Harry fell in love on a bright bench in a park with no clouds in the sky and a Villain fight around the corner.

He hadn't meant to, and he also hadn't meant to find a villain fight or to well, not fight in said fight.

He'd been quite happily sipping his hot chocolate while Shouta gulped his second coffee, the two of them otherwise content to relax outside after a long week. Shouta was leaning into Harry's shoulder, and Harry was trying to remember the last time he'd felt quite so content.

The moment ended when Shouta's phone rang.

Harry had barely heard "your kids are all right," before he was standing and throwing out both of their drinks, Shouta's slipping easily out of his hand.

When Harry had made it the several steps back from the trash can, he forestalled Shouta's apologies. "If you can give me a landmark, I can teleport us there."

The look Shouta sent Harry seeped slow gratitude and tired affection. It took four suggestions to get a landmark Harry recognized enough for apparition (just long enough for Harry to battle his blush into submission).

They both hit the ground running. This was impressive for Shouta because he'd only been side-a- longed once, which was not enough to get used to the nausea, and was impressive for Harry because he'd only visited this statue once (it was confusing enough to add to the list of things to show Luna), which wasn't enough to know where the fuck he was going.

Shouta was, consequentially, several feet ahead. Harry let that distance grow when he saw Shouta stop next to Detective Tsukauchi and four teenagers. One was a boy with red and white hair and a surprising amount of poise for someone covered in goop. Also for someone being poked by two teenagers investigating said goop.

The girl poker had a mischievous smile and just enough baby-fat in her cheeks to get away with looking innocent while she stirred up trouble. The boy poker had purple hair and eye bags that were suspiciously similar to Shouta's. He didn't even try for innocent and went straight for shit- disturber.

The last teen was a green haired boy with bright freckles and a sheepish grin. He shifted the white- haired girl in his arms to rub at the back of his neck as Shouta approached.

The white-haired girl was the one who stopped Harry in his tracks, though not far enough away that he wasn't able to hear Midoriya's (because Shouta had lots of stories about his Problem Child) insistence that this wasn't his fault.

Harry could relate, or he would, if he could take his eyes off Shouta's daughter. She went to her father easily, soaking in his hug for all that she was perhaps just a bit too big to be passed around like that.

"It actually wan't his fault, this time."

Shouta scowled at Detective Tsukauchi (the man who'd won what Harry was mentally calling the Police Shovel Talk Sweepstakes by staring at Harry with flat eyes, telling him "It's funny how people seem to think that being a human lie-detector means you only tell the truth," sipping his coffee, and walking away).

"I'm still getting him tested for residual quirk effects. This is the second time this week." Shouta said with something just a bit too harsh to be a pout.

Midoriya laughed, awkwardly, even as the the girl, Uraraka (because Harry had seen a lot of photos) crossed her arms and huffed. "It really wasn't us Sensei! We were just walking down the street after getting groceries-"

"We lost the bags, by the way. Your juice pouches were in them." The purple boy, Hitoshi, interrupted.

Uraraka waved off his interruption and Shouta's glare. "-and then bam! Smoke attack."

"You got in the middle of a turf war between two gang factions that happened in the middle of the day and expect me to believe that none of you, particularly the Problem Child, had nothing to do with it?"

"We only meant to start evacuating civilians, but..."

"The daughter of one of the gang leaders was in a relationship with the chief enforcer of another. They were very much in love but the mother of the enforcer found out and wanted to put the girl through battle trials. The girl's father found out during a betrothal meeting with another gang leader and both brought forces to interrupt the trials. The mother of the enforcer then decided to make that the trial."

Everyone stared at Todoroki, even the Detective. Except Eri. Eri hadn't turned large red eyes from Harry's face since she noticed him behind her father.

Todoroki ignored them all to turn baleful eyes at Midoriya. "I got monologued at and covered in purple goop. Getting monologued at is your job."

Midoriya opened his mouth to reply, and something about his expression made it startlingly clear that he was going to apologize instead of protest his innocence.

He never got the chance. A loud bang echoed down the street while a very tall woman yelled "Get your filthy hands off my future daughter in-law!" Several other bangs quickly followed, along with a resurgence of pale yellow smoke and a general return of chaos to the street.

Shouta and Tsukauchi sighed at the exact same time, before Tsukauchi ran off to discover who had fucked up the containment process quite so badly.

Shouta turned back to the four alert and tense teenagers. "Go." They didn't hesitate. Uraraka lessened the gravity of both herself and Hitoshi, and both of them held out their hands to a green- sparking Izuku who grabbed them and sped off. Todoroki followed shortly after on only slightly purple ice.

This left Harry, Shouta, and Eri standing in a loose triangle. Eri tugged on her father's sleeve, immediately gaining all of the man's attention that wasn't on the fight. "That's Harry, right?"

"Ah." Shouta looked from Eri to Harry. "Right."

She nodded then stepped to Harry's side. "Go, Papa."

"What?" Shouta shared a quick startled look with Harry, who could offer no insights. "You're a hero. Go be a hero."

Shouta looked torn. He trusted his students, but he was a hero. And their teacher.

Harry studied white hair for a moment, before glancing back at the line on Shouta's face and the tension in his shoulder. "Go," Harry said. "I've got her."

Shouta was gone almost before Harry had finished speaking, and he had never felt so trusted in his life.

Harry dropped to his heels, so he was shoulder to shoulder with Eri, but didn't turn to face her. The fight was taking place at the end of the street, but it was a messy brawl of a fight and Harry knew those changed direction quickly. He wouldn't let so much as a drop of goop hit Shouta's daughter.

Eri was content for several moments to watch her father and his students fight from distance, amidst the growing crowd.

"You're Papa's boyfriend."

She didn't turn away from the fight, so Harry didn't feel the need to either. "Yes."

"You make him happy."

Harry let out a breath, a deep one that he felt had been sitting at the bottom of his lungs for days, maybe weeks. "Good. That's good. I want to."

She went quiet.

"My son says Shouta makes me happy, too." Harry added, lowly.

"Your son?"

Harry watched her run small palms over her cherry-red dress out of the corner of his eyes. "He's like you, in some ways. His grandmother and I adopted him after he lost the rest of his family."

"Some ways." Such a sharp little girl Shouta had raised.

Harry sighed. "Some ways. We got him when he was a baby. He never had to go through the awful things we did."

She turned to him, Harry could feel the sudden weight of her gaze studying every visible scar. He thought she might be surprised with how easily he'd brought her history up; most people probably skirted the violence of her past or thought she'd prefer not to hear mention of those particular memories.

Harry had never been fond of burying the past. He didn't want to talk about it, was sure she didn't really either, but not talking wasn't not acknowledging.

Then again, she might be picking up on the implied threat. She was a sharp little girl, after all, and raised by heroes. She might hear the 'I didn't allow those awful things near my son' in his tone. She might also read the readiness in his slightly glowing hand and the protective violence in his crouched form, just slightly in front of her.

She opened her mouth, but Harry interrupted her with an arm around her middle that dragged her out of existence with him.

They popped back at the statues, it's coiling wires waving slightly in the wind.

"Shit, sorry, that must have been rough."

He tried to put her down, but arms and legs clung to him as she breathed through the nausea.

"Thank you." Her voice said, usually small.

Which, double shit. He'd hoped that her staring at him had meant she hadn't seen the large chunk of building suddenly being flung in their direction.

"You're welcome, sweetheart." The endearment fell off his lips without thought, without effort, and it had both of them staring at each other in its wake. Cautious, but not completely uncomfortable.

"Auntie Nem said it's good Papa found you but that because we loved him first I need to threaten you so you don't hurt Papa."

"Alright." That sounded like pretty solid logic to Harry. "Is that what you're going to do now?"

"I'm not going to scare you." She shook her head a couple times to confirm her point. "Papa and Deku and Lemillion and Auntie Nem and Uncle Zashi, they're heroes. They fight villains. You, you're not like that."

Harry cocked his head at the little girl who refused to be put down for this conversation. "I'm a hero, too?"

She huffed in annoyance. "We. You said we. The awful things that happened to us." Her voice dropped to barely a whisper. "You know how bad it is. How bad they are. Right?"

Harry didn't close his eyes, because there was a battle a street away and he was holding Shouta's daughter. Instead, he gathered his courage and tried not to drown in red eyes (a red so deep that they might drown the echoes and nightmares of another, crueler set entirely).

"Yes. I know. I know how bad it is when the villains are the ones supposed to take care of you, according to everyone but you. I know how bad it is when the pain is safe, because pain is

predictable and not nearly as harmful as hope or questions. I know how bad it is without the sky, when you've been without the sky so long it feels safer where there's no sky at all."

He looked into old, tired eyes and tried not to cry. "I know," he whispered.

Eri raised both hands till they cupped his cheeks, tracing along the edges of spell-scars. "Me too,"

she whispered right back. "Papa and Deku saved me."

Harry smiled, echoes of wind and spice floating in his mind alongside Ron and Hermione and the trails throughout the Hogwarts grounds. Ron and Hermione hadn't saved him, not the same way Shouta and Deku had saved this little girl, but they'd given him the sky all the same. They'd shown him there was more than just the ceiling of his cupboard.

"They gave you the sky." The gave Eri the expectations that she could always see the sky, whenever she wanted. That she could leave the white room and tiled roof of her imprisonment. That she could live under the sky with the rest of them.

Eri nodded. "Papa doesn't need saving. But he needs- he gives too much sky."

Harry thought about this for a moment before nodding. Shouta hadn't grown up contained by locks and doors and bound by absence and fate. He'd been allowed dreams and followed those dreams with a kind of willful ferocity and desire to help that left Harry in awe.

Harry didn't think for a single second that he knew all of Shouta's history, all of the stories behind every trauma and scar, and he certainly knew far less about Deku and the other heroes Eri loved. He didn't know their pasts or their stories or the events that had shaped them into heroes.

He knew they were strong, though. Knew they had insights into Eri and her past and her present Harry would never presume to minimize.

But.

Draco had once said the broken children recognize broken children, even if they don't realize it, even if they weren't broken the same.

Eri and Harry had been broken the same, once, trapped in a space that ate their dreams and forced to go back into it again and again and again. Shouta had saved her and Harry had newer, shinier scars, but they'd always have a hollow room locked and bound and hidden in their bones.

Shouta recognized that, Harry was sure. He supported and he saved and he loved so desperately that he couldn't not.

And Shouta did give a lot of sky. To the police, to the people he saved, to his students, to his family. Just, quite a lot of sky. Enough to get lost in, probably.

"He needs to be grounded. To be reminded that there are cookies and hugs and cloud-watching on the ground, under the sky."

Eri nodded, thrilled that Harry was getting it. "Papa fights because he's a hero. You fight because you won't go back."

"Won't be alone."

"Never." Her entire face focused into an intense expression that showed exactly what kind of woman she'd become. "Never. So you can do that! I won't try and scare you away because I need

you to fight and protect him till I'm old enough and a hero and able to ground" she said that word slowly, glancing up at Harry to make sure she was using it right, "Papa."

Harry took a deep, rattling breath and leaned forward, pressing his forehead and its scar into Eri's little horn. "I might need to be saved, though."

Eri thought about this long enough that Harry almost leaned back, but stilled when he felt small yet frighteningly strong arms link around his neck. "That's okay. Papa can save you and you can ground Papa. And then I'll get big and strong and save you too!"

Harry laughed, and Eri certainly wasn't going to comment if it was a little wetter than what would be considered normal.

"Okay. Let's do that. You'll be great. The absolute best." Harry really didn't think she'd have to get much older to be strong. Or to save him.

She didn't let go of his neck, but did settle back enough to smile a small, bashful little grin that had echoes of Shouta and edges of sunshine. "Let's go sit." Eri pointed to a bench a little ways away, in the opposite direction of the fight. "We shouldn't distract Papa and Deku when they're working."

"No, we shouldn't, should we." Harry let his own lopsided grin creep onto his face. "I'm afraid I'm very distracting. Besides, Deku has your Papa's back, this time."

"Deku's the best."

"Is he?" Harry's question was more amused than anything else, but Eri gasped and pivoted in his arms.

"You don't know?"

"Nope. I know all about your Papa, not so much about Deku!" Which wasn't entirely accurate, in that Harry knew quite a bit about the Problem Child, and had probably inferred quite a bit more. But he really knew very little about Deku, the hero who saved the little girl in Harry's arms probably more than the boy would ever truly know.

Eri wriggled in glee, happy to discuss her favourite hero, happy to have been understood and content that now that she'd been heard, they didn't need to talk about it any more. Shouta and Deku and the others would fight to save everyone else, and she and Harry would fight to protect their heroes.

Harry sat them down on the bench, only hesitating briefly before settling Eri in his lap since she seemed disinclined to leave his space.

Harry didn't mind, since he was in a bit of withdrawal from child-cuddles considering all his family were either at school or on another continent or both (Merlin, he couldn't wait to introduce this girl to Teddy; they'd be such overprotective mother-hens together and it would be hilarious).

There were two benches he could have chosen and he sat them in the sun, directly under the open sky.

Eri pretended not to notice, and Harry fell in love.

"Deku!"

Eri interrupted her own stories to run forward and throw herself at a slightly battered but still normally coloured Deku.

The boy caught her easily, the now red Uraraka and also purple Hitoshi getting in the occasional pat and smile.

"Who is this?" Todoroki asked.

"Oh!" Midoriya smiled at Harry. "You were with Sensei earlier. Are you a hero too?"

Hitoshi seemed much more suspicious than his fellows and took a step forward between Harry and Eri. He also didn't seem comforted when the motion did nothing but make Harry smile.

Harry stood, carefully keeping his hands visible and non-threatening, before nodding. "My name's Potter Harry."

"Hello! Were you patrolling with Aizawa-Sensei?" Harry looked down at his outfit, which was mostly obscured by a long dark coat, and guessed that it could count as a hero uniform, particularly if you were using Shouta's plain jumpsuit as a basis.

"He was not." Tsukauchi said with a serious expression as he and Shouta approached.

"Papa!" Eri threw herself at her father, wrapping both arms around his waist. Shouta quickly stopped adjusting his capture scarf and returned the hug.

"Because," Tsukauchi continued as if he was never interrupted, "he still does not have his Japanese license and patrolling would therefore be illegal."

"End of the week." Shouta threw out over his daughter's shoulder.

The teenagers didn't hear Tsukauchi's muttered "Thank God," over Hitoshi's clear, "So were you on a date, then?"

The kid was so obviously trying to needled his mentor. Harry could already see the grin ready to break out on the boy's face and Shouta's well-accustomed huff.

Harry therefore took great pleasure in responding, "Yes!" Shouta glared at him, but without heat, since Harry knew the man had no desire to hide their relationship.

The kids, however were flabbergasted. It was beautiful.

Midoriya and Uraraka broke first, both spinning to face their teacher.

"I'm so sorry, Sensei," Izuku said, miserably.

"We interrupted your date?" Uraraka asked, horrified.

"No," Harry relied, at the same time as Shouta went, "Yes."

They blinked at each other, and Tsukauchi rolled his eyes. "And that's case in point for why my quirk gives me headaches. Two honest yet contradicting answers."

Eri giggled at Harry's expression, so Harry wiggled his eyebrows at her.

"We ruined Sensei's date." Todoroki sounded so sad, even if his expression didn't change, and Harry wasn't having that.

"Are you kidding? Don't listen to Mr. Grumpy Pants." Harry grinned at Shouta's scowl. "Dates are for getting to know your partner as much as spending time with them. On today's date I learned first hand how protective Shouta is, particularly of his children, how hot he looks when punching a man twice his size clean out, and that his daughter is wonderful and I would die for her."

He shrugged. "I'm officially besotted and this was one of the best dates I've ever been on."

Shouta shot him a look, likely based on the fact that Harry had shared stories about some of the dates he'd previously be on, including the Madam Puddifoot's debacle.

Todoroki looked pleased but confused, while Midoriya was all soft and happy and Uraraka looked downright delighted. Hitoshi was ignoring Harry entirely to stare with extreme judgement at an unrepentant Shouta.

Tsukauchi started laughing quietly, though that quickly turned into full blown guffaws as faces turned to gawk at him.

"Complete truth! Oh, Eraser, you've picked a match." Tsukauchi finally straightened and grinned at Harry, who grinned right back. "I like him."

"Cool, does this mean you take the shovel talk back?"

"Absolutely not." Tsukauchi raised an eyebrow.

"Fair enough." Harry shrugged, hands slipping into his pockets.

"What." Shouta said. He then turned to Tsukauchi, probably (rightly) figuring that for the quickest route to actual answers. "You gave Harry a shovel talk?"

"Yes."

"Shouta, darling. Every police officer you've ever worked with at Tsukauchi's station has given me a shovel talk."

"What," Shouta repeated, even as his students giggled and Hitoshi looked like he'd been given a week with no homework.

"If it makes you feel better, Tsukauchi's was at the top of the list." "...Why would that make me feel better?"

"It makes me feel pretty good." Tsukauchi interjected. "Would you mind telling that to Sansa; he thinks his was the best."

"Sure." Harry narrowed his eyes. "I mean, his was solid, but didn't have near the intimidation factor that Officer Yuki's had."

Tsukauchi started nodding like that made sense, but Hitoshi beat the man to actual words. "Is this a Police-only ranking?"

Harry didn't respond, instead focusing on the small tug on his coat. He dropped to one knee immediately so he faced Eri on her level. "Yes, sweetheart?"

She smiled at him and raised her arms slightly, when he nodded in response and lifted his in return, she ducked under to wind herself against his back. Laughing and well used to the many ways children asked for piggy-back rides, Harry stood up, easily shifting her into the perfect position for comfort and stability.

Eri grinned her father's grin at the students before turning back to a Shouta that was valiantly trying not to smile soppily. "Auntie Nem said I should threaten Harry, too, but I don't want to. He's nice and I want to keep him."

Harry grinned a toothy smile of his own up at his boyfriend. "So, Shou, are you going to keep me?"

"Maybe." His eyes said yes. It was a good day.