Nothing is mine.

Katie learns how to conjure flowers...

Love You Forever

The sound of Katie screaming and shouting tore through the soft pink cherry blossom to Harry's ears; they fed a creeping unease, tightening the trembling knot of anxiety in the pit of his stomach.

What's wrong, baby bird? He cocked his head, peering through the cherry blossom at the distant windows. Why're you so upset with your maman again?

The back door slammed, sending a flash of cold through Harry's veins.

Katie stomped down the patio in a short violet dress, her arms bristling with tiny white tufts and her eyes black as pitch; the little purple ribbon at the end of her braid bounced on her shoulder with each stomp.

A very cross little chick is coming. He flapped his wings, warming the muscles, and swooped down from his perch onto the white pebbles.

His daughter stormed from under the cherry blossom and down the slope to the riverbank, muttering under her breath as she glowered all around her. 'Papa!'

Harry winced and shifted out of the raven. 'Katie,' he chided. 'Don't shout that; if your maman hears…'

I'll have to leave, baby bird. His heart seized, clamped in a coil of cold dread. I don't ever want to do that.

She flinched. 'Sorry, papa.'

'Come here, silly little chick,' Harry murmured.

Katie darted across and buried her face in his stomach; the small white tufts crept back beneath her skin.

'What's wrong, baby bird?' He wrapped his arms around her and held her close. 'You're all feathery and cross.'

'Maman,' she muttered. 'She won't let me go to Beauxbatons!' His daughter glared up at him, tears glistening about her ink-black irises. 'It's not fair! You're meant to go when you turn eleven and I'm eleven this summer.'

Harry sighed, toying with her little silver braid as it swung back and forth, its small purple bow fluttering between his fingers. 'Your maman just wants you to be happy, little chick.'

'I'll be happy when I get to go,' Katie mumbled.

A small smile crept across his face and he swept her hair back, straightening the shoulders of her violet dress. 'Would you like me to try and explain why she's saying no? Or has she already told you?'

'Maman won't tell me anything, papa. She just makes up silly reasons that won't happen to keep me here with her.'

'Come and sit.' Harry took a step back and sat down on the pebbles. 'Let me explain.'

His daughter dropped down next to him and snuggled into his side. 'Why won't she let me go, papa? I'm not going to get hurt! It's school!'

A wry flash of humour tugged at the corner of Harry's mouth. I nearly died more times at Hogwarts than anywhere else. I did die there; I just came back.

'When your maman was little,' he said, 'she had magic just like yours.'

Probably. Gabby thought so and she was usually right about Fleur.

'I know!'

'Let me finish, Katie,' Harry murmured. 'You can feel what I feel when I cast my magic, can't you? And in your maman's?

She nodded.

'She could feel what was in the magic of all her friends and family too, so she knew how they felt. And, well, your maman is very very pretty, little chick; her magic, her allure, it made all the boys want to pay her lots of attention. Her friends struggled to handle that. They were envious of how good she was at magic, and how pretty she was, and how all the boys paid her more attention than them, and they blamed her veela magic and said lots of very horrible things about her, and I'm sure they tried to curse her and do all the sorts of things children do when they're angry and upset. They hurt her a lot. All the friends she really liked and wanted to like her were nasty to her, and she was very lonely and sad for a few years. She doesn't want that to happen to you. Even your auntie Gabby, whose allure was not as strong and who wasn't quite as… focused on romance as your maman, still had to deal with this.'

'But I still want to go!' Katie declared, the darkness draining from her eyes. 'My friends won't be like that!'

'Well, if you show your maman that you understand what might happen if your friends aren't as perfect as you hope, maybe she won't be so worried about you getting hurt, baby bird.' Harry pressed a soft kiss to the crown of her head. 'And if she's not so worried, she might change her mind.'

His daughter scrunched her face up. 'But papaaaa.'

'Just tell her, silly little chick. You don't need to keep anything like that a secret from your maman. She loves you more than you can imagine.'

'Je sais,' Katie whispered. 'I can feel it. I just…'

'You want to go.' Harry chuckled and mussed her hair with one hand. 'I know.'

She pouted at him. 'Papa, don't mess my hair up. It was all pretty.'

'You're always beautiful, baby bird—' he smoothed her soft silver hair back down '—even if your papa cruelly makes a mess of your lovely hair.'

'Should I go tell her now?' Katie asked.

'Maybe let your maman calm down first,' Harry said. 'She's probably a bit cross still if you were yelling at her.'

'Scary maman,' his daughter mumbled.

'Very scary.'

'Does she get angry with you, papa?'

A bittersweet snort of laughter burst from his lips. 'Oh, I think I've probably made your maman cross more times than anyone else. Sometimes, most of the time, I'd panic about losing her and be very stupid. She would be very very angry with me for that.' That wry sharp humour twisted the corner of his mouth up into half a smile. 'Lots of fire and feathers, and sometimes that slightly terrifying beak too.'

'Losing her, like… she would die?'

'Like she would leave me,' Harry murmured, swallowing the soft hot whisper of the stirring storm. 'I love her. Before I met her, everything was cold and dark, and then she came, like the sun rising, and she lit up the world for me. I was always so terrified she would disappear and everything would go back to how it was before.'

Katie's forehead creased. 'But—' her voice shrank '—you…'

'I know, little chick, but this is perfect enough for me. I get to spend time with you, and that's more than I hoped for.' He wrapped his arm around her. 'Do you want to learn some more magic?'

She nodded so fast, her braid bounced off her shoulder, dangling against her cheek. 'I want to learn how to conjure flowers like you can.'

'Well, let's start with using your wand first. It's very tricky to do without your wand and takes a lot of practice. I learnt so I could give roses to your maman.'

Katie stuck her hand down the front of her dress and wriggled it about.

'What are you doing?' Harry laughed. 'Did you lose something?'

'I have your wand,' she chirped, pulling it out. 'See, papa?'

'Where did you have that?'

'I stuck it through the side of my pants,' she said. 'You can't see it if I put my arm over it or when I'm moving, so maman won't know.'

I think your maman probably knows, baby bird.

'Well, let's start with the basics.' Harry eased the tip of the wand away from his face with one finger. 'Conjuration is a special case of transfiguration. And transfiguration is changing one thing into another with magic.' He offered her a gentle smile. 'Want to guess what you're changing into something when you conjure, little chick?'

Katie scrunched her face up into a deep frown and hummed. 'You just made your flower out of nothing!' She scowled at him. 'Je ne sais pas. The air?'

Harry nodded. 'The air.'

'Oh.' She beamed. 'Really?'

'Really. It's harder to imagine things changing from something like air to anything else, so it's harder than transfiguring one thing to another for the most part. You have to really imagine how what you're conjuring will form and what it will look like, and want to create it.'

'Is there an incat — incantation?' Katie asked.

'Orchideous is one I've seen used,' he said. 'Try that.'

'Orchideous,' she said. 'Orchideous. Orchideous.' His daughter raised the wand. 'What about a wand motion?'

Harry shrugged. 'I've never seen one or used one. Try using whatever motion feels right to you. In theory, you'll always choose something that's strongly associated with whatever you're trying to do that way. Does that make sense, baby bird?'

Katie scrunched up her face. 'Kind of.'

'Well, give it a try.' He pointed the wand away from them. 'But aim it that way in case you do something weird.'

She flicked the end of the wand up. 'Orchideous.'

A big daisy flopped from the ebony tip into her lap; its mismatched, off-white petals fluttered on Katie's knee.

His daughter stared at the square green centre of the flower. 'Hmmm.'

'Not a bad first attempt,' Harry said.

'But papa, it's green!'

He laughed. 'You won't always get it right the first time, little chick.'

Katie pouted at him. 'All the petals are weird. Your flower was perfect.'

'Not the first one I conjured; it was all lopsided. And they didn't even smell like roses for a while.' Harry picked the flower off her lap and tucked it into the pocket inside his robes. 'Keep practising.'

'Are you keeping it?' She wrinkled her nose. 'It's bad.'

'You made it.' He patted the small lump in his robes. 'I don't have anything else that you've made.'

'Oh.' The tips of Katie's ears turned pink and a huge beaming smile spread across her face like the summer sun bursting through clouds. 'Do you want more?'

'Well, you can probably practise by yourself, so if there's anything else you want to learn to do, we should do that first.'

'Yes.' His daughter nodded. 'I want to be able to conjure fire.'

'No.'

'But, papaaaa.'

'I don't want you to hurt yourself.' He gave her a gentle poke in the side. 'You would get excited by making flames like all silly bird-girls do and set fire to something important… and make your maman very cross.'

Katie's lower lip crept out. 'I wouldn't!'

Harry levelled her with a wry stare.

'Fine,' she mumbled. 'Teach me how to conjure something else that's pretty. Like maman's paper butterflies!'

'What are those?'

'She makes letters into them.' Katie dropped the wand into her lap and clasped her thumbs together, flapping her hands like wings. 'They turn into a whole bunch of butterflies and fly off where the letter is meant to go.'

'I can teach you how to conjure them,' Harry said. 'Whatever your maman did sounds like enchanting, and I'm not very good at that compared to her.'

'What's the incantation?' His daughter asked, snatching the wand back up from the lap of her violet dress.

'Papilionis,' he murmured with a bittersweet pang. 'You know, I learnt this when I was fourteen. It's not something most people learn to do until they're a few years older than that, so it might take a lot of trying.'

'Did it take you a lot of trying, papa?'

'Yes.' Harry snorted. 'They kept coming out in odd shapes and couldn't fly very well. You've got… softer magic than I do, though. Cheating bird-girl magic.'

Katie stuck her small nose in the air. 'It's not cheating. It's good magic.'

'Cheat.' He laughed at her little pout and kissed her on the head. 'Give it a try. It's the same as the flower; picture what you want and pick a wand motion that feels right.'

She swished the wand through the air, the tip flashing past Harry's eye. 'Papilionis!'

A single silver butterfly plummeted from the end of her wand and flopped about on Harry's leg like a floundering fish, its stubby wings flapping against his robes and all its little legs waving like an upturned beetle as it wriggled off his knee and fell onto the stones.

'Awww.' Katie poked it with the tip of the wand. 'It's bad.'

'It's just as good as my first tries—' he scooped it off the pebbles, but it burst into a wisp of silver mist and slipped through his fingers '—and I was over three years older than you.'

'So I did well, papa?' Katie whispered.

'You did really well, little chick. Je te le promets.'

A huge proud smile flashed across her face. 'Bonne,' she chirped. 'I'll get really really good at them until I can summon loads and loads to show you!'

Harry's heart melted into a little hot puddle. 'I'm sure you will, mon petit ange.' He swallowed a small hot lump and pressed a soft kiss to the crown of Katie's head. 'But your maman has probably calmed down now, so you can go to talk to her.'

She jumped up and skipped across the pebbles.

'Wand,' he called.

'Oh…' His daughter frowned and wriggled her arm down the front of her chest, poking the wand all the way down across the side of her hip. 'There!' She bounced away. 'Au revoir, papa.'

'Au revoir, baby bird,' Harry whispered.

A sharp, sweet little pain twisted in his breast as he watched her go, but a small fond smile lingered on his lips.

Is this how it felt for you, Salazar? Teaching Tom and I? Close enough to care so much, but never quite a part of our lives. He released a long sigh and shifted back into the form of the raven, fluttering up into the branches of the willow. Still, this is much more than I deserve. La Victoire Finale requires a price, and if this is it, I will pay it forever to keep them happy and safe.

Katie skipped from under the cherry blossom and through the back door, her silver hair floating after her like the trail of a shooting star, and Harry's heart lurched, snatched away in a bittersweet bliss that touched on pain.

No wonder you chose to burn, Salazar. Who wouldn't?

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