and harsher than he intended.

Aurora stared at him like he was something like a miracle. "All this time the Outer Gates was not his greatest legacy. It was his bloodline." Her eyes roved over his body. And not only because he was wearing a pair of trunks and nothing else, Harry felt naked under that piercing gaze. "Born of mortal parents you are Janus come again."

Harry frowned. "This doesn't change anything. I'm still me. I'm still human."

She shook her head and let out a delighted little laugh. "No, my dear husband, you most certainly are not. Is that what the Gatekeeper told you?"

Sand fell between the cracks of his fingers from the curls of his fist at his side. "Why would he lie?" He demanded.

Harry was not prepared for the look on Aurora's face. It was unexpected how her face seemed to open a little, green eyes going sort of soft before she took in his sudden surprise, and her own flashed briefly in response, and Aurora's face smoothly closed off. Harry felt a weird sense of loss.

"You are human," she answered. "He didn't lie."

"But you just said—"

"Half human," Aurora clarified.

Harry froze and his head filled with white noise. None of it made sense to him at all. It panged deep in his gut and crawled in the muscles of his shoulders like every time he had ever tried to stop compulsively rolling them, a bad habit from practicing wand movements during his schoolboy years.

"And the other half?" he asked, not even recognizing his own voice. It sounded too rough, apprehension turning it deeper.

She shrugged. "Whatever the Gatebuilder was— Demigod, demon, or dragon. I cannot say. It was a secret he took to his grave."

Harry studied her for a moment before asking, "What do you think he was?"

"Our savior," The Summer Lady returned, and then looked off into the ocean's horizon.

A shadow fell over them and they looked up at the person blocking the sunlight. Margaret stood with her hands on her hips that were covered in the tightest pair of blue jeans Harry had ever seen. The long legs were stuffed into a pair of black motorcycle boots. A white T-shirt with the words 'Live Long and Prosper' clung to her midsection in a size too small. Harry took in her high ponytail and scowl and just blinked. Then blinked again. Her scowl deepened.

"They were the only clothes I had in my old locker back at Edinburgh," she snapped, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

Harry's eyebrows rose. "I didn't say anything."

Margaret just gave him a look and Harry was reminded of Snape so strongly that he throttled a smile. "I've given you almost fifteen minutes," she said, staring suspiciously at the smart phones a group of teenagers were texting with. "Let's get this show on the road."

Harry glanced at Aurora and then back up at Margaret. "Where exactly is this show going?"

Margaret returned her dark eyes on the married pair. "I've made mistakes and there's plenty I need to apologize for. None more than anything is for leaving any kid of mine without a mother." She wasn't one to cry but there was brittleness about her expression, then it was gone as briefly as it appeared. "We're going to Chicago for a family reunion. If we're going full out on your evil faerie father and his buddies, then we're going to need backup."

"Dresden is going to go bonkers," Harry stated, tapping at his abs with his fingers. "I hope he doesn't try and burn our faces off because the bloke really is that staff happy. He'll probably think you're a zombie."

"And he'll probably think you're a glass cutter," Margaret said, staring pointedly at his chest. "Your nipples are so hard you could cut through a window. Put a shirt on. It's distracting and indecent."

"Uncalled for," Harry said, reaching for his shirt. "The ocean breeze does things to me,"

Aurora hummed under her breath, delightedly. "I quite like the view."

"I bet you do. The ocean isn't the only thing that's wet here," Margaret chimed in, with a suggestive leer. She pointed to a rock outcropping bisecting the beach. "I'll be over there waiting in the wings."

Harry tugged on his shirt and watched her walk across the sand, ignoring everyone who stared at her very non-beach attire. Margaret was headstrong, willful, blunt and sarcastic, plus vulnerable and full of regrets, and Harry was genuinely starting to like her. She reminded him of someone from Hogwarts but he couldn't put his finger on it.

Harry turned to Aurora who had been watching him stare at Margaret. "Ready?"

There was a peculiar expression that Harry had never seen on Aurora's face. She smiled at Harry but there was something off about it. He followed her so they were standing on their feet now. There was only the barest distance between them, but it felt like miles.

"We better get going. This is going to be some reunion," she said, turning to leave. She left her towel lying on the sand.

Aurora was three steps ahead and Harry stared at her back with a confused frown feeling a strange sort of loss. He suddenly wanted to make her laugh again, ask her what was wrong and if he could make it better, if this was all worth it, if she was happy. Why did the expression on her face send his heart jumping through his throat, made the ground feel unstable like—It felt like...

Understanding hit Harry like a hex and his mouth kind of fell open and he muttered, "Oh," finally getting it and he followed.

Harry covertly watched his wife as they strolled down Chicago's downtown streets. He was barely aware of Margaret's knowing smirk or the random passersby. Green eyes roved over a lithe and shapely body covered in a sleeveless, refined black and silver A-Line dress with a round neckline that was cutout at the chest to showcase Aurora's ample assets. The nighttime breeze played about Aurora's hair, silken golden strands bouncing against slim shoulders, and Harry was painfully aware that it only took a single moment of clarity for his thoughts to devolve into this. This want. He walked on autopilot, trying to tune out the voice in his head that kept supplying unhelpfully as he went, a thing for danger and a thing for bad girls Hermione was right but Aurora was more than that and it showed in the way she grabbed my hand on the island and when she called me Harry instead of husband with fond affection and when she protected me from Titania and remember there was that genuine look of happiness when she met Aiden, et cetera and so on forever and ever. All this time and without his realizing it Harry and Aurora had been dating. Somehow and someway Harry had fallen for his brilliant, scheming and slightly mad wife. And it was all just…bollocks. It was bollocks in ways that he couldn't even begin to fathom. He held his breath until his lungs burned, and then for another minute after.

He was not having a panic attack. He was a Gryffindor for Merlin's sake.

And if Harry was being brutally honest these were not new feelings, it was just he put a name to them now, and that felt a whole lot like walking the plank. He was rubbish at this. Always had been. Harry Potter and anything romance always ended up a spectacular failure. It was not like Aurora was going to feel the same way. She might have a soul, but did she even know what love was. Feelings, genuine emotions and humanity, were still a whole new world for her. Of course he couldn't be normal and do the easy thing of falling in love with a nice girl with a pretty smile, live in an average house with a reasonable mortgage and raise 2.5 kids. Nope. The love of his life was a Faerie Queen with grand designs on expanding her sovereignty into an empire that will shake the earth's foundations. And Harry was fated to ride shotgun.

Even then he wanted to be the reason she smiled that big, honest smile.

Harry walked behind Aurora, staring at the back of her head in a way that he hoped wasn't as pensive as he felt it was, or as murderous as his pensive looks sometimes came across, when he heard her let out a breath of triumph. Because his life was an ironic joke Harry didn't catch himself in time from walking into her back when she stopped suddenly. He let out a whoosh of air as they collided, his hands automatically reaching out to steady her hips. It was such an enormous cliché that he hated himself for the quickening of his heart when Aurora's hair brushed the side of his face.

"Graceful as ever, dear husband," Aurora murmured.

Harry snorted into her shoulder and said, muffled. "Nag, nag, nag."

She turned around and looked at him. "You think you're terribly amusing."

He shrugged, and he was smiling already. "I think I'm quite brilliant really."

"And modest," Aurora added, smiling, then she lowered her voice and leaned in so that their foreheads were almost touching. "For the record, this is not the place to put your hands on me."

One of Aurora's fingers nudged into Harry's palm that was still holding her waist, and he muttered something unintelligible that sounded like, "Oh," and that was singularly the lamest reply in the history of ever. And it was coming, he could feel words on his tongue, where is the place you want me to put my hands I'll take you there and never let you go and I'll show you things you've made me feel over and over and his mouth opened to blurt it all out like some twitchy Fourth Year.

"If this is going to turn into a Hollywood romcom I won't be a part of it," said Margaret, somehow managing to look both amused and disgusted.

Harry scowled at her. "I liked you better when you didn't talk."

She rolled her eyes. "Don't be a pussy."

Aurora, curse her black heart, laughed. "If you two are finished we have arrived. Do you recognize this place?"

Harry blinked at the slightly faded sign that read MacAnally's. "Am I supposed to?"

"I do," Margaret said, striding forward to the door. "What I wouldn't do for a Chardonnay."

Aurora cleared her throat. "I suppose I should mention my handmaiden Elaine is in there right now with your son."

Margaret froze in her tracks, back ramrod straight. The streetlight over them caught her face, and Harry was close enough to see that she looked wrecked, like the defiant fire in her all died away revealing frightened eyes belonging to a too pale face. Harry stepped forward to help calm the utter panic taking over her face when Margaret steadied her breathing, flattened the crease in her brow with the heel of her hand, and let that fire inside burn away panic leaving serenity across her expression.

When she looked at them her smile was a small, quiet thing. "How do I look?"

"You'll pass," Aurora said with a reassuring thumb up.

Harry side eyed her and then grinned at Margaret. "She means you look like a million galleons."

Margaret stared at them for a long moment with a blank expression. "You two are a real piece of work."

If Harry didn't agree he would have taken offense. As it was, all he could do was share a shrug and a smirk with Aurora and follow their wizardly companion into the pub. A set of stairs led down into the barroom. They were greeted by low ceilings with lazily spinning ceiling fans. There were thirteen stools at the bar and thirteen tables in the room. Thirteen mirrors on the walls giving the room the illusion of more space. Thirteen windows, set up high in the wall in order to be above ground level, let in some light from the street to shine into the place. Even the columns around the room numbered thirteen.

"Clever," Harry said under his breath.

The spacing was done such to diffuse and refract random magical energies that often gathered around practitioners, especially young ones that hadn't fully honed their abilities. The dim, comfortable room wasn't empty. The bartender was a tall, thin man in his middle ages with narrowed eyes that watched them with a sharp, no nonsense gaze. He wiped his hands on his stark white apron and set them carefully upon the bar top, ready.

Margaret's stare wasn't on the few patrons scattered around the room. Elaine saw them before Dresden. She dropped her fork and the clatter muffled her gasp. Dresden spun around and then rolled his eyes when he saw Aurora and Harry.

"Damn it, Potter," he griped, wiping the beer from the corner of his mouth. "If you and the wife are here then I know trouble is right behind you."

Harry stuck his hands in the pockets of his slacks. "Please tell me that isn't your prom tux," he said, nodding at Dresden's ill fit suit. "You look like a knock off James Bond. Did we interrupt a date?"

Aurora sighed, "Harry."

"Sorry, sorry," he winced, pulling a face. "Force of habit. Listen, mate…"

Margaret moved from behind the pair finally coming into Dresden's line of sight and matching pair of eyes took the measure of the other. It wasn't even his reunion and Harry's heart was pounding in his chest something awful.

"Is this another Mrs. Harry Potter?" Dresden asked, wiggling his eyebrows. He mimed firing a gun at Harry. "You're a regular lady killer."

Harry let out the breath he didn't realize he was holding. "I thought you were a detective." He was flabbergasted. "And stop doing that thing with your eyebrows. You look as ridiculous as your taste in clothing."

Margaret placed a hand on his arm. "Easy there. He doesn't remember me. He hasn't seen me since the day he was born."

The detective crack might have been a dig but it wasn't without merit. Dresden was an excellent investigator. That and his temper were well known. Thoughts swirled openly in Dresden's eyes as he took in the new fact. It was all there on his face as it came together with the slackening of his jaw and the widening of his eyes. The myriad of emotions on his face went from lost, confusion, dismay, disbelief, anger—well, less like anger and more like wrath.

Dresden shot up, chair topping over backward. "HOW DARE YOU!"

His voice was fury given sound and the entire bar shook. The air grew thick and that enraged glare was pinned on three of them.

Harry reached for his wand. This was exactly how he pictured this going.