FILFY teacher

by Vimesenthusiast

A Harry Potter who has tried to take control of his destiny from second year on finds himself in need of a fresh start. Armed with some abilities beyond the norm, a Mastery of Defense and a muggle-style teacher's license, Harry takes his daughter Lily Luna and takes a job offer at Kuoh Academy, not knowing how big the world beyond the Wizarding World is. Pairings Harry/Rias/many.

11. Chapter 11

*Ain't Rowling nor can I draw boobies.

For this month's poll, the winner was a Patty on only story first, Sword, Bow, and Horse, with 1088. This is a Ranma and Lord Marksman and Vanadis crossover, with this month's update making the third chapter, and, considering it was only part of the poll over there, that's darn impressive.

Anything Goes Game Changer, my personal choice this month (and from now until I finish it!) brought in 1073, with 198 votes here on fanfic. FILFy Teacher had 1069 votes, 470 of which came from here hence why it is also being updated here. I wish I had time to both update FILFy and the winner of the large story poll, which was Horse for the Force, but I underestimated this chapter again. I just couldn't get to it this month, and since FILFy had won a poll I put up to see which should become my priority, it gets updated instead of Horse. ON the other hand: total words across chapters was 143,000 this month, LOL. So maybe I shouldn't apologize for that.

There is something I do need to issue an apology for: When I put the two versions of the last chapter I sent to my flow/character interaction and small mistake beta readers, there were a few changes I had made on my version that were somehow deleted when I combined the three files together. Specifically, there were many of them in the last section before the Harry/Riser fight, which will hopefully make Harry's reasons for not executing Riser at the end of their fight more understandable.

I have also been told that I have been spelling Danaan wrong all this time. My bad, and I will switch to the right spelling from now on.

I wish to recommend another fic called Pawn of Grisaia. It is a crossover, but it isn't in crossover section, and I think it has one of the best Akenos I've ever read and a very unique Main male character who basically has replaced Issei, but without taking Ddraig!

This has been beta-read by Nad Destroyer, and Michael, one for flow and general character interpretation help, and the other for small mistakes. Going through the chapter and checking their corrections took me near to seven hours all told, and is why the chapter's late. But it will read better for it.

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Chapter 11: Calm Before the Storm

As they appeared in the Occult Research Club's room, Rias smiled wanly. She didn't like how it had ended, but she was now free of Riser and free of her parents' attempts to marry her off! Freedom! I'm sad that one of Riser's peerage had to die, but the outcome was all I could hope for.

Despite that, Rias cold not help but to scowl as she remembered those last few moments after Riser's attack on his former peerage…

Flashback:

As Devil lords and ladies scattered in confusion, and her brother dealt with the perpetrator, Rias gaped in appalled horror, shocked not at Riser's ill humor, but at the fact that he had lashed out like this at those he had once led as their King. Then Harry and Asia had reacted, and she followed on their heels, unable to do much more than watch. Rias's healing spells were limited in the extreme, and, even if she had had the time, no healing spell she knew of could regenerate limbs or entirely vaporized organs.

Even the Phoenix Tears of the Phenex clan were limited in how much they could do in such a situation. Only a Phenex clan member could regenerate to that extent. For other people, their tears would work on anything below missing limbs or exploded heads and hearts. Here, both Yubelluna's legs were missing and a goodly portion of her intestines.

Asia and Harry were so busy trying to heal Yubelluna that they couldn't pay any attention to what was going on around them. As Sirzechs threatened Riser, the rest of his former peerage were being led away despite two of them trying to protest. Grayfia, however, was having no truck with that. A single glare from the strongest Queen sent them packing, and Grayfia followed, herding them out into the waiting arms of several more servants, all members of various Gremory clan member peerages.

Yet while Asia concentrated her modified Twilight Healing on Yubelluna, the aura of the healing Sacred Gear also worked its magic on the nearby Karlamine, keeping the sorely wounded Knight alive until Ravel, of all people, could give the older girl a vial of Phoenix Tears. But for some reason, while Karlamine's injuries healed, they healed...wrongly. Her wounds should have disappeared entirely, but the burn marks instead faded into a horrible set of scars which pulsed with sickly light, evidence of what Harry would call the 'curse' component of Riser's attack spell. Still, she was brought back to life and, a moment later, led off to rejoin the others by another servant.

Rias wondered why her wounds hadn't healed, but before she could voice that question, her attention and the attention of everyone else there became fixated solely on Harry and Yubelluna as a miracle occurred.

End Flashback

Still, Karlamine's alive, at least. And I imagine once Asia recovers her strength she'll be able to do something for the poor girl. With a smile at that thought, Rias turned to Harry, intending to thank him both for his training leading up to the match and for his largesse in sparing Riser as he had. "Harry, I…"

She paused as, with a faint smile on his face and with no warning, Harry fell forward into her chest.

"Harry!" Putting a hand to his forehead, Rias gasped. "He's burning up!"

Tonks quickly moved over, pulled open one of Harry's eyes, then cast a spell on him and hissed as she saw some lights of red and dark umber colors appear around his body. "I don't know how, but he's pushed himself well past the point of magical exhaustion."

"Asia, is there anything you can do for him?" Rias asked, looking frantic as she knelt down with Harry still lying against her breasts. Around her, the others began to panic too, with Lily rushing and pushing everyone else aside to grab at her father's arm, tugging it hard. The sight of that made Rias calm down in turn, knowing that she had to take charge here.

Asia quickly manifested her Sacred Gear and laid her hands on Harry's head, but nothing happened. "I don't understand it," she said, her face distraught. "There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with him." This was the second time today Asia had run into a limitation of her Sacred Gear, and she found that irritated her despite her lack of anything anyone else could have called an ego

"Nothing wrong your Twilight Healing can fix," Rias said with a slow nod, looking over towards where Yubelluna was being laid out by Kiba, having not awoken since Harry had brought her back to life. "The Blessing, maybe it's a holdover from that?"

"Could be, though I don't have a handle on what a Blessing is, to tell ya straight," Tonks said with a nod. At the same time Akeno moved some of Harry's hair away from his forehead and touched it, hissing briefly at how hot his skin was to the touch.

"And we didn't see anything like that from the time we adopted Asia," Lily said, her tone somewhere between frantic and utterly distraught as tears came to her eyes. Lily had never seen her father like this. Exhausted, battered, bruised, yes, even bloody once or twice, but not simply unconscious like this for no reason. That frightened Lily. That frightened her a lot.

"Let's get him home and lying down, then we'll need to figure out what's wrong with him." Frowning, Rias put her arms around Harry and was about to lift to him up when Loup, who had been lying out on the room's sofa waiting for them, stood up abruptly and moved towards her. He waved Rias off and then lifted Harry easily, including dragging Lily up it in the air when she refused to release her grip on Harry's arm.

"Come on, luv," Tonks said, laying a hand on Lily shoulder. "You need to let Harry go so he can be carried home, okay?"

Lily frowned but nodded, dropping back the short distance to the ground. A second later she allowed Rias to take her by the hand and nuzzled into Rias's arm as she looked at her father, while Kunou stood there in distress, also looking very worried but not quite as disturbed as Lily. She had seen people suffering from magical exhaustion before, though she hadn't seen someone hitting their limits so quickly without any buildup.

Within a second the two young girls, Asia, Loup, and Harry were gone, teleported to their house by Rias. Then she turned to the others, her voice clear and commanding. "Akeno, wait here for Sona to return. She and her peerage should be along shortly. Tell them what happened and tell them I don't want it to get back to the Underworld. After his display of power just now, the last thing I want to do is to let anyone think he weakened afterward."

Rias didn't think any of the partygoers would take advantage of that, but with Devil politics, one could never know for sure. And the difference between politics and war among Devils was, historically, very, very slim, though thankfully that had started to change with her brother's rule.

Akeno nodded, unhappy but understanding. Rias turned away from her to look at the others. "Koneko, I'll be sending you along with the others to the Potter house, but you know you'll have to do something different than them, right?"

Koneko, looking just as upset in her own way as the younger kids, nodded. "I'm to bring up the wards to the highest level?" She, Rias, and Harry were the only ones that could do that, and Rias still found it somewhat amusing that Koneko had been the first one to be given that responsibility.

"Right. Then, Akeno, after you speak to Sona, ask her to lend you Momo, Reya, and Tsubaki to check out the wards. We've been gone for half a day, and I want to make certain that nothing of a magical nature has happened while we've been gone."

Akeno nodded again, looking over to Tonks, who nodded as well, indicating that she would help as much as she could and stay with Akeno while she checked in on everything. Kiba was about to offer to do the same thing, but Rias had another job for him. "Kiba, I'm going to send you through the teleportation ring straight to the Familiar Forest."

"Won't that cause issues?" Kiba asked judiciously, understanding why he was being sent there but not wanting to exchange trouble now for more trouble in the future. Even Pillar clans normally had to call in advance and inform the government office which controlled the Familiar Forest that they were going to be there and when, if only to not run into other clans they had feuds with.

"As a Gremory, you can enter it on my orders!" Rias barked irritably. "If anyone shows up and attempts to question why you're there, let Tiamat eat them! Explain to her what's happened and get her to come here to look at Harry for us."

"Of course, Buchou," Kiba said, bowing from the waist towards her. An instant later he was gone, teleported back down to Hell and the Familiar Forest.

"I'm going to go to Kyoto, myself," Rias said, looking around at the rest of her peerage. "The only other person beyond Tiamat I can think of who might know something that could help is Yasaka."

"She's never mentioned anything about Blessings as far as I know," Akeno protested.

"No, she hasn't, but she is an experienced ruler who has dealt with a lot of occult and unusual things in her time. Yasaka also said once that she was descended from the original Inari, so she might know something or have access to someone who does."

Akeno nodded at that and watched as her friend disappeared. A second later Tonks smiled weakly. "So, never a dull moment around here, is there?"

OOOOOOO

While Rias and the others were dealing with Harry's sudden malady, back in the underworld, Rias's parents and older brother were dealing with the fallout of the event, with Grayfia helping by seeing to Riser's former peerage. Thankfully for the Gremory Clan, there wasn't as much fallout as there would have been if Harry had gone through with his plan to execute Riser. Even with what he had done during the after party, the Pureblood Faction would have raised a major stink if Riser had been killed, not in the heat of battle, but execution style afterward.

Yet as much as some of them liked to believe they had moved past their violent origins, power talked to Devils; it talked loudly. So while many of them would have wanted to question his relationship with Rias, only a few were self-assured or arrogant enough to bring it up after Harry's show of force.

Then too, Harry had very obviously spared Riser when he could've killed him. Everyone who had watched the match knew it, and that had very, very firmly put the Phenex clan in Harry's debt up to their gills. Lord Phenex even acknowledged that formal debt before sending Riser home under Ruval's care.

That was not, in any way, a kindness. Riser had been basically broken by today's events, socially and politically, by his own actions during the battle against Rias and after, and then further mentally by Harry. His older brother would not allow him to forget and would probably hammer it home in no uncertain terms before any of the others got home. There was no love lost between them, something the parents were only just realizing went deeper than simple sibling rivalry.

It wasn't, for all that Rias and Harry might have wished, because of the way Riser had treated his peerage. No, whatever happened behind closed doors was fine to most devils. Rather, it was his stupidly callous way of disposing of them, the needless cruelty of it, that made most of the devils present for this event look down on him. On top of that had been the political side of things.

"If he disappears or runs away, your clan will pay for it, and perhaps not just monetarily," Sirzechs had growled at Ruval as the two young men made to leave. "He broke guest rights, and he did so right in front of me by killing someone who, at that moment, was under the protection of my name as Lucifer and the Gremory clan. If he runs, he loses all protection as a member of your clan, and he will have to atone for that with his own life."

But, even so, there were still those among the onlookers who shook their heads. "That demigod is quite obviously involved with young Rias, and that's not right! Yes, she won her freedom from the Phenex/Gremory contract, but her children won't be pure! Does that mean the Gremory clan will be fine with no longer being a Pillar Clan in the future?"

"I have to disagree. Marrying into power isn't just a human phrase, after all," said another lord, an older woman who smiled rather whimsically. "Look at what Potter showed off in that...well, you could hardly call it a fight, could you? Transformation into a werewolf form, healing ability far beyond any normal werewolf I've ever seen, and magical power well beyond most people here."

"Indeed," said a third, an even older, more thoughtful looking noble, his hair entirely gray and so long and unkempt it nearly covered his face. "Quite a bit more magical power than I would have anticipated he would still retain directly after an event like the one he used to bring that other woman, the Bomb Queen, back to life. She was dead, gentlemen, ladies. Even using a Peerage piece would not have healed those wounds."

"That doesn't change the fact that he is not a devil!" said the first one relentlessly to many a nod from those around him. "Pureblood Devils are in danger of being bred out of existence, and we all need to do our part."

"And have we? How many sons and daughters have you had?" asked a red-haired man with an easygoing smile. He was a distant cousin of Rias's who hadn't inherited much in the way of skill with teleportation but was well known as a lawyer among Devil-kind, which was not an easy task by any means.

"That's beside the point," the first man huffed. His name was Lord Amon, the head of another Pillar Clan. His Clan had produced many of the strongest devils in the Great War. Yet, even so, there were some things that even the most powerful devil had to face.

The truth was, Pureblood Devils had a very big problem getting pregnant. When you stripped everything else away from their origins, the original devils had been created magically, an entire army brought into being to offset the legions of God by the original Lucifer. They were, essentially, homunculi. Angels were much the same: neither group were natural beings who were supposed to reproduce via children or even duplication, like amoebas. They had become more so since, but that origin still plagued Devils and Angels, though in the Devils' case they had begun to break through that barrier and had also come up with the Peerage System to bring in new blood. Yet few of the Pillar Clans could boast even four children in Rias's generation spread throughout their populations, let alone from the main branch.

The Gremory clan was an astonishing group, with two children from the main house and several dozen nieces and nephews around the place, though few of them had shown any aptitude with the clan's teleportation powers. And then there was Grayfia and Lucifer, who had gotten pregnant within a year of the two of them becoming an item. The Phenex clan was even more renowned, with three children at present from the main house, all of whom had shown aptitude with their clan powers. That was why the marriage had looked to be such a good idea from a social perspective. Or why this particular Lord thought that way, anyway.

In reality, the basis for the marriage pact had been based on something entirely different.

"I have to apologize for all this, old friend," Lord Gremory said again elsewhere in the ballroom, shaking his head. "Your clan is going to be in for a very bad time thanks to Riser, and I can't say I'm sorry to see how it went, now knowing what we do about his personality."

"We let our personal friendships get in the way of seeing what was there," Venelana said with a sigh. "And perhaps we too had become convinced that we should look to keep our blood purer to retain our Pillar Clan status."

"It's fine," said Lady Phenex with a sigh of her own accompanied by a shake of her head. "We might not take it to the extreme the Gremory clan does, but we Phenex value loyalty. What my son showed today was both far too much ego to let stand and too much needless cruelty to his own troops. It was honestly pathetic, and if it was only the tip of the iceberg, as it might be, that is even more disturbing."

While his parents were soothing feathers, and various servants were spying on conversations elsewhere in the crowd, Lucifer, unfortunately, found himself pigeonholed near the food by Lord and Lady Astaroth. "It was not Rias Gremory or some of her peerage which killed our son," said Lord Astaroth angrily. "Too much of that story did not make sense. Now we know it must have been Harry Potter!"

"If you are here to demand answers of me, then perhaps you should have known what your son and heir was up to before he invaded Rias-tan's territory!" Lucifer barked back. "You know what our investigators have uncovered. And you had the gall to demand of my little sister that she pay reparations! I might have handed that on because you and your clan has always stood by the Rating System and the New Devil faction, but do not mistake that for acquiescence."

"We will withdraw that demand," said Lady Astaroth firmly, glaring at her husband until he looked down, nodding his agreement. "We have no wish to make her and her new paramour angry at us. We just want closure at this point."

Sirzechs paused, then slowly nodded. "For that, I will ask young Harry to add his own memories to those that were already shared with my investigators. That will have to be enough."

Later that night, after all of the guests had left, the family met up together to discuss what had occurred, what they had learned from the other partygoers, and everything else. Or most of them did. Lady Gremory didn't talk much, sighing and looking away from them all. She only spoke up when the others were finished talking, her tone whimsical and sad at the same time. "I wonder what we're going to have to do to get Rias to forgive us for this. Lady Phenex was right: what we personally saw of Riser is enough to make me question everything else Rias tried to make us listen to over the past few years."

That froze everyone else where they were sitting except for Sirzechs, who smiled thinly. "I think you're going to eat some crow," he said simply. "A lot of it, and possibly without ketchup or any other condiment. I'd get on that quickly too. Don't let her make the assumption that you're just going to try to keep going as if this incident and everything that occurred before it is now over with and can be put behind us."

His eyes hardened noticeably. "I warned you. I warned both of you what lengths Rias might go to in order to be free of Riser. But you didn't listen. Thank every circle of Hell that the worst didn't happen, that she was able to win her freedom rather than die for it! So yes, I think you definitely have a lot of ground to make up before she forgives you."

"We will send a letter to her asking her to come down to speak to us on the twenty-seventh," Zeoticus intoned, his own voice grave and his face showing how shaken he was at the implication, and the near-contempt, in Sirzechs's words. "We will invite her and Harry Potter both to talk to us and, hopefully, to start rebuilding bridges between us."

"In that case I wish you all the luck in the world. " With that, Sirzechs bowed to his parents and left without another word, Grayfia trailing behind him.

The moment they were alone in their room, Grayfia asked, "You realize that this will cause trouble, of course, Milord Sirzechs? While we might make fun of them for their idiotic beliefs, the Pureblood Faction is still a social and political power to be reckoned with. And they are also the faction that is already in near direct opposition to your policies. Any issue like this will be a hot-button topic with them."

Sirzechs bit back a growl with some difficulty. "I realize this, but what would you have me do about it?"

"It is not my place to come up with solutions," she said primly, causing him to smirk and look at her lopsidedly. "I simply know what they will attempt to push the Gremory clan into doing: they will push to have another arranged marriage prepared for Rias-oujosama as soon as possible, regardless of her personal feelings or any prior arrangements she might have made."

"I think we can both assume that, yes, but that doesn't mean we're going to give into them."

"You should consider your position more," she said sternly. "I would think that trying to at least appear conciliatory toward them would defang any social or extralegal move on their part to force the issue. We can ill afford to have another civil war, after all."

"No, I fucking shouldn't!" Sirzechs roared, suddenly losing his temper. She blinked, looking at him in surprise as he quickly threw up a sound muffling spell around the room. With that done he continued without any let up. "Grayfia, you are far too damn concerned with appearances! I know you for a loving, caring individual, but I can count on the fingers of one hand how often you show that aspect of yourself in a month! And the way you have acted in regards to this entire marriage issue from beginning to end is just, has just… Sirzechs paused and visibly counted to ten as he regained control of his temper. "It has not shown you in the best light."

For a moment Grayfia was silent, then she turned, looking down at the ground. "What would you have me do? We need to be aware of how we are viewed. We have to put the betterment of all Devil-kind ahead of our needs and wants."

"That is officially our position, yes," Sirzechs said. "But that doesn't mean that we need to act in such a manner when we're alone. By the cursed legion, Grayfia, it's almost as if you actually agree with the pureblood movement!"

"You know I don't!" she barked back, now beginning to lose her own temper in turn. "If I believed that, I would've never joined your faction during the war."

"There is a difference between believing that Devil-kind should immediately restart the three-way war as the Old Satan Faction did back then and believing now that new blood Devils are just as important and necessary as pureblood Devils are," Sirzechs growled. "But you are so quick to say we must act in such a manner, must kowtow to what you think society expects of us. What am I supposed to think about what you believe! If we had a daughter of our own, would you have agreed to have our daughter be part of this kind of arranged marriage to someone like Riser!?"

"No," Grayfia shouted. "Of course I wouldn't! But I can't…that is, I cannot act…" She stuttered to a halt, looking away, her façade cracking and revealing the turmoil within. "It is not my place to…"

"Of course it's your place! You are my queen, my wife!" Sirzechs said softly, moving behind her and taking him her in her his arms, one hand around her waist and the other around her shoulder. With his thumb he gently pushed her chin around to face him. "I know your clan prided itself on its service to the original Lucifer clan. I know that the position of menial was ingrained into you from an early age along with respect for authority, law, and social customs. But Grayfia, you were able to throw those off once because you could see that it was better for all of Devil-kind. Because you fell in love with me. I want you to take that next step, to extend that feeling and to throw aside this, this façade. Can you try to do that, for me?"

"I can," she murmured, nodding slowly. "I can try."

Sirzechs smiled and leaned in, kissing him her. "Good." And, if you do, maybe we can try to heal the rift between you and my little sister, just like we will need to heal the rift between her and our parents.

OOOOOOO

The two comatose forms of Harry and Yubelluna had been brought up to Asia and Koneko's room and laid out on their beds, though Rias had to enlarge both beds somewhat for them. Yubelluna was nearly as tall as Rias, after all, and Harry was a good bit taller again. They had been made as comfortable as possible, but unfortunately, Yasaka, who was the first to arrive, was stumped as to what could be wrong with Harry.

"I can tell something is wrong with them. I feel almost as if… I don't know as if something within him is missing now or perhaps diminished, but I can't tell what it is, only that it is more than simple magical exhaustion. I'm sorry," Yasaka said, much to the distress of everyone around. Her daughter buried herself into Yasaka's side, staring at the bed where they had laid out Harry, while Lily lay next to him, unwilling to let go. "Let me examine Yubelluna. Maybe that will give me a clue."

The others nodded, and she moved over to the other bed, kneeling down next to Yubelluna and laying her hands first on her forehead, then her chest. And almost instantly, Yasaka's Sage senses could feel something there, a connection almost calling out to her. It was as if the other woman was using Yasaka's own brand of sensing the world, but not quite, and at the same time Yasaka could tell Yubelluna's scent had changed to that of a were-creature, although again, not quite. The one thing that Yasaka could say right off the bat was, "Well, that's interesting. She's no longer a devil."

"What!?" exclaimed more than one voice, and Rias quickly moved over along with Akeno, who had returned with Tonks a few minutes ago while Yasaka was examining Harry. Sona's peerage had decided to take on the job of making certain nothing had occurred of a magical nature while they were gone on their own.

After a few seconds of examining Yubelluna, they could only agree: she was indeed no longer a devil. The former Queen of Riser's peerage read to their spells as part human, part animal, and part plant, all combined into one.

Having studied European magic and histories a little more thoroughly since meeting Harry, Yasaka frowned and then clicked her fingers in realization. "She might be a bandrui now."

"A what now?" Rias asked.

"A female druid. Druids were essentially priests to several of the old-time religions like the Celtic faith and Tuatha de Danaan. Bandrui were particularly prized by the Tuatha de Danaan. I think that when Harry essentially brought Yubelluna back to life, his Blessing sought for an equivalent template to fit her into," Yasaka mused as she stood back up, pouting and biting at one nail in thought. "Something like that, anyway. Asia, did you have any part in this?" she asked. "Can you tell me anything that happened?"

Asia shook her head sadly. "By the time Harry attempted to Bless Yubelluna-san, my powers had already given up," she said, somewhat ashamed of that.

"Pity," Yasaka muttered, then, without preamble, reached down to lay her hand over the blanket that covered the woman's crotch, using another spell there which caused a blue glow to appear and spread quickly.

"What the heck are you doing?" Rias asked, while Asia backed away, as did Koneko and Teddy, who had been looking on in confusion and worry.

"Was this woman sexually active?" Yasaka asked instead of answering.

"Very much so," Rias said with a sigh. "That was one of the issues I had with Riser: that he routinely abused Yubelluna and at least his Knights and Bishops. As his Queen, Yubelluna obviously would have been forced to face a larger share of that kind of thing than the others."

"Well that's interesting, because her body has been completely healed," Yasaka replied with a bemused smile on her face. "She's basically in perfect physical condition for a thirty-something-year-old woman, and her hymen is intact."

"That is interesting, though I don't think it really matters at the moment," Rias said, shaking her head. "We'll tell her about it, obviously, when she wakes up, but it hardly tells us more about what Harry is going through now than we had before."

Kalawarner had, of course, been waiting for them at home and had helped Loup the instant he and the others teleported in, despite her own worries for Harry. Now she nodded, adding, "I think it will be a positive to Yubelluna that can really help her close the book on that part of her life."

They all fell silent then as a teleportation circle appeared underneath them. Kiba came through it along with Tiamat in a body the size of a medium-sized donkey, filling the room even further and quickly making the Chromatic Dragon Empress even more agitated than she already was, which, admittedly, was quite a lot. "Clear the room!" Tiamat bellowed. "I want everyone out of here who isn't directly trying to help Potter!" Her voice softened a little as she looked at Lily and her downcast expression. "I suppose you can stay, but please don't move, child."

Once everyone was out of her way, Tiamat moved to sit between the two beds on her haunches, her tail smacking into the ground with enough force to cause everyone there to jump. She looked between the two comatose forms, her eyes glowing as she sniffed the air heavily, as if taking in just as much information through her nose as her eyes despite whatever it was she was searching for being magical in nature.

Then she slowly blinked her massive eyes, her long neck flaring up and back as she hissed. "Soul sickness, "she said definitively. "Am I correct in saying Potter performed a Blessing with that one, a powerful one?"

"He brought her back to life," Asia said, wiping down Harry's forehead with a dull rag, her eyes anguished at her inability to help him just as she had not been able to help Yubelluna earlier. Asia was unused to running into such hard limits on her ability to use Twilight Healing, and she didn't like it one bit! But how do I train myself to be better? How do I get Twilight Healing stronger than it is already?

"What is soul sickness?" Rias asked, smiling reassuringly at Asia and sitting on Harry's other side, taking his free hand, his other arm being monopolized by Lily.

"Harry is not a god," Tiamat said bluntly. "He is, at best, a demigod. Much of the power of a god, perhaps, but not the spiritual extension of that. His soul is still that of a normal immortal being like you all rather than a god. Ergo, it is not as malleable."

Seeing their faces, Tiamat rolled her eyes and elaborated, one claw coming up to rest briefly on her jutting jaw as she explained what she had told Harry about Blessings before when they had talked about them. Tonks, however, got there before she could finish and shouted out, "Wait, he split his soul!?"

Everyone gasped at that, and Lily asked hesitantly, "Is that true, Tiamat-sama?" Tiamat had basically demanded that she be addressed like that during their initial meeting, and Lily had no desire to annoy her at the moment by forgetting it.

"For a given value, yes," Tiamat said slowly, wondering about the anger and loathing she could see in Tonks's expression and flashing hair. "It isn't as if his soul will remain split. Rather, a bit of his soul went along with much of his magic into Yubelluna here, to start the rebirth process, as it were, but it will return or reform eventually as the bit within Yubelluna fades out."

From the doorway Mittelt muttered, "Fuck, it sounds as if Harry's soul has become some kind of silly putty which'll, like, melt back together automatically."

Tiamat swiveled her head in that direction, her voice becoming even more of a growl than normal. "We're talking about magic at a level that few could understand, and fewer still can do. So you will have to forgive me for speaking in descriptions your tiny, feeble minds can comprehend."

As Mittelt blushed at her mutter having been overheard, Rias asked Tonks, "Why do you look so horrified? I mean, I'm not exactly happy about the fact that Harry was forced to manipulate his soul in such a manner, but you look as if you just saw a ghost."

"That was doing its business on you at the same time," Akeno added, giggling a little wickedly at the expression on Tonks's face.

Tonks growled at her, leaning over to flick Akeno in the ear, but she dodged adroitly, and Tonks turned to the rest of the group. "I suppose you wouldn't know. Hell, a part of me wishes I didn't know. Still, Harry's told you about the Unforgivables, right?"

"….Yes. One dominates the soul, the other tortures it, and the third kills it. They all target the soul and are thus Unforgivable. The creation of them is something of a major wedge between European wizards and every other magical society in the world," Rias said tartly, while the others to a woman and man shuddered. "What about it? Because if you're implying that Harry did something along those lines…"

"No, not that! Or, not precisely that. As far as I know, Harry has never once cast the killing curse. Hell, I don't even know if he could. The other two he can cast, and he's actually pretty disturbingly good with the domination thing…" Tonks said, trailing off for a moment.

"I beg to differ," Akeno muttered. But there was no heat in her tone, and she, like Rias, was now looking back down at Harry worriedly.

Tonks did the same, continuing her explanation. "Well, the killing curse does something else when you use it. It basically splits your own soul at the same time. Killing like that, killing not just a person's physical body but the entirety of what that individual is or could ever be, the price of it is heavy, and your soul pays the price. It can recover, but for the few moments after you've cast the spell your soul is damaged and can be split in two."

Rias and every other devil there shivered again at that, while Yasaka just looked like she wanted to be sick.

Only Tiamat took it stoically, shrugging her draconic shoulders and looking over at Koneko thoughtfully, since she had taken the gauntlet off of Harry as they had gotten him onto the bed. "I can't say that that is precisely the case here. The soul of a god is like any muscle would be for a human being. The more you use it, twist it, manipulate it, the more you're able to do. For a demigod like Harry, I'm uncertain that would be the case, but he should recover."

"All right, we know what happened now, but why wouldn't it have happened during the ritual?" Rias said thoughtfully. "Is it just a matter of the power needed to perform each act?"

"Ritual?" Tiamat asked, then sniffed the air and looked toward Asia, her long snout forming into a smile as she did. "You are now linked by blood to Harry and Lily? I am happy for you. Being special and unusual is always easier with family rather than alone."

Asia blushed at that but curtsied prettily, and Tiamat nodded in reply before turning back to Rias. "I presume you're speaking of the ritual in which Harry welcomed young Asia into the family? Can you explain what happened? Unless it is a family secret."

"Even if it was, you're Harry's familiar regardless of your contract being more like that of a contracted magician than anything else, so I have no concern of your sharing his secrets," Rias said dryly. From there she went on to explain what had happened, and Tiamat listened silently until they got to the part where Fawkes turned up.

"Well, that explains it!"Tiamat interrupted, laughter in her tone now. "That old bird is still around, hmmm?"

"You know Fawkes?" Rias asked in surprise.

"I do. I even know quite a bit more about her than anyone else expects I presume. You could say that Fawkes provided the...the pilot light, as it were, to ignite the ritual, while Harry provided the oil. Harry's soul was not part of the ritual, but the ritual drained his magical core something fierce, I presume?"

"He mentioned that, yes," Rias said with a nod.

"In that case just let him rest. Let him soak in ambient magic, feed him a time or two, I shouldn't wonder, and he'll be right as rain," Tiamat said, now somewhat dismissive. This had been fascinating, but by the ancient gods of magic did Tiamat hate being so small! Perhaps I should look into that human transformation I tried a few centuries ago again. But what would the difference between that and simply shifting to a smaller size be? Surely humans aren't any more comfortable, but then again, they are born to be this size, aren't they?

She turned away to head towards Koneko for a moment, leaning over the girl and staring down at the gauntlet. She put a large claw on it, and Koneko grunted a little at the strength of that claw landing on her arm but took it stoically. For a moment Tiamat fell silent, then leaned back with a huff.

"Very well, but I will be back in two weeks' time to have another…match…with you. And you, child, should make time to talk to Ddraig. He's got something he wants to say to you." With a swish of her tail that would've looked coquettish to any other dragon, Tiamat turned away, nodded once at Koneko, and disappeared, teleporting back to the Familiar Forest.

Rias gently played with Harry's hair for a few moments as she pondered what Tiamat had told them before blinking as something Tiamat had said finally registered. Then she looked over at Akeno. "Wait, 'her?'"

Having heard the pronoun as well but having no idea why Tiamat had used it to describe Fawkes, Koneko and Akeno both shrugged, while Yasaka ignored it to concentrate on more important things. "Tiamat just said that Harry should soak in ambient magic, so why don't we all move back to Kyoto until they recover? The ambient magic from the Dragon's Nest will help his soul heal and get Yubelluna over her magical exhaustion quicker too. Being around so much nature would also help Yubelluna, given her new status." That this would also let Yasaka watch over them and not have to deal with the achy, growing migraine feeling of being away from Kyoto was just a bonus.

Rias nodded, and Loup picked Harry up once more while Koneko did the same thing for the far taller Yubelluna. It was slightly comical to see her like that, but the still almost distraught expression on Lily's face as Rias gathered the little girl to her was enough to stop any attempt at smiling that she might have attempted.

She lifted Lily up into her arms where the girl hugged her once, then just clung there in her arms, staring at her daddy. Kunou too was still subdued, but Yasaka gathered her into her arms as well, and they all teleported straight from Harry's house to Yasaka's mansion in Kyoto, with Rias doing the spell work.

Only Akeno, Tonks, and Teddy opted out of going with the rest of the family. Kiba and Loup wanted to go, but not because of any further concern for Harry, their worries there put to ease by Tiamat's words. Instead they wanted to go celebrate the victory out at a bar Loup knew in Kyoto. Teddy and Tonks too were no longer worried for Harry's life, certain he would pull through like he always seemed to.

Akeno and Tonks took Teddy home to the Gremory house but, after putting him to bed, stayed up late into the night, sitting and talking about the day's events and sharing a large bottle of wine between them. Both of them were somewhat miffed about how the Rating Games had gone.

"I wasn't able to beat the Bomb Queen one-on-one despite all of my training! But I was winning before Riser pulled that switch, darn it!" Akeno growled, pouting outrageously.

"Poor baby," Tonks cooed mockingly, shifting her face to match that of the Bishop she had fought. "I fought only one of them, but she set an entire bloody colony of Acromantula on me! I don't care what spells were on the Rating Game to remove us if we hit a certain threshold of pain or injury, death by spider would not be one of the top ways I could think of going."

"And what would be one of those ways?" Akeno asked dryly, watching as Tonks shifted back to her normal body. "That must save quite a lot on makeup."

"Being shagged stupid, I suppose," Tonks said with a grin. "Or maybe of old age surrounded by my loved ones, with the skulls of my enemies at my feet, of course."

"Shagged into an early grave, is it? And is that why you nearly married this Remus Lupin?"

"Sort of," Tonks said with a grin, lounging back in the chair. Both of them were dressed in long nightshirts, and this move flashed quite a lot of leg towards Akeno, but she didn't comment, simply staring at Tonks for a moment. "He was damned good in the sack, that's true, but once ya wore away his defenses, he was actually a pretty fun guy to know."

"And what happened to him?" Akeno asked softly.

Tonks grimaced. "Let's just say that, despite being so much fun, he had a major issue with commitment and always sort of…" She paused, thinking how to put it. "He always thought that he wasn't worthy of being loved regardless of anything I did to try to convince him otherwise, and that sat between us, I guess. It was just, he had faced his personal demon, the werewolf curse, for so long and had tried to fight it like a wall, not allowing it to have any sort of hold on him or anything. And he had a pathological need to protect other people from that curse."

She took a long, slow drag from the wine bottle before setting it down with a dull thud. "So, fearing that he was a burden or a danger to us or some such crap, he left us. Harry tried to find him, but instead of just running away like, well, like my parents thought he had, Lupin had hunted down some of the werewolves working for Tom Riddle and had pretty much gutted the madman's werewolf allies on his own before being taken down. I wish he'd had the courage to stay alive, to come back and become a father, but I can't say that he was a coward either. There are different kinds of courage, y'know?

"I always think of him as the character described in the song, "Heroes," you know? 'A hero's going to save me just in time?' He was a hero at the last, just not for the reasons that I would've liked him to be," Tonks finished.

Akeno nodded softly, then, in a deliberate effort to change the subject, mused aloud. "Mmm, now, if I was assigning songs to everyone, what would Rias's be?"

Tonks fell silent, watching her for a moment and noticing how her outfit pressed her out nighty out alarmingly, and felt her own chest start to expand in a near-automatic challenge, but she fought the urge down. "'Click, Click, Boom,' maybe, for her Power of Destruction?"

"No, that would be her brother," Akeno answered absently. "Perhaps a song about redheads and their temper? No, wait, 'I'm a bitch; I'm a lover!'"

"Hehe! Mine would be, 'I Like It Heavy,'" Tonks said with a laugh.

"Ah, mine would probably be 'Amen,'" Akeno replied with a smile, taking another long draft from their wine bottle. "But what about Harry's?"

"'How Do You Love,'" Tonks replied instantly.

"You're so certain? Have you thought of this before?" Akeno teased.

"Oh yeah. Definitely. 'You can have the sound of a thousand voices calling your name, you can have the light of the world blind you bathe you in grace. But I don't see so easily what you hold in your hand, because castles crumble nations stumble and turn into sand'. That is Harry to a 'T', and boy was his life surrounded by some lies large and small trying to tear him apart. But all he ever wanted was a family."

Tonks let a lopsided smirk appear on her face at that point as she looked at Akeno. "That is why I am not doing the overbearing relative thing towards Rias or any of you. All of you, something about each of you called out to Harry, and he opened himself up to you, and you opened yourselves up to him in turn. You might not all share blood but you've certainly made yourselves into a family."

"Nice of you to say so," Akeno said with a warm smile. "Although I'll admit it took me quite a while to figure out my place in that family."

"It does sometimes. Just don't make the mistake of putting your own assumptions of where you should be up against the assumptions of other people." Tonks leaned back and downed the last of the wine, shaking the bottle disconsolately for a moment before setting it to the side.

While Akeno blinked and wondered what Tonks had meant by that Tonks looked around and then chuckled. "This place is kind of empty, you know, with just you me and my boy in it. But if Kiba and Loup are going to live together in their apartment, turning it into a guys' pad, we could do the same here. Move Mittelt and Kalawarner in; it would make it seem less lonely for its size, anyway."

"But if we did that we would have to move your son in with the guys, wouldn't we?" Akeno asked, setting aside her confusion at what Tonks had said a moment ago.

Tonks waved that off. "He's only a single step away with that teleportation ability of Rias's. Now," she said, standing up on slightly wobbly feet. "Where's yer kitchen? I want some more wine."

Akeno laughed but got to her feet and led the way. "I might even have some of Rias's popcorn still around. She makes some of the best popcorn you will ever taste. And then, perhaps some romantic comedies."

"Romantic action," Tonks said with a growl. "Something we can make fun of at the same time."

"That works," Akeno said with a nod. "Although, remind me of the idea about Mittelt and Kalawarner moving in here tomorrow. That seems like a good idea."

The next morning Teddy would not be surprised to find his mother laid out on one of the sofas, half naked, with several bottles of wine nearby. The bottles were a bit unusual, but the half-naked thing on the sofa, that made Teddy feel right at home. The sight of Akeno on the next sofa over, though, with her top nowhere in sight, caused him to do an abrupt about-face, his face entirely red, as he quickly marched up the stairs. "Nope, not getting involved in that. Let them sleep it off. Besides, Rias has got the niftiest collection of manga, anyway."

OOOOOOO

That night, however, Akeno and Tonks were not the only ones having a heart to heart, though they were the only ones doing so with another physical person.

Kalawarner was lying back on her bed in the Fallen Angel's apartment disconsolately. Mittelt had gone to sleep, happy about how she had done in the Rating Game, almost killing the opposing King and Queen with her first attack. Mittelt knew she needed to work on her endurance and to build up her ability to better control the number of light spears she created, maybe even enhance the magical gloves that kept her light spears from hurting her now that she was a devil. But, other than that, she was perfectly happy with how the fight had gone, not overly caring about what Riser had attempted or anything else to do with that aspect. The blonde loli Fallen wasn't a very empathic person.

On the other hand, Kalawarner was somewhat depressed. Yes, she was still of the firm opinion that she didn't want to become a Devil. But, if I had, perhaps I could have been down there to help out Harry and the others. Perhaps I should have forced the issue, regardless of the reaction of bringing a Fallen into such a place. But I didn't. I let my concerns for the future override my concerns for the now.

Sighing, she reached over to a small, thin glass case Harry had created for the phoenix feather Fawkes had left her, pulling it out and a moving her thumb along it. To be honest, she was very concerned. In terms of the real powers out there, Riser was nothing. Not even a bottom feeder. He just wouldn't register at all. Rias and her team had done very well, and she knew that Rias would've beaten Riser flat in a one on one fight, even if not in exactly the same manner as she had here.

Harry too was growing all the time. But am I growing? Growing as a person, perhaps, growing as someone important to the family, but not growing in terms of combat potential. I need to find a way to grow. Maybe I should start taking part in Harry's magic lessons with Asia.

As she was thinking that, Kala continued to trace the feather, and, as she did, it started to glow with a reddish yellow light. Kala stopped instantly, holding it up in front of her face, but the light instantly faded. What the heck? Holding it close to her eyes, Kala let the tip of the feather brush her forehead, and once more the light started to glow, but this time it was accompanied by images that were not from Kalawarner's memory or imagination.

Rather, the images seemed to be of different times and settings. Of a blacksmith's forge from various angles. Of a large stone altar, hidden deep in the woodlands, covered by ivory save for a single place that looked scorched. Of another altar, this time in a wide meadow filled with flowers, the scent of spring in the air. The last was of a person, a young man declaiming before a group of equally young girls, all of their faces marked with woad like the Celts were supposed to have used. Then the images disappeared to be replaced once more by the blacksmith's forge, only this time weapons were shown. And each of them were Light weapons or armor, each a different type, until the vision alighted on one, an incongruous image here in a forge with the background of heat and fire: a bow, complete with arrows.

With that the images ended, and the lights went out so quickly it made Kala blink. When she opened her eyes again she wasn't holding the feather: it was back on top of the small glass container, her hand slumped to one side of it. Huh… So was that just a weird dream or something else? Kala was leaning towards the something else, but she wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth, since the images, while confusing at first, had given her two ideas for how she could get stronger: armor and a bow.

Armor to help everyone else, something she could work on with Harry, who was easily the best when it came to enchantments. A bow so she could fill in a niche the family didn't have yet, that of a long range sniper. Yes, that could work. With her mind now much clearer, Kalawarner sighed, put the feather back in its small container, and then twisted onto her side before closing her eyes.

OOOOOOO

In Kyoto, Koneko too was having a heart to heart, but in her case it wasn't nearly so ephemeral a situation as with Kalawarner. She too was lying out in bed, the day having taken it out of her big time. Nearby she could hear the soft, even breathing of Asia in her own bed. The two of them had been given a nice double room in Yasaka's mansion with two small beds. Elsewhere, Lily and Rias were sleeping cuddled together in a bed in the room next to Harry's, the older redhead having convinced the younger to get some sleep, while Kunou slept in her own bed with both her own familiar and Titan for company.

The sight of that had struck Koneko as almost weapons-grade cute, but right now she didn't have the time to think about that. Instead she was once more wearing the Boosted Gear and was currently glaring down at it. "Tiamat said you wanted to speak to me, Pervert?"

"Hah, just because I am a male who knows what he likes is no reason to think of me as a pervert, little cat. Don't worry, your tail isn't the kind I'm interested in." Ddraig's voice sounded out in her head, the small gem on the gauntlet shining only slightly in the darkness. "And you don't have to speak aloud, Koneko. Just try to project your thoughts, and that will be enough."

"What do you want then?" Koneko sent, growling.

"I don't know about you, but I feel as if we could have done better in this Rating Game," Ddraig replied, his tone serious and leeched of all humor. "Being separated from a true connection to the soul of my wielder limits how much of my power you all can pull out from me at any given time, and that is dangerous. I think we need to look into training you, or Harry, to find Balance Breaker."

"What is that?"

"Hmmm, you know those RPG games you and the vampire boy play online together?"Lily had once stolen Ddraig out of his box to join her, Koneko, and Kunou in playing one of those with Gasper. "The Balance Breaker is something like a cheat code which allows you to access far more of my strengths and abilities. We need to figure out how to bring it out."

"Why the urgency?" Koneko asked bluntly. "Khaos Brigade or something else?"

"We were recorded fighting together against the Fried Turkey's peerage, Koneko, and even landed him a good one at the end. That kind of thing is certain to spread, and Albion will know I am awake now if he didn't before. We need to be ready for him and for any other threats out there."

Koneko pouted. "Just great. Still, I'll talk to Harry about it when he wakes up, find some way to train to find this Balance Breaker. But not opening my soul to you, even if I could. Senjutsu and that kind of thing can't mix well, I think."

Ddraig grumbled at that but acquiesced. He doubted that anyone unwilling to meld their soul to his being would be able to call upon his full power, but perhaps if they took his current self to the utmost limit and had a large bag of other tricks and abilities, they wouldn't have to.

OOOOOOO

Harry woke up groaning and in some pain, his eyes blinking open then closing quickly in agony at the light bathing his face. Though, to be fair to his caretakers, this amounted to little more than the nearby window letting in some light into the room. Nor was this a sensation Harry had little familiarity with. After all, there had been a time during the war against Riddle that this had been pretty much the norm rather than unusual, and the Dursleys were no picnic either. They might not have been normally violent towards him, but when Vernon got into the mood, he could be as abusive as Marge and Ripper combined.

So while it had been many years since he'd had to go through a similar experience, Harry was still able to analyze what he was feeling with relative ease. It felt as if his body was somehow torn between achingly exhausted, as if he'd pushed himself mentally and physically, and yet as if his body was near to fully rested with energy to burn yet at the same time badly stiff. For a moment the dichotomy threw him, then he realized that his mind was terribly disjointed, his mental plane feeling as if a tornado had reached in and had a rummage, a sensation he recognized. Ah, magical exhaustion. I tried a spell that was beyond me. But, what was it exactly?

That was about as far as his mind got before something small and body-shaped moved next to him. He barely was able to open his eyes for a second, but he saw a wave of red hair and a very familiar face leaning into his vision. "Daddy?"

"Hey, honey," Harry replied, his voice scratchy and parched. "What exactly happened? And, um, can I get some water, please?"

Lily's arm went around his chest and hugged him tightly, and Harry could detect a sound like a sniffle for a moment before she turned and shouted so hard it hurt his ears, "He's awake! Daddy's awake and he wants some water!"

Moments later Harry was sitting up in bed with Kunou and Lily hugging his sides as if they were afraid he would fall back asleep the moment they let him go. Around the bed Rias, Yasaka, and the rest of his friends and family were gathered, sans Loup, who simply couldn't fit into the already crowded room.

Beyond Asia's head, Harry could see another bed beyond them containing Yubelluna, which, coupled with everyone's explanations, told Harry what had happened. She was sans makeup and still sleeping deeply, her eyes closed. In sleep, the woman seemed to be almost at peace, her expression no longer a mask for the pain within. She is avery beautiful woman,Harry reflected. Just as good looking as the other ladies here, if with a slightly more mature beauty than them, save for Kala and Yasaka.

After hearing what had happened and what Tiamat and Yasaka had been able to discern, Harry slowly nodded and, after carefully editing his speech for any and all curses, replied. "So, basically I pulled a magical superpower out of my rear through sheer dumb luck, and, while the cost of it was high, my rage against Riser and my own adrenaline kept me going until I dealt with him too. After which the bill came due, and I collapsed."

"…You are taking the fact you split your soul up like that far too calmly, Harry," Tonks growled from where she was leaning against the wall near the doorway.

"Oh, inside I am sooo not calm it's not funny at all," Harry drawled. "But we are British, Tonksy, so I felt playing the sarcastic blasé statement card would be keeping the side up." As Lily giggled at that, Harry's façade faded, and everyone there saw he really was rattled by what he had been told. "But it wasn't permanent or anything? My soul has repaired itself?"

"As far as my Sage senses can tell, but even knowing now what I'm seeing I've not got anything to compare it to. Tiamat?"

"Grrrm…"Since her arrival, Tiamat had not joined in the general discussion. Half of her mind was dealing with the sensations of being so small at the moment, which really was just a wrong feeling for any dragon. But the rest of her mind had been examining Harry with every sense available to her.

In truth she was shocked at how quickly Harry had recovered. True, she had no baseline to use to figure out how long it should have taken, but she knew how long it had taken her soul to return to normal the only time she'd Blessed something in the past. And, despite his vast array of tricks and spells, Harry's base strength was equal to Tiamat's, so it should have taken him as long as it had her. So am I just wrong about how strong Potter is, or has something inside him somehow helped to rejuvenate his soul faster than it should have been able to?

Since trying to answer that question was beyond her ability, Tiamat shook it off. "Your soul is fine, Harry Potter. A demigod's soul might not be as immutable as a true god's, but it will regrow from this type of Blessing given time. Your magical strength will refill swiftly, though I think you will need to renew your mental defenses and such like."

She then reared up on her haunches, her face thrust forward into Harry's. Since she was the size of a large donkey, this should have, even given her draconic body, been rather more amusing than anything. But somehow Tiamat seemed to loom as if she was in her normal-sized body. "But this is not something you should take for granted, Harry Potter. You were very lucky! Yubelluna was on the edge of life and death. Without your regeneration ability as a, a 'Phoenix Werewolf,' you might well have died from the drain on your magic reconstituting her body demanded. Even with that, without the aspect of 'the ferryman' of Manannán mac Lir it would have been beyond your ability to save her. Instead you would have, in effect, created a phylactery inside her and splintered your soul permanently."

All of the people in the room shivered and fell silent, their faces turning various shades of white while Harry and Tonks shared a look and a grim nod. Even the two little girls, who barely understood what was being discussed, shivered, clinging even tighter to Harry.

That act would have, even for the best of reasons, been utter anathema to everyone there. The grim expressions told Harry that everyone was in agreement on that point without having to voice it.

Harry slowly nodded. "So, we know now what Blessings cost. But this, this wasn't something I really controlled, Tiamat. I mean, yes, the original intent was mine, but how it came about?" He shrugged helplessly. "How can I stop something like that happening again when I'm desperate to change something or protect someone, or would it be better to try and somehow train it?"

"Train it how?" Tiamat asked bluntly. "You are no god, Potter. You get this wrong, you die, simple as that. You destroy your own soul. You need to be aware of your limitations and avoid pushing them. Your soul might become stronger after this, but not enough to experiment with." Then she sighed. "Still, you have ways to review memories that are well beyond anything I've seen before. I would recommend using your pensieve to figure out exactly how it felt to Bless Yubelluna, then simply…figure out how to control it, how to know if something is beyond your abilities, or figure out the feeling you get when you are about to shift from wanting something to occur and creating a Blessing to make it happen. That is all I can tell you."

"So, we're back to winging it, then," Harry groaned. "Still, that gives me a place to start." With an almost audible snap, Harry decided to set that topic to one side and asked, "So, exactly how long was I out?"

"You've been asleep for the better part of two days. It's now the evening of the twenty-sixth," Rias replied, sitting down now on the edge of the bed and taking his hand in hers.

This meant, of course, that Harry had missed Christmas, but in the days leading up to the break Harry had learned that Devils could literally not celebrate Christmas in any way. Even just attempting to exchange gifts on the day of Jesus Christ's birth brought pain to them. Not really being Christians, it had been easy to convince Harry and Lily to exchange gifts and such on New Year's Eve instead of Christmas.

"And where are we? This doesn't look like our home or your old place, Rias?" Harry asked, though he was looking between her and Yasaka, already having an idea.

"As you've no doubt already discerned, you're in Kyoto, Harry," Yasaka said, pushing Rias down onto Harry's chest from behind to lean over her to give him a kiss. Yasaka was currently in her Kitsune form, two long ears poking out from her long blond hair, and her nine tails visible behind her.

More importantly, her jaw felt slightly different in this form, and her tongue, when she pushed it into Harry's mouth, was a bit longer and coarse to the touch. The kiss deepened, and Yasaka only pulled away when Rias growled and pushed her away, blushing at the feeling of the other woman's breasts pressing into her back at the same time that she was feeling Harry's hard chest against her own.

"You're in Old Corky's room." Kunou mangled the Yatagarasu's name, giggling at the antics of the grownups as Rias admonished Yasaka for her pushiness. "He was Mommy's advisor that was involved in the attack Harry helped stop. The position hasn't been filled since, so his room's been vacant."

"Hmmm. You know Lily and I spend so much time here, maybe we should just bite the bullet and take over one of your mansion's wings, make it a home away from home?" Harry mused.

Hearing that, Rias and Yasaka stopped their minor argument, the Kitsune chittering happily at the idea while Kunou promised Harry and Lily that she'd love it, and they could go exploring together in the woods every day that way. After assuring her that he would enjoy that, Harry asked the others what had been going on.

Relieved that Harry seemed to have no further ill effects from his soul-splitting, the group began to exit the room. Kiba, Loup, and Tsubaki, there as Sona's representative, left together. Tiamat just popped out of existence, heading back to her home after tossing out a request for another 'spar' with Ddraig to Harry as soon as possible, who simply smirked in reply.

Teddy left too, taking Kunou with him. The young Tonks had full confidence in Harry's ability to bounce back from anything and took him waking up as he had as proof of that. The young kitsune was also happy now that Harry was awake and didn't need further reassurance of his return to the land of the living. Lily did need a bit more and remained stuck to his side, while Kala left to prepare some food, or, rather, a lot of food, as Harry's stomach had begun to grumble loudly.

Of the six left, Tonks, Akeno, and Yasaka pulled up some chairs and added their own bits to what had been going on. Asia and Koneko took turns hugging Harry, then moved to a pair of chairs close by but not directly against his bed, while Rias sat on the bed itself and did most of the talking.

She told them she had received a formal note from her parents to meet with them along with Harry and a note from the Astaroths withdrawing their demands for reparations in return for the real story of how their son died. "The last is easy to deal with, given the note Nii-sama gave me. I think they just want some honest closure and more evidence of what he's been telling them since Diodora died."

She paused, her blue eyes showing her hesitation. "I'm...uncertain how to deal with my parents. The note is conciliatory, but I don't know if I want to… That is, I've spent so long blaming them for the arrangement with Riser…"

Yasaka and Harry exchanged a glance, and then Harry reached out, pulling Rias into a light hug. "Rias, if your parents are admitting they were wrong, I think you should give them a chance. So long as they don't try to control you or tie you up in another arranged marriage—which is a ship that has sailed, I should think—it should turn out okay. I am not saying you should forgive them or that you'll ever be close to them ever again, but entirely shutting them out of your life would be a mistake. And besides, if they are asking for a meeting with both of us, I'll be right there with you."

Sighing, Rias nodded. "All right. I'll reply that we'll see them on the twenty-eighth , unless you think you won't be recovered by then?"

"I should be, I think. Again, I don't have much experience with my soul recovering from being used as a bloody spell component. I'll be there, Rias, right beside you, never fear," Harry replied before kissing her.

It was supposed to be a chaste kiss, but despite Harry's body starting to feel tired again, the two of them rapidly started to get into it a bit too much, pulling away only when Lily groaned out a, "Gah, I'm still in the bed!" That and the others' laughter caused Rias and Harry to pull away from one another.

"I doubt he's up to that level of exertion just yet, Rias, and, since this is my house, don't I have dibs?" Yasaka asked.

While Rias was trying to formulate a response to that, Yubelluna woke up. She did so in a slightly slower but far more startling manner than Harry. First, she started to mumble the normal, "What happened, where am I?" set of questions, then she sat up abruptly as her final memories came back to her. "What? My legs!"

Before any of the others could say anything, Yubelluna threw off the bedding to stare at her lower body, moving her legs this way and that as they came into sight. This showed that no one had thought to replace her disintegrated dress after they had put her to bed, and she was still naked from the waist down. Her legs were a little longer looking than Rias's and just as well-formed, with a tiny beauty mark on her inner thigh and another down near her ankle. Her pussy lips, visible when she spread her legs, looked a little larger and thicker than Rias's or Ginny's, and there was a tuft of purple hair above that. At the sight, Harry couldn't stop himself from letting out a low whistle.

Reaching over, Koneko pulled the blanket back over Yubelluna's legs as Tonks started to push the other woman back down. "Easy there, Purple. You've been going through one hell of a rough time. Heh, I made a pun."

"A right horrible one, Tonksy," Harry said, shaking his head to dispel the image from his mind. Hmm, being with Rias seems to have weakened my self-control. I really will have to renew my mental defenses later.

Staring around her now, Yubelluna first stared at Rias. "You! If I'm here, then you did it, you beat Riser!" Then she looked around before her eyes lit on Harry and suddenly blushed, showing much more embarrassment than most who knew her would have believed given her normal attire, pulling the blanket tighter around her legs with an "EEP!"

"Let's take care of that little fact right now," Rias said, hopping off Harry's bed and beginning to gesture in front of her. "What kind of pants do you like to wear, Yubelluna, and what is your waist size?"

"I don't know Japanese sizes, but I'm fifty-seven centimeters, if that helps, and regular jeans, I suppose. Not tight, though: the loose variety," Yubelluna replied, still looking somewhat dazed and embarrassed.

Rias blinked, as did the other older, or, rather, more fully formed ladies. "Fifty-seven, really?" Yasaka asked. When Yubelluna nodded, she shook her head. "Wow. Respect, girl."

Yubelluna smirked. "Thank you. I've always practiced yoga and various calisthenics to keep my figure, but it is an uphill battle even with a devil's constitution."

Shaking her head, Rias muttered, "Might have to look into more yoga myself if it can keep you that thin." So saying, she conjured a pair of pants into being, while Akeno stood up and created a white curtain between the beds.

Neither got their target object quite right, since conjuration and transfiguration were among the skills Harry had been teaching them which they hadn't mastered yet. They were at the equivalent of a third-year student at Hogwarts in many ways. Harry walked each of them through the process, showing the accompanying movements with his fingers. "Although, if this was a test I wouldn't be helping you ladies and would, in fact, be failing you right now," he teased.

Both girls stuck out their tongues at him before turning to try again. Akeno got the curtain right on the second try but forgot something to hold it up, which forced Koneko and Tonks into service as curtain ends. Rias took several tries to get the pants right, the zipper giving her trouble, but eventually they were done, and Yubelluna had finished dressing with Yasaka's aid.

This had resulted in a rather amusing moment, albeit one hidden behind the curtain, when she realized who Yasaka was. Once the curtain was pulled back, she was looking between Rias, Yasaka, and Harry in wonder, shock visible on her face from that revelation before she resolutely pushed it to the side. "Rias-sama, Harry-san, Yasaka-dono, what, what exactly happened after I fell unconscious? The last memory I have, it… My legs were…"

The normally self-possessed, calm, even haughty woman that most saw when they met Yubelluna had been gone since the moment she woke up, but now real fear was visible on that beautiful face, and Harry couldn't stand it. Without even looking at the others for their opinions, he started to explain. "First, Yubelluna, I have to tell you a bit about me and the Celtic god Manannán mac Lir."

Rias was a little concerned at first about how fast Harry was to share the full reason behind his demigod status with Yubelluna, but after a moment she knew that that concern was more because she hoped to keep the full breadth of his abilities from Devil-kind at large rather than Yubelluna the individual. And, like it or not, Yubelluna-san is here to stay. And I rather think I like it, although her position in the household remains to be seen...

Listening intently, Yubelluna asked only a few questions, visibly reining herself in several times lest they go off on a tangent. She seemed to know a lot about Celtic beliefs, so she didn't have many questions about Manannán mac Lir, but asked several questions about the Blessing when it got to that point. As Harry finished, she slowly nodded. "I, I see… So, I left one master for another. At least I know you are not the kind who would abuse his tools."

"NO," Harry said, his voice hard and certain, while Rias scowled on his behalf, and Yasaka rolled her eyes. "I know you don't know me very well, Yubelluna, but I would never treat anyone as a mere tool. I will always treat you with respect and dignity, like the lady I told you that you were when we met in that bar."

Yubelluna smiled faintly at the memory but held Harry's gaze, searching for any sign of deception, finding none. She wasn't really showing it, but Yubelluna was really, really beginning to be turned on despite her momentary protest. Her shock at still being alive had faded sometime during Harry's explanation under the impact of Harry's emerald eyes and British accent. Curse my Roger Moore crush!

She couldn't stop herself, she really couldn't. "Harry, could you say, 'Keeping the British end up, sir,' for me?"

Yasaka blinked as did Rias and Akeno while Harry frowned. "I'm sorry, I know that from somewhere, but…"

Tonks laughed. "Oooh, someone wanted to be a Bond Girl, aye? That's from…hold on… Um, that movie with the marine expert chappie who didn't like shaking hands for some reason."

At that Harry laughed. "Ah, and you imagined yourself in the image of Romanova then? Though I prefer the rest of the film. 'And what do they teach you in Siberia about keeping warm?'" he asked, putting even more of an accent on his words, causing everyone to laugh while Yubelluna shuddered.

"Hmmf. I still think the best Bond girl is that one who goes into space, Holly! She's a woman in a man-dominated profession, and she goes into space! That or Bambi and Thumper. They should've finished off Sean-Bond," Lily said, speaking up from her place by her father for the first time. She had been looking with interest at Yubelluna, who had smiled at her a few times but not asked any questions about her.

"In a way the movie did just that, lovey," Harry said, his hand ruffling her hair tenderly. Lily rumbled happily, leaning further against his side but not moving her eyes away from Yubelluna. Something about her nearly captivated Lily's attention, her looks or her odd smell that the others had said came from her new status as a bandrui, Lily didn't know, but it was there.

Yubelluna smiled, addressing her directly now. "And this must be your daughter, Harry. Those eyes and the face are all yours, I think." Her smile turned sly. "Although that red hair could well give people some ideas about how long you and Rias have been an item." The others looked at her in surprise, but she waved them off. "Please, if I didn't know that before seeing you in your club's room before the Rating Game, I know it now with this setting."

"Yes, this is my daughter Lily, but she isn't my only daughter. I have adopted Asia there, and Rias and I have sort of worked out a joint custody deal for Koneko-chan. There's also Yasaka's daughter, Kunou," Harry said, gesturing to each in turn, making Asia flush in pleasure, and Koneko to stand up straight with pride, her ears twitching upright with the rest of her as Rias smiled at her fondly as Kunou smiled happily at being mentioned.

Yubelluna was silent for a moment, looking at them and then smiling somewhat wistfully. "This is the oddest family I've ever heard of, but it sounds lovely all the same. And, before any of you ask, I have no problems with kids. I used to look after Nel and Lle, although whatever they look like, those two are actually only a bit younger than Asia-chan looks to be."

From there, the conversation shifted all over the place as Yubelluna asked Harry how he and Yasaka had met, how he had gotten together with Rias, and many other questions. Harry and Rias, in turn, asked questions of her, and Yasaka was called upon to explain the various aspects of what she sensed in Yubelluna.

"Hmmm… Well, I was a gardener once. I was also okay with animals of all sorts, worked as a dog walker at one point. I even was going to college for a degree in horticulture when Riser and I…" Yubelluna scowled, and suddenly the years spent with Riser settled down on her like a lead weight, her face slowly becoming cooler, more controlled and closed.

"Well, that might be why you were fit into the bandrui template, then," Yasaka replied briskly, eager to move the conversation on.

"And we kind of need one," Lily chirped. "You should see…" She fell silent when Rias held up a finger to her lips, and she blushed, having nearly ruined the surprise Rias and everyone else had been working on over the past few days.

"If everyone has a role they need to fill, then, yes, gardener would be mine. That and maid or general cleaner. As messy as I am when I work with the dirt, I definitely dislike it anywhere in the house. I'm kind of OCD about it, really." Yubelluna admitted. "I nearly forced Riser to keep his room clean despite everything he could have done to me."

"Oh, Seven levels, I know! Men can be such pigs sometimes, leaving food and clothing all over the place. That's been a major issue with living in the same room with Harry and this little messy monster," Rias said, mock-glaring at Lily, her face scrunched up as Lily responded with a mock-growl of her own.

Harry simply shrugged. "I like a little mess around the place, but I suppose we can agree to disagree. But you said you were going to college?"

"Yes. I was a normal college student before I accidentally discovered my Sacred Gear during a car crash. After that I was targeted for it by a devil who wasn't willing to take no for an answer. Then Riser came in and swept me off my feet." Yubelluna scowled. "Looking back on it, I have to wonder if that was a plan Riser had come up with to get me to willingly become his Queen."

"Well then, in terms of duties around the house, you can be our general maid and gardener," Harry said in an upbeat tone which turned nearly tender. "But I thought you would prefer to be a lady."

"In public, I would very much like that." Yubelluna smiled, leaning back and closing her eyes as the relief of Harry's words and tone moved over her like a gentle wave. No more forced exhibitionism, no humiliation, no degradation! Not here, not with these people. I am finally free.

"Lily, love, why don't you run off to play now?" Harry asked softly. "I think we need to have a serious talk."

"I'll go with ya, Lily," Tonks said, hopping to her feet. She had no wish to be drawn into further Devil style shite despite technically being one now. Then again, I think hanging all the politicians, whatever their race, would make for a lovely Yuletide party.

Yasaka also excused herself, leaving Rias, Akeno, and Harry to talk to Yubelluna. They were silent for a moment, and then Rias began softly. "My family has taken in Riser's peerage, and their connection to him has been blocked for now and will be severed. At the moment he is a King with no peerage, but I imagine the King's Piece will be removed after we meet with Lord and Lady Phenex and formalize his further punishment. I don't know if you remember, but you weren't the only one hurt in his attack on you all. Siris died, and Karlamine was gravely wounded. Regardless, my parents have already prepared psychologists to speak to them. Many have requested, even pleaded, to be allowed to return to Riser despite all the, the evidence of his treatment of them I turned over to my parents. We know it is Stockholm syndrome in many cases, yet none of us can tell who among the rest of Riser's peerage would remain loyal to him regardless of what happened. Can you tell us?"

"Not the pawns. After Riser had gotten them into his peerage, he saw no need to molest Nel and Lle further. But he made them watch all the time, and, in a way that was just as bad." Yubelluna said, astonished to find tears trying to form in her eyes. Odd, I thought I had cried all the tears I had in me years ago.

Harry let loose a low, animalistic growl deep in his throat as he fought the urge to transform and hunt down Riser for that. "I see… Now I am regretting most strenuously not having executed him before."

"We had information on how he treated everyone else, and I'm afraid I sort of assumed that he was molesting them too, but we didn't have proof of that," Rias said with a scowl. "Still, justice will be served—if not in the coin we could have wished—never fear."

"No, he was always careful with them. But I don't see why you're surprised. There are devils out there who very much prefer young girls and girls who cater to it too," Yubelluna stated, looking somewhat confused as she saw the two were furious more about the ages of the two girls then how they were treated.

"I tend to try to hold myself to a more moral standard than that," Rias replied with a scowl. "Still, go on."

"The two Nekomata are, well, they are kind of sluts, but I doubt they have any true love for him. Certainly they never enjoyed the pain games he had us all play occasionally. Burent and Marion are loyal to the Phenex clan. They were his first pieces for that reason, and I don't think that has ever changed even if they kept his vices secret from his parents despite how much damage some might have done the Clan's public image. Shuriya…not certain about her. She liked the sex, even when Riser loaned us out to other High-Class devils for favors or to seal a contract. But there was a mind behind that body of hers, and I don't think she liked being treated as a disposable tool in combat any more than I did. Mira, you'll have to be careful of her. She was the weakest of us and tended to get more in the way of abuse. If anyone is suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, it's her.

"Mihae, she's possibly the shyest person I've ever met." Yubelluna shook her head. "She also was our newest member and, so long as she isn't near him ever again, should be fine."

Her voice starting to become choked up, Yubelluna went on. "Karlamine being, being injured is a tragedy, as she was one who would have been free from him in an instant if given half the chance. That's why, that's why I was sent out on that mission I met you on rather than the two knights, Rias-sama. He couldn't, couldn't trust Karlamine not to run off if he remained home and the obedience portion of the Peerage bond weakened due to being in different dimensions."

Rias moved over to throw an arm around the woman, while Harry pushed himself out of bed with some difficulty to join them in Yubelluna's, Akeno beating him there by a few seconds. He hugged Akeno and Yubelluna both with what little strength he had left, while Rias and Akeno did the same, giving this strong, yet sorely wounded woman all the aid they could.

Eventually Yubelluna went on her hands resting on the arm Rias had put around her chest. "Siris, the Knight who died, and the Rooks... I don't know which came first for the two Rooks, their masochistic tendencies or their infatuation with him. But they were loyal to Riser. Siris was too, though I have no idea why."

"According to the note they sent me, my family has already brought in two human psychologists we have contracts with, one of whom is a woman. With that help we could keep them and the others away from all men if need be."

"That could help the youngsters realize you're serious. Not the Nekomata, though." Yubelluna frowned. "To be fair I don't know if their oversexed ways behind closed doors were a defense mechanism or not. But you will have to watch Xuelan and Isabela."

Moving away from the group hug, Harry slid around so that he was looking Yubelluna in the eyes, and when he spoke his tone even, but his emerald eyes were as hard and dark as stones. "Do you want him dead? I might have let him live simply because I didn't want to kill him in front of Ravel or the other kids and his parents, but I could find a way to get to him somehow. A dark alley somewhere in the Underworld or a brain aneurysm, or dress up like a Khaos Brigade assassin, any number of things."

"I'm glad you didn't. Ravel's the darling of the whole family, and there have been rumors that her mastery of the Phenex fire is exceptional. Despite her, I think it is called tsundere? Despite her tsundere attitude, I rather like her and would not like to see her traumatized so," Yubelluna said with a faint smile.

She looked at Harry closely, and a part of her, the dark, vindictive, and, above all, wounded part of her demanded that she answer yes. But she shook her head. "No. At this point his death wouldn't solve anything, wouldn't serve anything. It wouldn't bring back their innocence."

She then smiled a thin, wintry smile. "However, there are other ways to hurt him, especially with his parents agreeing to the punishments in question. I was, after all, Riser's Queen, and I know Devil Law and contract laws in particular. If they balk, well…"

From there Yubelluna described could be done by that type of magical agreement to keep Riser in line, to make certain he learned and was never in a position to hurt any other woman ever again, while also describing in detail several things Riser had been up to over the years which could bring dishonor. Listening to her, Harry was amused to note how much these Devil contracts sounded like magically binding oaths among wizard-kind. Rias too was amazed at her mastery of Demonic law and quickly hopped off the bed to grab a pen and pad, writing it all down before giving the older woman a spontaneous hug. "This is all amazing. And if we couch it just so, even Riser's parents will agree with it, every bit of it."

"Ah, politics: where blackmail isn't nearly so horrible a term," Harry quipped before he got out of the bed, standing with a bit of difficulty as Kala came in with several servants following her, pushing trays of food. "For now I think I need something to wash my mouth out from all this dirty talk." He held Yubelluna against him lightly, twining his arm around hers and gesturing with his free hand to the food, transfiguring his former bed into a table as he did, causing exclamations of shock among the youkai servants. "Shall we?"

Finished talking about Riser and anything difficult, the group continued to talk for a long while on numerous other topics. Rias and Yubelluna both talked seriously about the food she'd prepared, grilled fillet of brill, which, as Harry put it, "Is rather a built-in pun, since it is both brill and brill!" to many boos and hisses at the awful pun.

For his part, Harry tried to wheedle out of Rias and Akeno the secret Lily had nearly blurted out earlier, but failed. Then the talk switched to gardens, and Yubelluna took over, excitedly talking about the gardens she'd been in charge of at the Phenex estate and what she would like to see done if they allowed her, permission which Harry, of course, instantly granted, so long as she kept the various familiar nests. Kala nearly came to blows with Yubelluna on the topic of cleanliness, since outside the kitchen, Kala and Mittelt were both slobs. Yasaka too joined them late that evening after the kids had come by to say goodnight, and they all just continued to talk, getting to know their newest companion, until Harry and Yubelluna were nearly falling asleep.

Rias and Yasaka helped Harry back to bed, though, given the disparity in size, it was mainly Rias doing the work. But at least Yasaka was able to help Harry walk in a straight line.

Lily had not followed them. Now that her daddy was awake, all of her concerns about him had disappeared, replaced with her initial certainty that he would be fine regardless of anything that happened. So she was off with the others, trying to decide on a single movie they all wanted to watch that night.

Eventually the two ladies were able to get Harry into his room and sitting up on the bed, where they started to strip him of his clothing. "I can do that myself, you know," he muttered, trying to help. But his fine motor control wasn't quite up to working the buttons of his shirt for some reason. He had even had trouble with feeding himself earlier.

"Oh hush, Harry," Rias murmured, pulling his shirt up and off and tossing it aside, her eyes raking his upper body as she did every time she saw him like this. Mmm, muscly.

Yasaka, too, was taking in the view, as was Harry in return. Rias had leaned in close as she pulled his shirt off, and, as she did, Harry could gaze straight down into her cleavage. He could also smell her perfume, lavender and something else, almost orange but not quite. Yasaka too smelled amazing to him, and only got more so as they helped him out of his clothing, but in her case it was a deeper, more earthy scent, one he recognized after only a few seconds contemplation.

Down below, Yasaka was looking up at him appreciatively while her fingers deftly undid his belt and pants, pulling them off with some difficulty, and not just because Harry had to lift himself off the bed for a moment. Harry's little staff had responded to the view, and she had to fiddle with his pants for a bit until she could get them off.

"Heh, sorry, Yasaka, Rias. I, um, I might be tired, but a certain part of me doesn't seem to have gotten the memo. I honestly don't think I'm going to be good for anything strenuous, though."

Chittering, Yasaka shook her head. "That's quite all right, Harry. It's a compliment, one I treasure." Staring at the tent pole straining at his boxers, Yasaka licked her lips, then looked up at Rias, her eyebrows raised in question.

Rias paused for a moment and then smiled. "Nothing strenuous, love, but perhaps we, or rather, Yasaka, can help you take the edge off. It is her house, after all, like she said earlier." And letting the two of them play alone will pay Yasaka back a bit for opening her mansion to us as she has over the past few days. She didn't have to welcome all of us as she did, and I've greatly enjoyed our discussion on leadership and the various problems we've both run into. And, Rias reflected, she very much preferred it when both she and Harry were both able to, for want of a better word, give their lovemaking their all.

{Lime start!}

"Mmm, I know just the thing, too…" Yasaka said, smirking as she pulled Harry's staff out from his boxers. "I won't even have to change either. You remember me teasing you that first time we really flirted, Harry, with the dango sticks? Heheheh, well, you're about to be shown the proof of my boasting."

"Oh?" Harry murmured, his tone deepening as he felt Yasaka's breath on the bare skin of his cock. "But I won't be able to pay you back right away…"

"I'll take a rain check on that lingual skill of yours, then," Yasaka replied before she began to kiss and lick at the head of Harry's cock. She then opened her mouth and took the head into it, followed by a few more inches. She let it rest there for just a moment, and then her tongue, longer than a human's and far rougher to the touch, started to force more and more of it into her mouth.

"Heh, um, I'll just leave you two to it," Rias said, tearing her eyes away from the sight with some difficulty. That was oddly hot. She backed away, still watching the scene until she bumped into the closed door behind her, which she fumbled with for a moment before she pulled it open, closing it behind her. Then she quickly put up a silencing charm and moved away, trying to calm her racing heartbeat and other responses to what she had just seen.

"Fuuuccckkkk, Yasaka, that feels good!" Harry grunted, leaning forward to run his fingers through Yasaka's hair before playing with her ears.

She moaned in turn, pressing her face deeper into Harry's crotch, taking him into her mouth and down her throat in one go. Kitsune ears were really sensitive, and Harry's fingers were finding just the right spots. That, plus the fact she loved fellatio, was really getting her motor running.

Her eyes gleaming with desire, Yasaka stared up at Harry. She pulled back so that his cock head was once more resting in her mouth, giving it several long, swishing licks, licking up the pre-cum before pulling back off almost entirely so Harry could see her tongue at work. Then, still maintaining eye contact despite Harry's continued stroking of her ears, she thrust her head forward almost violently, taking Harry's entire length into her mouth and down her throat.

"Holy, shiii…" Harry grunted, the feeling out of this world. It was warm and tight, almost like being in a woman's pussy, but different, moving differently around him, to say nothing of the fact that, somehow, Yasaka was still able to move her tongue lightly around the base of his cock.

Enough playing around, time to get serious,Yasaka thought gleefully, pulling back just a bit before moving her mouth up and down, pulling away from Harry's hands as she did so and breaking eye contact at last, her eyes closing in bliss.

This was why she missed Harry casting a few spells. The first one created a small, bullet-shaped piece of wood. The second, a Sirius Special Spell, teleported Yasaka's skirt which was her usual Miko outfit, from around her into a neat pile to one side. That she noticed, but before she could do anything her panties followed. Then Harry's hands moved from the back of Yasaka's head down her back and through the base of her tails to her small, padded rear, picking up the small magical vibrator from the floor before trying to work their way under Yasaka's rear.

This, however, nearly overbalanced him off the side of the bed, and Yasaka pushed up at his chest with some difficulty, feeling a thrill at the feel of those tight, heavy muscles under her fingers. "Mou, Harry-han, what part about not needing to exert yourself didn't you get?"

With Yasaka's help, Harry first sat back upright and then flopped back onto the bed, moving into the center of the bed with Yasaka's aid once more. "It isn't in me to not try to return that kind of favor," he murmured.

Yasaka shook her head but moved around the bed until her crotch was over one of Harry's hands, the one holding the makeshift vibrator. "Well, just don't try to do too much. Your body's still not fully recovered." With that Yasaka licked her lips once and then dove back down on Harry's cock, gobbling it eagerly like it was her favorite treat. Soon enough her head was bobbing once more on his cock, his whole length in her mouth and down her throat as she made happy gurgling noises.

At the same time Harry's fingers were busy. Unable to see what he was doing thanks to Yasaka's tails being in the way and his own lack of fine muscle coordination at this point, he had to fumble for a bit but soon found her cleft. It was noticeably shaggier than Rias's, but it was just as wet as his redheaded love's had been the last time they had slept together. Has it really been two days?

Shutting that thought down as being pointless, Harry continued his work on Yasaka's lower lips. One finger slowly worked its way inside, curling and uncurling, while two more found the small nub at the top of Yasaka's pussy that he knew was her clit.

Yasaka's moan confirmed this, but instead of pulling back and giving a more verbal response as Harry had thought, Yasaka sped up her own deep throat assault on his dick, moving her head faster and faster, and Harry watched, somewhere between bemused and intensely aroused, his fingers pausing in their exploration. Even the sound Yasaka was making was dirty, the 'glrrk, glrrk' noise adding to the impact, making the experience all the better.

How long this went on, neither could tell, but eventually Harry felt a familiar feeling welling within his balls. "Yasaka, I'm about to cum!"

If anything that made Yasaka redouble her efforts. No other thought was in her mind other than tasting Harry right then, and she was going to have it.

Desperately, Harry touched the base of his cock as Yasaka's head was on the upswing, casting the same spell he routinely used with Rias, another Sirius special that changed the taste of his cum to whatever the girl he was with would find most pleasing. And then, fighting off the need to cum, Harry grabbed up the tiny vibrator once more, plunging it without any preamble into Yasaka's pussy. Redoing the vibrating spell on it was hard for some reason and made his eyes nearly shut from the effort, but Harry pushed on, pushing the small vibrator deeper into Yasaka's depths. His other hand pressed down hard on her head, forcing her to take his cock deeper.

"EEEEEMMMM!" Yasaka squealed around Harry's cock as she swallowed, causing Harry to finally lose control and cumming deep down her throat, Yasaka cumming at the same time from his own ministrations.

For a second it was all she could do to remember to keep breathing through her nose, her whole body quivering. Then Yasaka slowly pulled her mouth back off Harry's cock, making an audible popping noise as she did. Her long tongue flicked out as her mouth continued to gape open for a second, and, in the light of the lamp set by his bed, Harry could see her sharp teeth gleaming there along with a copious amount of his seed, though it was nothing to the amount which had rocketed straight down her throat.

As Harry watched, she flicked her tongue back in and closed her mouth, swallowing. Once more she opened her mouth to show Harry that she had swallowed everything he had poured down her throat. "Mmm, Kiwi… Tasty and filling too," she purred throatily, then her eyes widened in surprise as she noticed that Harry's cock hadn't flagged at all.

"Really, you show me something that sinfully sexy and you expect anything else?" Harry asked. He then asked solicitously, "Are you okay? I didn't hurt you when I pressed on your head at the end there?"

"Heh, impressive. And no, Harry, you didn't hurt me. I can take anything you want to dish out. In fact…" Yasaka trailed off as a wicked idea occurred to her. "In fact, why don't you transform, Harry, and then I can prove that I can take anything you do."

Harry gaped at her but, after a moment's hesitation, nodded and transformed into his werewolf form. His body bulked out in every direction, adding three inches to his shoulder width and a further three to his height, causing him to practically dwarf Yasaka. A fact that, judging by her suddenly dilated eyes and the smell of her arousal doubling, she greatly enjoyed.

Despite having had this form for longer than he'd known her as more than his best mate's little sister, Harry and Ginny had never experimented with it. Ginny had not exactly hated Harry's werewolf side, but had certainly not been open to seeing it as an addition to their sex lives. Before her, Harry had never gone that far with anyone so it had never come up. So despite his nose telling him in no uncertain terms that Yasaka enjoyed the view, Harry tried to hide his body somewhat, one hand dropping to his crotch and the other covering his lower face, hiding his muzzle from view.

Yasaka however was having none of that, and gently removed his arm from his face, leaning in to kiss him. Pulling back she sent him a wink. "Come on Harry, no need to hide yourself, not to me, and I daresay not to Rias either." She gently stroked her hand down his face, then played gently with his ears, causing his eyes to close and a deep rumble to shake his large frame. "You're so self-controlled Harry, it's just not healthy. You need to learn that you can let go sometimes you know?"

"It, It's not that easy," Harry said, trying to think through the haze of his arousal and the simpler pleasure of having his ears rubbed in just the right way. "I, I don't, that is…"

Realizing that Harry's self-control issues ran deeper than she had thought Yasaka sighed but continued her work on his ears, setting aside the fact she was more turned on right now than she could remember being since the last time she'd been with her dead husband, her eye raking down Harry's muscles and enlarged frame. "Harry, everyone has a wild side to them, some admittedly more literally than others. You need to let it out to play at times, or else you'll just keep on getting more and more wound up. Yes, control what you can around you, but you don't have to control yourself to that extent."

"For far too long myself was all I could control," Harry replied.

"Having heard about your life prior to coming to Kuoh I can understand that. But it's no longer the case is it?" Yasaka asked, kissing Harry's muzzle ardently, then leaning back kissing his eyes and ears, watching them twitch before biting one of them ever so lightly. "Is it? You can control much more than yourself Harry, so conversely you don't have to control yourself to that extent any longer, do you?"

"I, I'll, think about it, it's um, it's hardly easy to think clearly right now," Harry said panting a little now.

"Good! I didn't want it to be," Yasaka said simply. "I'm not saying that Rias would be willing to play with this form, but I bet she'd like a bit more heavy play in the bedroom, lover." With that Yasaka pulled away entirely, letting her eyes stray down now to his tool. The shape of Harry's cock was different now, the head more pointed like a dogs rather than a human's more mushroom-like tip. Further, its size had changed, adding at least the length of Yasaka's pinkie to its length, and another two thumb's worth to its already considerable girth. "Amazing," she breathed.

So he didn't realize how sensitive he was down there until Yasaka leaned down and began to lick and nibble every swollen inch of his cock. She giggled throatily, looking up at him with a wink as she moved to be kneeling within Harry's outstretched legs, out of his reach so she could concentrate entirely on what she was doing to him rather than the other way around, her tails wagging. "Now, why don't we take a walk on the wild side, hmmm, Harry?"

{End Lime}

OOOOOOO

Moments after leaving Harry and Yasaka, Rias looked around at everyone else in Yasaka's TV room. "So, what do you all think of Yubelluna?"

Her own peerage members shrugged before Akeno spoke up. "After we learned what Riser was up to with his peerage, I think we all felt sorry for all of them. Yubelluna seems to have borne through it well enough and is, generally speaking, not quite what we expected her to be given how she has acted in our limited interactions with her and Riser both. I think we will all take a wait-and-see attitude as to whether or not we can be friends with her, Rias."

"What about you, Lily, Kunou, Asia?" she asked.

"I like her," Lily said brightly. "She knows a lot about plants, and I thought her explosive powers looked amazing when she fought Akeno! Can you imagine being able to make something explode so easily? That would just be cool! She even smells a little like a werewolf too, but, like, one that rolled around in a lot of flowers and dirt."

Note to self, when Harry starts teaching her spells, make certain it occurs in our training ground , Rias mused, shaking her head with a chuckle. I can just see our little Lily becoming quite the pyromancer in the future.

"She seems nice," was Kunou's uncomplicated opinion. Asia too was of that opinion, while Koneko's impression of the former Queen was a bit more in depth than either of theirs. "She's tough. Stronger than she acts; has been through a lot. I kind of respect her for that."

There were some murmurs from the other women at that. All of them understood intellectually the courage that Yubelluna had to have lived through her time with Riser and come out the other side as mentally all together as she seemed to be.

Kala and Mittelt both nodded agreement. They didn't know as much as Rias's original peerage did about Riser and how he treated his peerage, but they did know something about being abused by those with more power than them. And, after hearing about how Yubelluna had nearly died to save the rest of her peerage from their master, both were willing to see if she fit in with the rest of their group.

Teddy and Tonks both shrugged, not having an opinion one way or another, though Tonks was watching Rias closely. She'd gotten used to the idea that Harry was dating Yasaka and Rias both and that Kala might be pining to join them, but from what she saw, Yubelluna seemed as if she might be interested in Harry too and vice versa, though that was a subtle thing with him. Huh, I wonder if Rias realizes that or not? Well, it should be interesting to watch, whatever happens.

"The more the merrier," Lily said with a firm nod as if she was casting the final vote or something. "That's part of what I've really like since we arrived in Japan: meeting all these new friends, making them friends rather than acquaintances, and all of us all living together as we have been. It's great!"

"That would be the werewolf in you, I think. Werewolves are always happier when surrounded by their packs," Rias said with a laugh, tussling the little girl's hair affectionately as she sat down on the sofa next to her. Lily promptly snuggled into her side, while Asia and Kunou did the same under a blanket next to them, and the others all made their homes variously around the place. "Now, what were we going to watch?"

Later, after putting the kids to bed, Rias returned to Harry's room, finding Yasaka outside the room, leaning back against the doorway in her Kitsune form. Her eyes were glazed, her breath was coming in gasps and pants, and her long tongue was lolling out. "Was it that good?" Rias asked, wondering if the two of them had actually gone all the way despite Harry's physical and mental exhaustion.

Yasaka shook her head. "N, no… It's just, he honestly was a bit much…" she said, touching her jaw rather tenderly. "I think I might've pulled something!"

Rias laughed, and Yasaka pouted at her. "That's not nice."

"You asked for it, literally!" Rias said, still laughing. "And I can't imagine why you did it that way when you're as endowed as I am," she said, touching her chest. Or maybe even a little more,she thought, looking down at Yasaka's. Given their disparate sizes she couldn't quite be certain, but she thought that the other woman was indeed a bit bigger in that area than she was, which was, while something she was used to with Akeno as a friend, also kind of irritating.

"Oh, but it was soooo worth it," she murmured, patting her stomach a little. "He was positively delicious." Then, without warning, Yasaka leaned up and kissed Rias hard on the lips.

Rias shuddered as she felt those feminine lips on hers, opening her mouth slightly and feeling Yasaka's long, rasping tongue against hers. She also tasted Harry's essence there and shuddered again, warmth filling her from her mouth straight down to her lower body.

But then Yasaka pulled away, winking at her. "Maybe next time it'll be all three of us?"

"Maybe," Rias murmured, shaking her head. She couldn't say she was in love with Yasaka or that she was nearly as attracted to her as she was to Harry, but Rias also couldn't deny that she thought it might be interesting to experiment and see what it would be like to go beyond kissing with a woman. "Maybe."

"Good. Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I need to go find an ice pack. Ow." With that Yasaka sauntered away, once more holding her jaw and wincing.

Watching her, Rias rolled her eyes with a final, if breathy, chuckle, then pushed open the door to Harry's room and entered, moving quickly towards the bed. She found him sprawled out there, but his eyes were open as she entered. Rias smiled at him and then stripped off her clothing before she moved to the bed. She stopped and stared, somewhat amused to see him rising to attention again despite all Yasaka had done to calm him down. That is very, very flattering and makes me regret my earlier comments about wanting to wait for him to feel better.

But Rias controlled herself and, with only a gentle pat to Harry's cock, lay down next to him, nuzzling her face against his shoulder and kissing his neck lightly. "Some other time," she murmured once more, "when you're feeling better. I'm tired, and so should you be."

Harry laughed quietly. "I'll say it again, Rias: the man who would not feel aroused with someone like you sleeping next to them doesn't exist. Still, you're right that you would have to be the one doing all the work, and that just won't stand twice in a row."

She laughed at that and then kissed him again. "I love you, Harry Potter," she murmured against his lips.

"I love you too, Rias Gremory," he replied before pulling her into a hug as she reached out to turn off the light.

Yet even as Rias fell asleep curled up next to him Harry didn't not fall asleep just yet. He had some more work to do. With a long sigh, Harry bent his thoughts inwards to his mental plane. As he had thought, his mental plane was a bit disordered from the way he had left it. His werewolf instincts had run amok and were now just loose all over the place, his defenses were shattered here and there and his aura had been seeping out through the cracks, though not too much. The main issue was his instincts, and Harry frowned as he turned from repairing his defenses, about to banish those instincts back into its cage next to his libido, which had also gotten loose, although it, an image of Harry himself with… enhanced proportions… hadn't moved much.

But then he paused, and looked at the image of his werewolf instincts, a large, black-furred version of his werewolf form as he remembered Yasaka's admonishment. I don't need to control myself so much any longer, I don't need to worry about other people trying to control me or manipulate me. I don't need the cage any longer, not for my instincts, not for my libido.

With a frown, Harry concentrated, and the two images before him slowly began to fade, while around him, his mindscape slowly changed. Trees sprang up here and there, and a few wolves started to appear, cavorting around the place, each of them composed of memories of a time when Harry's instincts had saved him, or when he had given in to them for the sheer fun of it.

Harry's single image of his libido too disappeared. The cage it had been in, lined with images of Rias, Yasaka, Akeno and others also disappeared. Those images flashed around his mindscape, taking up new positions elsewhere as the light of his soul changed slightly, becoming a little yellower, more vibrant. Harry idly noticed that a lot of the images that had been inside the cage, which had been where he had stored thoughts he hadn't wanted to give credence to, featured Akeno, which Harry supposed he should have expected. She had always called out to a part of him in a way, a kind of sexuality he hadn't wanted to take part in.

And now, do I still think that way? Shrugging that thought off as unimportant, Harry continued his mental repairs, still wondering about things, such as the whole 'malleability of the soul' issue and others. He didn't notice when an image of Rias moved into a special, small silver and gold lined room right below the tower on which his soul resided, an area that had previously only had images of Lily, Hermione, Ron, Teddy, Tonks and at one point, Ginny. Nor did he notice when it was joined by several other pictures from his memory. But even if he had, it was doubtful he would have cared. After all, he had a lot more precious friends and family now. Although if he had, one of them might have surprised him.

OOOOOOO

"Mommy, what happened to your jaw?" Kunou asked in innocent confusion as she looked at her mother across the breakfast table.

A little way down the table, Harry coughed delicately as his eyes found Rias's, exchanging a brief smile and then looking back at Yasaka. He was feeling a lot better than he had been last night and had easily made his way to the breakfast table without any aid, though he was among the last to arrive. And even that was because he and Rias had spent most of that time in a very nice snogging session.

Now he watched as Yasaka flushed a bit at her daughter's innocent question before catching Harry's gaze and winking. "Nothing major, Kunou-chan. I just attempted to bite off a bit more than I could chew last night."

Kunou's brows scrunched up cutely at that, but Harry spoke up before she could inquire further, his voice rising very slightly at the use of the word 'bite' in this context. "So, what are everyone's plans for the day? I think I personally want some exercise…outside. Maybe go for a swim."

Yasaka and Asia, who were the ones really in charge of his convalescence, glanced at one another before Yasaka nodded. "That should be all right, so long as others go with you. Though I think Rias said something about a girls' day out."

"I did indeed, but that leaves Loup, Issei, and Kiba at loose ends," Rias noted, looking at each man in turn and getting nods from each in turn. Issei hadn't been with them the night before, but he was getting more and more adroit at getting out of the house these days without giving his parents cause to worry, something helped along by Loup, who had introduced himself to them at one point as a tutor.

"Ara, I'm more interested in what you were trying to eat last night than any plans today," Akeno teased, having cottoned on to what Yasaka had implied. "Whatever did you try, Yasaka-sama~? And after bragging so much about certain skills in that area too~."

Yasaka's gaze whipped between Akeno and Kunou, her look both desperate and promising wrath if Akeno didn't let up in front of her daughter. Luckily, Tonks and Teddy weren't there that morning. They had preferred to stay in Kuoh and find a place that served European style breakfasts, so Akeno was alone in her teasing assault, and once Rias, Kala, and the others headed her off, breakfast passed without further incident.

So, after breakfast, Loup and Kiba decided to head back to pick up Issei from his family for the day and then headed out with Harry to swim at the same river they had been shown before in the forest of Kyoto. And if Harry noticed how there seemed to be a fox following them at one point to make certain they didn't roughhouse, he didn't comment, simply winking in its direction.

None of the girls were with them. They had decided to take Yubelluna shopping as a part of cutting off all her ties to the Phenex clan. She also deserved a day to just be pampered, in Rias's words. And the other girls, particularly Asia, who had been watching Harry nearly as often as Lily had, deserved it too. Rias was going to splurge on them all.

Harry found that his body was just as strong as ever and didn't feel any special exhaustion or anything after swimming around, so he was quite happy with the way the day went. Then Issei asked, "Hey, guys. Erm, Harry-san, what do, that is, how do you tell if a girl is into you or not?"

Issei had not yet been able to separate 'Potter-sensei' from 'Harry,' and Harry was in no way helping him given Issei's attraction to Asia. Indeed, he now looked at Issei rather suspiciously, one eye closed thanks to an errant beam of sunlight while the other started to glow with magic. "Hmmm… This better not be about my pure, innocent Asia would it?" Harry asked.

"Gahh! No, not Asia-chan! Jeeze, between you, Koneko-chan, and Raiter, I don't know which is worse! No, it's about Ruruko-chan. I, well, she sort of, um, hinted that maybe she'd like to go on a date with me at one point after we came back from the Rating game. But if that's the case, why doesn't she just, y'know, ask me out?"

"Some girls are more traditional and would rather be asked out than the reverse," Kiba opined. "Though I doubt Ruruko would like you to be over the top about it. Certainly don't ask her at school, and don't, whatever you do, act any differently around her. She would hate that."

"All women would hate that," Loup grunted, stretching out on the ground nearby. He had felt rather irritated about missing both the Rating Game and the action afterward and was trying to figure out a way to enhance his strength and abilities without becoming a devil. At the moment he was looking at using enchanted war gear and items Harry and Rias could create, as well as further martial arts training. "Being yourself is best. If they don't want that, they aren't for you."

"Yes, but…" Harry and Kiba said as one before looking at one another and laughing.

Harry gestured for Kiba to continue, and he did so. "There is a limit to how much of yourself you should show so quickly. And, in your case, Issei-kun, she has seen quite a lot already, both the good and the bad."

"Your heroics and your perversions, in other words." Harry elaborated. "You've come a long way from that mob character that was part of the Perverted Trio. You showed off your heroic side against Diodora and during the Rating Game. But that last was tempered by the way you went about it."

"Hey! Don't blame me for all that! It's not my fault becoming a devil has heightened my already massive libido! Becoming a devil heightens your connections to the Original Sins. And my Lust has let me create my spells and even has driven me to become as good as I am at magic!" Issei retorted, angry at having been called a mob character, the sort that could be found in the background of any RPG. I was never a mob character, darn it! I was the tragic hero!

Harry nodded at that, going off on a tangent. "That's true, though I think there's more to it than that. But Akeno mentioned that you had created four spells, yet we only saw you use one original spell during the Rating Game and two of the spells I've taught you. What are the other three?"

At that Issei began to cackle evilly. "You really want to know?"

Cocking his head to one side, Harry shrugged. "No, not really."

"Well, I'll tell you anyway; rather, please let me brag!" Issei shouted, reaching out to try and shake Harry, which failed miserably.

"Fine. Just let go of me. Who knows where those hands have been?" Yet, even so, Harry smiled at Issei, indicating that he could go on, as Loup and Kiba leaned forward in interest. Even Kiba hadn't really been able to create more than a few spells of his own over his years as Rias's Knight, so it was doubly interesting to him.

"Gah, you bastard…" Issei growled, then shook it off in order to brag. "Well, I have one other spell based on my love of all things oppai. I call it the Sticky-Sticky Cannon!"

"And suddenly I'm regretting my curiosity," Kiba mused as Harry groaned.
"Enemy of women," Loup grunted.

"Oh, come on, can't you picture it!? First I strip 'em, then I cover 'em! It'll be glorious!"

"Remember what we were talking about a second ago, about showing too much of your inner self? That, right there, is what we were talking about." Harry sighed heavily. "We might as well get it over with. Come on, what're your last two spells?"

"Well they aren't nearly as cool as my first three, but Akeno-senpai told me I needed at least one direct attack spell and a misdirection spell. So I hit on the idea of taking small things, small irritations, and magnifying them. So I came up with Prickly Privates. It'll basically create an itchy feeling and then ratchet it up every ten seconds for more than an hour. It's an AOE spell, so it can affect a lot of people all at once, driving them all crazy!"

All three of Issei's listeners gaped at him, and Kiba slowly said, "Issei-kun, it pains me to say this, but I think you are taking to being a devil a little too well. It's kind of terrifying me right now." Harry and Loup nodded wordless agreement.

Taking that more as a compliment than a statement of fact, Issei grinned. "Then this'll really blow your socks off! My last spell is even dirtier, and its name says it all: the Rectal Prolapse Spell! Mind you, I haven't actually tried that on a living target, but I definitely think it will work!"

"Fuck, I'm going to be sick," Loup groaned, turning away, his face pale.

"Issei, I want you to listen to me very carefully, okay? If you promise to never use those in training or ever speak of them again, I will try to forget this conversation ever occurred. And, further, I won't label you as an enemy of all humanity, agreed?" Harry asked, reaching out to take Issei's head in his hands. "This is where you nod if you want to live."

Gulping, Issei nodded, and Harry let him go. For a moment the men were all silent, with Issei looking kind of bewildered while Kiba, Loup, and Harry simply tried to forget that the last few minutes had ever happened. Eventually Issei broke the silence and asked hesitantly, "So, um, about Ruruko…"

"Keep your perversions on the down low; try to make asking her out both a private and seemingly random thing. That way there's no pressure on her to act in a way that she might feel others might expect her to," Harry said.

"What type of girl is Ruruko?" Loup asked.

"Cheerful, friendly, lots of friends, a somewhat typical young teenage girl," Kiba listed.

Loup grunted. "Make lists. Girls want their first date to be special. Make a list, check it off, get everything right. And have another list of ideas and places to go for the date."

"If she's been subtle about indicating her interest in you, then be subtle in turn. Make the first date something as non-date-like as possible, then, if she comments on it, you can switch gears quickly," Harry added. "And if she notices, tell her how much time you've put into it. A girl likes to know you've worked for her."

"To expand on what Harry just said if Nimura-san isn't certain how deep her interest in you goes, I think you need to be careful about scaring her off by being too enthusiastic. No roses, though a tulip or daisy might be good. No movie dates: they are rather cliché," Kiba supplied before wincing. "You, ahem, you might want to also try to distance yourself from any areas of the city you frequented with your former friends."

"And for goodness sake, don't stare at her chest," Harry finished dryly.

Issei nodded, not looking up from where he had written down all their suggestions. "Meh, no worries there. She's nice and all, but she doesn't actually have very big oppai, more's the pity."

"And never say that aloud, anywhere! Let alone where she might be able to overhear it!" Kiba growled.

Loup grunted once more then pushed Issei under the water. The other two looked at him, and he shrugged. "I'm trying to wash out the oppai obsession."

"Worth a try, I suppose," Harry said judiciously, his lips twitching. The next second Issei thrust Loup's lazy hand off his head and came barreling out of the water into Loup, pushing him back into Kiba. Harry watched all this and laughed quietly before turning and pulling himself out of the small pool of flowing water, lying out on the bank, and watching the fun.

Kiba eventually joined him, laying out next to the older man silently for a second before coughing uncomfortably. "Um, while I do not need as much help in this area as Issei, I um, I was wondering if you could, that is, are there any signs that girls give when they are ready for more? I, I think Tsubaki is, but I don't know for certain."

"Heh, no, there isn't any one signal they all give. You just have to play it by ear and use your knowledge of the woman in question. Sorry," Harry said with a chuckle. He'd not actually dated all that much in his life, but he supposed having been married did give him a lot of experience in comparison to these three.

"Then, um, what about signaling that you want to push forward a bit? How do you do that without coming off as demanding and pushy."

"Talk about it. That's about the only way to handle that idea. You can be subtle about it—invite her to your apartment, say, or to the bedroom if that's what you want. When you're kissing, try to bring her hands where you want them, but very slowly, so that she can stop you anytime," Harry advised.

Issei and Loup rejoined the discussion at that point, and the first thing out of Issei's mouth was, "So, still on the topic of dating, what's it like having two women at once, you, you happy harem bastard!? Seriously, tell me how they feel. What's Rias-sempai like in bed?"

Scowling, Harry was about to tell him to go soak himself once more, but then he smiled. If Rias and the girls could have their little information session, I can get away with a bit of bragging. "Hmm… Well, I won't go into details, but let's just say that Rias is very adventurous in bed, both in word and deed."

When Issei's face started to go red as he imagined what those words might mean, Harry realized there was a downside to discussions like this: you had to be all right with the idea of other people fantasizing about the partner you were discussing and what the two of you did together. And, looking at Issei, Harry realized he really wasn't. "And I think you need to dunk your head some more." With that Harry sent a low-level Stupefy at Issei, the magic attack hurling him back into the river with a splash.

OOOOOOO

Elsewhere in Kyoto, Rias had taken Akeno, Koneko, Kunou, Lily, Asia, and Yubelluna out on the town. At first Yubelluna was somewhat stiff, but as the day wound on the stiffness faded, leaving a far more formal and much less in-your-face woman behind than most would have assumed if they had met Yubelluna while she was Riser's Queen. Gone was her normal haughty, aloof air coupled with clothing that put her assets on display to everyone around her. That image had been replaced by someone who, while no wallflower, seemed to radiate calm and a certain refinement.

The clothing she chose as they shopped reflected that: long skirts, flowing dresses, loose jeans, and older, traditional Japanese kimonos, which covered everything yet showed off her body to a certain extent, hinting at what was below without putting any of it on display but her face. At present she wore a tight blouse and jeans. This she highlighted with purple lipstick, somewhat clashing with the rest of her style, but little else. Her purple hair was let loose down her back, and a warm smile from those purple lips finished the look.

Kunou got along with her famously from the get go, having much the same taste in clothing when she wasn't running around with Lily or the others. She also enjoyed talking about gardening with her. Lily too enjoyed talking about gardening, even though she could tell that Yubelluna would be another person trying to make her act more like a lady when the occasion called for it. That thought won many a scowl as the shopping continued, but she didn't complain overmuch given the source of unexpected entertainment their newest friend provided.

This entertainment showed itself first when they walked by a florist's shop. She paused, looked into the building, and then entered before any of the others could ask what she was doing. The rest of the girls then watched as she seemed to browbeat a young woman on duty to move plants around in the window so two were given more shade and a third was placed in direct sunlight. Four more, hanging vine types, were shifted around and placed outside on small stands. "Honestly, can't you hear the little things? They need sunlight and wind; they can't be kept on that back shelf like that. Why, I bet they only get a few hours a day of sunlight, none of it direct, and don't get me started on your haphazard watering schedule."

"Um, hear, ma'am?" the harried young woman asked in reply.

Yubelluna stumbled for a moment before swiftly continuing. "Just a figure of speech. Now, for these plants with the red leaves, they don't need so much sun, but they do need some extra nutrients…"

It took Rias and the others a few minutes to get her away from the store and the poor worker, who was looking like she had been run ragged by the time they left. "So, was that your past as a gardener calling out, or your new bandrui instincts or powers influencing you?"

"I, um, I don't know?" Yubelluna said hesitantly. "I mean, I did sort of hear the plants calling out, so I would assume it is my bandrui powers, but only those few plants in trouble really grabbed my attention. So maybe it will be controllable once I get used to it."

If that was the case, her getting used to it would no doubt take a long time, because about ten minutes later, Lily watched with a grin on her face as Yubelluna stopped halfway down the block, staring up a plant set on a windowsill high above them. It looked a little brownish around the edges, and its leaves were obviously drooping, though Lily didn't know enough about plants to say what type it was.

But the reason she was grinning was that Yubelluna—calm, ladylike Yubelluna—had started to cuss a blue streak the instant she saw the plant. And now, as Lily watched, she leaped up into the air, floating in the air somehow even without wings to fly up to the windowsill.

There Yubelluna glared inside, seeing a young man there sitting in front of a computer screen with the kind of tan that only the finest NEET could ever manage. Her appearance seemed to pull his attention away from the game he was playing, some kind of visual novel if the picture was anything to go by.

He gaped at her, and she quickly hit him with a memory charm. "I am taking this plant. You will remember that a cat knocked it off your windowsill." She paused, then smirked. "You will further be very sorry for it, even if you did a horrible job taking care of the plant someone must have bought you, and take this as a sign to get out and get some sun yourself. You look like you need it."

With that she flew back down to join the others, several of whom had quickly gotten busy erasing the memories of passersby. They all looked at her, and Yubelluna shrugged. "I, um, I couldn't stop myself?" she said sheepishly to many a chuckle.

Eventually they rejoined Harry and the boys, and, after bidding Yasaka good-day they all headed back to Kuoh. There Kala and Tonks quickly left to grab Mittelt and then shop for ingredients for dinner. At the same time Harry and the newcomer were ushered through the house by Kunou and Lily, as Rias and Kiba covered their eyes. "So, the big secret you've been working on is in the backyard, is it?"

"You might be saying that, yes." Rias said with a laugh as she held her hands over Yubelluna's eyes and Kiba did the same to Harry. They walked Yubelluna and Harry into what had been the far side of the backyard facing the fence that was set between his property and the next door neighbors, then Rias pulled her hands away. "You can open your eyes now."

Harry did so and gaped in surprise at what was in front of him. Because where there should have been a white picket fence was, in fact, the back of the Gremory house here in Kuoh. Harry recognized it from having put his motorcycle there several times after coming by to pick up Rias or Akeno for dates. Turning to the side, he was going to ask Rias how she had managed this and gaped again as, to the left of the backyard, the fence on that side was also gone. It was replaced by what looked like a townhouse of some kind: it had a single story and had just as wide a garage as the rest of the house.

"What, what is this?" he asked, stepping forward. Yubelluna was staring first at the lawns and then down to where her feet brushed the grass underneath her thoughtfully.

Harry felt it as he stepped forward, a pulse of magic, and then he was there, facing the Gremory house from the edge of its backyard rather than staring at it from the edge of his own. He looked around for a few seconds and then stepped back the way he had come.

Rias was beaming at him and took his arm, pulling him along eagerly. "The townhouse is Loup and Kiba's place. Loup had been saving up for after college, and Kiba had actually been saving up his money too. Anyway, they decided Kiba's apartment was too small, and that plus Loup wanting to get a motorcycle of his own decided them on this townhouse. It has a small room for Teddy and another guest room plus the two rooms Loup and Kiba took after we renovated the interior."

"Ara, that was rather fun. An excellent way to practice spells of all sorts, and it was interesting too," Akeno said, leading the way inside.

A few steps later Harry stopped and grinned at the huge plasma TV on one wall accompanied by a DVD player and a pool table to one side. He even saw one of the magical chess sets which had been a present to him and Lily from Ron. Ron had given them two sets of brand new soldiers, one set a year for two years, and had even taught Lily how to play. There were a few other board games of the college set variety too. "A man cave, awesome," he said, exchanging a fist bump with Loup and Kiba.

"Hmmf! If you think we'll let you monopolize that big screen, you've got another think coming, Daddy!" Lily said with a huff.

"We've got our own TV in the main house, Lily," Asia admonished gently.

"Mmm, let the boys have their space," Koneko said.

"Besides, the TV in the girls' house is even bigger," Akeno added with a little giggle. "So let the boys keep playing with their…little…toys on their own."

"Ouch," Kiba mimed, holding a hand over his heart as Loup grunted.

"Girls' house?" Harry asked.

"Indeed. Since we've gotten to know them, we decided that Mittelt and Kalawarner having their own place was no longer necessary. We sold their apartment and had them move into the Gremory House. That way, between them, myself, and Tonks, that house is now nearly full again," Akeno supplied.

"Essentially, we enlarged the idea of thinking outside the house that Loup had. On the one hand, we sort of embrace that fact that we have groups which will spend a lot of time in their own houses, but essentially what we needed was not a larger house, but a compound. So that's what we created," Rias said with a smile. "What I made was a sort of stretched out teleportation ring, a permanent gateway. I had to ask my Nii-sama to help with some of it, but I think that it's worked very well. Although, as you can see, Yubelluna, the various lawns need a lot of work to really merge together."

With that Rias showed Harry were there was a thick two foot line of Ankhsera script on the ground and up to the enlarged corner pillars of the original fence. "Essentially the gateway will remain there as a permanent, always open connection between the three properties."

Yubelluna slowly nodded. She had seen works like this in the Underworld, and it was always expensive to get done, but it could be very effective in linking small properties together which were widely dispersed. "And I presume you have some defenses on those wooden pillars? They are the anchor points, correct?"

"Exactly, yes. I infused them with magic, and we asked Master Husukai to help us. Between him and our own use of your Norse runes, Harry, we were able to create a decent defensive array, though obviously, if you think you can add to it, please feel free."

Harry looked, but offhand it didn't look like he would be able to add much to their work. Rias and Akeno had both learned a lot about European style runes, and they had worked them into one array while Husukai had added the local touch.

Yubelluna moved around the place, smiling as she thought about what she could do with this combined space. Almost absentmindedly she reached out to touch a small tree at the edge of the Gremory house's backyard, but then gasped as sensations she had no word for flooded into her.

She could feel the roots of the tree, the feeling of sunlight on leaves, and something like energy, which she felt spreading throughout 'her' body or, rather, the body of the tree. It was what the tree was feeling that Yubelluna was now somehow getting sent via her hand on the bark. It was odd, bizarre, and utterly alien, but she fought through it, trying to push the information to one side so she could pull away. It was an almost overwhelming experience in comparison to the whispers of the plants she had interacted with while out with the girls.

Unbeknownst to Yubelluna, the tree had responded to her touch almost instantly. It seemed to almost glow with more vitality, its leaves shivering, and then, before the eyes of the onlookers, it began to grow: slowly, to be sure, but far, far faster than a tree would ever normally be able to. And, under her feet, as if her touching the tree like that was a signal, the grass under her shoes started to grow too. Nearby plants, a few bushes set around the lawn's outer edge, bowed towards her as if from the impact of some unseen wind.

The moment was over almost as quickly as it had begun, and Yubelluna stepped back, finding Harry there to hold her arm lightly. Shaking her head, she cocked her head thoughtfully as she looked at the tree, a small, happy, yet bemused smile on her face. "Did I do that?"

"I believe you did. This, like the plants calling out to you, must be a part of your new bandrui heritage. Even untrained or even unaware, a descendant of nymphs would have a special connection to trees," Harry replied.

Nearby, Tonks narrowed her eyes as Harry glanced her way, but, thankfully for the peace of the moment, he made no attempt to make a joke about her hated first name there. Instead Yubelluna murmured, "Hmm, I hadn't realized just yet how deep that change would be. Interesting. This is going to take some training, I suppose, both to use and to control my own reactions to it."

After the group had gotten over their surprise at this sudden display of Yubelluna's new status, Koneko linked arms with Harry, tugging him along. "Come on. We made changes to the main house too."

Harry stumbled at that and was ready to glare at Rias for making changes to his house without his consent, but Asia saw his irritation and quickly spoke up. "Ano, don't worry, Tou-san. We didn't make very many changes. We just shifted mine and Koneko-chan's beds into bunk beds and added another sofa to the living room. But we want you to see the changes and the wallpaper Koneko-chan and I chose."

With a wink, Rias indicated she too had seen Harry's moment of anger and understood it, but that nothing had been done to the house that he would object to. This proved to be the case, and the rest of the day passed uneventfully until evening. As they were preparing for bed, Koneko once more cornered Harry as he was heading up to bed with Rias. Rias, with a smile and a kiss to Koneko's head, left them to talk, heading up to the attic with Lily and Kunou.

Koneko explained the discussion she had had with Ddraig about the need to see if they could use Balance Breaker to bring out more of his power. "So, want you to help me train."

"Hmm, all right. Ddraig's never mentioned this idea to me before, though he's more pushed me to try and figure out how to permanently bond with him before this. Still, I have no problem with training you, Koneko-chan. In fact, if we expand the idea of Balance Breaker to cover all Sacred Gears, then perhaps Kiba and even Asia-chan could benefit from being trained to the point where they find their own Balance Breakers." Harry mused. And doesn't Yubelluna have a Sacred Gear? "Give me a few days to think about it, and we'll see what we can do. But does this mean you want to keep using Ddraig in battle?"

"Un. Boosted Gear, it fits my combat style more than anyone else's. Ddraig has said he wants to wait until Lily grows up to bond with someone besides you, and you don't really need it, so I'm the best fit," Koneko said, smiling.

"Well then, let me think about it. Talk to Ddraig, and we'll make this Balance Breaker thing work," Harry said with a smile.

Koneko smiled back, hugging him tightly.

That evening, Harry made good this promise and went inside the Boosted Gear to talk to Ddraig face to snout. "So, this Balance Breaker thing, do you honestly think that Koneko or I will be able to draw out that power?"

"Perhaps, perhaps not," Ddraig rumbled back. "This is a first for me too you know Potter. And I would still prefer to bond permanently to a single user. Yet I'm also willing to wait until the one I'm most compatible with has grown some more, so I can only hope that one of you can reach that stage."

"Lily, you're talking about my daughter," Harry said, his eyes narrowing.

"Her soul sings to me every time she touches my gauntlet Harry," Ddraig said, a wistful smile on his face. "Strong-willed, righteous, intelligent, fun-loving, quick to befriend and quicker to fight for those she cares for, with an urge to defend those weaker than she is. Even if you weren't proud of her for other reasons, you should be proud of her for those qualities. I predict should we bond in the future she could be as strong as my strongest wielder was, perhaps even stronger."

"I am proud of Lily, but I also love her and she is my daughter Ddraig, you'll forgive me if I don't want her to grow up so quickly," Harry replied with a scowl. Then he sighed. "But if she reaches an age to be able to make an informed, intelligent decision, to act as an adult, I won't stand in her way if she decides to bond permanently to you."

Ddraig rumbled a happy sounding noise at that and Harry sighed. "Now, about this training…"

OOOOOOO

Of course, while Harry might have wanted to start that training the next day, there was something else that took precedence beyond that: meeting with Rias's parents. While the others headed back to Kyoto to spend the day with Yasaka; Rias, Harry, Asia, and Yubelluna headed down to the main Gremory estate in the underworld. Akeno and the rest of Rias's peerage offered to go with them. Indeed, Akeno even tried to insist, but Rias wanted to keep the group as small as possible. They weren't going down to fight but to talk.

The reception they got started off predictably for anyone who knew the individuals in question.

"Rias-tan!" Sirzechs shouted as he grabbed Rias in a hug. "Oh, I am so proud of you! I know I've said it before, but I haven't seen you in two days, and, oh wow, that fight was great, and your alliance with the Youkai Association has already begun to bear fruit for the family, and I've had hundreds of requests for teleportation ring defenses, and…"

"Gah, Onii-sama!" Rias groaned, feeling her ribs starting to creak. "Come on! It's only been a few days and, oh curse it, stop nuzzling me like that!" she growled, her brother's face rubbing against hers like he was a Nekomata.

Despite that, though, after a few seconds Rias still hugged him back, whispering, "Thank you for finding Harry and sending him to Kuoh so he and I could meet and fall in love. It's changed my life sooo much, and all of it for the better. I don't think I could ever thank you enough."

"Heh, well I didn't ever think that by doing that I'd be playing matchmaker, but I suppose, so long as you're happy, that, that's fine," Sirzechs replied, though his eyebrows were twitching as he said it.

"Ahem, Sirzechs, if you could let your sister go, perhaps we could get a word in edgewise to congratulate her ourselves," Zeoticus said dryly.

With a sigh Sirzechs did so, moving over to shake Harry's hand, squeezing it tightly and almost, but not quite, glaring at him before leaning in to whisper, "Harm her in any way, and your atoms will never know what hit them."

Rolling his eyes at that, Harry returned the squeeze but said nothing to the threat. Between the two of them, Harry knew that Sirzechs was the stronger, and honestly he agreed with the sentiment regardless.

"Indeed, Rias-chan, congratulations," Venelana said, moving in to hug Rias before she could get her feet under her from Sirzechs's earlier exuberance. "In more ways than one. If we had known…"

"If you had known what!?" Rias growled, pushing away from her mother, her face clouding over, anger replacing her earlier embarrassed but grateful feelings. She stepped away from her mother, ignoring the hurt, agonized look on the older woman's face and moving back to stand next to Harry, taking his hand in hers. "If you had known? I told you, I showed you the evidence so often, and you just…"

"I think this is a discussion we should be having sitting down," Harry said smoothly, reaching over to squeeze Rias's hand lightly as he interrupted her before she could fully vent her justified anger on her parents. "Could we adjourn to a sitting room, perhaps?"

Zeoticus nodded, gently pulling his wife with him, though he too was looking at his daughter sorrowfully. "Follow me, please. Though, could I ask, why is young Asia here?"

"Ano, I'm here to see if I can help heal the Knight who was injured. Um, Miss Karlamine," Asia said, very unhappy with the undercurrents she was feeling here. She knew why Rias was angry with her parents, but Asia was a firm believer in forgiveness, and the fact it was Rias's parents made Asia believe that Rias should forgive them even more strongly.

"In that case, would you and Yubelluna like to be shown to the library for now?" Venelana asked. "The Phenex clan won't arrive for another two and a half hours, so we can send Karlamine to you there."

Yubelluna spoke up for both of them, bowing from the waist. "That sounds like a good idea, Lady Gremory."

A maid nearby bowed and then led Asia and Yubelluna away down the corridor in one direction as Zeoticus led the rest of the group to a small sitting room in a tense silence. That state continued while Sirzechs prepared some tea and set a cup down in front of each of them in turn.

Before any of the others could speak, Rias did, her voice tense, bitter, and angry. "I, I tried to tell you I hated being, being sold off like that. I told you I researched Riser: what he was like, how he treated the women of his peerage, how he would obviously treat me. And you didn't believe me that I did that or any of what I found out. I felt cheapened. I honestly felt like a whore. You two were selling me off like a pair of pimps and using Grayfia as your bouncer, and for what?!"

She glared at them, her blue eyes starting to shine with unshed tears, but she gritted her teeth and regained control with difficulty. "Yet worse in a way is that every time I talked to you about it, you were convinced I was just lashing out like a child. Even after I started to run my own territory alongside Sona you continued to treat me like a child whose opinion didn't matter. When I showed you the evidence, you didn't believe me. What did you think would happen if I was forced to marry him!?"

She paused and went on softly. "Did you think I was joking when I said he'd marry me over my dead body? Do you have any idea how often I honestly dreamed about that, about how I might have to kill myself to stop him from abusing me?!"

During this tirade Venelana's face became white and drawn as she stared at her daughter. Zeoticus was a little more stoic, though the white-knuckled grip he had on his chair's armrests told the real story.

Yet Rias continued to lash into them before either could speak. "And now you call me down here in a manner suggesting you want to let bygones be bygones? How!? How can I ever forgive you for disregarding my self-worth like that?"

Through the wild drumbeats of his heart, Zeoticus was dimly aware of his hands cracking the wood of the armrests under his hands, but it didn't register. He realized now that, even as he and his wife had written out the formal note to Rias, they had made a mistake: they had still treated her like their daughter, someone who was a child and who should come to them, to meet them on their ground at their convenience. Yet before them was a young woman who had long been denied that sense of worth, but who had found a way to become independent despite that. There was no way Rias was going to willingly be placed back in the mold of a simple daughter, or even heiress, now.

As he was thinking that, Venelana spoke for both of them, her eyes downcast. "I, I am sorry, Rias. That is all we can say. I am sorry we ever made that agreement, and whatever you or others might think, initially the contract between our clans and the Phenex was not a political maneuver. It became such, to be sure—it made the Pureblood faction very happy—but it wasn't built on that."

She scoffed, one arm waving as if to swat a fly. "Nor was it, as some people—stupid, idiotic people—think, to create some 'super Devil!'" Venelana even held up quote marks around those last two words, adding an eye roll for good measure. "Devil genetics being what they are, that would be impossible to predict.

"It was instead built on our friendships with Sarah and Philip, Lady and Lord Phenex. We had been friends with them for so long, had been at one another's weddings, the birth of each of their children and vice versa. We, we always thought that a marriage between you and Riser would simply be a way to affirm our friendship, taking it to the next level in your generation." Venelana sighed.

"And because of that, all four of us were blind. We were blind to your real, true reasons to be leery of Riser. We were blind to the fact that Riser wasn't his parents, wasn't someone they could be proud of outside his power and his ability with the Phenex flames and regeneration, someone who had risen above our Devil instincts to become someone more than a creature of Sin," Zeoticus said with a sigh. "Philip and I, you see, had much the same rumors following us around when we were young, and since they were groundless in our case, we assumed it was the same with him, and simply… The humans have a saying, 'None so blind, as those who refuse to see.' That is us in a nutshell.

"And, because of that, we have missed so much of your life. We have missed you change from a young girl to that of a strong, confident young woman. I, that horrifies me as a mother," Venelana said, smiling sadly. "We love you, Rias. We have always loved you, and our decisions up to this point were simply because, like you said we, we thought we knew best, and we did not. Now that our eyes have been opened, all we can do is bow our heads and, and beg you to forgive us, Rias."

With that she bowed forward at the waist so far she nearly hit her head on the table between them. Next to her, Zeoticus did the same.

Her face twisted into a grimace of indecision, anger, grief, and hope, Rias looked at Harry for his opinion. Harry simply looked at her reassuringly, as if saying it was entirely her decision, and he would back whatever she chose to do.

After an interminable moment, to Zeoticus and Venelana, Rias finally spoke. "Raise your heads, both of you. I, I cannot say I can forgive you right away. I believe that you thought you were doing what was best for the family, but it was never about what was doing best for me. And regardless of whether I forgive you eventually or not, I will never forget."

"That is the best we can expect, and we will be happy for it," Venelana sighed.

Rias's eyes narrowed. "And don't think I'll let you make choices for me again going forward. I am the heir of the clan, and I will be treated like it going forward. That means you respect my decisions, both on the business side of things and the personal side of things. So there will be no attempts to convince me to break up with Harry or to come back to the underworld or anything of that nature. If you make decisions for me without my consent again, not only will I not agree to whatever it is, but we will be done, are we clear?"

"Hmmf, a little too late to make that demand, aren't you, Rias?" Zeoticus said with a grunting sort of chuckle. "After all, we can't demand you return from Kuoh thanks to your agreement with Yasaka and the Youkai Association. And your relationship with this one," he flicked a finger towards Harry, "is already beyond the point where anyone could get between you."

"Huh?" Rias blinked, her face losing all hints of seriousness as she looked at her father in confusion. "What do you mean by that?"

"You honestly didn't know?" Zeoticus asked, staring at the two of them before laughing as Venelana broke into giggles. "I, ha-ha, I am torn between irritation at that and what it means and simply finding it funny." When Rias growled at him, and Harry quirked an inquiring eyebrow, he went on. "Ah, well, you see, when I went to look at the actual wording of the contract between the Phenex Clan and ourselves, I found instead a pile of ash. The contract had been destroyed, dissolved in no uncertain terms."

Rias blushed, realizing that probably meant her parents knew she and Harry had been intimate with one another. But she straightened her shoulders and was about to shoot back with a, 'so what,' when Zeoticus went on. "But while the agreement would have been weakened by, oh, the daughter promised in the agreement no longer being 'untainted by the touch of a man', that wouldn't have been enough to destroy the contract scroll like that. Certainly not in such a manner."

That sent Rias into an even deeper blush, and Harry took it upon himself to ask the obvious question. "If not that, then what would have been enough to destroy the contract so completely?"

"Why, it would have been destroyed so utterly only if Rias had given her body and soul in totality to a man, even exchanging vows to that effect with him," Venelana said, smiling at her daughter's look of confusion and embarrassment. For the first time in this discussion she saw some of the girl Rias had been and was grateful for the glimpse.

Rias blinked in surprise and turned to Harry. "Our hand-fasting, that had to be it!"

Harry nodded, his mind awhirl and his face going nearly slack as he thought about the implications of that. Rias too was astonished and rather worried. After all, while they had both meant the words, they hadn't really intended to make them into magical vows.

"So, so does that mean, magically speaking, we're married?" Harry asked, looking a little freaked.

"Um, I suppose so," Rias replied, taking his hand in hers and bringing it up to her face to kiss the knuckles. "Is that so bad?"

"No… no it isn't. It's just a shock to the system is all," Harry said with a quiet laugh, pulling Rias's own hand up to his face in turn, kissing her palm. "But don't think this changes anything, love. I'm still going to propose to you as romantically as I can at some point, already married or no."

"Do I take it aright that you two made vows like that in some haphazard manner?" Zeoticus asked with a chuckle, while his wife was sighing happily at the romance in front of her. Sirzechs, on the other hand, was pouting, his fingers twitching on his upper arms.

"Somewhat, yes. I, obviously I didn't jump into Harry's bed right away," Rias huffed. "I had long thought about using that method to get out of the agreement, admittedly, but I'd learned and grown so much in the past few months that the need to go that far was no longer necessary." Her smile turned tender as she felt Harry taking her hand and pulling it up to kiss the back of it. "But we decided to exchange vows in the hand-fasting tradition after our first night together.

"And it was most definitely not haphazard!" She nearly glared at her father again before looking back at Harry. "I meant it, every word. I might still be young, but I know exactly what I want out of life."

"As do I, Rias," Harry said, once more kissing the back of her hand and then around her wrist and to her palm. "Never doubt it." So magic itself has stated we're married so what? I can live with that, I can certainly live with that. We might not have made any vows of exclusivity, but that does not mean our love or our vows are any less real, any less binding.

"Hmmf. And if this relationship causes the Gremory clan to lose our Pillar status?" Zeoticus asked, though there was no censure in his tone, only curiosity. "If the Lords' Assembly demands that we search elsewhere among our extended clan to find another heir?"

Devil clans were based on familial relationships, of course, but Noble clans were based on the power inherent in their blood. A Pillar clan, on top of that, had to have pure Devil blood in its main line, or its ruling line, at any rate. A normal Devil clan of middling rank or below could get away with its heir marrying a turned devil or someone of another race, but a Pillar clan would lose that status and a large portion of its political clout with it.

"Then I will challenge them to either a duel or a Rating Game, beat them, and take back my position as heir," Rias said, her eyes flashing. "I still have my dream to become clan head, after all. Besides," she said with a sly little smile as she looked back at Harry. "I should think that the idea of adding the powers inherent in Harry's genes would convince anyone it was a good idea to bring him into the family."

"True enough," Sirzechs said, speaking up at last. He'd been there to play mediator, but really he had just wanted to keep things from getting too combative, knowing that Rias had to get everything off her chest to make their parents understand how badly they had screwed up. "I might not have seen this particular outcome coming, but, like the Phenex, Harry too has his regeneration skills, which apparently breed true. And, if his magical abilities also carry over, that will be a major boon to any children you two have in the future."

"Enough of that," Venelana interjected as she leaned forward eagerly, her eyes gleaming as she hoped to capitalize on the glimpse of her daughter's less serious side she had seen a moment before. "Can I ask how you two became involved, Harry? I understand Sirzechs here hired you, but isn't it unusual among humans that a teacher becomes involved with a student? And I also understand many humans have an issue with your age gap, though I've never understood the point of that myself."

"Ah, heh," Harry chuckled, while Rias giggled, leaning into his shoulder, more of her tenseness evaporating at that question. "Hmm, well, I think we can elaborate a bit on that. As for how we got together, I suppose you could say we both found a mystery in one another that attracted our attention. Everything else flowed from that…"

From there Rias and Harry described how they had moved from teacher and student to, first acquaintances, then friends, and finally lovers. Venelana asked numerous questions, mostly about the romantic side of things and where Lily and the other children came into the equation. As she had deduced from her understanding of her daughter, Lily and Harry's way with her was actually a draw to her rather than a detriment, though Rias's willingness to share Harry with Yasaka, herself a single mother, was more surprising.

She also asked questions about Harry's past, not having any real knowledge of the wizarding sect, which was Zeoticus's main line of interest. From this, they got a more detailed view of the man their daughter had fallen in love with, not just how that had occurred.

They also realized that they still would have an uphill battle to become involved once more their daughter's life, since every time they mentioned the possibility in any form, both Rias and Harry clammed up. It was evident that while they had been accidentally pushing Rias away, she had created her own family and support structure which was only vaguely connected to the rest of the clan. That hurt, yet also filled both parents with pride at the woman she had become and how she had grown.

Eventually, a maid came in to inform them that the Phenex clan had arrived for their meeting. Zeoticus sent her away with orders to lead Asia and Yubelluna to the dining room, while he led Harry and Rias there along with his wife. They arrived a moment before the butler led in Lord and Lady Phenex, Ravel, and Ruval. The inclusion of Ravel was surprising but not enough to make anyone comment.

What was a surprise came in a moment later. Karlamine, Riser's former Knight who had been so badly scarred in his temper tantrum, followed Asia and Yubelluna in. The sight of her perfectly healed and whole face caused everyone there to gasp, even Venelana and Zeoticus, who hadn't really believed that Asia would have been able to heal the damage done to her, even with a Sacred Gear.

The fact was, Karlamine's injuries had been caused by her King, the transfer of her and the other members of Riser's peerage to the Gremory House having only been recognized at that point rather than finalized. This was more a point magically speaking than socially or lawfully, but, because of that, the wounds caused by her master had been backed by the magic of the peerage piece within her, the thing which had reincarnated her into a devil. It had thus fought the efforts of the Phenex Tears that had been used after the aura of Twilight Healing had kept her alive while Asia had been concentrating on healing Yubelluna. But once Asia was able to concentrate on Karlamine, and since only a few days had passed, healing her actually hadn't been all that difficult once Asia was able to analyze Karlamine's body and figure out what she had looked like before the attack.

Harry smiled and, ignoring all the others around him, moved to wrap his arms around Asia, pulling her into a hug for a second. "I see you were able to heal her. Well done, Asia."

Practically glowing at Harry's praise, Asia hugged her father back and then moved to join Yubelluna as Karlamine bowed deeply to the lords and ladies present. "Lady Gremory, Lord Gremory, Lady Rias. Words cannot express how grateful I am for this double boon you have given me. Not only did you free me from my former dishonorable lord, but you healed the wounds he caused with his final act of perfidy upon my person! I cannot thank you enough!"

Karlamine hesitated before going on. "But… I must tell you that I have no desire to serve any new King at this time, even from among the Gremory Clan. I realize this might sound churlish, so if thou, Lady Rias, or thou, Lady Asia, have need of my blade for a specific battle, you will find me more than willing. But, until then, I wish to hone my craft and seek solace in solitude."

In other words, she wants to try to put her years of serving Riser behind her but do so in her own way. The girl might have a very odd way of speaking, but her meaning comes through anyway. And the way she's staying well away from me and the other men is also telling, Harry mused.

Rias answered that she was fine with Karlamine remaining independent right now. Rias had no need or desire to add any further pieces from Riser's peerage to her own since she only had one Rook piece and five Pawn pieces left (Mittelt having taken up two to convert) and was secretly holding out hope that Loup and Kala would bite the proverbial bullet. Yubelluna wasn't part of her peerage. Rather, she had suddenly become part of Harry's household.

Her parents, though, had a caveat, which Venelana gave voice to. "We are fine with that, but we will request that you remain within the environs of our estate here. Further, we wish that you continue to train your sword to defend not just yourself, but the young Pawns from your former peerage that we have taken in. They have been harmed sorely by men. It makes sense that their defender both be a woman and one who suffered alongside them."

Harry smiled, realizing that this would also help abate any guilt Karlamine felt about not being able to shield them from Riser's abuses in the first place, and from the wink Sirzechs sent him, he knew it too. Despite the way they had acted towards Rias and this whole marriage thing, Harry had to admit he saw quite a bit to like in the Gremorys.

"My lady, it will be both an honor and an honorable duty to so!" Karlamine replied, thumping her armored chest with a mailed gauntlet. With that Karlamine turned to Lord and Lady Phenex and bowed her head, far less so than she had to Lord and Lady Gremory or Rias. "Lady Phenex, Lord Phenex, I do not harbor ill-feeling towards you, but nor do I have any positive feelings. You should probably take that as a given for the majority of us who served under your son and found it to be sorely different from our hopes."

"We understand, but I just have a question for you and for Yubelluna," Lady Phenex said with a sigh. "Was there any point, any point at all, where you enjoyed serving Riser?"

Yubelluna and Karlamine exchanged a glance, and Yubelluna sighed. "There was indeed a point where being with Riser was something enjoyable, something we could respect ourselves for. When Riser was romantic at times, when he treated us with care and concern, when he saw us as people rather than objects. But that time didn't last, and, for my part, I have to wonder whether or not that time was simply an extension of the mask he used to entice me to become part of his peerage in the first place. I'm sorry, Lady Phenex. I know that's not what you want to hear, but it is the truth.

"By the time he had met me, the mask was very thin indeed. After I agreed to become a devil under his command, it didn't take Riser very long to show his true colors at all. Barely three days, if that. And I am not sorry to say it," Karlamine said with a snarl, glaring at the Phenex clan heads before controlling herself, shaking her head, and turning to bow towards Lord and Lady Gremory again. "With your leave, then, I will go to start my duties protecting the other members of my former peerage."

Lord Gremory nodded at her, and they waited while she left the room before he motioned everyone towards the table. "If we could all sit down?"

Since she had no role to play in these negotiations, Harry sent Asia off once more. Rias asked if she could go and play with Millicas for a time, and Sirzechs agreed with a smile, telling her where to find his son. That didn't stop Harry from whispering in Asia's ear about watching out for any odd offers, but Asia simply smiled at that, kissed him on the cheek, and walked out of the room.

Lord Sirzechs took a seat at one end of the rectangular table, while Harry, Rias, and the Lord and Lady of the house sat on one side across from Lord and Lady Phenex and their two children. This left Yubelluna standing behind Rias and Harry, her head bowed demurely as if she was a servant. But that was the way she had wanted to act during this conversation anyway.

As they sat, Ruval smiled at Harry, eager to get past the awkwardness Karlamine's blunt attitude had caused. "That was quite an interesting display you put on, both the blessing to bring Yubelluna back to life and the battle against my little brother," he said, his smile turning thin at the last words. "I hope that you don't think that those tricks of yours would work on someone a little more experienced, do you?"

Harry barked a laugh as he stared back at the other man, openly challenging. "Please, I didn't even show a third or even a fifth of what I can do out there. There are so many ways to skin a turkey, after all," he replied, using the taunt Rias had used on occasion.

"Ouch." Ruval's smile flickered at that, his eyes narrowing.

"Boys," Sirzechs said mildly, a tiny flicker of his aura causing Ruval to blanch and Harry to twitch. "If there's any showing off to be done here, I'll be the one doing it, understand?"

"Men," Rias, her mother, and Lady Phenex said with a sigh before looking at one another and sharing a quiet chuckle.

"Actually, I've been wondering about that match," Ravel said, speaking up and looking at the Potters, her head cocked to one side. "Your own regeneration was phenomenal, far beyond what I've read werewolves should be able to do. And I heard that irritating little… That is, I heard your daughter say something about you being a Phoenix Werewolf while we were watching the match between you and Riser-nii-sama?"

Harry smirked, hearing more than a bit of irritation towards his daughter in Ravel's voice while also wondering why some devils had seemingly embraced Japanese modes of address and others hadn't. Then again, I suppose their entire society is a polyglot of various human societies, old and new. Still, it looks as if Ravel and Lily continued to rub one another wrong after I left the scene, which is something I should have anticipated. Ravel seemed a very proper, almost uptight young lady, part of what Yubelluna had called her tsundere personality, and that would grate on Lily.

"It's no real secret, I suppose," Harry said pulling out a chair for Rias as he sat down. "When I was younger I happened to be poisoned by a very deadly animal, a basilisk, in fact." There were several gasps from everyone who had not heard the story before, but Harry went on. "To save me, a phoenix, a real one, not one of your clan's members," he said with another smile, "had to give me some of its tears. I drank one tear, and another tear was dripped onto the actual wound the basilisk's tooth had made in my arm.

"Because of that and the interaction between the very odd concoction that became my blood at that point and the werewolf curse, my regeneration is utterly phenomenal, possibly as good as your own clan's." Or a little better, he added silently.

Harry knew, for example, that he could survive having his heart blown apart. That had happened during the war with Riddle's forces. But because his teammates, Ron and Tonks at the time, had protected him long enough from their enemies' attempts to stab Harry's comatose body with silver, he had regenerated despite the curse used to wound him in the first place, an exploding entrails curse.

"That's amazing!" Ravel gushed, staring at Harry intently. But her awe wasn't because of the regeneration aspect that so interested the rest of her family who were all looking at Harry speculatively. "I know they are Light-based creatures, and, as such they would never have anything to do with Devils, but are phoenixes as beautiful as they say?"

"Yes!" Rias and Harry answered as one, causing the others to look at Rias in surprise. But Harry was the one who went on, squeezing Rias's hand under the table as he chuckled quietly. "Over the years I've seen this particular phoenix throughout its life cycle, and I have to say that, yes, they are beautiful creatures except for right before and after burning days."

Looking at the longing expression on Ravel's face for a moment, Harry was about to offer to use his pensieve to show a memory of Fawkes, when it suddenly became a moot point. There was a sudden blaring all around them as alarms went off, and suddenly, before even Sirzechs could do more than jerk upright in his chair and stare around, there, hovering above Harry, was Fawkes.

Harry gaped at it as did at all of the devils, most of whom pushed quickly away from the table, their hands up in front of their eyes as their bodies thrummed with sudden pain. The Light-aligned creature's presence froze them in place, all save Sirzechs who raised a hand defensively but paused as the creature made no move to attack any of them, alighting on Harry's shoulder.

"Fawkes," Harry said mildly, staring at the creature. "Is there any reason why you seem to like bursting in like that?"

Fawkes whistled jubilantly, ruffling his hair affectionately with its beak. Its song, for some reason, was able to carry meaning across easily to Harry just then, giving him two, very odd impressions. The first was the sense of someone watching their favorite show or something like that, the mildly happy sense you got while watching a favorite sitcom, perhaps. The other, the other was deeper, an almost burning eagerness tied into something, some feeling Harry could not fully discern.

Before he could question that impression, Fawkes looked down at Rias. As it had been when Fawkes had interrupted the blood adoption ritual, the phoenix's song turned ribald once more, causing Rias to blush a bright red again. Yet , even so, she leaned against Harry, staring up at Fawkes almost challengingly, to which its song twisted it to an even more ribald tune, adding a tone of jubilation and amusement.

Then it hopped off of Harry's shoulder and into the air where it flew around the room. "What is that bird doing?" Sirzechs asked, his eyes slowly narrowing as his magical senses, honed over centuries and empowered by his brute magical energy, began to tell him things about this phoenix that he rather doubted the others could discern. How interesting...and amusing, can't forget that. This phoenix is most decidedly not a normal one…

"I honestly have no idea," Harry said with a sigh. "I don't even know how Fawkes was able to get here at all! Oh, I'm not in surprised that Fawkes was able to get through a dimensional gap, but I assume that you had anti-teleportation defenses up?"

"Of course, though, like most such, we can only stop teleportation methods whose type we know of," Sirzechs answered, his lips twitching as he tried to contain his growing amusement. He waved off the maids and servants who had rushed into the room, led by Grayfia, pointing them out the door in no uncertain terms. Whatever was going on here, it wasn't a threat. "A phoenix, though, one willingly coming down into the Underworld, that's a new one to me."

As they were speaking, the phoenix had flown around the room and stared at each individual in turn, its music becoming low and menacing to most of the devils there. This hastened the servants' retreat out the door, the Light magic of the bird's aura causing most of them various levels of pain. The exception was Grayfia, whose power was such that she could ignore such a low-level attack with ease. But she reluctantly left too at her husband/King's peremptory gesture.

The Phenex clan members had frozen to an individual in their chairs at Fawkes's initial arrival and now shivered a little at the impact of the sound. The song of a phoenix was a Light-based spell, after all. A low key one, but nonetheless as based on Light magic as an Angel's spear. This was the kind of thing that no one could train themselves for, a natural weakness that only pure magical strength could overcome.

But when Fawkes looked at Ravel, the phoenix's song changed. For her the song seemed to soften, becoming almost soothing and hopeful. Ravel gasped, staring back in awe and delight while the rest of her clan continued to flinch away.

Ah, so it can choose what impact its song can have. Fascinating, Sirzechs mused. He himself felt no impact from its song and, indeed, could tell that Fawkes was no threat to him at all. But the songs seemed to discern the Sin of the devils in the room. Rias had little Sin in her, most of it offset by the love she felt for Harry, who had a distinct connection to this particular phoenix. Ravel, being young, had no Sins to speak of despite being a pureblood devil.

A second later Fawkes was hovering in front of Yubelluna, examining her far more closely than it had the rest of the people in the room. Yubelluna and Fawkes stared at one another. Then Fawkes once more sang a song, a song of renewal, of spring and growing things, the meaning coming so clearly, even with no words, that anyone there could hear and understand. Then it seemed to shift, becoming a song of farewell, although Harry could almost hear the words for 'for now' somewhere in the air before it disappeared again, heading, somehow Harry knew, to find Asia for a bit.

For a moment the room fell silent, then, while the others were still recovering from the sudden and unexpected arrival and disappearance, Rias muttered, "Well, that was interesting. She certainly is as mysterious as a woman could be, isn't she?"

"Wait, what?" Harry asked, looking at her in shock.

"Oh, right, forgot about that. I'll, um, I'll tell you later. It's something Tiamat said. She also said it wasn't her story to tell, which kind of irritates me, but we aren't here for that," Rias said, trying to move past the abrupt arrival and departure of the odd Light-sided creature

"Indeed, indeed not," Ruval said, coughing lightly and wincing, but the migraine Fawkes's presence and songs had caused him was already beginning to fade for him, as it was for the rest of the devils in the room bar Ravel and Sirzechs. "While that was amazing, perhaps we should get down to business?"

The others all nodded save Ravel, who was still staring at where Fawkes had disappeared, her eyes wide and unseeing. That had not been anything like she had thought it would be, either in what Riser had called 'her sparkly girly' dreams or her most boneheaded, iron headed, realistic idea.

"Indeed!" Lord Phenex spoke up after his son. "We are here to discuss the punishment of Riser and finalize handing over his peerage to you. But on that score can we ask if Burent and Marion can be returned to our clan? They were family maids before we allowed Riser to take them as his first pieces, after all."

"Isn't there something you should be showing us first?" Rias asked before her parents could speak up, able to shake off the effect of Fawkes's sudden arrival better than the rest were.

Lady Phenex sighed but nodded. "We have already removed the King piece from within our son," she said bluntly. "He no longer has any connection to the rest of his peerage." With that she pulled out a small King piece and set it down in front of Lord Sirzechs. "That is our proof if more had to be added to the word of Maou Beelzebub, who has no doubt been in contact with you, Maou Lucifer."

The King piece in question looked to be made of marble, like most. It was black in color with a crown that looked like flames, an affectation added for those Peerage Sets given to the Phenex clan, much like the red cloak added to the King piece Rias had shown Harry at one point.

But this one looked broken. Indeed, there was a large gash running up one side of the piece, red and pulsating with magic, almost like puss from a mortal wound. The crown too was shattered around the edges, pieces of it missing.

With every peerage set, there obviously came a King piece. The King piece was normally infused into the King of the peerage when he or she received the peerage set from Lord Beelzebub, the Maou who had come up with the Peerage System in the first place to let Devils rebuild their numbers. For Pillar clans this was normally done in a very private ceremony, unique for each family. And, like other pieces in the set, the King piece could be removed permanently. Most of the time when you removed a piece from a devil, it was because that devil had risen in rank, becoming a High-Class devil and thus able to earn his own set. It was a permanent event, forever severing the original connection between King and vassal.

Removing the King piece was something that had very rarely been done since the inception of the Peerage System and had been done only because of an individual breaking the laws of his clan, or acting out in public in such a way that Devil society as a whole had to punish them most severely, which was very rare indeed. In this case it was both of those, but that didn't make it any less a serious step. And, of course, for the individual in question, the process was incredibly painful, almost the Devil equivalent of being under the Crucio to the point you went insane from the pain.

Picking up the piece, Sirzechs could feel the magical essence of Riser in the piece, shattered and broken as the piece had been removed from him. He also felt that the connection through it to the remaining pieces had also been broken, a side effect of the removal process of the King piece. He held it for a few seconds, turning it this way and that as he analyzed it before setting it down with a distinctly heavy sounding thud, as if the piece was far heavier than anything it's size should be.

"I acknowledge and accept that this was Riser's King piece, although I would have preferred to be present when it was removed by you and Lord Beelzebub. Still, I will, as Maou Lucifer, allow this face-saving gesture from the Phenex clan to stand."

From the look on Rias's face, she would probably not have allowed that to stand, but, as the arbitrator of the law if not neutrality at the moment, Sirzechs's word was final. So Rias simply huffed once and then nodded sharply. "Very well. If Onii-sama says that he will take that as a sign of your willingness to start Riser's punishment for what he did and nearly did, I will agree with it.

"However, that is only the start of it," Rias went on, leaning forward, propping her elbows on the table, and steepling her fingers. "How are we going to enforce the punishment that Harry made Riser agree to face in lieu of his life? How are you, his family, going to make certain he cannot go back to his old ways?"

"Isn't that enough?" Ravel asked, coming back to the here and now to frown at Rias. "I understand that he promised many things, but surely that was under duress."

"I have lived my life under duress ever since it was decided that I would marry your brother, little girl," Rias growled. "Or are you saying he should not be punished for nearly killing his former peerage? A peerage which, socially and legally if not magically, had already been transferred to my clan?

"There is that, and there is the fact of how he treated them," she went on, glaring at Lord and Lady Phenex now rather than at Ravel. "Would you like Yubelluna to tell all three of you what she has shared with us? She hasn't shared many details, but what little she has is horrifying and completely backs up what I had already learned of your son's ill-doings. Doings which go beyond the pale even for Devils, tales of common cruelty and abhorrent abuse that go well beyond what is allowed even to a High-Class Devil, and even outright illegal doings which paint, not just him, but your whole clan in a dim light."

Yubelluna allowed a small, tight smile to flicker over her face. It was clear to everyone there that she would have no issue whatsoever with sticking the knife in and twisting it a bit if she was allowed to do so.

Despite that, though, Lord and Lady Phenex launched into an argument on what exactly Riser was supposed to be punished further for. After all, to Devil society as a whole, Riser's abuses of his peerage weren't really that big a deal. They were, after all, still devils. Needless cruelty was frowned upon, but there was no law that enforced some general concept of how to treat a peerage. Rias countered by mentioning how such things could be seen, and how Riser had apparently broken the general rule about interfering and even sometimes throwing Rating Games, something that could get the Phenex clan as a whole in hot water. Yubelluna chimed in, explaining that he had used some of his peerage as whores for favors and access to illegal substances. This made the Lord and Lady Phenex dig in their heels, wanting to disbelieve Yubelluna's words as being from a biased source.

"Are we interested in punishment or justice here?" Harry asked softly, arresting everyone's attention. "Nothing we do to Riser now can change the past. Rather, we must force Riser to learn and put him in a position where he cannot harm others ever again as he did his peerage during his time as their King. Or else, somewhere down the line, you all will have to deal with further trouble from that quarter."

With a sigh, Ruval nodded. "Agreed. While we Phenex might not treat our peerages as closely and lovingly as the Gremory do, we do care for our servants. Abusing them, treating them as disposable, is something I cannot condone."

Huffing, Ravel nodded. It was evident that she still had a flickering of hero worship when it came to her brother, although why that was, Harry didn't know. If anything, she should feel that way towards Ruval. From what I am feeling from him, I'd wager he's at least half again as strong as Riser is.

"I presume a full written and witnessed contract of some kind coupled with a punishment ward placed on Riser to enforce the rules of that contract will do for everyone?" Ruval asked.

"Exactly what I was thinking," Rias said with a nod, smirking internally. Her and Yubelluna's bad cop to Harry's good cop had worked a treat, although Rias was getting the impression that Ruval, at the very least, wasn't against punishing Riser as much as possible. There has to be some reason why he is taking the speaking position here, but if they think they can get out of an agreement between us because he is the clan heir rather than the clan lord, they have another think coming.

"And I presume," Ruval went on, smiling frostily, "that you have already created an outline?"

"Indeed we have," Rias said, smiling equally coolly as she brought out a document she and Yubelluna had worked on, building on Yubelluna's ideas she had shared during their initial discussion.

It essentially outlined what they expected to occur to Riser. It also outlined what they expected from the clan as a whole to do in reparation. Essentially the clan would pay a set amount of money towards Clan Gremory for the upkeep of Riser's former peerage. that was all Clan Phenex, as a whole would have to do.

Riser was a very, very different story. Riser would be fitted with a magical dampening collar, or rather an arm guard, that would suppress the majority of his magical power. He would be essentially demoted from a High-class devil to a very low-class one. This binding would be witnessed by Karlamine and two of Sirzechs's peerage for the Gremory side of things.

Further, he would be fitted with a sigil that would cause him pain should he Feel arousaltowards any woman in any way for a year for every single abuse he had heaped on the women of his 'harem'. This was a long list of grievances, and the specifics of it caused Lady Phenex to push Ravel away when the girl tried to read it, having no wish to harm Ravel's image of her older brother further.

In return, Yubelluna and the rest of Riser's peerage would keep his secrets and no further damage to the clan's reputation would be done.

Lord and Lady Phenex looked thunderous, but Ruval simply slowly nodded, looking at his parents silently until they looked away. It was evident from that look that there was some kind of power struggle going on between them now, but Rias frankly couldn't bring herself to care. "We agree," Ruval said firmly. "Who will administer the punishment?"

"I believe Maou Beelzebub will agree to perform the enchantments," Sirzechs smirked. "Falbium is being kept hopping these days, much to his dismay, but I can rouse Adjuka from his lair easily enough. For now, shall we finish the formal contract?"

Between them all, the contract was laid out somewhat quickly, only taking two hours of negotiation until every section was correct. As Harry had once laughingly mentioned, devils had created the idea of bureaucracy, and forms and contracts were a staple of Devil life, as was finding loopholes to exploit. Each line had to be correctly annotated and written out in such a manner that Riser could not get around it. But the outline Yubelluna had created served them very well, and it was done in barely a third of the time that most equivalent contracts would've taken, with Lord and Lady Phenex writing their names down along with Ruval's in the position of enforcers, and the rest of them writing their names as witnesses at appropriate sections.

When it became his turn to sign as a witness, Harry looked at Lord and Lady Phenex and then over to where Ravel had moved away, being too young to take part in signing even as a witness, simply standing and waiting silently for the negotiations to finish, a small book open in her lap. When he was certain that Ravel was out of hearing range, he leaned forward slightly and spoke quietly to Ruval and the others. "Understand me, you only get one strike here. While I was not willing to kill Riser in front of you and most particularly Ravel or the other children in such a manner, do not think that was a sign of weakness. If he comes back and threatens me or mine or goes after his former peerage, I will find out, and I will hunt him down and end him. No amount of regeneration will help Riser then. Am I understood?"

Ruval shivered at that and slowly nodded. Normally such a threat would have entirely derailed this discussion, but, once more, power talked for Devils, and the confidence Ruval could hear in Harry's tone made it a simple statement and, as such, had to be taken as a simple warning rather than a threat. "We hear you, Lord Potter."

Nodding once, Harry turned his attention back down to the document between them all. "So long as that is clear. Now, where do I sign again?"

OOOOOOO

It wasn't only in the underworld that news of the Rating Game between Riser and Rias had spread. After all, it had been a very public event, and Sirzechs had been there along with several dozen lords and ladies of various clans and Devil factions. So it was no wonder that the Khaos Brigade heard about what had occurred. Despite knowledge of their activities growing, they still had thousands of devils of all kinds willing to pass on news, to say nothing of the Old Satan Faction they were allied with.

"And they say he basically just wore out Riser, didn't show much of anything flashy, and then ran Riser through with a weapon that the fried turkey's regeneration couldn't stop!" said Kuroka, sister to Koneko and wanted S-class criminal, to Bikou, a Monkey Youkai. "How awesome is that!?"

The Nekoshou criminal was practically panting at the idea of how strong this news meant Harry Potter was, her tails quivering behind her. Kuroka had a dream, which was to have lots and lots of children. It had to be said that this was not because she wanted to be a mother. Rather, Kuroka felt she had to propagate her race in order to rebuild the numbers they had lost in the Nekomata Massacre, which her actions had inadvertently caused.

That meant finding a strong male to mate with, and, after hearing about this match between him and Riser, Harry had shot almost to the top of her list of potential mates. The very top were other humans, Youkai, and Fallen that she had met in the Khaos Brigade. But, for one reason or the other, she had rejected most of them as potential fathers to her future children by this point.

While Bikou was fun in the sack, both of them knew he wasn't the type to settle down with. Plus he had ten other girls scattered around the world that he was screwing whenever he got the chance, following in his great-great-grandfather's footsteps in that area to a T. In contrast, Arthur was a devoted sis-con and was about as emotional towards anything besides his sister, good tea, and combat as his blades, which was also a problem for a few others she could name. Kuroka wouldn't touch Hercules if he was the last man on Earth. His attitude towards women was an immense turn-off, and, frankly, he wasn't as strong as he thought he was, besides his magical durability, that is. Cao-Cao was polite, genteel, and easy on the eyes, but Kuroka could sense his real feelings towards anything and anyone that wasn't human and so knew he wouldn't give her the time of day regardless of anything else.

"A demigod," Ophis stated flatly. Her voice had its normal cold and calculating tone despite the fact she had been enjoying their meal of apple pie and fried chicken a moment ago. Bikou had brought it from America that afternoon along with fried Oreos, which Kuroka had thought looked disgusting, but which Ophis had gobbled up.

Occasionally Ophis joined several of the other more outgoing members of the Khaos Brigade for meals, during which she would enjoy the meal and then say something along the lines of, "It is good, but silence and solitude are better. When will we remove Great Red from the Dimensional Gap?"

Honestly, Kuroka thought the loli-dragon was a major downer. But she was so darned powerful that, even though she wasn't a real leader, she had become like a beacon to all those disaffected with the status quo among the Three Factions. Or those like herself who just didn't have any other place to go.

"That is the word that all of our resources in the underworld have used, 'demigod?'" Ophis went on, wiping some pie crumbs from her face.

"All the ones that know anything about Rias-chan's Rating Game, anyway," Kuroka said, trying to rein in her panting with difficulty. She had even seen a recording of the match, and a close-up of Harry's eyes did funny things to her. I wonder if he's involved with Rias-chan. There are a lot of rumors about that, but no one had any recordings of their interaction during the party. The rumors range from someone seeing them kiss before the game to them fucking right there in the center of the ballroom, so I don't know the truth there.

"Interesting. This is the second time this individual has come to our attention. He is strong. We must look into recruiting him," Ophis said definitively. "With the Christian God dead, powers that he suppressed have been returning ever since. This mortal becoming a demigod is a sign of that process speeding up."

"We're going to run into problems with that," Kuroka replied quickly, becoming more serious. "You know I tried to spy on little Shirone, to see how she was getting on with Rias. But the wards in Kuoh are just, they're damn scary! Most of it was probably because of my senses, I'll admit, but all that means is that if someone else went there and tried something against the people there, the blow would come out of nowhere to them. That would be even worse!"

"Wards like that can be broken," Bikou said. "I mean they can't be that strong, right? Rias and the other one, they're just Junior devils in terms of power, right, no matter how high their birth? How much more energy could they add to the wards this demigod must've put up?"

"Stating such as that with so few facts is stupid," Ophis said bluntly. "If you have nothing intelligent to add to the conversation, remain silent."

Bikou winced at that but subsided, something most who knew him would be astonished by. He was a young Monkey Youkai with short-cropped black hair, though he often died it red or other garish colors. He routinely dressed in ancient-looking Chinese armor fit for a play from the Three Kingdoms period, but actually the armor was barely a year old. Unlike Cao-Cao's obsession with his ancestor, Bikou dressed like that more to needle his umpteenth great grandfather than he did anything else.

Like most of his race, Bikou never took life seriously, joking, laughing, and poking fun at those around him without care. He would have given anyone else, even Cao-Cao or the others at his level, lip. But not Ophis.

"What was this man's name again?" Arthur asked.

"Harry Potter," Kuroka supplied, looking at the sword wielder and shaking her head internally at his good looks, his blond hair, angular face, and light blue eyes behind his glasses. He really is quite pretty. Pity he's so broken.

"I seem to have heard that name before," he mused, tapping the teacup set in front of him. "My sister should be back from England after the new year. Do you think we can wait to discover more about him at that point? I think I've heard that name while I was with my family, and Le Fay would know more about that than I."

Ophis frowned, thinking hard while Cao-Cao remained silent. The fact that Harry Potter had already messed up their plans was something that he and Ophis were aware of, but not the others at this point. They also knew that they had also lost Diodora's services because he had ventured into Kuoh, which was rapidly becoming a major source of contention.

Because of this and the fact that this information really changed little but their level of interest in Potter, Ophis slowly shook her head. "We will wait for your sister's return," she said to Arthur before her eyes twitched back to Kuroka. "Other spies indicate the Fallen's mad dog will be attacking that town within the month. Move into position to where you can take advantage of the chaos to approach this Potter. Regardless of anything else, we will use that activity to either recruit or remove him from play."

OOOOOOO

The 'mad dog' in question, who might well have taken pride in that name, was indeed still plotting against those in Kuoh. Yet with so many of his bases destroyed, he had to move more circumspectly than he had hoped to, and from a distance as well. Despite that, he had still gathered quite a large army of his own. While Azazel as an individual was popular, his policies, if such they could be called, of peace and reconciliation with Heaven and Hell were not very popular. This made for fertile recruitment both for the Khaos Brigade and for others who wished for the cold war between the factions to grow hot once more.

At present those forces were being kept at sea on a large trawler converted into a living space, while the 'mad dog' personally, along with two of his more intelligent lieutenants, moved through Japan to survey what had been going on. They were not happy with what they had found, but they didn't see anything that couldn't be overcome.

"The Onmyouji will not interfere so long as we keep the fight within Kuoh," he said, frowning at the map in his ready room upon his return to the ship. "And there is still a way we can get to our target without entering their territories or those of the other factions. I'm not happy that we won't be able to create a forward position close enough to take over the city afterward for a time, but that was always a secondary concern. No, the real goal here remains to simply kill all the devils that have taken up residence there. We can do that with a short, sharp strike."

"What about the wards, Lord Kokabiel?" asked the older looking gentleman beside him. "I personally couldn't feel anything, but both yourself and your fellows warned that they were there."

This man was a human, the only one in the room at present, though there were a few others around the place. He wore a priest's cassock and was a little overweight, with a frizz of gray hair and what looked at first glance to be a kindly face. But his eyes told the real story. They were black and nearly dead, devoid of any empathy or any other good emotion, looking through the world and seeing, not other people, but tools to be used and discarded. He even looked at Kokabiel like that, but that was all right, since the fallen saw him in a similar manner.

"Oh, it's there. I would think that you would know better than to question us when we sense things you cannot, Valper," said Kokabiel, smirking at the human.

Valper Galilei winced, but it was true. The original forward base Valper had built to further experiment with the stolen false Excalibur blades had been wiped out, though that had not been clear from the outside. When he had made to enter, his Fallen bodyguard had saved his life by noticing the various magical traps which sent the old warehouse up in flames, costing several more of his personal helpers, former monks, and other men like himself who lived to see the perfect blade reborn. "Of course you are right, Lord Kokabiel, but perhaps you could explain further."

"I could feel the edge of it and the power within, though scant little else. But it was very powerful, so powerful, and, and almost alive, something I have not seen the like of since the war. It brought back pleasant memories, really."

"So…can it be shattered from the outside? You make it seem that simply entering, going under the umbrella of those wards, would be a very bad thing."

"No, or at least we lack the brute power to do so. Trying to do so would drain me too much for me to take part in the battle afterward and, given that power, removing myself from the assault would obviously be a mistake," Kokabiel said honestly. Despite being a warmonger and general jackal—again a way he would describe himself—there was nothing wrong with Kokabiel's mind, and he could afford to be honest with himself.

After all, if I had that kind of power I could just challenge Azazel for the leadership of the Grigori, and there would be no need to take such a roundabout manner to restart the war. Our legions would already be marching, and the human world would burn as would Heaven as I tore down Michael from his assumed throne!

Shaking his head to remove such pleasant thoughts, Kokabiel went on. "But we don't need magical power to destroy those wards. They will have anchor points, anchor points which can be attacked physically."

The others all looked at him, and he rolled his eyes. "Physically," he emphasized, "as in not magical but material means. TNT, other types of high explosives, to take out the anchor point.

"But surely they'll be on the lookout for such things?" asked another Fallen. He was a younger-looking man with a jagged scar over one eye, winding its way around his head to where an ear should have been.

"Quite possibly, so we'll have to be careful about how we go about doing it. We'll need to discover where they are somehow and then send in groups of saboteurs, mercenaries that we have paid for and brought into the country for the sole express purpose of taking out these targets. But there must be nothing in their minds, nothing magical on them, nothing for the wards to spot."

"But if so, then won't the wards stones, whatever they are, be defended by further magical protections?" another Fallen asked, his voice making it obvious he was playing devil's advocate. He was a much older looking man with short-cropped gray hair and wide, powerful shoulders, the face of a brute finishing the image of someone who would rather punch things than talk, an impression that was quite accurate in his case.

"And remember that we need to concern ourselves with the small team of exorcists the Church has dispatched to Japan. They could be a wild card," Valper said with a faint smile, though there was nothing humorous in it. Rather, it was as if the man had once seen a picture of a smile. "I will need the Excalibur pieces they have been assigned before my work can really continue."

"Then you just make the explosion big enough so that even outside of those secondary protections they will destroy the stones. Perhaps a pocket nuke of some kind?" Kokabiel shrugged, unconcerned and not answering Valper's question. He had an idea there, but it would take time to put it into play. If it worked, though, the…fundamental inflexibility of the Church and its exorcists would force the devils to take action against them. Or those wards will act against them, one or the other. "It is not the most elegant of solutions, yet it is a solution."

"And really what do we care for the damage it will cause?" Kokabiel roared, standing up suddenly and whirling around his fellows, a Halberd of Light Magic appearing in his hand. "We wish to fan the flames, gentlemen! Wish to usher in a new era of violence and war! Let it spread to the non-magical; let it spread beyond the factions! That violence will be all the sweeter to all of us!"

He was answered with a roar of agreement, and Kokabiel's smile widened into something mad and bloodthirsty. So much so that, had anyone seen it, they would have agreed with Ophis's label. This truly was a mad dog, one poised to spread his rabies throughout the world.

OOOOOOO

Over the next few days, Yubelluna did her best to fit in with the extended Potter-Gremory group, which was not as easy as she had hoped after first impressions from Harry, Lily, and Rias. Living with Tonks, Akeno, and the two fallen Angels was one irritant, which an incident on her second morning of doing so illustrated very well.

"Why do you keep on leaving your clothing just strewn all over the place!?" Yubelluna shouted, picking up both a shirt and bra before hurling them at Tonks, who had just come out of the bathroom. "Are you a closet exhibitionist!?"

"I know a lot of people who would argue about the closet part of that statement," Tonks said with a grin, her body shifting between one second and the next to a runway model that she had seen in the magazine the day before plus Akeno's breasts, which she had seen during their night of low-key, drunken revelry. The impact of the two together would have made any gravure idol weep in envy and Issei and other perverts to die from blood loss. "After all, if you've got it, why not flaunt it?"

"Maybe because you're living with other people for the first time?" Kala asked with a wry quirk of her lips, joining the conversation as she stepped out of her own room. In her hands were a few plastic bags worth of trash in her hands. "Other than your son, of course, who probably had to deal with all your strange quirks regardless of his own thoughts on the matter, the poor boy."

"Hey, I'll have you know Teddy and I always got on great!" Tonks said, lying through her teeth. Besides Teddy's baby years, there had been more than a few times over the years when Tonks's free-wheeling living had caused issues. Mainly, as Yubelluna was hinting, in the number of times Teddy or someone else had to clean up after her. And to say they ate takeout often was a bit of a misnomer: it was more that doing so was their normal way of life.

"And you!" Yubelluna shouted, turning and pointing at the Fallen Angel. "You don't have a leg to stand on! You might not leave clothing around, but trash? Your room is a pigsty."

"What, are you supposed to be the den mother?" Kala asked tartly. "You're about three hundred years too young to take that tone with me, sweetheart! I like my room that way; what business is it of yours?"

"Point. However..." Yubelluna said with a nod before pulling out several books, all of which were stuffed full of little sticky notes. "You left these strewn around the sitting room this morning."

Blushing, Kala shifted the bags she was caring to one hand and reached out for the books. "My bad."

"Ara, ara~. If we're talking about bad habits, perhaps we should talk about treading dirt into the house?" Akeno said with a giggle, coming out of her room. "Or how you've somehow changed your own room to better resemble a forest? Exactly how often have you had to use memory charms to steal plants from people who weren't taking care of them since moving in here?"

But, despite issues like that, Yubelluna found that she got along pretty well with all of the girls. It was a little early to tell, but Yubelluna felt they were fun. Each of them had different senses of humor, and each of them was very intelligent in their own way, which could not have been said for many of the girls in Riser's peerage. Yes, one or two had been smart—Mihae, for example, was extremely intelligent. But she wasn't a very good conversationalist, and, really, beyond being in Riser's peerage, Yubelluna didn't have anything in common with her or anyone else in her former peerage.

Luckily for Yubelluna, she also got along very well with the kids. While most of the adults and older teens were still, generally speaking, feeling Yubelluna out and vice-versa, Lily, Kunou, and Asia, to a certain extent, and even Koneko, were more than willing to become friendly with the newcomer. This was in part because of similar interests. Kunou really liked music, and she got along well with both Akeno and Yubelluna because of that, who was an amateur fiddler, and she and Yubelluna also liked talking about clothing and fashion. Asia was simply nice to everyone, and Yubelluna quickly slipped into the same protective, semi-motherly role that all of the older women had assumed with the young nun.

To the surprise of many, Koneko and Yubelluna bonded over fighting and training, which somewhat astonished Koneko when Yubelluna asked her where Rias's peerage went for training and whether she could use those facilities. "After all, I've got these new druid powers plus my own Sacred Gear to train."

However, she really should have been experienced enough to be careful what she wished for. Because the very same day she asked about it, both Yubelluna and Kiba became involved in training which was, to put it mildly, troublesome...

"And this is our training center," Koneko said as she led Yubelluna into the underground area. She nodded to Saji and Kiba who were already there, as well as to Asia, blinking in surprise at her presence. "Asia, what're you doing here?"

Koneko knew well that Asia didn't like to fight at all. All of the magic she was learning either had no combat application or a purely defensive one, despite Harry urging her to learn more. So her presence here was either because Harry had asked her to help them heal after training, which was not a good sign, or there was something else going on here.

Yubelluna frowned too, looking around even as she smiled at the younger blonde girl, who smiled back. "Can I ask a question, Saji? You have a Sacred Gear, correct?" she said, gesturing to the young boy who she had only barely been introduced to.

"That's right!" the boy said proudly, thumping his chest. "And it isn't like the Boosted Gear either, removed from its original owner," he said teasingly, winking at Koneko as he summoned his own Sacred Gear into being, a gauntlet with a deformed lizard face on the bit that covered the back of the hand. "Mine is the real thing, the Sacred Gear Absorption Line!"

Koneko rolled her eyes but looked at Yubelluna questioningly.

"Then am I right to assume that every Sacred Gear user in Kuoh is here at present?" the older woman asked.

"That's right," Harry said from nearby, and they all turned to look at him as the scenery around them changed to match his will. They found themselves now on a vast grassland with no trees, hills, or anything else to break up the monotony. "Or rather, it is, bar one. Young Gasper is still not quite ready to join us here, but Rias says she thinks he will be joining us in a week or so, after school starts."

Koneko smiled at Harry, then blinked and looked down at her arm. "Why is Ddraig telling me to get ready?" she asked suspiciously as she looked up again at Harry, her eyes narrowing.

"Because part of this training is going to be based upon what Ddraig and you yourself told me about your conversation with him," Harry said with a smirk. "We don't know yet if he can achieve Balance Breaker in this form, but it can't hurt to try." But the rest of you can at least learn to reach that level of connection with your Sacred Gears."

"Yes, yes it can hurt," Koneko said with a groan. The others looked at her and then back to Harry, concern on most of their faces now.

"You see, Boosted Gear and Koneko had a talk the night after the Rating game against Riser where he told her about something called Balance Breaker. Apparently, this is a power that all Sacred Gears have, to reach a new, far higher level of power. And, according to Ddraig, the only way to reach it is through experiencing life or death situations. But don't worry; we won't go that far. Instead we'll see if we can do without true life or death situations through intense training." That this would serve Harry in terms of training as well to a small degree was something he was well aware of, but he saw no point in saying that here.

There were many groans from everyone who had dealt with Harry's training before this, but they should've waited to groan, because it was about to get worse. "And, to help us do this, I've asked for my lovely assistants Mittelt and Tonks to join us."

There was a cackle from on high, and the diminutive Fallen Angel flew down to hover above Harry from where she had been hidden in the glare of the sun above them. She held two large spears of light in either hand, and she grinned maniacally down at the devils. "Try not to die," she said simply and without a trace of honesty or real concern in her voice.

A second later Tonks appeared, a Dissilusion charm fading from around her as she did. A broad smirk was on her face and magical energies were sparkling around her hands as she gave them all a mock-salute. "Yo. Hope everyone here's ready for equal parts training and humiliation. But look at it this way: the more you sweat and bleed here, the less you might bleed out there! Me own trainers told me that, and look at me now!"

"Shall we begin?" Harry said and, without further ado, sent a blasting spell towards Saji followed instantly by Mittelt and Tonks attacking in turn.

"You're a meanie, Tou-san!" Asia shouted as she leaped aside.

She was still pouting several hours later when they had finished, but Harry lifted her easily into his arms and carried her on his back. Koneko, too, was grumbling, battered from head to foot. Her own training had been actual combat training against a number of golems and Harry himself rather than simple endurance and muscle training like what Asia had been put through for the most part.

"Don't be like that, you two," Harry said with a chuckle. "Look at it this way: I hope that you won't ever have to use this training, but it's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it." Asia moaned again, not buying that for an instant, and Harry sighed. "Who's up for some candy on the way home?"

"Sweets, hooray!" Asia mumbled into his ear, while Koneko nodded her head vigorously, and Yubelluna chuckled but still raised her hand in agreement. The two boys sighed but did the same. After all, free food was free food.

As Yubelluna worked on merging the three backyards into one larger yard, Lily became her little helper. Lily loved getting dirty, especially after spending the mornings in etiquette lessons with Rias and Kunou teaching her and Asia. Kunou didn't like getting dirty so much, so she and Asia would train their familiars while Lily helped Yubelluna. In this endeavor Yubelluna also had Loup helping on a daily basis, and Harry also pitched in when it came to the heavy magical lifting.

It had barely taken Yubelluna a few hours to come up with a plan of action for the communal gardens, and the very next day she started to put that into action. First she planted several small saplings on the outer edge of each of the backyards in turn, then she used her new Druid powers to slowly, over the course of a few hours, grow them to such an extent that they blocked anyone from attempting to look inside from the outside. This was very much a learning experience for her, but working with trees seemed almost natural to her after a few days.

Placing trees like this wasn't technically necessary to make the backyard more private, but it certainly looked very good. Then, with Harry, Rias, and Akeno's help, they slowly took down the permanent gateways between each of the properties. Once that was done, they removed the stone paths that carried the runic arrays.

"What are you going to do now?" Lily asked, huffing and puffing from where she had been carrying in several large bags of dirt and soil.

"Harry, if you could stand by with a shield for a moment? And Lady Rias, I presume that you've already cast spells to make us unseen?" Yubelluna asked before turning to the edge of the Potter house's backyard. That edge, now that the gateways were no longer around, looked as it had before they had been put up, minus the fence on three sides.

"I have. No one's home in two of the houses, and I've set up a blanket spell around the area to make people not interested in anything but whatever it is they are doing right now. I'll have to take it down soon because it is rather powerful, but what exactly are you going to be doing?"

Yubelluna didn't reply, instead thrusting out both hands. As she did, a tiara of some kind coalesced into being on her forehead. It was of an almost ludicrously simple design, looking like simple iron, almost, but within it, right at the center of her forehead, was a large orange jewel of some kind. This was surrounded by an image that looked like it was supposed to be an explosion of some kind.

As the others watched, there appeared a series of lines of magical energy on the ground moving away from her, which quickly formed a long rectangle which slowly began to sink into the ground. "This is one of the ways my Sacred Gear Bombardier can be used. This method is a little slow, so it's not nearly as applicable in combat as the more primal attacks such as Aura Explosion, Finger Bomb, or Blast Touch, but…"

"I'm sorry, Finger Bomb?" Rias asked incredulously. "Really? Do you know where that comes from?"

Yubelluna looked at her blankly, and Rias sighed. "Never mind. I'll teach you eventually. Continue, please."

"As I was saying, my Sacred Gear, in essence, translates explosive magical energy to various attacks, the limitations of which being that I have to be able to see my target most of the time or create a mental image like this to fill in. The second, which I call Image Bomber, is tough and can't be used in battle since it takes too much concentration, but…" With that she gestured again, her hands glowing brown and orange to match the gleam coming the gem on her diadem.

An instant later Harry cast a Protego, not around himself and the other onlookers, but over the area of the ground the rectangle had sunk into. There was a muted 'whump,' and the ground there exploded upwards, the explosion having been contained and thus creating even more damage within the area.

"Amazing! I had no idea shield spells could be used in that manner! That could enhance my own attack tremendously, Harry! Why, just think of the possibilities! The effect of having the explosions contained would enhance the power of them tremendously," Yubelluna enthused, her eyes alight.

Then, as the others looked at her nonplussed, bar Lily who looked like she was close to hero-worshipping Yubelluna, she coughed. "Ahem, yes, well, what I thought about doing was creating a trench where the stones with the gateway arrays should be and burying the stones underneath the ground."

"Sort of like a single large ward stone," Harry mused. "Could work, though we'll have to take steps to ensure the Ankhsera runes can't be damaged."

The solution to this problem was easy: Harry covered the runic stones with a film of thin metal plates they had purchased from one of Rias's connections then transfigured the metal into crystal, molding it around the stones. This protected the runic arrays in the stones when they implanted them in the trenches. Even the anchor stones were thus changed, and when they powered them back up, the dimensional doorways still worked.

"Why hasn't anyone thought about burying runic arrays like this before?" Rias groused, thinking about how much effort they had to put into the five points of the security ward they had put up around Kuoh.

"The crystal," Yubelluna said simply. "Transfiguration and transmutation like that are well beyond nearly every devil in existence. It's a type of magic that Harry's wizards are much better at than any others, and Ankhsera runes will etch or melt metal given continued contact. Furthermore, I don't think that purely defensive security runic arrays would be able to be buried like this and still work…unless they were somehow connected to the rest of the world above them? I'm sorry; I've never made a study of magic like that," Yubelluna finished with a shrug. "The only reason I knew it would work for the gateways was because I saw Lord Beelzebub's library, and it's got several portals like that that he and your brother created between them, Rias-sama."

"No worries, Lady Yubelluna," Harry said, bumping his shoulder against hers gently as they sat on a few lawn chairs, staring at their work. "It worked here, and that means that the possibilities for more are there, which I'm chuffed to bits about."

Yubelluna blushed hotly, looking away and cursing Harry's British accent. And is it my imagination or is his accent thicker sometimes when he's talking to me? He also always called Yubelluna a lady. Not even milady, just lady, as he had when they had met. It was touching and marked another major difference from her previous life to this one. Riser had either called her Yube, an ugly shortening of her name, or 'my Queen,' or, rather, 'Riser's Queen.' It had been a sign that Riser saw Yubelluna as his possession, not that he was possessive of her, which she might have welcomed.

After the work on the connecting gateways was done, and they were once more running, Yubelluna, Lily, and Loup continued to work on the backyards, enlarging the Potter house's deck and adding a small pond along with several more trees here and there. One of them became home to Titan, his former house shifted into the new tree which gave him far more area to play with. Raiter was also given a new home in another tree, with Okuri-inu's house on the ground between them.

Flowers were planted here and there around the pool, and the single central tree that had been part of the original Potter's backyard was transplanted into the front yard, replaced by an even larger sakura tree.

Thanks to magic and Yubelluna's helpers, this all took about two and a half days, a far shorter time than it should've taken. Thanks in particular to Yubelluna's new ability with plants, everything was transplanted, green, and growing by the time the fourth evening of her time with them had ended.

During this time everyone else was also busy with general family stuff: preparing for school, finishing homework, getting Teddy into the elementary school with Kunou and Lily, and a few more things on that level. The only major event that occurred in this time was a single fateful meeting, but, for a while, no one would recognize its significance, including the individual involved in the meeting…

One cloudy day Issei was walking home from training with Akeno, Tonks, and Kala, grumbling. "Dammit, why the hell do all three of them have to be so freaking hot! Don't they know what they're doing to me!"

The fact that he was bruised and battered from head to toe should've indicated to Issei that, yes, they most certainly did know what they were doing to him, if not in the same manner as he thought. But Akeno took every opportunity to tease him, always enjoying how she was able to so easily get a rise out of him. Tonks didn't go out of her way to cause reactions but certainly didn't back away from them. And Kala, though not nearly as in his face about it, had a body that was built quite literally for sin.

And Issei was a healthy young devil with a healthy (unnaturally so) libido. This left him open to their attacks during sparring, and kept his mind on other things when Akeno or Tonks were trying to teach him magic. Indeed, beyond Engorgio and a handful of other spells, both Wizard and Onmyouji, Issei's spells continued to be tinged with his obsessions.

"So you're Hyoudou," said a voice from one side of him, and Issei turned, wincing as he did so, to look at the person who had just spoken.

He was another young man Issei's own age or perhaps a little older, though not by much. He had silver blond hair, tight black jeans, and a button up shirt on, along with a silver chain that was hanging down from one side of his waist. His eyes seemed to stab Issei, staring through him, almost, before he snorted. "I'm not impressed."

"What the hell am I supposed to have done to impress you in the first place, you pretty boy bastard!" Issei growled, somewhat bewildered at this meeting and also furious. All pretty boys should just fondle a goat and die!

Beyond that, Issei was used to people talking down to him. The girls at school still did that all the time, even after he had joined Rias's peerage in truth and had begun to distance himself from the other two perverted trio members. His former reputation continued to color how people interacted with.

He couldn't sense anything magical about the other man—not that that meant much; Issei's magical senses were not nearly as good as they should be. Issei thought this would be more of the same and went on in a slightly more conciliatory tone. "If this is about me peeping on your sister or girlfriend, I'll apologize, but I stopped doing that a while ago."

Even if some of the oppai at school are truly amazing," he said wistfully, now staring off into the distance rather than at the pretty boy. "Ah, to see the kendo club again, the dangerous beauties! Or a true taste of the forbidden in the tennis club! But no," he said, thrusting one hand outwards and covering his face with his other hand. "No! Get thee be behind me, temptation. I will never get into that again! It is better to touch and to taste a few than to see many and touch none."

The silver-haired man's lips curled. "Is that all that is in your head, perversion? If that is so, how will you ever get stronger?"

"Exercising every day," Issei said returning to the here and now, thoroughly bewildered.

The man rolled his eyes but then paused, cocking his head to one side as if someone else was speaking to him for a moment. His eyes narrowed, and he looked at Issei with new eyes, almost uncaring, as if he had turned from being marginally interesting to dirt on his feet. "My apologies, then. I seem to have gotten the wrong person." With a bare nod he turned and walked away without another word.

"Yeah, pretty boy, you better walk away!" Issei shouted, then shook his head as the other young man disappeared around a bend in the road. "What the heck was that about?"

OOOOOOO

Elsewhere, the silver-haired youth moved through the streets avoiding the known areas where the local devils were known to reside or otherwise hang out. He did so automatically, his thoughts elsewhere. "What do you mean that the Boosted Gear isn't inside him?" growled Vali Lucifer, descendant of the original Lucifer and wielder of Divine Dividing, the White Dragon Emperor Albion.

"I thought you said that the Boosted Gear had revived months ago. Issei Hyoudou is the known wielder! Unless you're telling me that the higher-ups among Fallen were wrong about that. But then, why would you have said that you can sense the Boosted Gear in this territory?"

"That is because it is here somewhere. The scent of the Boosted Gear is strong indeed, although not the presence of Ddraig. That is an odd dichotomy that I can't quite figure out," said a deep rumbling voice inside Vali's head. It was haughty, that voice, cool and commanding, yet also very confused at the moment. "But specifically, I could not sense even a hint of Ddraig's presence within that boy's soul."

"Could it be the other feeling you've been warning me about since we arrived here getting in the way?"

"No, though you could have worked to bring your own magical senses to a higher peak before this, Vali. You rely too much on my powers to protect you from unseen threats. That way you'd be able to feel it yourself instead of just a faint unease and the feeling of being watched,"the White Dragon said with a shrug of his ancient shoulders. "No, the Boosted Gear is here; it's just not within that boy."

"Does that mean I should be looking around for the other devils?"

"No, I think we need to leave."

"Retreat!?" The boy paused, moving over as if to look into a window as he almost glared at his own reflection, which was superimposed by that of a massive Dragon behind him to his senses for just a second. "What do you mean, retreat?! I'm here to test my opposing number! If I don't get a fight out of it, why the hell am I here at all!?"

"That feeling in the air reminds me far too much of some of the wards I saw during my younger years, when there were still gods of all sorts around," Albion began, but his current wielder interrupted him.

"Good! That just means that I would be guaranteed a good fight." Although, as he said that, Vali's anger at the idea of retreating dissipated somewhat, since he truly was a little concerned about the feeling in the air of being watched and almost judged wanting somehow. He didn't like it, whatever it was.

"But not one against Ddraig," Albion retorted. "Besides, there is another scent in the air, another dragon's scent, a female one. And I want no part of her!"

Vali blinked, his anger dissipating in surprise. "What?" He knew Albion could be cautious at times, but this went beyond simple caution.

"Let's just say that there are issues there," the White Emperor said, sounding a little embarrassed as well as very, very worried. "I would suggest waiting on finding your opposite number until we figure out what is going on here, or use your adopted Father's spies to figure it out."

Vali grunted. He'd not done that yet beyond discovering the name of the individual suspected as being the owner of the Boosted Gear, not wanting to put himself further in Azazel's debt or to bring more attention on his own activities. He hadn't even read the reports the Devils had, for their own reasons, passed on to the Grigori about what had happened to Raynare and her group. Yet it had bitten him in the rear here, and Vali had to admit that he'd gone in unprepared. So he nodded and turned away, moving quickly away from Issei, the feeling of being watched and judged hurrying him along.

OOOOOOO

For his part Harry had a relatively easy time of it during those few days of the winter break remaining. Other than making certain that Kunou and Lily had done their homework, Asia was ready to start school, helping Yubelluna with the backyard, and training with the Sacred Gear users, he was able to go on one family style date with Yasaka, Rias, Lily, and Kunou, which turned out very well.

But perhaps the two most important things he did during this time were following up on talking to Tiamat more about Blessings and training with the Sacred Gear users. Tiamat and he used his pensieve to look at what had occurred with Yubelluna as well as the blood adoption ceremony. Harry asked her several questions about Fawkes, but Tiamat refused to be drawn out on that score, simply saying that he needed to do more research on the Tuatha de Danaan pantheon. That really wasn't much information to go on, and it kind of irritated Harry, but there seemed to be some kind of understanding between Tiamat and Fawkes.

The idea that Fawkes was female, though, Tiamat was willing to acknowledge. "Are you sure about that?" Harry had asked the same evening of the meeting between him, Rias, and the Phenex clan. "I mean, Fawkes is a male name, and when he wasn't addressed as it, he was always addressed as, well, 'he,'" Harry finished somewhat lamely.

"Gender isn't nearly as important for immortal beings as it is for you pesky mortals who have to pass on your lineage in so short a time," Tiamat said with a guffaw that shook the nearby trees. "Besides, who called 'Fawkes,' *snicker*, a 'him?' Was the one who gave her that name old and bearded?"

Harry winced at that. "Um, yes. Certainly Albus Dumbledore was, and the majority of the headmasters too."

"You see?" Tiamat said smugly, and nothing could do smug like a dragon. "Men of every species always think that power should generally reside in their own gender, and most of them believe in seeing anything that they cannot identify the gender of as male." She paused then, her wings fluttering above her back. "Except for ships. I am uncertain why, but that is the only exception I know of. Even Mother Earth goddesses were thought up by women first and foremost."

But the discussions about Blessings did not go nearly as well as that. Harry now understood that intent and will had driven the miracle that had saved Yubelluna's life, but he didn't know how he had jumped from wishing to save her so hard and being able to do so. There didn't seem to be any single instance in the memory where that intent and will had shifted from simple will to the Blessing in question. Harry was used to there not being much logic or reason behind most magic, but with Blessings, it was as if that aspect of magic became squared. If one had enough will and power, one could change the world in a far more fundamental and permanent manner that any other magic Harry had ever dealt with, but there seemed to be no way he could control it as he was now.

It was frustrating in the extreme. Regardless, Harry agreed with Tiamat's opinion: that Blessings in general were things that he really should not fool around with at all. Certainly not in any kind of combat context, which was disappointing.

Although, even from such disappoint could come something fun…

One time, coming home from such a meeting, Harry was surprised to find that he had some mail. The mail in question came from the Onmyouji government and was addressed to him. But, when he opened it, he found that it was not only addressed to him but to Rias and Akeno, and it wasn't a form letter demanding that he stop using magic or anything else equally invasive and stupid. "Rias," he called into the living room, where she was sitting down and finishing her own homework for school. "We have a bit of mail here."

"You have a lot of mail there, Harry," she replied with a laugh, gesturing to the pile of letters Tonks had brought with her, which had been piled up on one of the small side tables and had not been touched since. "Are you finally going to go through all the rest of your mail? You only looked at that one from Gringotts."

"I suppose so," he said with a sigh. Right now the kids were all in Kyoto or out with Kiba and Loup, so they were alone. He had hoped to have a romantic evening in. But I suppose that work should come before pleasure. Sitting down next to Rias, he leaned in, kissing her neck and then her cheekbones and lips lightly before pulling back and handing her the note, reaching for the pile of mail. "The local wizards want us to take part in a New Year's ceremony on the first."

"Interesting," she mused. "I think this might be the first time a devil has ever been openly invited to such a thing. Looking at the timing, it should be possible. The ceremony is in the evening, which leaves us to celebrate the New Year's with gifts and everything else in the morning."

"That makes sense," Harry said with a nod. "I'll send them a reply, then, shall I? Though why the heck they waited until the last minute is beyond me."

Harry used his magic to grab a piece of stationary from the kitchen and then wrote out a quick message, pressing it into the envelope the Onmyouji's missive had come in. A second later it flashed into a blue and white fire, and he shrugged, waving his hand to rid it of the smoke and ash. "Huh, some return service."

Laughing, Rias leaned against his shoulder, kissing his neck before going back to her own work. For a moment the sitting room was silent, the two of them working on their disparate work. Harry read through several dozen pieces of hate mail, each of them un-cursed by Tonks before she brought them along, two pieces of fan mail, and a letter from the Wizengamot saying his lands in England would be forfeit unless he or a close relative lived in them, as would the title of Ancient and Noble.

Harry couldn't say he cared much about that, but since it also said that the first, at least, would be waived if he paid a fine, Harry decided to go with that. After all, I might have to head to Ireland itself some time to find out more about what the Tuatha de Danaan were really like. All the resources I've been able to find, even on the Internet, haven't really helped me much to figure out Blessings or more about Fawkes.

With that in mind, Harry wrote out a check and addressed it to a nonmagical address in London called Portabello Hall. It was actually a front for the Wizarding World, where four house elves worked to sort and manage nonmagical mail heading into and out of the Wizarding World, though there was scant little of the latter. On top of this, Harry had already called his bank and transferred half his money back to the nonmagical bank in London that was the equivalent for Gringotts.

Finally he was able to turn to the last message, one that Tonks had said came from Gabrielle Delacour. Opening it, he blinked, his eyes widening.

As he did so, Rias stretched beside him and set her homework aside, finally finished. She was about to suggest that they make some dinner but paused as she caught sight of what Harry was gaping at.

Inside the envelope had been a picture, which, like all wizarding pictures, moved when you looked at it as if it was alive. The image was of a young blonde girl, Rias's age or maybe a year or so younger. And she was currently wearing nothing but a set of very skimpy black lingerie, complete with garters and stockings. Her hair was loose down her back, her breasts a size or so above Asia's—which Rias knew because she had helped the girl buy her first sexy bra—and, as the image twirled, it showed a bottom whose likeness could stand up against the best models out there. Then the image moved into a sensual shaking out of her hips and breasts as the blonde stared up out of the image at Harry.

The coquettish smile the image wore disappeared the instant Rias leaned into view, her eyes narrowing as she made to speak. But no words could be heard. That bit of enchantment cost far too much to be put on a mere card.

Rias didn't notice that, nor did she notice when, after picking the image up, it tried to gnaw at where her thumb covered a corner of it. Instead she glared at Harry, waving it around this way and that. "Harry James Potter, what is this!?"

"That would be Gabrielle Delacour. She's what you might call a fangirl, one of only two or three that have never backed away from it, and the only French national who wants anything to do with me anymore." He shrugged. "It's not the first time she's sent images like that to me, although it is the first one that started out nearly naked."

"And you've never done anything with her, never encouraged her? What did Ginny think about this?" Rias asked, confused.

"Nothing. That is, I never encouraged her, and Ginny only knew about the first two. After that Gabrielle must have realized that sending such pictures to a married man was a bad idea and spelled the images so they only appeared for me. Evidently she thought that, since we divorced, that was no longer necessary. Though I'm grateful she can't seem to afford adding the ability to speak and be heard onto the picture. That would just make it disturbing."

"Yet you never told her to stop sending you these pictures?"

Harry flushed a little. "Um, well, no. It, um, it made the times when Ginny was being frigid a little, ahem, easier to bear."

"I see…" Rias replied frostily. She looked at the image and then back at Harry, then she smiled that sensual little smile that never failed to set Harry's pulse to racing. "Harry, why don't you go up to our room for a moment. I'll join you presently."

With a grin on his face, Harry stood up, but when he moved to kiss Rias she moved back. "Ah-ah, none of that. Just go and wait for me, Harry. You'll like it, trust me."

Eyebrows arcing in interest, Harry nodded and left the sitting room, heading for the stairs.

Once he was gone, Rias turned to the picture and stared down into it as the blonde girl pictured there shrieked something at her. "I don't know what you're saying, but I'm certain that it isn't kind. But don't worry, I'm not going to do anything to you. No, instead I'm going to show you something, show you the difference between you and me."

With that Rias stared at what Gabrielle was wearing in the picture before stripping out of her clothing. Gabrielle's image fell instantly silent, staring at her in unalloyed envy, and Rias smirked. "That's right blondie. You have literally nothing to offer him that I haven't already given him in spades."

Once clad in only her underthings, Rias cast a spell on them and then trooped up the stairs after Harry.

She didn't notice Yubelluna arriving in the entryway. Having left the other girls behind at the women's house, she had come back to get some rest, having no need or desire to join the others in a night of drinking and sappy romance movies. Sappy romance movies were well and good, but not the wine.

Yubelluna did not want to start drinking, afraid that she wouldn't be able to stop. She still had nightmares occasionally about Riser, though they were more often about his attack on her rather than just being stuck with him again. In her dreams she died, and no one even mourned her. In Yubelluna's dreams she was once more powerless to save herself. In her dreams she ran away only to be dragged back in chains.

The purple-haired woman knew that none of her dreams were real, but that didn't stop them from popping into her head, and the first time they had she had downed an entire Devil-made wine bottle in an effort to block them out. It had worked, but that wasn't a healthy way to deal with the problem.

She paused though as she saw Rias heading upstairs wearing stockings and garters. Hmmm, what do we have here?

Feeling a strange sort of excitement welling up inside her, Yubelluna floated into the air and followed the redhead, watching as she made her way to the trapdoor up to the attic and opened it up. The sight of that door closing behind Rias brought Yubelluna to her senses, and she shook her head. Come on, Yubelluna. That's got to be kind of disturbing, you know, spying on your new benefactor and his girlfriend. Although, if the spells are down, then I…no, no. Gah. Right, off to join Yasaka and the kids in Kyoto. Need to get my mind on something else beyond sexy as hell British blokes with emerald eyes and equally sexy redheaded girls with bodies even other devils might envy. Ugh.

Upstairs, Harry looked up from where he was pulling the bed cover down to stare at Rias as she slowly, teasingly sashayed up the ladder into the attic. How she managed to sashay while moving in a straight line up a ladder, he didn't know, but she did, and it took all of Harry's considerable willpower not to start drooling. "Bloody hell, love, you could make a corpse sport a stiffie, I swear."

Rias was currently wearing the same exact outfit Gabrielle's picture had been. A pair of fishnet stockings clung to her legs up to halfway up her thigh, where they were paired with a set of black garter belts. Her panties were also black, lacy and small, barely hiding the treasure within. Her breasts—those large, amazing breasts, whose every inch and contour Harry had made it his mission to explore—were held in the light grip of a lacy black bra. The bra held them up from below, practically presenting Rias's breasts like food on a platter while also barely covering Rias's nipples, showing a lot of her cleavage to his devouring gaze.

"Thank you for the compliment, lover," Rias said with a smirk. She moved towards him but never finished the movement. Harry met her halfway, lifting her into his arms and snogging her for all he was worth. Rias moaned happily, returning the kiss as her arms went around Harry. Her eyes were still open, however, and she smirked at the picture she was still carrying, which was now motionless, staring at what was going on. She sent a wink its way and then tossed it away to land forgotten in a corner as her legs moved around Harry's waist. She then moaned in shock and delighted surprise as Harry reached down and, after moving her panties aside, slid home without even an attempt at further foreplay. "SAAAaaasomone's a little eager I sseeeE?" She squealed as Harry, mindful of Yasaka's hint that maybe Rias might be up for some rougher play, began to thrust up into her a bit harder than he would normally so early in their coupling.

Later—much, much later—the two of them cuddled in post-coital bliss, Harry's staff still buried within Rias's tight wet tunnel as she leaned against his shoulder. "So, what was that all about?" Harry asked. "It's not like you to be that jealous. Else you wouldn't have been fine with sharing me from the outset."

"Hmmf. Two things, I suppose. First was the idea that she felt it was right to send you images like that, or even tamer ones, while you were married. That bothers me. it also bothers me that she'd rather do that, pine from afar, than try to get close to you for real. And third…" Rias shifted upwards to look Harry in the face and kissed him tenderly before pulling away. "And third, while I might be willing to share you, I certainly am not going to share you with some little fangirl floozy who didn't have the courage to make a try for you when she had the chance."

Chuckling Harry nodded, and leaned in, kissing her hard as his hands made their way to her breasts once more, eager for another round as Rias moaned and urged him on.

Neither of them remembered one thing about magical paintings though: even cheaply made ones that couldn't talk could travel between frames…

OOOOOOO

But finally, on the 31st of December, the work on the lawn was finished. Deciding to roll celebrating that event into their New Year's celebrations, Harry, Rias and the others organized an entire morning's worth of present-sharing and a party for everyone.

Of course, with this crowd, even gift-giving didn't always go as expected. Akeno's gift to Asia and Koneko were a pair of matched lace camisoles and an entire book series of what Harry could only term female erotica. The fact that Koneko nearly beaned Akeno by tossing them back was not lost on him, nor was the fact that Asia, sweet innocent Asia, surreptitiously picked them back up and took them up to her room when she thought no one was watching. This caused him to twitch quite violently, but before he could think of what to do about it, he looked up and discovered that Tonks's gift to Issei was worse.

Blushing, Issei took the present that Tonks handed him and unwrapped it to find what looked like a photo album. Inside, however, were images of Tonks, or who he thought was Tonks, anyway. Each image was of a different woman, a different famous model, gravure, international and runway. He had no way of knowing if the proportions were entirely accurate, but the faces were. And the poses… He blushed hotly, staring avidly as he flipped through page after page, his blush increasing while Ruruko, who had been invited along with the rest of Sona's peerage, scowled.

"Are we giving out awards for the most obnoxious presents now?" Harry asked Rias mildly as Tonks handed the two of them what were obviously wrapped books of some kind. "If this is a how-to book of some sort, Tonks, I'm going to have to hex you."

"Don't be that way, cuz. Just think of it as a…long-term goal. You can go through the book and mark out each position after you're done with it. Be among the few, the proud, that have gone through the entire thing!" Tonks said with a laugh.

Harry groaned but opened the present and was unsurprised to find an illustrated copy of the Karma Sutra. Looking over at Rias, Harry saw that she had the Japanese equivalent, which for some reason had quite a bit more in terms of bondage and rope from what he was seeing in the pages as she flipped through them. The two of them looked at one another, flushed a little, and then put the books away, staring at Tonks in amusement. "You are one-of-a-kind, Tonks."

"Of course I am!" Tonks said with a grin, her entire skin flashing green for a moment. "And don't you forget it."

"Yes, well, my gift to you isn't nearly as rarefied as your gifts to us," Harry said with a chuckle, holding out a long box to Tonks.

She took it and opened it only to gasp in delight. Inside was a short sword. It looked like something the Romans would use, but Tonks recognized it as something she had seen somewhere before. "What is this?" she asked, pulling it out and twirling it this way and that in such a way that all the other Knights all winced, Kiba going so far as to cover his eyes.

"It's a short sword that Albus bequeathed to me for some reason despite knowing that I could already use the Sword of Gryffindor. He was odd like that," Harry said, understating things dramatically, though of course Tonks knew that. "But seeing as I'm not really a sword fighter, and I've already picked up yet another sword in the meantime, I thought of you. It's got a few interesting spells on it and should add to your combat ability."

"Which rather neatly goes with my gift to you, Tonks," Kiba said firmly, holding out a card.

Tonks groaned and opened it and was utterly unsurprised to see a 'free month's worth of sword training' card, something that Kiba had obviously made himself. "This is to get me back for training you into the dirt, isn't it?" she asked.

"Whatever gave you that idea?" Kiba said with a smirk, moving over to give exactly the same gift to Mittelt. "I've noticed that you don't like closing the distance, but there are a lot of styles that you can use despite your short stature to take advantage of your speed," he said to her firmly. "We will be training on this."

Rias leaned over to Harry and whispered, "Harry, this training you, Tonks, and Mittelt have been giving our Sacred Gear users, is there something you should be telling me about them? I've never known Kiba to be vindictive in any manner except towards the Church."

Harry shrugged. "We haven't exactly gotten very far yet, but I think we've seen a noticeable improvement in many ways," he answered obliquely.

Rias caught onto this, and she teasingly reached up to tug lightly on his ear. "Harry…" she drawled.

"Rias…" he drawled back before leaning in to kiss her thoroughly, to many wolf whistles and laughter.

Of course, the ones who received the most gifts where the kids and Yubelluna. Harry handed out emergency portkeys to many of them, including Yubelluna. Books, comic books, clothing, all the normal things were given to the kids, with a bag of ever full candy for Koneko and a few shirts for Teddy.

Yet his most significant presents he saved for last: several pieces of enchanted jewelry. First a set of earring for Rias fit with tiny rubies, which were made from two of the small crystals she had treated so they could contain spells. Kunou got a small pinky ring to match the necklace Lily already had. Koneko got a small, formfitting anklet with a few carved images in them of different wind chimes, which she could set to jingling if she wanted. Asia received a few prayer beads of different colored glass to add to her rosary each of which contained defensive runes.

Of course, every piece was like that, enchanted to various degrees. Harry liked to merge utility with beauty like that. Even Kala, Yubelluna, and Mittelt received pieces of enchanted jewelry, though theirs were far simpler in appearance.

Once all of the girls had their presents, Harry stood up and looked around the throng of family and friends. "Ladies and gentlemen, when I first heard of this idea of a compound rather than a single home, I was a little ambivalent about it. I didn't doubt the need for more space; I was simply set on the idea of keeping our house small and homely, and I couldn't quite fit the two needs together. Rias, in her infinite wisdom, and with quite a bit of help from other people," he teased gently, "realized that that wasn't going to work, and that we had to find a solution. So I thank everyone here who helped the initial project of joining our three different houses together.

"Kiba, Loup, I well understand the horror that is moving, and I thank you for taking one for the team," he said, holding up at the glass towards the two boys, who mock-saluted him as one. "Teddy, I hope you like your new home, and that you and Tonks can, like Lily and me, make a permanent home here in Japan, here in Kuoh with our new friends."

"Hear, hear!" Teddy shouted, throwing one arm into the air excitedly, while Lily bounced happily next to them and Kunou chittered and nuzzled into her shoulder.

"However, we have welcomed one other person this past week, and, without her, we wouldn't have this lovely backyard. Lady Yubelluna, please stand up and take a bow," he shouted to the laughter and amusement of everyone there.

Yubelluna blushed but stood up all the same, curtsying to the crowd, who cheered and whistled.

"Welcome to our little compound, and welcome to our rather large family," Harry said, raising a glass towards her with a smile on his face. Later that day would come a time for formalities. Tomorrow would come the humdrum of school and the return to the daily grind. In the future there would no doubt be further trials, travails, and dangers. But right now Harry was content to forget all that and bask in the warmth of his friends and extended family.

End Chapter

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This is pretty much the last chapter in which the majority of the chapter will be built around small familial matters rather than bigger events or meetings. From here on I will be getting into the true nitty-gritty of the plot, and the size of the chapters will shrink, thankfully. Honestly, I was kind of surprised at the size of this one, but it isn't nearly as bad as the past two, LOL. Hope you all enjoyed your DxD fix this month.