[A/N: Don't worry, I haven't forgotten this story. I also haven't gotten it beta'd because I want to see how chaotic I'll get without a voice of reason involved. I'm just along for the ride at this point.]
The Grangers wouldn't have time to take the children back to Diagon Alley until the next weekend, so the next day Hestia came over to set up the wards over the house. The children were in school and the Grangers were at work, so Sirius was the only one there to let her in. Hestia spent the first day sitting at the kitchen table doing arithmantic calculations to plan out the wardstone locations, which was one of the most boring ways to spend a day that Sirius could think of. The only bright spot was when a small, short-eared owl arrived for Sirius.
"Um…Sirius?" Hestia said as he took the letter from the bird. "Is that owl…"
"Wearing a small tophat charmed to stay on its head?" Sirius asked. "Yes. Yes it is."
"Oh, good," Hestia said. "I thought I'd been staring at these calculations for too long and completely lost my mind. You know, you should probably check all incoming mail for compulsions, portkeys, and the like. You and Harry are pretty famous."
The owl hooted indignantly at Hestia and flew off.
"Did that owl just get shirty with me?" Hestia asked.
"Also yes," Sirius said. "And that's a good idea. Albus had all of Harry's mail redirected to him while he was Harry's de facto magical guardian, and I had it rerouted to me now that I am. But I should have my own monitored, too. I'm not used to getting mail after being on the run for so long. In this case, though, I'm pretty sure I know who sent this."
Hestia arched her eyebrows. "Just by the owl?"
"I only know one family insane enough to Charm a tophat onto their owl." Sirius waved his wand over the letter and it glowed blue.
" Merlin, it is a portkey!" Sirius said.
"Wait, what?" Hestia asked. "Should we call the Aurors?"
"Not yet," Sirius said as he used his wand to magically unroll the parchment without touching it. "If it's from who I think it is, it's harmless."
Hestia came over to read the letter, too, and Sirius had to practically turn his head to keep his eyes on the letter rather than her cleavage. She normally wore conservative witches' robes, but they were loose enough and she was short enough that he could get an eyeful when she leaned over. Though petite, she was still quite curvy, and for the first time since Azkaban he was starting to feel something for a woman.
Who was also a contractor for him, he promptly reminded himself. The important thing here was her work, not his fun.
Once unrolled, the letter was quite simple, though the long, loopy curves of the writer's quillwomanship made it a bit difficult to decipher.
Dear Sirius,
When your Animagus form was revealed in your Wizengamot proceeding, I finally realised why that dog had stolen my wand and sent it back a few days later with roses. That was lovely, thank you, though I admit that my subsequent research on wand protection distracted me from my previous spell research project on ways to combine the effects of the Banishing Charm and the Reductor Curse. I'll get back to that latter project at some point, but wand protection is proving to be unusually interesting.
Xeno asked me to pass along that he hopes that The Hobgoblins will do another album now that you're out of prison, since we both know you're really Stubby Boardman. He also said that he wouldn't mind if you visited me while he was out this week if you wanted to make up to me for stealing my wand, but that he really wouldn't mind if you wanted to pay another visit when we were both at home. I have a wonderfully understanding husband, don't you think?
This parchment will function as a portkey if you'd like to drop by to chat or do other things with our mouths. Just say your real first name and it'll whisk you right into our foyer.
Your Most Obedient Servant,
Pandora Lovegood
They both stared at the letter for a moment before Sirius broke the silence. "In retrospect," he said, "I shouldn't have gotten her red roses. I should have known she'd take that the wrong way. Next time I have to steal a witch's wand, I'm sending her yellow roses."
"I am so confused right now," Hestia said. "Also, did she say she was trying to combine the Banishing Charm and the Reductor Curse? That's a horrible idea! That may be the worst idea I have ever heard! She's going to get herself killed!"
Sirius sighed. "Pandora has lots of ideas and tends to act on them. I worry about her, too."
"So you do actually know her and this isn't a random witch you had a moment of contact with telling you to come over and shag her senseless?" Hestia asked archly, then blushed. "I mean, it's none of my—"
Sirius waved off her concerns. "No, no, it's fine. Pandora was one of a number of witches I…um…visited a broom closet with while I was in Hogwarts. After she started dating Xenophilus, I didn't expect to hear from her again, but she contacted me after a couple of months and asked if I…um…wanted to join them in a broom closet."
"She did?" Hestia blushed again. "But…wouldn't it have been tight in there?"
"Oh, it was," Sirius said. "You have no idea." He had to turn to adjust his trousers at that point.
"Then how did you…oh." Hestia's blush was practically incandescent.
"Good times," Sirius said wistfully. "I think I'm probably too old for that sort of thing, though. Harry needs a responsible godfather, not someone who's always off fraternising with anyone who sends him a suggestive letter. Besides, sometimes I look at the Grangers and get jealous of how happy they are. I want that for myself, but I don't think I'm going to find it in the back of a broom closet, you know?"
Hestia nodded, still blushing. "I want that, too," she said, her voice unusually soft.
"I'll respond to this later," Sirius said as he set the parchment back down. "I don't want to interrupt your calculations any more than I already have."
"Oh, no, it's fine, really," Hestia said.
As they walked away, Sirius noticed her furtively checking out the front of his trousers and had to hide a grin. "I've still got it!" he thought.
Harry and Hermione came home from school at their usual time a few hours later to an empty house.
"Where do you suppose Sirius is?" Harry asked.
Hermione did a quick check of the kitchen. "He left us a note on the refrigerator," she said. "He and Hestia are working in the backyard right now."
"Oh, OK. Do you want to go…hey, what's that?" He pointed at the kitchen table. Set aside from the neat sheets of parchment covered with some form of mathematics he didn't recognize was another, larger sheet covered in a looping, unfamiliar script.
"I'm not sure." Hermione's curiosity took over and she hurried over to the kitchen table. "It looks like a letter for Sirius." She took a seat and began to read.
"It is?" Harry rested his chin on her shoulder so he could read it, too. "How can you even tell? I can barely make out one word in five."
"Her penmanship is definitely odd, but in a different way than yours is odd. If you assume this first word is 'dear' like it is in most letters, then the next word is probably the name of the addressee." She held the parchment up for Harry. "That first letter is probably a cursive 's', and the next letter is just a 'i' with a flourish. Yours are much stubbi—"
The kitchen disappeared around them as Hermione was sucked into and through the letter. She and Harry screamed as they whirled through a bright void, the centrifugal force threatening to tear him away from her. His reflexes had always been good, though, and he'd somehow managed to tighten his grip on her upper body as she'd first been pulled in and he wasn't letting her go.
Wherever she was going, he was going, too, and he was going to make sure she got home safely.
The spinning slowed to a stop and the void around them was replaced with a perfectly normal, if old and eclectically furnished, foyer.
"Where…where are we?" Hermione asked, her voice still woozy from the magical transportation.
"I thought we were in my house," another girl said, "but if you're not sure, then I guess we might not be. Do you think we're somewhere else?"
Harry struggled to his knees and turned around. Hermione was evidently not up to that task and just rolled over. In the doorway between the foyer and what looked like a sitting room stood a small girl, wearing a faded sundress on which animated fairies chased bugs and other magical creatures. Long blonde hair with the occasional twig in it cascaded down past her shoulders, and her grey eyes protruded slightly from the tanned skin of her face.
"I have no idea where we might be," Harry said, since she seemed to be awaiting some sort of response.
"Oh, alright," she said. "We're probably still at my house, then."
She seemed about as far from a threat as anyone could be, so Harry decided to just roll with the situation and see if he could convince her to explain what was going on. "Well, then," he said, "thank you for having us over. My name is Harry, and this is my best friend Hermione."
"It's ever so nice to meet you, Harry, and you too, Hermione," she said. "My name is Luna."
Hermione managed to push herself up onto her knees. "It's nice to meet you, too, Luna. Do you happen to know how we got here?"
"No," Luna said, "but I didn't hear the crack sound that apparition makes, so it was probably a portkey."
"What's that?" Hermione asked.
The little girl raised her eyebrows. "Oh, dear. I'd just assumed you were wixen because of how you appeared in my house, but if you're not then I'm going to need to call the Aurors."
"We are," Harry said hastily, "but we grew up with muggles and there's a lot we still don't know."
"I see." Luna nodded gravely. "In that case, a portkey is an object that's been enchanted to take anyone touching it from one place to another, usually with some sort of triggering phrase."
"That must be this parchment," Hermione said, holding up the guilty document.
"That makes sense," Luna said. "That is mummy's handwriting, after all."
"Is she here?" Harry asked. "Or your father?"
"Daddy is on an expedition looking for couatls right now," Luna said, "and Mummy is downstairs in her lab. With the protection protocols active, I'm afraid we can't disturb her."
"So there are no adults with whom we can speak?" Hermione asked. "We've arrived by accident and our parents might be worried if they come home and we're not there."
"Not here," Luna said. "We'd have to walk a mile or two to get to the Diggorys' house or the Weasleys' house and it's been cold and rainy all day."
"We'd better stay here in case someone comes looking for us," Harry said.
Luna clapped her hands, startling them. "Yay! It's been years since I had a friend over. Hmmm…Mummy said I should always offer guests a snack. Would you like to come to the kitchen?"
"Sure." Harry rose to his feet and helped Hermione up. "Luna, why haven't you had any friends over? Do you want us to go?"
"No! Not at all." The smaller girl stopped and looked down at her feet. "I really only ever had Ginevra Weasley over, but she stopped wanting to play with me a couple of years ago. She says I'm too weird."
"We know all about being 'weird,'" Hermione said. "Most of our schoolmates think we're pretty weird. I don't think I ever had a friend until I met Harry."
Luna blinked. "Wait, I thought you said you had the same parents."
"We do now," Harry said. "Hermione's parents took me in because my foster family wasn't very nice to me. She was my first real friend, too."
"That's sad," Luna said. "I know what it's like to be lonely, but my parents love me and I don't know what I'd do without them."
"It's OK." Harry hadn't intended to make this unusual little girl sad for him. "I have a wonderful family now."
"I'm glad, but I still feel sad for you," Luna said. "Mummy says pudding always helps when you're sad, though. Let's go find some."
She skipped off before Hermione could register any dental health objections to that plan. "We're guests," Harry said, "so it's only polite to join her."
"You just want pudding," Hermione said, but Harry could see he'd won her over.
"Of course I want pudding, just like you want to be polite," Harry replied.
"You win this time, Harry Potter," Hermione grumbled, too quietly to be heard by their diminutive hostess.
Harry just smirked and led her on. If either of them noticed he was still holding her hand from when he'd helped her up, they didn't remark upon it.
The kitchen looked like a classic country house kitchen from the early 1900s, but with weird carvings on all of the appliances. A huge AGA range took over most of one wall and Luna was digging around in the icebox on the opposite wall, which appeared to somehow be bigger on the inside. She popped back out a moment later looking both cold and depressed.
"There's no pudding," she said disconsolately.
"Oh, that's OK," Hermione said. "We weren't that hungry, anyway."
"But I'm supposed to offer guests a treat! No one is ever going to want to see me again if I'm a bad hostess." The poor child looked close to tears.
"I have a solution," Harry said. "Offer us the raw materials for biscuits and we'll make them ourselves."
"But how?" Luna asked. "I don't have my wand yet and can't do any Cooking Charms."
Harry rolled up his sleeves. "The old-fashioned way."
"What about operating the oven?" Hermione asked.
"That's an AGA," Harry said. "It's always hot. Luna, do you remember where your mum usually puts cookies in the baking oven?"
"The upper rack," Luna said.
"You know how to use an AGA?" Hermione asked Harry.
"Aunt Petunia always wanted one," he replied. "She made me learn how to use it just in case."
Hermione glowered. "That insane old…ooh! I'm not allowed to use language describing how I feel about the Dursleys!"
"It's OK." Harry made a show of looking around and shot Luna a grin. "No one else is here and we won't tell a soul, will we, Luna?"
"Of course not!" Luna said. "I'll even expose myself to an Obliviatoad to make myself forget it if you want."
"That…um…won't be necessary." Hermione looked around, too, and furtively said, "Your Aunt Petunia is a rotten old bint!"
"No argument here," Harry said.
Luna frowned. "That's all? I was expecting some spectacular cursing, like Mummy does when a spell blows up her lab."
"Um…does that happen often?" Harry asked.
"Yes," Luna said, "especially when Daddy isn't around to double-check her work. Wards keep it from damaging the rest of the house, though."
"That's good, at least," Hermione said.
Luna shrugged and turned to Harry. "Are you sure you don't mind? I feel like I should be the one offering you biscuits, not the other way around."
"You are," Harry assured her, "just in raw form. Don't worry about it."
Over the course of the next hour, Harry whipped up a batch of snickerdoodles (there didn't seem to be any chocolate chips in the house) while they chatted with Luna. The odd girl regaled them with stories of fantastic animals that they got the impression even most wixen didn't believe in. Hermione was clearly having trouble dealing with it, so when Luna stepped away to use the loo, Harry leaned over to whisper to his friend.
"Don't be so hard on Luna about all of those animals," he told her. "I can tell it's driving you crazy, but think about it some more."
"Why?" Hermione asked. "Clearly nobody around here is applying any decent principles of scientific scepticism."
"That's why," Harry said. "Think about it like this: there's a magical world out there full of magical animals we didn't know existed. Witches and wizards have explored this world, and Luna believes in some animals that most other wixen don't. The problem is, as you've pointed out a few times, that most wixen don't seem to be able to apply simple reasoning to problems, so why should we assume they've figured out how to find all of the magical creatures that have been hidden from the rest of us?"
Hermione's mouth formed into a small 'o', but no sound came out.
"Um…is something wrong?" Harry asked.
"We have so much to do already," she said. "Now we have to search out animals, too?"
"Nah," Harry said. "Luna can handle that."
Hermione breathed a sigh of relief. "You're right. We can let her worry about the animals other people probably missed while we deal with the insane bigots."
Harry nodded. That sounded like a perfect distribution of labour, especially because he had plans for the insane bigots who didn't like Hermione.