Summary: SSSHG, AU, Hermione and Ron were meant. That's what everyone believed, but when Harry did his best to ensure his best mate got the girl, things did not go quite as he had imagined.
Beta Love: No one has found me. MUAHAHAHAHHA!
Well, Dragon and the Rose found me.
A/N: I've been playing PALworld. It's eaten my life. I have no life but chasing and raising pals.
My Most Scornful Regards
Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.
Alan Alda
"Auror Potter, Saviour of the Wizarding World," Sanguini said wryly as he looked at him over his antique desk. His fingers were steepled in a sharp angle, his nails curved into seemingly delicate but deadly points. "To what do I owe your most unwelcome presence?"
Harry looked around the room, and found it was like a library of antiquity. Tomes surrounded the room, shelves lovingly cared for, desks well polished and maintained—the likes of which hadn't been seen in centuries. Sanguini himself had no inclination whatsoever to hide what he was. Harry knew what he was, of course, but he'd always seen him as a pale, unassuming sort of man.
Whatever delusion had allowed him to think so no longer applied.
"He's a vampire, Harry, not a leper," Hermione had scolded him. "He deserves just as much consideration as you or me or any living creature living within the means of their species."
"You're meant for Ron."
Hermione scoffed. "In what world? We shared a kiss, not an Oath, and it was purely in the heat of the moment, not a lifetime commitment."
"He's old."
"Mature is the word you're looking for," Hermione said with a scowl. "I happen to appreciate that after what we've been through."
"Come on," Harry said, holding her arm. "We should go talk to Ron. Clear this all up."
Hermione's expression darkened. "No, I will not go and listen to some made up spiel that explains how we're meant while he sticks his tongue and whatever else into Lavender Brown." She removed his arm from her shoulder. "Goodnight, Harry. I have company, and you were not invited."
Hermione moved into her flat, where Harry tried to push his way past the door. "Hermione-wait—"
He saw two men waiting in the sitting room, and Hermione kissed them both on the cheek in greeting.
"Snape," Harry said.
"Good evening you too, Mr Potter," Snape replied with an arched eyebrow.
"Will Mr Potter be joining us for dinner?" the vaguely familiar but pale man asked.
"No," Hermione said.
"Yes," Harry said at the same time.
The man's eyes brow arched into his black hair. "I wasn't planning for any more than Severus and I," he said, his head tilted. "Had I, I would have worn a different vest. He is shockingly unprepared. He didn't even bring us a Lethifold."
"Mr Potter was hardly the 'do his proper research' sort of wizard," Severus said coolly. "As I recall, he was most infatuated with the Weasley girl, and she with him."
"Ah," the other man said. "I never had the pleasure of a meeting. Do I need to break out the other case of wine for our unexpected suitor? Perhaps a rule book."
Harry baulked. "I'm not—that's not why—"
Hermione shot the men a look and then put her hand on Harry's chest and pushed him firmly out the door. "Goodnight, Harry."
"No one really knows why it works the way it does," Sanguini said thoughtfully as Hermione lifted the lid of the box to expose what seemed like a dark mass of velvety fabric.
"But for as long as the Sang have been—civilised—the Lethifold has been the engagement gift of choice. Far more practical than a ring. Eats the food when you can't or shouldn't. Protects—and eases the transition of one not of the Sang into readiness for the Turn," Severus said.
"Tends to eat the unworthy," Sanguini added helpfully.
Severus shot the Sanguini a look.
"What? It's not like it isn't true," Sanguini protested. "Look what happened to that woman who tried to dose poor Rada with a love potion."
"Saved him from a most unhappy mating," Severus said with a sigh.
The Lethifold slithered up Hermione's body and seemed to explore every nook and cranny.
"So warm," Hermione whispered. Her eyes fluttered as Severus caught her.
"I've got you, love," Severus said. "It can be overwhelming to those not used to the Dark."
Hermione mumbled something as the Lethifold swaddled her up in a Dark cocoon, hissing at each of the men when they tried to move it.
"Well, I suppose that answers any lingering doubts," Severus said with a smirk.
"What doubts?" Sanguini asked.
"You have to be the suave, self-assured bastard you've always been, Mihail," Severus said pointedly, "but I'm not the only one who has ever doubted if accepting what we are—and our rather different lifestyle is too much even for a caring relationship."
Sanguini chuckled as he gently placed a kiss upon Hermione's forehead. "Let's put her to bed, love. It will take a few days or more for the Lethifold to finish anchoring to her body and her magic."
"I would prefer her to be safe instead of surrounded in all this—humanity," Severus said.
"Well, you can blame Parker for loosing those cursed gadflies into the Nation," Sanguini said with a sigh. "Until the exterminators can get rid of them, none of those not Sang or fully of the Dark can stand to be there."
"I would prefer to take my father's approach to his problems," Severus said, lips tightening.
"We can't always behead our problems, Severus," Sanguini said reprovingly. "Besides, thousands of beheaded gadflies would be quite traumatic to the entomologists."
"I meant Parker," Severus said darkly.
"Oh, did you?" Sanguini said smoothly.
Severus rolled his eyes. "Why do I put up with you?"
"We haven't managed to kill each other in a thousand some years, why ruin a good thing?" Sanguini replied with a smile.
"My mistake," Severus muttered.
"Tch," Sanguini said as he tucked Hermione in, kissing her on the temple. "Sleep well, love," he said as Severus did the same as the possessive and protective Lethifold slithered more securely around her.
"Such a protective thing," Sanguini said with a chuckle. "A good sign."
"It should be after all the bites he gave us as we tried to convince him to give us a chance," Severus noted.
"We would pick the wildest, most stubborn Lethifold in all the rainforest," Sanguini said ruefully.
"And yet, he just slithers out of the box and bonds with her like she was meant for him," Severus said with a sigh.
"Lethifolds know exactly what and who they want," Sanguini supposed. "Come, let her sleep. The sleep should be deep and restful. We'll check on her tomorrow night and every night until the bond is fully cemented."
As the two men left Hermione sleeping in the embrace of her newly adopted Lethifold, a patch of wall shimmered as Harry and Ron eased themselves from under the invisibility cloak, wands out.
"I don't even know who you are," Hermione said, as Ron rubbed her shoulders. "And you—look just like my potions professor."
Snape and Sanguini exchanged glances.
"You do not remember us?"
"How could I possibly—" Hermione shook her head. "Look, I'm engaged to be married, I want you both to go."
"You heard her," Molly said imperiously, waving the pan she took from Hermione's kitchen. "Get out of here. I won't have older men preying upon young witches around me!"
"If her memory has been—" Sanguini said, stepping forward.
"She'll deal with it with us, the ones that matter!" Ron said, pulling out his wand and aggressively pointing it at them.
"If you don't leave when asked, I'll have you arrested," Harry threatened.
The two men stiffened.
"As her fiancé, I revoke any invitation to this home," Ron yelled.
In a blink of the eye, the two men were gone as if they had never been there at all.
"What do you mean we can't be married," Ron blurted in shock.
The Ministry official shuffled the papers. "I'm sorry, Mr Weasley, but there is already a bond of marital magic between you and another party. I cannot marry you to this witch while you are bonded to another, and such bonds only dissolve upon death of the partner and the child."
"What do you mean there is another bond?" Harry exclaimed.
The official looked rather flustered. "I mean, it happens whenever an unmarried wizard gets a witch, erm, pregnant. It's the oldest form of magic there is."
"What do you mean you got another witch pregnant, Ronald?!" Molly screamed at her youngest son.
But just then, Hermione turned deathly pale and crumpled to the floor, her body convulsing wildly as she let out a piercing shriek of agony.
"We can do nothing, Mr Potter," Sanguini said as his nails drummed on the antique desk. "The one who cast the magic that drove the Lethifold from our mate is the only one who can undo this travesty. Find the Lethifold and bring it to Hermione, or all the things that she had shared willingly to its embrace will never return."
"And that is the only reason you are still standing here and not headless," Snape hissed from the dark corner. He was sitting there, fingers steepled as if in thought, a murderous look upon his face.
"I just—they were meant. I just wanted to give them that chance. It's what Ginny said. 'Mione just had to get it out of her system and—" Harry stammered. "Once she had kids, saw what she was missing. Saw what a good family it would be, she'd settle and realise it herself."
"How dare you dismiss the choice she made and assume she was incapable of making up her own mind," Severus seethed. "Since when has Hermione Granger ever not made her feelings perfectly plain?"
"Everyone knew that they were meant!" Harry protested.
"Doubtful," Severus said sourly. "She knew from the very start that she and Mr Weasley were only meant for angst, drama, and pain."
"You're vampires!"
"Ob-viously."
"You could have given her time to live her life and—and grow old together!"
"And what?" Sanguini said. "Picked her up after her husband cast her aside for being old and grey or just decided she no longer suited him? That's what you mean, right? When she was old and thus more suited for us old people."
"We wouldn't have cared, by the way," Severus added scornfully. "What she looked like for us, but she made the choice to Turn to be with us. She accepted our courtship, and you—you bushwhacked her. You somehow got to her after we gave her the engagement present. You drove off her Lethifold in mid-bond, so it flew off to only the gods know where—with only the bits of her memory and soul it had fused itself to to anchor itself to her."
Sanguini curled his lip. "You did this Mr Potter. So you must be the one to fix it, and you will, or we will bury you in the fact that you assaulted someone for making a choice you disapproved of, willfully broke a magical bond, sabotaged our future wedding, and left your victim mentally broken so much that she couldn't remember her real fiances, Mister Auror Potter."
Harry's face reddened.
"We have memories, too, Potter," Severus said. He flashed a small vial of shimmering memory strands. "Every intimate conversation. Details of our courtship. Plans for our wedding. In great, stark detail. Including using such subjugation of her confusion to cast us out of her own home where she had invited us. We have all the details of Weasley's multiple paramours. Everyone who told us how good he was in bed. His hot romances. His wandering cock. All of it will come out on billboards all over Britain. Newspaper advertisements. Muggle and magical with just enough information that no Weasley from here to antiquity will ever be looked on again with even a shred of respect—"
Sanguini smiled, but it was not kind. "And the dragon reserve in Romania where Charles works will suffer serious financial setbacks without its main financier. Ginevra will find that her Quidditch career is cast in shame as the news of her cheating on her husband with several members of various teams all over the world becomes public knowledge. Arthur will be cast even deeper into the Ministry's worst jobs as the shame of his wife's Dark magic activity is discovered, and not only in that special herbal tea she so kindly gave Hermione to calm her nerves, the lease for George's joke shop will dry up and be replaced by a herbalist's dream shop run by none other than your unlikely friend, Mr Longbottom, Percy's already sagging political career will be even less successful, and William and his ostracised wife will just decide that moving permanently to France is better than ever seeing the lot of you again—need I go on?"
"You'd manipulate me and the Weasleys after accusing me of doing the exact same thing?" Harry raged.
Sanguini's smile was dark. "We would be exposing the truth that is already there. Our financial concerns are all legal. Rational. The Nation is free to pull their finances and land wherever they wish just as anyone else. Your crimes are still crimes."
"I don't even know where to find a Lethifold," Harry said with a sigh.
Sanguini levelled his gaze at Harry. "Start in the tropics."
Ronald Weasley at the Center Of A Riot in Auror Office!
Crowd of Angry Pregnant Witches Fling Barrage of Spells Within the Heart Of The Ministry!
Weasley's Wife Currently Under Caution After Casting Multiple Unforgivables at Rival Witches!
Hermione Granger Admitted to St Mungos For Treatment of Debilitating Memory Loss
Harry was gone for months, having taken a leave of absence from work to take care of some "personal matters" regarding his family.
He arrived in Sanguini's office tattered, haggard, and covered in bloody bites and scratches, his hair so long that it came down to his shoulders in a mass tangle of jungle leaves and litter. He carried with him just one Lethifold that looked very unhappy to be there as it shot out of Harry's grip and promptly fused itself to Sanguini's back.
"Well, will it help Hermione?" Harry asked, the blood pooling under him enough that younger vampires out in the corridor were starting to salivate hungrily.
"While I appreciate the courting gift, Mr Potter, I fear I am already taken," Sanguini said. "That is not the right Lethifold."
Harry slumped weakly into the seat, practically sliding onto the floor. He blinked dazedly as Severus took a photograph of the moment for posterity. "I will enjoy inserting you into the manual on how not to capture a Lethifold for future generations of vampire courtship."
Harry could only wheeze. "There are hundreds or more Lethifolds out there. There are massive rainforests. How am I to find one Lethifold in all that?"
"Well, you could bring them back one by one," Sanguini said grimly.
"Or you could use your brain, Potter," Severus said.
Harry looked at him with askance.
"Oh, don't give ME that look of disapproval and suspicion, Potter. You did this to yourself," Severus said. "Instead of trying to bring the entire bloody rainforest to my love's office, why don't you use your head and take Granger to the rainforest instead?"
Harry let out a deflated, defeated squeak. "Oh."
Harry brought Hermione to the rainforest and promptly had serious regrets.
A few hundred regrets in the form of a seething mass of very angry Lethifolds.
Whatever had happened on his previous attempts to wrangle a Lethifold had apparently spread far and wide, and every one from one side of the rainforest to the other decided to give him a hefty piece of their Dark, flesh chewing mind.
He had his Patronus, of course, but he realised that was, in many ways, the root of the problem. For every Lethifold he drove away with his Patronus, that was one more Lethifold that possibly COULD have been the one he desperately needed to help Hermione.
He came back to the camp where he had left Hermione to find Snape there, and it took every bit of restraint on his part to not immediately pull his wand.
"Wise of you," Severus said as he tenderly cradled Hermione's limp body against him.
Hermione hadn't been verbal since her breakdown at the moment of her un-wedding to Ron. It had been there that the last sliver of sanity had been lost. The last bit of memory that let her function.
He hadn't known at the time that in driving away the Lethifold, all the memories she had entrusted into the bond with it was so complete. That the symbiosis was total.
How could he?
He realised, too, that he was never one for doing his research. He let those like Ron and Molly tell him what to think and what to do because they had been the first to tell him what he so desperately wanted to hear about his parents. About himself.
And because he trusted the Weasleys to tell him how things were, he had fiercely hated Snape—Snape, who his father had tormented unmercifully along with Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew.
His heroes. His father—
Snape was right. They had been swine.
And Ron had often told him that Hermione was a know-it-all swot. Made fun of her—
But she had covered for them with the troll, and that first begrudging friendship had occurred based on her lie.
Their friendship was based on a lie.
Much like his trust in the Weasleys.
Only Hermione had never lied to him. She had never told him that he and Ginny were meant. That Ron and her were meant.
No.
She had been the voice of reason.
Reason that he had stubbornly denied. At any and every opportunity.
And with him, Ginny had a rich husband who funded all her fancy soirees. Parties where she had wined and dined many other men—and slept with them.
And he had tried to help Ron bag Hermione—bind her to him so he could live his hero's life with multiple witches while Hermione slaved away at the Ministry so he didn't have to.
Only he hadn't been able to keep it in his pants, and Molly forced her son to marry the one he'd impregnated and formed a marital bond with, Lavender being ironically only the first of many. Ironically, it hadn't even been Snape or Sanguini that exposed it. Ron's multiple paramours had gotten into a blazing, hex and curse-flinging row right in the middle of the Aurory—
Ron was going to be a father to the unborn babies of some twelve or more different witches.
Did that mean he was married to all of them?
How the hell did that even work?
There was the rub, perhaps.
Ministry law said once married, it was done.
But what magic allowed on its own—was magic's business.
But now, Ron was going to have at least a dozen babies and just as much child maintenance, whether he was married or not. He'd be working even harder than Arthur had—
And yet he'd tried to get Hermione to see the light of "reason" and marry Ron anyway—
"I've been a bloody idiot," Harry said quietly.
Snape favoured him with a very familiar look of scorn. "You have, indeed."
Hermione, despite being in a deep slumber, curled into Snape, her fingers wrapped around his as she pulled them closer to her body.
"She remembers you?"
"Her body does," Snape said with a frown. "It instinctively responds to me. But her mind is shattered. Most she gave to the Lethifold to keep. All that remains is what didn't transfer over before the bond was broken."
Harry slid into one of the camp chairs with a weary thump as he rustled through one of the boxes for Essence of Dittany. With a pained wince, he pulled out the last one. "I can't believe I've gone through a whole case of this stuff," he groaned as he applied a few drops to each of the wounds he could reach.
Snape sniffed and shook his head. "There is a reason why Lethifolds are used as a courting gift."
"You're all masochists?" Harry commented bitterly.
Snape snorted. "No, it's a test of devotion. You have to really want to be mated. You have to convince one to come back with you—not to bond with you but your mate. Then they have to survive the experience. They are kind of like wands. They choose who they want. When they've ingested enough blood from you, they decide if they want to come back with you for the memory of who you wish them to be with. They either will after the fight or—"
"You just end up looking like me," Harry said with a sigh.
"Pretty much."
"Why Lethifolds—they are proven man-eaters," Harry said. "Every Auror is trained on it."
"They eat the weak and those that have no empathy," Snape replied. "If upon tasting your blood they decide you're wanker, they will just keep eating you. It's why in even more ancient times, it was considered a badge of trustworthiness. Later, it became the greatest gift we can give those we love. They protect and enshroud our future mate, and in the case of mortals, they prepare them for the Turn by converting their bodies to be compatible with the Dark, which makes the Turn smoother and less traumatic. They preserve all the memories in the bond, so when they wake into undeath they are not complete heathens that have to be beaten and wrestled down until the memories of their lifetime come back to them. I'd imagine that is why humans have such bad stories historically about vampires—from back in the day when the Turning did not guarantee the return of sanity and instead created a mindless, bloodthirsty beast that only cared about sating its blood hunger."
"And I just mucked that up, didn't I," Harry said sombrely.
"Quite," Snape said. "Then you banished us from her side, which could have at least, if done early enough, kept her from completely degrading as she had—the memory of touch and skin against skin would have prevented the complete loss of memory as it had, but you kept us from that, too. You were lucky that Sanguini and I were already fully bonded. We could have both gone mad had we been alone with no one there to anchor us. We would have gone feral, murdering everything in our way in desperation to restore what was lost to us. It would have started with you."
Harry grimaced. "It wouldn't have ended with me, then."
"No," Snape said grimly. "Not at all."
There was a soft rustling, and Harry immediately pulled his wand. Snape shot him a look, and Harry forced himself to put his wand down.
Dark shapes moved within the shadows of the tent as the sun went down, and Harry heard the sound that seemed like the grinding of teeth and whispering.
Snape was calm, and while part of Harry screamed "so what!" another part of him had begun to realise that the Dark wizard and vampire truly cared about Hermione—and he would hardly sit complacently amidst her demise.
The wall of shadow rose in a few areas of the tent and then slithered over to where Hermione was laying in Snape's embrace.
Lethifolds.
So many of them.
They all explored Hermione's body like curious cats, and in a single rush of Lethifold solidarity, wove themselves around her in a Dark cocoon. Hermione, who had been visibly tense and full of anxiety up until that point finally seemed to relax into that soothing Darkness as one would sink into one's familiar bed.
The silence was like a roar in Harry's ears—he could hear his own heart beating wildly, the blood rushing through his vessels.
Severus let out a soft sigh. "At least she will be safe, for now at least," he said after a while.
"That's it?" Harry asked, frowning.
"No, Potter," Snape said. "Her original Lethifold is still out there somewhere, and you must convince it that it is safe to return to her."
"But—what just happened here?" Harry protested.
Severus arched a brow. "It seems she's attracted a fan club of sorts."
Harry's hope that his ordeal was finally over crashed and burned in the pit of his soul, and he let out a pathetic wheeze. "Oh."
Harry spent the next few weeks wrangling Lethifolds, but he started to realise after his conversation with Snape that he needed to think more about Hermione and less about his pitiful state of being while he was doing so. He focused on his thoughts of Hermione as he battled the Lethifolds, holding back their grinding teeth from consuming the whole of him, hoping that while they ate away at the topmost layer of his skin and blood that they could read his concern for Hermione instead of his just wanting it to be over and done with.
Each time, though, the Lethifold would go still and then zoom off to places unknown, and Harry would return to the tent to use more Dittany and blood replenishing potion only to find that yet another Lethifold had joined in the ever-growing pile that was nesting around Hermione.
It was never the right one, though.
Snape and Sanguini took turns watching over her, and Harry felt so guilty that in his haste to bring her out in the rainforest, he hadn't even thought to bring someone to help tend to Hermione's needs while he was away.
Some friend he was.
And—none of the Weasleys had apparently visited her at Mungos. Not since Ron couldn't marry her.
Not even Ginny.
And perhaps most especially not Ron.
Not Molly, who had been so utterly convinced that Hermione and Ron were meant.
It made him angry.
More than angry.
He'd sent Patronus messages to Ginny every night to update her on the current status of his quest, but he hadn't gotten even a single reply. Not by Patronus or owl.
Okay, he was absolutely livid.
Utterly and completely ready to blow.
He wanted justice for Hermione.
He wanted her to be happy with who she chose to be, whether she forgave him or not.
And as he caught probably the most violent Lethifold in the entire jungle—knowing that one false move would surely mean his death, he poured all that molten anger and his fierce desire for Hermione to be well again into a scream of wrathful anguish.
The pain was beyond excruciating.
Grinding teeth like an unholy combination of being stung by thousands of pissed-off wasps while being dipped in a vat of sulfuric acid. Maybe it was like rolling around in the infamous gympie-gympie plant from Australia or standing under the manchineel in the middle of a raging rainstorm. He'd read about them in the Auror handbooks, but he'd never imagined this kind of pain before, even after a war full of pain.
And in that moment, he felt the Lethifold's presence bearing down on his mind as recognition dawned.
This one was Hermione's Lethifold.
It was her rage—her fury—mixed with the Dark rage of the Lethifold made into one, and all of its countless teeth of ceaseless retribution.
"I'm sorry!" Harry yelled, his voice cracking with emotion. "I'm sorry, Hermione! I'm so sorry! I was a total bastard! I was completely an utter cockup! I was blinded, but it was no excuse for treating you like I did!"
Those countless teeth ground a little deeper into his flesh.
"S-Severus and Sanguini are waiting for you, Hermione—" Harry pleaded. "Won't you go home to them? Please. Please. Not for me. I don't deserve any consideration from you. For them. They need you!"
Harry crumpled under the oppressive malevolence and impossible weight of that Lethifold as his tears mixed with the steady stream of blood from his wounds.
And then suddenly, it was gone.
Harry was alone.
When Harry returned to the tent, he found it packed full of Lethifolds and vampires.
And they weren't just any vampires—
They were truly ancient ones.
He'd started to get a "feel" for vampiric age after being around Snape and Sanguini. There was a certain pulse of magic about them. Like gazing at ancient Greek or Roman ruins and seeing something that had survived an eventful past.
Hermione had fang marks on her throat, and the vampire elders had all bitten their wrists and let the blood mingle in a chalice. Snape cradled her body as Sanguini brought the goblet to her lips.
"Drink, beloved," he said encouragingly. "Drink."
Hermione drank, and as the last drop touched her lips, the goblet fell as her body went into spasms. Severus held her against himself in a tight embrace as Sanguini held her hand, speaking in a language Harry didn't know.
Hermione stared into her lovers' eyes as her body went still and limp, and Severus and Sanguini put fingers to her eyelids and closed them. They stripped down completely in front of them all, drew Hermione between them. The Lethifolds cocooned them in a swirl of Dark bodies, and they sank into the Earth together.
The vampire elders stared at Harry with crimson gazes and flickers of golden magic shimmered in their eyes.
"Mr Potter," one of them said in heavily accented English. "We've heard so much about you."
Ginny found the ornately wrapped box on her nightstand and smiled. Harry was always giving her gifts to prove his devotion. He always turned a blind eye to her affairs because there was no room for her open relationships in his dream of a happy family.
She was young and beautiful and talented in Quidditch. She deserved to live life large and loud—not like she'd grown up poor and unknown.
She saw the parchment where it was written: "To my darling Ginny, a token of my love forever."
She tugged on the ribbon and opened the lid, and a whoosh of black shot out to tackle her to the ground as she screamed—
The Lethifold let out a satisfied belch as it slithered out the door and into the night.
Severus stood by the door watching Harry's expression, which seemed as if set in stone.
"Consider your application to join the Nation approved, Mr Potter," Snape said with a dark rumble. He snapped his fingers as the gift box disintegrated.
"Welcome home, old friends, Lady Hermione," Rada said as he bowed slightly, gesturing to the cottage in the middle of the simulated rainforest deep within the heart of the Undead Nation.
"Lord Rada, it's so beautiful!" Hermione said in delight as she gave him a fond kiss on the cheek.
"Seeing as you brought so many Lethifolds home, the Council decided you needed an appropriate home where both you and your new friends can live peacefully," Rada said with a warm chuckle. "I'm so glad you like it."
Sanguini smiled at his friend. "You know us so well," he said as Severus was already busy inspecting the library and potions setup. Sanguini's office had been painstakingly moved in intricate detail into the new place, not a shelf, book, or quill out of place. There were plenty of dark nooks and crannies prepared for lurking Lethifolds, and already the swarm of them were investigating their new home as smaller ones zipped about from their "parents."
"Baby Lethifolds?" Rada asked.
"Babyfolds," Hermione said with a smile. "They're quite adorable."
Rada chuckled. "Well, the Nation will never again have to travel far to do their Rite of Passage at this rate. I'm sure it will be just as traumatic with considerably less travel time."
"Obviously," Severus said as he passed Rada a goblet of bloodwine. "Thank you for watching over us as we slept."
Rada tilted his head. "As always, it is not a problem, old friend. Maksim has agreed to Sire Potter and indenture him for the next two centuries. Since he is of this time period, it will allow him to keep the appearance of his being an Auror and offer us intel as to the latest workings of the Ministry. I doubt if it will be as before, however. Kingsley Shacklebolt is quite an honourable wizard, unlike the previous Ministers for Magic."
Sanguini nodded. "I am quite surprised he went all in for joining the Nation after such a rough start," he said.
"Let's just say the situation with the Weasleys both shrouded his judgement and opened his eyes in the end," Rada said. "Give him a few centuries, and I'm sure he'll be a contributing member of our society."
"As long as he does so far from me," Severus said grimly. "Lest I remove his head from his shoulders out of general principles."
"I'll make sure of it," Rada said with a chuckle.
"This library is gorgeous!" Hermione squealed from inside, dancing with the Lethifolds in a waltz.
Rada, Severus, and Sanguini exchanged amused glances.
"That's our mate," Sanguini said, smiling broadly.
"Always," Severus replied with satisfaction.
And everyone died!
MAUAHAHAHAHAAA!
(ahem) And they lived happily ever after!
A/N: Evil Author's Day is coming up. Evil grin and talons tapping on the desk. Yissss.