Chapter 32

Harry carefully, very, very carefully, took stock of the situation. He was in Voldemort's bed, his shirt was open, his trousers were half off with one leg bare and his head was pounding. Harry glanced at Voldemort again. "I don't think we fucked, but my trousers are half off for some reason."

Voldemort swallowed, his throat making a very dry sound, and then he lifted the covers and examined his own body. "My trousers are opened but still on. I agree that we probably didn't have sex."

"Good," Harry said, letting his head drop back in his pillow. And then he realized how that sounded, so he quickly added, "When I fuck you I want to remember it." Harry wasn't a complete idiot. He had eyes and he could see how utterly attractive Voldemort was. Not just in the looks department, but more importantly in the magical department. There was something so deliciously raw and dark about the man and his magic that Harry felt drawn to without even realizing. And now that Harry knew Voldemort at least welcomed the idea of having sex with men the chances of them eventually fucking had just risen exponentially.

Voldemort couldn't hold back a grin and released a burst of laughter, which quickly transformed into a pained groan.

Harry threw his arm over his own face and joined Voldemort in groaning in absolute misery. Not just his head was pounding, his whole fucking face was aching. "What sort of poison did you serve me last night?"

Voldemort had his eyes squeezed shut, face a picture of misery. "Guinness is a muggle beer, so I'm simply blaming this whole terrible hangover on the muggles."

Snorting, Harry couldn't hold back some laughter, which caused even his teeth to ache for some fucking reason. That is when Harry's stomach made it known it wasn't happy, either. "Ah, I feel so sick."

"If you throw up in my bed I will curse you," Voldemort said and he even managed to sound kind of menacing for a second or two before he groaned in absolute misery again. "Look what you have done to me."

"What?"

"I used to be a Dark Lord," Voldemort whispered, licking his dry lips a few times. "A respected, feared Dark Lord. People were literally too scared to even say my name. And now I'm reduced to a hungover fool who spent a whole night in a pub making merry and getting drunk with werewolves and muggleborns. It's all your fault."

Harry cracked up again and then quickly rolled onto his side, one arm curled around his stomach. "Stop…stop… Fuck, what do I call you? I keep calling you Voldemort in my head, but that's just not right."

Slowly letting his head drop to the side, Voldemort stared at him. "I go by Marvolo these days. You could try that."

"Ugh. It's too fucking long," Harry muttered, face pressed against the pillow.

"How is that too long?" Voldemort demanded, expression briefly lighting up in outrage before crumbling in pain again. "It's exactly one syllable longer than your name. Har-ry. Mar-vo-lo."

"Yeah, all right," Harry conceded. "Marvolo, do you wizards have something to fix this mess? In Santika we had a herbal brew that worked pretty well, but I don't have any doses ready."

"Dobby!" Voldemort called, voice cracking and he ended up coughing a few times while the eager house-elf appeared at the side of the bed. "Get us some hangover cures, quickly!"

"Master Gaunts is not be having them in the mansion," Dobby said while pulling on his own ears in obvious distress.

"There's a money pouch in my cloak, grab that and go to Diagon Alley to buy some," Voldemort said…no, Marvolo said. Harry decided he was going to make an effort to think of the man by his newly chosen name because if last night had proven anything, it was that Lord Voldemort as he'd once existed was well and truly gone.

Dobby popped away and Harry and Marvolo both lay very still until a few minutes later the house-elf returned and gave them both a vial with a bright blue potion inside. Marvolo sniffed his briefly before downing it and falling back against the bed with a relieved sigh. Harry drank his own dose, which had a surprisingly minty flavour, and at once his stomach settled and his head stopped pounding.

"Oh yeah," Harry moaned in absolute delight. "That's so much better. Thanks."

"You're welcome," Marvolo said, eyes still squeezed shut but his face utterly relaxed now.

Harry licked his lips, his mouth now a lot less dry. "We should make this a thing."

"A what now?"

"Saturday nights," Harry explained, glancing at Marvolo again. "We should go to the pub on Saturday nights from now on."

Marvolo looked at Harry as though he'd utterly lost his mind for a moment but then he released a resigned little sigh. "Fine. We can do that. Mingling with the peasants is probably a good idea, politically speaking."

"Fuck off," Harry said with a snicker, pulling his pillow out from under his own head and smacking it against Marvolo's face. "We're just going there to get shitfaced. It's healthy, considering all the stress we're under."

Marvolo's expression was stuck somewhere between outrage and sincere surprise and Harry got the ridiculous impulse to kiss the man, just dive right on top of him, push him down against the mattress and snog him within an inch of his life. But they were both sweaty and smelly and had morning-breath that could knock a dragon out, probably, so this really wasn't a good time.

Still, the idea of snogging Marvolo had now taken up root in Harry's brain and knowing himself, Harry was sure that someday soon he was going to act on that impulse. And from what he'd seen so far, Marvolo probably wouldn't be opposed to such a thing. He certainly hadn't reacted with revulsion to the idea of having sex with Harry earlier.

"We need an apothecary," Harry mused, giving Marvolo no chance of retaliation by quickly sitting up. "All those poor bastards out there who got just as drunk as us but who don't have house-elves to visit Diagon Alley for them."

"They should have thought of that before they entered the pub last night," Marvolo grumbled, still staring at Harry in slight disbelief he'd just been smacked in the face with a pillow like that.

There was a strange tapping noise that Harry couldn't quite place as he slowly pushed himself out of bed and stretched out his arms over his head. "I should head home, have a bath." Harry frowned as he considered his option. "I might even take the day off, or at least do some quiet stuff around the castle."

"Merlin knows we have earned some time to ourselves," Marvolo agreed, making no effort to get up just yet.

Harry looked around in confusion as he pulled his trousers up all the way. Next he buttoned his shirt while Marvolo stared at him with narrowed eyes.

"What do the tattoos mean?" Marvolo asked quietly.

"They're runes that provide safety when walking the deathlands," Harry said while he looked all over the large room. Where the fuck was V? "And there's a few little extras I've added over the years, to help focus my powers."

There was that tapping noise again, and only now did Harry realize it came from one of the windows. There, on the windowsill outside sat V, tapping his beak against the glass in quiet outrage.

"Aw, buddy," Harry said with a chuckle. "Just fly to the castle, I'll be there in a minute." V did not seem reassured by those words and tapped the glass harder.

Marvolo ignored V completely, as he usually did. "Does that mean I will have to get those tattoos as well?" Marvolo's face was scrunched up in clear distaste.

"Seriously?" Harry said, more than a little surprised by Marvolo's negative response. "You'll rip your own fucking soul apart like it's nothing, but the idea of permanently inking designs into your skin is freaking you out?" Harry snorted with laughter, shook his head and walked to the bedroom door. Marvolo was giving him an unreadable look while Harry glanced at him over his shoulder. "I had a great time. I'll see you tomorrow to move some more homes. Bye, Marvolo." And with that, Harry slipped through the bedroom door.

Harry decided to walk back to his castle across the brand-new paved road, to help wake him up a bit more and to clear his head. V landed on his shoulder almost at once and chattered in annoyance for most of the way home. By the time Harry stepped through his own door he was feeling back to his usual self again. He was also surprised to see it was after noon already.

"Igor, run me a bath! Violet, some lunch, please!" Harry shrugged off his brand-new cloak, glad to see it still in pristine condition, and hung it up on the coatrack beside the door.

"Eurgh!"

"Eep!"

Once Harry was fed and washed and dressed in his normal attire again, he settled in the library where a generous pile of mail awaited him. Harry had been neglecting it, and as expected, it had only grown over the past couple of weeks. Most of it was nonsense from 'fans', people who didn't know him but insisted on putting him on a pedestal anyway. Harry had no patience for that kind of nonsense and chucked those letter straight onto the pile meant to light fires with.

It was stupid, tedious work, to go through every piece of mail, make sure it wasn't cursed, only for it to be a letter from a complete stranger singing his praises over nothing.

There was one letter, though, that brought a genuine smile to Harry's face. His three young assistants had sent him a letter, talking about their lives at Hogwarts. Apparently the Yule Ball was a big thing amongst the students, and Hermione had a date but wouldn't say who it was, while Ron and Neville had managed to convince a pair of sisters to go with them to the dance. Ron had apparently received dress-robes from his mother that might have actually belonged to his many times great-grandfather born in the 1700s, if Harry was the believe the description Hermione gave of it.

Still, Harry appreciated his young friends keeping in touch with him, so he decided to give them a new project to research. He wrote them a letter back and asked them to design a judicial system, including a branch of law enforcement, from scratch for a hypothetical new country. Harry was genuinely curious what Hermione would come up with in all her idealistic glory.

Once he sent Poppy off with the letter for his assistants, Harry frowned and realized he probably needed such dress-robes for himself to wear to the ball. He should probably visit Melissa Greengrass, their resident tailor, soon. Which reminded Harry that he had meant to go through his own wardrobes and sort through old clothing to donate to Melissa's clothing bank.

So, after Harry finished wading through his mostly useless mail, he headed upstairs and opened each and every wardrobe and closet he had in search of old clothing and other linens. It turned out Harry had a ridiculous amount of sheets and blankets and towels that were still in usable shape, which he set aside to donate.

Next came his clothing. For some reason, Harry had about a hundred thousand socks with a single hole in them. It was a habit for Harry to put aside any sock that developed a hole with the genuine intention of fixing it later, only to forget about it entirely.

"Lavender!" Harry yelled, sitting on the floor beside his small mountain of socks. "Fix the holes in these, make decent pairs and then put them aside to be donated."

"Eep!"

Next came shoes, which Harry didn't have that many spare pairs of, since he usually wore his boots down until they practically fell apart and even magic couldn't hold them together anymore. As Harry crawled onto his knees inside his biggest built-in closet in one of his storage rooms, he found an old trunk which he didn't even remember storing there.

Harry pulled the trunk out of the closet, opened the lid, and gasped at what he saw.

Small clothes. Tiny shoes. Little tunics and trousers and dresses and ribbons in all colours that had once tied his daughters' hair in ponytails.

Swallowing, Harry sat back on his butt and ran a hand over his face. He was sure he'd passed on all his children's clothing to his grandkids as some point. When had he even put this trunk in the closet? Had Mal done this? She could be oddly sentimental at times, even though she usually was refreshingly pragmatic in her day to day life.

Well, had been.

A sob rose from Harry's chest, but he bit down in it, refused to let it surface, because he was not dealing with this right now.

Harry had lost his entire family, his entire fucking world, and he was not fucking dealing with it right at that moment.

Harry had built an entire new country to fill the vast chasm of grief losing everyone he'd ever loved had left inside of him and apparently even that wasn't enough because his chest still burned with heartache.

V sat on the edge of the trunk and picked up a few ribbons while he hung his head. V had always cared for Harry's kids just as much as Harry had, even if he liked to pretend they were annoying little miscreants that always got underfoot.

"Call, call," V cawed softly, letting the ribbons drop around his feet. "Call kids."

"No," Harry said, his voice thick and his eyes closed. "No, V, not now."

A shadow fell over Harry and when he looked up he saw Keket standing on the ceiling. She jumped to the floor and settled behind him, leaning her massive head around him to sniff at the clothes in the trunk. Keket released a soft, keening noise. She, too, had been there to see Harry's children grow up.

"Let's go outside for a while," Harry said, gently closing the lid. V flew up as he picked up the ribbons to settle on top of the closed lid again.

"Tie, tie," V cawed, waving the four ribbons at Harry while he stuck out a foot. "Tie foot."

"You'll look like a clown," Harry warned him with a chuckle, but he still tied the four ribbons around V's skinny leg, so he had a bunch of colourful tails hanging down from his ankle. Then Harry shoved the trunk back into the wardrobe, closed the door and decided Melissa could make do with his linens and mountain of socks for her clothing bank.

Harry pulled on his cloak, got his broom and he flew down the new paved road the elves had build around the island while V flew ahead and Keket loped after him. They saw the thestrals munching on some fresh cow carcasses on the edge of his property, so Masaru had been able to keep them fed well enough. Right as they passed by Gaunt Mansion they saw the Scottish Highland coos grazing, spread out across the meadow opposite Marvolo's home. The elves had done a good job and the road looked great, and beside it small trees were already emerging from the soil. And Harry took his time flying, since he wasn't in a hurry.

This was his home now. He had nowhere else to go.

As Harry stopped for a break in the young forest he'd planted on the westernmost point of the island, he decided that he was lucky.

No, really. Harry was incredibly lucky. He was an old man. He should be wrinkled and grey by now, on his deathbed even. And here he was, young and vital and with many years still ahead of him.

How many people were that lucky, that they got to live not one, but two different lives like that? Raise a family in the first life, see his kids grow up, his grandkids find their ways in life. And now here in this new world he was able to provide a home for those who needed it the most, and maybe he would even be able to save the broken soul of a person who needed saving more than anyone else.

Harry hadn't told him yet, but he already knew that Marvolo couldn't walk the deathlands with the way his soul was shattered. The demons would sense such weakness at once and devour him alive. And without walking the deathlands, Marvolo would never become a genuine necromancer, just the pale illusion of one that he already was. Harry decided it was probably for the best if Marvolo studied the theory first, so he'd understand what was at stake, and then he could decide what he wanted to do about his broken soul.

When Harry got back on his broom after having walked down the coast a little amongst the young trees that now were foot taller than him, he saw a few flying animals in the distance. At first Harry thought they were thestrals, but as he flew closer he realized these creatures had the heads of very large birds with sharp beaks.

These were hippogriffs, Harry was sure. His father had mentioned them so often during his stories about the marauders roaming through the Forbidden Forest, that Harry knew what they were the moment he saw them. There were five of them, all in different colours, flying high above the large lake Harry had created beside the forest when he'd just made the island.

Well, Harry hoped they liked carrion, too. Masaru now had two places to drop off carcasses, it seemed.

As Harry flew along the southern shore of the island he realized he still needed to adjust the coastal areas. The ocean around them was filled with life meant for the open waters, not for coastal areas. That meant Harry had to import coastal seaweeds and all sorts of critters, from fish to worms, to start the correct coastal ecosystem, and which would eventually provide food for them as well in the form of crabs and mussels, scallops and fish, and much more. Harry made a mental note to visit Rachel that week.

By the time Harry arrived back at his castle he felt a little calmer, the pain in his chest having receded for the most part. He had a quiet dinner and then retired to the library for a few hours where he read some of the new books he'd purchased before heading to bed.

The next morning the strange melancholic mood that had taken over Harry the previous day was gone, and Harry was ready to get some more work done instead of wallowing in the past. V insisted on keeping the ribbons around his leg, though, which was fine by Harry, even if seeing the four ribbons did bring up memories of his children every single time he caught sight of them.

The first thing Harry did was stop at Melissa Greengrass' home. "I need dress robes," Harry said the moment she opened her door. "For the Yule ball."

"Well, you've come to the right place," Melissa said and waved him inside.

"I also brought socks and linens, for your clothing bank." Harry dropped a crate in the kitchen. "I didn't have any other usable clothes."

"Thanks, Harry. Every little bit helps," Melissa assured him with a warm smile as she grabbed a tape measure from a nearby table. "Now stand still for a moment."

Harry posed patiently as Melissa got his measurements and gave him some options for different types of dress robes.

"I basically want the kind that look the least like robes," Harry finally said, since he really wasn't a fan of the long, closed robes people like Dumbledore seemed to favour. "I don't care what anyone says."

Melissa grinned in response. "Well, it's not as though they'd kick you out for not adhering to the dress code."

"Exactly," Harry agreed with a haughty sniff. Melissa showed him a few types of fabric, and Harry chose one of the black ones that seemed the nicest. Then he said his goodbyes and headed for Gaunt Mansion, since they still had a home to move that morning.

"I just ordered dress robes," Harry said by way of greeting when Marvolo opened the door. And it was strange to think of him as Marvolo, Harry mused, but it was better than Voldemort, which didn't seem to fit him at all anymore now that Harry had seen the man well and truly drunk and completely hungover.

"Ah," Marvolo replied with a nod. "It's good that you mention it, since I could do with a new pair as well. The last time I wore dress robes was in the seventies."

"Melissa Greengrass is happy enough to help you with that," Harry said as they walked down the garden path. Voldemort grabbed Harry's shoulder and apparated them to Mulciber Mansion.

Jerome Mulciber Senior was a grumpy man with harsh features. His son, Jerome Jr, was serving a life sentence in Azkaban and was on the list to be freed, if they ever figured out a way to do so without alerting anyone. Mulciber Mansion was an average size, but it did have around 25 acres of land and 20 of those were used to grow rye, barley and dried beans. Mulciber didn't care if he sold his crops in Britain or Magica, since it was a side income as he worked at the Ministry as an archivist. Harry moved his property to Blueberry Lane without any issues.

"Have you considered our Azkaban dilemma?" Marvolo asked him as they enjoyed the mild curry Violet served them for lunch.

"The problem is that if we use Muggles to Polyjuice into the wizards in question, the most basic tests will reveal the bodies never belonged to a witch or wizard in the first place," Harry said by way of summing up the issues they needed to solve.

Marvolo nodded slowly a few times. "Exactly."

Harry sat back in his chair, narrowing his eyes as his mind went around and around to figure out a solution. "What if the imaginary plague we thought about unleashing on Azkaban eats away the prisoner's magic."

Sitting up a little, Marvolo widened his eyes. "That would be a brilliant way to fool everyone."

"Right." Harry grinned for a moment, proud of his own cleverness. "That means we have to invent a new illness, and we have to start with just a few prisoners. We can't break them out all at once."

"We could use a potion," Marvolo mused, placing his elbows on the table and resting his chin on his folded hands. "I could create a new potion, that cannot easily be detected, that suppresses the magic while making the prisoners visibly ill."

"Right," Harry said, leaning forward, genuinely happy they seemed to have hit upon a strategy they could work out into a realistic plan. "We have to find a way to dose the prisoners without being detected, let them be ill for a while so some healer can at least examine them and conclude their magic is disappearing, and then when they find a dead body without magic in the cell eventually they won't assume it's a Polyjuiced muggle."

"It's a perfect plan," Marvolo said with no small amount of satisfaction. "I'll get started on a potion."

"And I'll find some muggles deserving of death who no one will miss," Harry said easily. He wasn't going to hurt innocent people, that wasn't his style at all, but he knew all too well that there were always monsters living amongst humanity, and Harry had no problems hunting those down and using them for his own betterment. "Let's postpone the actual breaking into Azkaban until after the Yule Ball," Harry said with a tilt of his head. "We're already stealing a basilisk in a week. Let's make sure that goes down without any problems first."

"Agreed." Marvolo sat back in his chair and gave Harry a look that was simultaneously very fond and very sly, and it did things to Harry's chest, and to Harry's groin. By the Sun Goddess, Harry wanted to ravage that man and he wasn't sure how much longer he could contain himself anymore.

That afternoon Harry stopped by Rachel's home where they talked about the ecological progress of Magica.

"I've been stocking the lakes and river with lots of fish and crustaceans," Rachel said with her usual amount of enthusiasm. "And I've added a few more important critters to the land. Lots of moles, since they are great at providing drainage for the fields. And lots of worms, who do the same thing."

"Excellent work," Harry said with a grateful smile. "I was thinking we can get started on the coastal waters."

"How do you want to do that?" Rachel asked with a quirk of her eyebrows.

"We go around the British coast and without being spotted we transport patches of beach and coastal areas to Magica."

"We're going to steal bits of beach," Rachel said in a sort of deadpan voice.

"When you put it like that, it sounds ridiculous." Harry got up from his seat and waved at Rachel to follow him. "Come on, let me show you how it's done."

And they spent the whole afternoon stealing, as Rachel insisted, all sorts of natural features, from large pieces of rocks that had mussels and oysters growing on them, to swatches of sand with lots of worms and clams and crabs living in it, and they all transported it through portals to add to their own coasts. They also made sure they got lots of different kinds of seaweed and several species of fish.

"I'll keep an eye on it," Rachel said once the sun started setting and they had to call it quits. "And add more things as needed."

The next day Harry sent a note to Sebastian Parkinson to come over, to discuss the planning of Spellbridge and of the rest of Magica. Harry had some ideas, but he could always use help.

Sebastian was an intelligent man, as Harry had guessed early on, and he took his job seriously as they stood in the library, examining the maps Harry had roughly drawn of Spellbridge and of Magica as a whole.

"You've only been adding residential streets, aside from town square," Sebastian pointed out, quill at the ready to add to the map. "But towns need more than that. They need schools and offices and recreational spaces."

"Sure," Harry agreed easily.

Sebastian started drawing on the map of Spellbridge, until they had a design they were both happy with. It included lots of new residential streets, but also more commercial areas, a large school, office space for businesses and a few parks and play areas for children.

"Where do you want the seat of your government?" Sebastian asked at one point.

Harry pointed at Town Hall.

Rolling his eyes, Sebastian released a tired sigh. "That's Spellbridge's government. I meant Magica's government. Eventually the country is going to have so many people living in it that you'll need to build a functional government with different departments."

"Right," Harry said, not at all embarrassed he'd completely forgotten about that, or so he told himself. "We can build it north of town square, put a large park between the future Gringotts office and put the national government on the other side of that."

"That'll work," Sebastian said and got drawing again.

"I have ideas for more towns," Harry said once they moved on to the map of Magica. "We need a port, because at some point people will want to start fishing and stuff." Harry pointed to the coast south of Spellbridge. "Here's a bit of a bay. We can start construction there soon."

"What do you want to call it?"

Harry frowned while he thought of a name. "Hexport."

Sebastian snorted in amusement but wrote it down without complaint.

"And here," Harry said, pointing at the coast north of the mountain, where there was only grassland since he hadn't planted any trees there. "Is going to be an agricultural town. I plan on getting my house-elves to start growing commodity crops there. Wheat, corn, sugar beets, rapeseed, sunflowers, dry peas, that sort of thing."

"All necessary," Sebastian agreed with a thoughtful nod.

"Put a town there and we'll call it… Kneazledale." Harry grinned in amusement at Sebastian's look of disbelief.

"Whatever you say, Guv," Sebastian said, shaking his head, but dutifully penning it in.

"And here," Harry pointed towards the large lake beside the forest on the westernmost point of Magica, "I've spotted hippogriffs. We can build a town here on the lake called Hippogriff Hollow. Eventually I want to invite merpeople and centaurs to live in that area. Other magical beings could move there, if they wanted."

"And a school?" Sebastian asked once all the new plans had been put on paper.

"I thought we just added one to Spellbridge?" Harry asked with a confused look.

"A primary school for the little ones. But at some point they're going to have to learn magic, or did you want our youth to attend Hogwarts in Britain?" Sebastian pointed out patiently.

"No," Harry said at once. "We can't expect our kids to grow up in a society where all magic is allowed and encouraged, and then send them to a school where nothing is allowed. We're building our own school. I've done that before in Sildar." Harry didn't mention that he had modelled Sildar's School for Magic on Hogwarts. "We can put it… here." Harry tapped a spot in the southwest, right on the coast, against the edge of what one day would hopefully become centaur forest.

"There." Sebastian gave Harry a satisfied look. "Now we've got something to work with, and I can keep our construction crew busy in a more efficient way instead of just letting them add streets randomly as they please."

"Thanks," Harry said with a sincere smile. He was more than happy he'd put Sebastian in charge because only now with a qualified person at the helm did he see what an unorganized mess his construction crew had been before.

"Right now I've got them working on a whole street full of vampire homes," Sebastian said as he copied both maps with a wave of his wand, folding up one pair of maps and tucking them in his pockets. "Let me know if you need more of those in the future."

After Sebastian left, Harry received a letter from Gringotts to tell him that Grimmauld Place had been sold. Apparently a squib investor had bought it for the asking price. He planned on stripping all magic from the building, gutting it and then rebuilding it into a luxurious muggle townhouse. Thanks to the location, it would earn him back a very nice profit on his investment this way. Harry briefly apparated to Diagon Alley to sign the paperwork and to collect his very generous pile of gold he'd just earned, and once back in his castle he stored it in a separate spot, to be used for the development of Magica in the future. For now he'd be using it to pay all the people's salaries with it.

Sirius invited him to dinner that evening and Harry happily went to spend some time with his friends. He wasn't the only guests, though, since Barty was there as well, sitting next to Regulus at the dining table.

Sirius laughed for a long few minutes when Harry told him to future of Grimmauld Place. "Our mother is rolling in her grave!"

Regulus looked equally as amused, though he kept it together. "I do find it deliciously ironic that Mother's pride and joy, the family townhouse, will soon be bought by muggles."

Harry toasted them with his glass of wine in response.

"We've all looked over the constitution," Remus pointed out some time later. "And it looks good."

"I'll officially implement it then," Harry said with a grateful smile. "Perhaps when we build Magica's ministry. We can put it up on a wall there or something."

"Inscribe it in the atrium," Barty suggested with a small smile.

"That's an excellent idea," Harry agreed. "But that will have to wait, because first there's the Yule Ball in a few days, when Marvolo and I are going to rescue a basilisk."

Dead silence greeted Harry while all four men stared at him with wide, disbelieving eyes.

Harry blinked and gestured helplessly. "Why do you think I've built that extra island off the coast? That's going to house the basilisk."

Remus cleared his throat and briefly pursed his lips. "Rachel seems to believe that island is a future tiger sanctuary. She was complaining it was a little small for that."

"What?" Harry asked in utter astonishment. "No. Tiger island is still a long ways away. I made a deal with Marvolo I would help him rescue the basilisk from Hogwarts in exchange for the Elixir of Life."

That caused some murmuring around the table and Regulus at least looked a little contrite about his earlier response. Of course, Harry had exchanged the basilisk rescue for elixir for Keket, but they didn't need to know that.

"Wait," Remus said, blinking slowly a few times. "There is a basilisk at Hogwarts? Right now?"

"Yep," Harry said with a shrug. "Apparently it's sleeping in the Chamber of Secrets."

"That needs to go," Barty said, looking around the table a few times with a sense of urgency. "Right now."

"It will go to Basilisk Island after the Yule Ball," Harry pointed out, again, now feeling a little exasperated. "In less than a week."

"I'm assuming the island is going to be warded, though?" Regulus asked delicately, looking as though he worried about upsetting Harry.

"Of course," Harry was quick to reassure him. "Marvolo is adding the wards as we speak and I'm going to examine them thoroughly before adding the basilisk."

"Well, we've already got a dragon," Sirius said, grinning while he sipped his glass of whiskey. "What's one more deadly creature."

"I suppose. As long as it's removed from Hogwarts," Remus finally conceded with a small smile. "Rachel is going to be disappointed there aren't going to be tigers moving in anytime soon."

Chuckling, Harry sat back in his chair and sipped his own glass of whiskey. "I'll get to creating tiger island as soon as I can, tell her that. But first we've got project Azkaban to tackle."

And there were those wide-eyed stares again. Harry sighed, wondering what it was that upset his friends now.

"Project Azkaban?" Sirius asked, his face paling visibly.

"Yes," Harry said with an impatient wave of his hand. "Marvolo wants to break his followers out of Azkaban and bring them here. And I want to remove all the poor bastards who were sentenced to prison for using dark magic and stuff."

Again only silence greeted him and Harry looked around the table in confusion. Regulus was staring at the empty plate in front of him, while Barty was giving Harry an unreadable look.

"Oh, Marvolo wants to break his followers out of Azkaban," Sirius said in a dark voice with an tone that got increasingly more dangerous. "And you're just going along with it?"

"Er…" Harry opened and closed his mouth, unsure what to say but utterly unprepared for his godfather's open hostility.

"Harry, those people are there for a reason," Barty whispered, hands folded tightly on the table in front of him.

"You were sentenced to Azkaban yourself," Harry felt compelled to point out, not understanding what the fuck was going on.

"Barty was an idiot!" Sirius all but yelled, pushing his chair back with too much force. He got up, glass of whiskey firmly in hand. "Young and foolish and hanging out with much older people he had no business hanging out with, who dragged him along whether he liked it or not."

"Thanks," Barty said, and he sounded as though he meant that sincerely, much to Harry's ever growing confusion.

"But the Death Eaters that are still in Azkaban are there for a reason, Harry." Sirius sloshed whiskey over his hand as he took a few determined steps towards Harry. "Did you even ask Marvolo what those lackeys of his have done?"

"I didn't, no," Harry said, feeling a little bit foolish that he hadn't done so but had just blindly agreed to help them. "I'll ask him first thing tomorrow."

"Don't bother," Sirius said, placing one hand on the table beside Harry so he could lean over him. "Because you've got to understand one thing, Harry. If Bellatrix or Rodolphus or Rabastan or any of those cunts set one foot on this island, I am out of here."