Chapter 59:
– Harry Sitri –
Kuroka strolled over in our direction like she hadn't just been launched out of a fourth-story window by her own little sister.
As I figured, she was completely unhurt. Her kimono was immaculate, somehow, barely covering her tits and the kind of curves I'd been dealing with on my phone for weeks now thanks to her shameless picture messages. Twin tails flicking lazily behind her, ears perked up, eyes half-lidded with that infuriating cat-grin of hers.
She stopped in front of our little group on the blanket. "Nyaa, Shirone-chan got me real good with a solid right hook," Kuroka said, completely shameless. "Onee-chan is so proud of her."
Ophis didn't move from my lap. She just blinked up at Kuroka.
Rias and Akeno, on the other hand, had a very different reaction. They were on their feet before Kuroka finished her sentence, sand kicking up around their shoes, twin glares locked on the nekoushou like they were ready to throw down right there on the lakeshore.
"Stay away from my precious Koneko-chan, you criminal bitch," Rias snapped. Her crimson hair lifted slightly with her words and her demonic power leaking out of her body, tiny embers of Power of Destruction flickering at the red tips. "I don't know why you're crawling back now, but she doesn't need you anymore!"
Kuroka's grin dropped instantly. Her ears flattened back against her skull, her tails lashing once, hard, behind her. "My little sister's name is Shirone-chan," she hissed, all the playful sing-song bleeding out of her voice. "You can't just rename her White Cat, you racist bimbo!"
Rias actually sputtered. I watched her go from righteous fury to flustered indignation in about half a second. "I—I was nine years old when I met Koneko-chan!" Rias shot back, cheeks going as red as her hair. "The name was cute, and Koneko likes it, so who cares!"
"We've been better big sisters to her than you ever have," Akeno added, voice silky-sweet in that way that always meant she was three seconds from electrocuting somebody.
That, apparently, was the wrong thing to say.
Kuroka's pupils narrowed to slits. Her kimono shifted as her shoulders rolled, and the air around her went thick. Heavy. Like a pressure drop before a thunderstorm. "You two have no idea what I went through to keep my precious sister safe," she said, low and venomous. "But clearly you need a proper education if you think you're strong enough to take on an Ultimate Class stray kitty like me, nyaa."
Then her aura opened up.
I'd been around Serafall enough to know what real power felt like. Kuroka wasn't on that level. Nobody was on that level. But she was a hell of a lot further up the ladder than I'd given her credit for, and the wave of senjutsu and demonic energy that poured off her hit me like a physical force. The grass at her feet wilted. The lake behind us went still. The temperature dropped maybe ten degrees in the span of a breath.
Holy shit. She's been hiding all of that?
Rias and Akeno, both of them powerful in their own right, both of them with serious training behind them, dropped to their knees in the sand. Akeno gasped, hand bracing against the blanket. Rias's lips parted, eyes wide, and I could see her trying to push back against the weight of it and failing.
Okay. Okay, Kuroka is way more dangerous than I assumed.
Kuroka's grin came back, slow and mean. She crouched down so her face was level with theirs, twin tails curling lazily behind her. "You're still lacking, nyaa," she purred. "Both of you. Cute, but lacking."
I started to try and get up so I could move. I didn't know what I was going to do, exactly, but I wasn't going to sit there while Rias and Akeno were being harassed.
But I didn't have to do anything.
"Bad kitty," Ophis said. Just two words. But the entire clearing went silent in a way that wasn't natural, like sound itself had decided to back off and give her room.
Kuroka's tails froze mid-flick.
"Stop harassing the women that also love Harry," Ophis continued, in the same flat tone she'd used to declare pumpkin pie acceptable, "or I will punish you."
Kuroka's aura snapped back into her body so fast I felt the pressure pop in my ears. The temperature shot back up. The grass remembered it was supposed to be standing. Rias and Akeno sucked in air like they'd been held underwater, and Kuroka, the same Kuroka who'd just had two of the strongest devil teenagers alive on their knees, went absolutely sheepish.
Ears pinned back. Shoulders hunched. Tails tucked. The whole thing. "...Nyaaa, don't punish this sexy naughty kitty, nya," Kuroka whined, hands coming up in immediate surrender. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I got carried away. Won't happen again, I promise."
I looked down at the Infinite Dragon God currently still sitting comfortably in my lap, draped against my chest like none of this had been even mildly interesting. She glanced up at me, those bottomless dark eyes catching the last of the sunset, and gave me what I was starting to recognize as her version of a satisfied expression. Which, on her face, looked like almost nothing at all. Just the faintest softening at the corner of her mouth.
Rias made a small, strangled noise from where she was still on her knees in the sand.
Akeno, recovering faster, tipped her head back and laughed, breathless and a little shaky.
"Oh," Akeno said, smoothing her hair back with a hand that was only slightly trembling. "Oh, Harry. You really do have the most interesting friends."
It looked like the situation de-escalated. That was a good thing.
I reached into the picnic basket beside me and rummaged around until I found one of the tuna sandwiches the kitchen elves had cut into neat little triangles. Held it up between two fingers, peace offering style, in Kuroka's general direction.
She perked up so fast her ears practically twanged. "Nyaaa, I love you, Harry-kun," Kuroka declared, snatching the sandwich with both hands like I might take it back. She bit into it, her slitted golden eyes fluttering shut in genuine bliss, then opened them again to grin at me around a mouthful of tuna. "Fish sandwiches are the way to any kitty's heart. You can expect the next set of naked photos I send you to be a lot sexier, nyaa."
Rias, who had just barely gotten her composure back together, immediately lost it again. "Stop sending naked photos to my fiancé!" she snapped, color flooding back into her cheeks, this time for entirely different reasons. "You are a criminal, Kuroka!"
Kuroka swallowed her bite and licked a crumb off her thumb without breaking eye contact. "A sexy criminal, nya," she replied, completely shameless, and went back to munching on her sandwich like she was at a beach party and not on the grounds of a magical school where she was, in fact, internationally wanted.
I should probably delete some things off my phone before Lilja goes through my photos again.
Akeno, finally tucked back under my arm with her usual composure mostly restored, turned her head and fixed Crom Junior with a deeply unimpressed look. "Crom-kun," she said sweetly, "and where exactly were you during all of that?"
Crom, standing quietly behind Rias with his hands folded in front of him, didn't even blink. "I was watching Lady Ophis," he said, in that flat, oddly polite voice of his. "I was ready to grab onee-sama and run if things became dangerous. My only job is keeping onee-sama safe."
Akeno's lower lip pushed out in an exaggerated pout, the corner of her mouth quirking like she was trying not to laugh. "What about me, Crom-kun?"
Crom looked at her for a long moment. His vertical pupils didn't do anything as expressive as narrowing, exactly, but there was definitely a beat where he considered the question. "I will protect onee-sama, that's all," he repeated, with exactly zero change in tone.
Akeno made an offended little noise. Rias swatted her new little brother's leg with the back of her hand. "Crom," she scolded, mock-stern. "You should protect the other peerage members too. They are all family."
Crom paused. Tilted his head slightly to the side, the way a bird does when it's processing something. Then nodded, slow and deliberate. "If you say so, onee-sama."
That kid is going to be a problem someday and I am extremely glad he's Rias's problem and not mine.
I turned my attention back down to my lap, where Ophis' cheek was resting against my chest, one small hand curled loosely in the fabric of my jumper, and she was watching the entire exchange with the same level of mild interest.
"You alright?" I asked her quietly. "Are you enjoying yourself? You want something to eat too?"
Ophis blinked up at me. The corners of her mouth did that almost-not-there softening thing again.
Beside me, Akeno mumbled something into my shoulder that I was pretty sure included the words "freaking Ophis" and "S-Class wanted criminal" and "our precious picnic." Rias made a small commiserating sound and patted Akeno's knee.
"Is there dessert in the basket?" Ophis asked.
I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep my face neutral. The Infinite Dragon God has a sweet tooth. Was I the one that caused this?
I didn't even get to say any of that out loud, before someone else did instead.
"Who would have thought," a familiar voice chirped from directly behind me, "that the Ouroboros Dragon had a sweet tooth?"
Every single person on the blanket flinched. Rias actually yelped. Akeno's hand shot to her chest. Kuroka inhaled half a sandwich and started coughing, tails poofed out to twice their normal size. Crom's body went rigid, dragon-pressure spiking off him in a tight controlled burst before he locked it back down. Even I jumped, and I should have known better.
Ophis, naturally, didn't react at all.
I twisted around to look up over my shoulder, already knowing exactly who I was going to see.
Mum was standing on the grass behind the blanket in her full Magical Girl Levia-tan getup, pink and frills and ribbons and the whole nine yards, her heart-shaped wand held tight in one fist. But her face wasn't doing any of the usual things. No bright smile. No dramatic pose. No sparkles. Her expression was stripped down to something I'd only seen a handful of times, and every one of those times had ended with somebody dead or wishing they were.
The pink magical girl outfit on a face like that was, frankly, terrifying.
"I can't sense her even when she's right in front of me…" Serafall said, eyes flicking from Ophis. But then she turned her gaze to Kuroka. "But, I did feel a very naughty cat get tossed out the window from my office and came rushing over to check on what was going on!"
"Okay," I said carefully, one hand instinctively curling a little tighter around Ophis's waist. "We're fine, Mum. Everyone's fine. We're just having an after sunset picnic…"
Kuroka, who had finally finished coughing up tuna, set her sandwich down on the blanket and pressed both palms flat to the sand in front of her. Her ears were so far back they were almost flat against her skull. "I'm so sorry, Ophis-sama," she said, voice gone small and earnest. "I didn't mean to get us exposed to a Maou. I know you said keep it quiet, I just got carried away with my baby sister, I'm so sorry."
She wasn't looking at Serafall. She was visibly trying not to look at Serafall, which I thought was probably wise.
Ophis, still curled against my chest, lifted her head maybe an inch. Just enough to look across at Kuroka. "It is fine," she said, in that flat little voice of hers. "You are MY kitty. No devil will hurt what is mine."
I felt my mother go very, very still behind me. Serafall didn't make a sound. But I'd lived with her long enough now to know what each of her silences meant, and this one was the kind that came right before she did something deeply considered and politically expensive. Her throat worked. I actually heard her swallow.
Ophis just put Kuroka under her personal protection in front of a Maou.
I didn't quite know how to feel about it. Part of me was genuinely happy that Ophis had a friend. Like, an actual friend. Someone she'd defend.
The other part of me was very aware that Mum was now standing about three feet behind my left shoulder with her wand out and a face like a glacier, and that the diplomatic implications of an internationally wanted SS-rank stray devil being personally claimed by the Infinite Dragon God.
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Kuroka's bounty was fully rescinded by tomorrow morning…
Serafall took a slow breath. Then another. And then, somehow, miraculously, the glacier-like expression melted. Her shoulders dropped. The wand vanished back into wherever she kept it. The Magical Girl smile flicked on like a stage light coming up. "No one is in any trouble," she announced brightly, hands clasping in front of her. "I just wanted to see what was going on. But if it's just a nice peaceful picnic on the lake, then that's fun."
I started to relax.
I should have known better.
Mum bent down, planted both hands on the edge of the picnic blanket, and then, with a cheerful little "scoot over, Ophis-chan," physically pushed Ophis sideways across my lap.
I made a sound that was not quite a word.
Ophis was actually caught off guard by Mum's sheer audacity! She ended up squished onto my left thigh, her legs swung over to the side, while Mum settled her own ass onto my right thigh in one smooth practiced motion. Pink skirt. Bare legs. Magical girl thigh-highs. The full deployment.
Ophis looked over at her.
I watched the Infinite Dragon God's face do a thing I had genuinely never seen it do before.
She looked upset.
Her dark eyes flicked from Mum, to me, to her newly halved portion of lap real estate, and her bottom lip did the tiniest, almost imperceptible push outward.
"Mum," I tried.
Serafall draped her arm around my shoulders, pressed her cheek against the side of my head, and beamed at Ophis. "As Harry's mother," she announced, "his lap belongs to me whenever I want to sit on it. Or grind on it. Or otherwise enjoy it. That's just how it is, Ophis-chan." She wiggled herself and I shivered. "You'll just have to accept it and learn to share, sweetie."
Akeno, on my other side, made a strangled noise.
Rias's face had gone the exact same color as her hair.
Ophis kept her dark eyes on my mother for a long, weighted moment. I felt the air around our blanket get a little thinner. The grass right at the edge of the picnic blanket trembled, just once, like a passing breeze had run through it. Except there was no breeze.
Then Ophis slowly, deliberately, scooted herself across my left thigh until she had pushed back into me, leaning her weight against my chest and reclaiming as much of my lap as the new arrangement allowed. She shot Mum one more very small, very pointed look. Then she settled in, tucked her head under my chin, and went back to looking faintly bored.
It was, I realized, the Ouroboros Dragon's version of attempting to share.
I exhaled slowly through my nose.
"Right," I said, mostly to myself. I picked up the picnic basket and set it on the blanket in the small space between Mum's knee and Akeno's. "Dessert. Ophis wanted dessert. Let's, uh. Let's find some dessert…"
"I could go for some of those little lemon tarts," Mum said helpfully, leaning across me to peer into the basket. Her hair tickled my jaw. Her weight shifted on my thigh in a way that was extremely deliberate. "Oh, and look, the elves packed some of these tasty chocolate eclairs too! Harry-chan, the elves must really love you!"
Well, I didn't know about that, but I did treat them right compared to most of the human students that thought of them as slaves...
"I want an eclair," Ophis decided.
– Daphne –
Daphne's eyes shot open and she jerked upright so fast the world spun for a second.
Where the bloody hell am I?
The last thing she remembered was sitting in the library with Tracey, both of them tucked into that quiet corner table under the single enchanted lamp where Madam Pince couldn't easily eavesdrop. Harry Sitri had sat down across from them. They'd finally told him. Everything. The contracts. The mind-wiping. Astoria. Yaxley and Nott and Macnair.
After that, her memory went hazy and grey at the edges, like trying to remember a dream three hours after waking.
She looked down at herself. Still in her Hogwarts uniform. Skirt pleats wrinkled, blouse half untucked, tie loose around her neck. The light coming through the window was wrong though, soft and grey and morning-pale, which meant she had slept in her clothes. For a long time.
The dorm room she'd woken up in wasn't one she recognised. Higher ceiling than Slytherin. Blue and bronze hangings on the four-poster bed. Constellations charmed onto the ceiling, slowly drifting in lazy patterns. Bookshelves crammed full to bursting along the far wall. There was a small telescope on the windowsill and what looked like an actual taxidermied something tucked between two textbooks, which Daphne chose not to examine too closely.
Ravenclaw. Why am I in Ravenclaw?
"It's about time you woke up, Daph," a familiar voice called from across the room. "We were getting worried about you."
Daphne's head whipped around so fast her neck twinged.
Her 18 year old younger sister Astoria was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of a chess set, looking absolutely fine. Healthy colour in her cheeks. Hair brushed. Wearing a shirt that wasn't hers. She had a captured rook in one hand and a teasing little smile on her face that Daphne hadn't seen on her sister in months.
Across from Astoria, perched on a cushion with her legs tucked underneath her, was Luna Lovegood. Ravenclaw, third year, Astoria's year. The pretty blonde girl with the dreamy eyes who Daphne had seen drifting around Harry Sitri and Sona Sitri at meals, usually with a book in one hand and a piece of toast in the other. Luna was wearing her own Ravenclaw uniform, neat as anything, and was apparently in the middle of contemplating a chess move with her fingertip pressed thoughtfully to her lower lip.
Astoria's playing chess. She's smiling.
The door to the dorm swung open, and Daphne's head snapped toward it on instinct.
Tracey strode in, also still in her Hogwarts uniform, looking slightly rumpled and significantly more alive than Daphne had seen her in weeks. Behind her came Auror, no, Professor Tonks.
Tracey took one look at the bed and lit up. "Daph! Oh thank Merlin, finally!" Tracey practically bounded across the room, climbed straight up onto the bed, and threw her arms around Daphne's neck. "You've been out for ages, I was starting to think they'd given you a stronger dose of devil magic or whatever by accident."
Daphne scrunched her nose. "Tracey, what—"
"It's a miracle, Daph," Tracey barreled on, pulling back to grip her by the shoulders. Her eyes were shining. Actually shining. Daphne couldn't remember the last time Tracey had looked anything other than tired and afraid. "We're free. We are free. The contracts are gone, all three of them, properly gone, and we never have to see your shitty parents again either!"
Daphne's brain stalled out completely.
She must have made some kind of sound, because Tracey's grip on her shoulders tightened and the words kept tumbling out.
"Yaxley's in St. Mungo's, Daph, magical backlash, they don't think he'll wake up! Nott Senior had a stroke or something, half his body's gone petrified. Macnair lost both his hands, just gone, the curse took them off at the wrist when it broke. We're free, all three of us, and your parents got raided by the DMLE last night!"
"Tracey." Daphne's voice came out hoarse. "Tracey, slow down..."
Tracey clamped her mouth shut, but the smile didn't go away. If anything it got bigger.
Daphne dragged her eyes off her best friend and swept the room slowly. Luna at the chess set, watching her with quiet patient interest. Astoria smiling, actually smiling, like the weight she'd been carrying for the last six months had been lifted off her shoulders overnight. Tonks standing a few steps from the bed with her hands tucked into the pockets of her professor's robes, her hair shifting from pink to a softer rose colour as Daphne watched.
Something is very wrong. Or very right. I cannot tell which.
Tonks took another step closer to the bed. "You probably have a lot of questions, huh," Tonks said. Her voice was warm and pitched the way someone talks to a spooked animal.
Daphne pulled herself together. Greengrass posture. Greengrass voice. Cool and clipped and far steadier than she actually felt. "Yes, Professor, I rather obviously do," she said. "Starting with where I am, how I got here, and why my last clear memory is of having a very private conversation with Harry Sitri in the library. Did he knock us out and haul us off to Ravenclaw Tower himself?"
Luna giggled softly from the floor. "Yep, this is my dorm room, by the way," Luna said, looking up from the chess board with that dreamy little smile of hers. "I'm so happy to have sleepovers. I've always wanted sisters, and now I have so many. I've got Tsubaki, and Sona, and you, and Astoria, and now Tracey, and then our future sisters as well." Luna's smile went a touch wider, distant and pleased. "It's going to be lovely."
Sisters? Future sisters? What is she talking about?
Daphne's mouth opened. Nothing useful came out. She turned back to Tonks, who was watching her with something that looked suspiciously like sympathy.
Tonks cleared her throat. "Long story short," Tonks said, "since I've already told this to Astoria and Tracey while you were sleeping it off." She paused. "None of you three are human anymore..."
– Harry –
The next morning…
I was sitting in the library tucked away at one of the back tables, the kind that nobody bothered with because they were too far from the windows and the chairs were the slightly creaky ones. It was the weekend. Breakfast was done, classes were off today, and most of the castle was off doing weekend things. The library was nearly empty except for a small cluster of Ravenclaw girls a few tables over and the ever-watchful presence of Madam Pince stalking the stacks like a particularly judgmental owl.
Hermione was beside me with half a dozen books spread out around her in the careful organized chaos that meant she was actually using all of them at once.
I was contentedly doing nothing more strenuous than being near her. Just spending some time with my first girlfriend as she studied whatever it was she was looking up this morning.
A small magical paper airplane sailed in through the open archway, banked sharply around a suit of armor, and made a perfect three-point landing on the table in front of me.
I unfolded it.
It was a message from Sona.
To my nephew Harry Sitri…
The note went on in the formal way Sona always wrote her letters. But it was about what I expected. The three girls, Daphne, Tracey, and Astoria, had all woken up and been formally informed of their new status as devils and as members of her peerage. They would require some time to acclimate to the substantial changes their lives had undergone, both magically and personally. Sona "formally extended her gratitude" for the loan of Auror Professor Tonks's expertise in introducing the basics of devil biology and culture to her three new peerage members.
I stopped reading there because I got the gist.
She's spent literal hours with my cock inside her and my mother's tongue down her throat at the same time. And she still writes to me all formal like we've never met before. Sona can be so weird and adorable sometimes…
I shook my head, refolded the airplane, and tucked it into my robe pocket to answer later. Probably with something deliberately filthy, just to make her sputter.
"Look at this," Hermione said quietly, without looking up. She slid an enormous, very old book in front of me and tapped a passage halfway down the faded yellow page. The book smelled like dust and the inside of a vault, which probably meant exactly what I thought it meant.
"Did you steal that from Grandfather's library?"
"I requested it from the Sitri library," Hermione said primly. "Through proper channels. Lord Sebastian was perfectly happy to lend it to me. He sent two more along with it."
"Of course he did. He likes you. He thinks you're the only sensible one I've collected so far."
Hermione's mouth twitched. She tapped the passage again. "According to this passage," Hermione said, in her quiet I've-been-reading-this-for-an-hour-and-I-have-thoughts voice, "Ophis is over a million years old. Possibly older. The author hedges. Despite that, however, every devil who has ever met her and lived describes her mentality as very young. Almost naive."
I blinked. "Naive?"
"That's the word the book uses, yes. The author thinks the reason for it is that she spent the overwhelming majority of her existence inside the Dimensional Gap. Which is, apparently, a place where the normal flow of experience and time and social development just doesn't apply. So she was alone in there for a very long time, and then about a hundred years ago," She paused.
"What?" I asked.
"Apparently a being called Great Red kicked her out. Of her home."
I sat back a bit. Ophis is homeless?
It was a stupid first thought, because obviously Ophis had a roof over her head somewhere now. But the rest of it kept landing on me in odd little pieces. A million years inside an empty space. Naive. Kicked out of the only home she'd ever had.
That sucks. That really, really sucks.
But then, the other half of my brain put in, maybe it had been a good thing in the end. A million years alone in a void didn't sound like much of a life. Maybe getting evicted by some other ancient apex monster had been the rude shove she'd needed to actually go meet people. Try deserts. Sit in someone's lap.
It was complicated, I decided. I would think about it more later, when there was less natural light and fewer Ravenclaw third-years pretending not to listen to my conversations from two tables over.
"You know," I said, leaning back in my chair, "you don't actually have to look any of this up in books. You can just ask her about herself when you meet her."
"Not all of us," she said evenly, "are crazy enough to walk up to the second-strongest being in existence and offer her pumpkin pie, Harry."
"I scoff at that." I scoffed, for emphasis. "She walked up to me, thank you very much. And for the record, she might actually like eclairs even more than the pie now."
Hermione's flat look got flatter. "I'll be sure to tell Lyra and Lyna to always have eclairs on hand from now on, then," she said dryly. She closed the book with a soft thump that sent up a tiny puff of dust and old leather smell. "I just want to be prepared. For all of it." She tucked a loose curl behind her ear and gave me a small, slightly self-conscious smile. "I'm your first peerage member, Harry. I'm your Bishop. Somebody in this family has to be the smart one, because the rest of you are horny idiots."
I bit the inside of my cheek. "All of us?"
She nodded with a serious look. "All of you. Without exception..."
I gasped. "Even Lilja?"
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Especially Lilja. I know what you, her and Marlene all got up to in China!" She pointed out, but then her smile turned a little fonder. "...But you're all my horny idiots."
I leaned over the table and kissed her at the corner of her mouth.
She made a startled sound and reflexively glanced toward the front of the library where Madam Pince was prowling between shelves like a furious crane. "Harry, we are in the library."
I ignored her protest and leaned in again. I kissed her properly, long enough to feel her breath catch, short enough to be defensible if anyone was actually watching. She made a soft tiny noise against my lips that I was going to be thinking about for the rest of the day.
"Speaking as a horny idiot," I murmured, when I pulled back, "I love you, Hermione."
Her cheeks flushed pink. Her eyes went soft and slightly liquid in that way they did when I caught her off guard with something earnest. "I love you too," she said, a little hoarse. "You absolute menace."
A muffled giggle floated over from one row over.
I glanced sideways. Two Ravenclaw girls, fifth or sixth year, were huddled behind a Charms textbook with their hands over their mouths and their cheeks bright pink. One of them, a brunette with her hair in a long plait, sighed loud enough to carry.
"Why don't I have a rich wizard heir who'll sweep me off my feet like that," she whispered, just barely loud enough for me to pretend I hadn't heard.
"Right?" her friend whispered back. "I'd literally settle for one with half his money and an ounce of his broad shoulders."
Hermione's blush deepened from pink to a rich red. She buried her face briefly in her hands. "Harry."
"Wasn't me," I said innocently.
"There's going to be rumors about us shagging in the library by the end of the day," she muttered into her palms. "These things always blow out of proportion.
She wasn't really wrong about that. I had some pretty insane rumors about all the crazy stuff students thought I got up to in this castle. A lot of those rumors weren't even wrong either…
Before I could decide whether I should just kiss Hermione again, a large black raven came swooping through one of the high library windows. A window that had been closed, but the bird phased through it like it was air. It was a big bird, easily the size of an eagle, with inky feathers that drank the morning light and one ragged scar where its right eye should have been. The remaining eye was bright yellow, and far too sharp. It glided across the library, banked over Madam Pince's head while she was busy yelling at a third year about a creased page, and dropped onto the table in front of me with a heavy thump that rattled Hermione's coffee mug.
It cocked its head and let out a deliberate CAW!
"NO PETS IN THE LIBRARY!" Madam Pince's voice cracked across the room like a whip. Heads popped up from study tables all over the place.
I held up a hand in her direction in the universal I've got it, sorry, one moment gesture.
The raven gave Madam Pince a long unimpressed stare with its single yellow eye. Then it turned its head back to me and cawed again, smaller this time. More polite. It picked up one foot and extended its leg toward me.
There was a small leather scroll case strapped to it, sealed with dark wax.
I felt the hair on the back of my neck lift.
That is not a normal raven. That bird's mana signature is wrong.
Beside me, Hermione had gone very still. "Harry," she said carefully, eyes locked on the bird, "that is not a normal raven."
"I know," I said.
The raven cocked its head at her. The single yellow eye glinted with what I could only describe as amusement.
I cleared my throat. "Hello there," I said to the bird, keeping my voice easy. "Do you need something?"
It gestured at its leg again, very pointedly. Take the letter, idiot, the body language said clearly.
I reached out, slow and careful, and untied the small leather scroll case. The raven held its leg perfectly still while I worked the knot open. The wax seal on the case was a flat black wax with no obvious crest, but there was something stamped into it. Three interlocking triangles. The shape was almost like a knot.
That's a valknut…
I was getting better at recognizing Norse symbology, mostly because Lilja was a relentless teacher.
This is one of the Allfather's birds. This is Huginn. Or Muninn. I can't remember which one only has one eye. Does either of them only have one eye, or am I confusing them with Odin himself?
– Roseweisse –
"Oh, Lord Harry, I'm so glad you finally see that I, as the more responsible older sister, am the better choice for being your girlfriend. I love you so much!"
Rossweisse cuddled into the arms of the handsome young devil with the black hair and the bright blue eyes, pressing her cheek against the broad warm plane of his chest. He smelled like rain and something faintly electric, the way she imagined a thunderstorm would smell up close. His hand was cradling the small of her back. His other hand was tilting her chin up, just so, with the kind of gentle confidence that made her thighs squeeze together under her robes. She rose onto her toes. Puckered her lips. His mouth was right there.
This is it. This is finally happening. Take that, Lilja! Take that, every Valkyrie at the spring solstice retreat who said I was going to die a virgin spinster!
"..."
"WAKE UP, DUMMY. CAW!"
Rossweisse let out a loud, undignified eep and shot bolt upright in bed!
Several glass containers rolled off her chest and stomach and clattered onto the floor of her chambers. Two empty mead bottles. A sake bottle she didn't entirely remember acquiring. Half a corked bottle of dwarven plum wine. Her sleep shirt, which was technically her dress shirt from yesterday, was rucked up around her ribs, and there was a small puddle of something sticky drying on her pillow that she was choosing not to examine.
Oh, by the All-Father's beard. Damn it. That was just a dream!
She slumped back against the headboard and dragged her hands down her face. Her head throbbed politely. The taste in her mouth was extremely informative about exactly how many of those bottles she had personally drained the night before.
I dreamed about kissing my baby sister's boyfriend. Again… Norns preserve me.
She turned her head, slowly, toward the open window of her quarters.
Perched on the windowsill, lit up by the cold pale morning light pouring in over Asgard's training fields, was a black raven the size of a small hunting dog. His one yellow eye was fixed on her with that horrible, ancient, judgmental glint she had personally come to associate with bad weeks at work.
Lord Muninn. Wait. No, the one without an eye was Huginn. Or was it the other way around? She always got them mixed up, and they refused to clarify because they thought it was funny.
The raven let out another loud, sharp CAW.
"Ugh," Rossweisse groaned, pressing the heel of her hand against her temple. "What time is it?"
The raven tilted his head and stared at her.
"Wasn't this supposed to be my day off?" she complained, dragging the sheets up over her large bare chest with what little dignity she had left. "I literally turned in three hundred and forty-seven hours of overtime last week. Three hundred and forty-seven. Lord Odin signed the slip himself. I have it framed."
The raven ignored every word of that. He just cawed at her again, louder, more pointedly, and ruffled his wings in a way that very clearly meant get up, work slave, you are wanted.
Of course I am. Of course I am wanted on my one day off in a month. I'm a Valkyrie. I forgot. We don't get days off. We just get rumors of days off!
Rossweisse rolled out of bed, one foot landing in something that crunched, the other narrowly missing a half-eaten cinnamon bun on the rug. She did not remember acquiring a cinnamon bun. She also did not remember crying into the cinnamon bun, but the icing had clearly been disturbed.
This is fine. This is dignified.
She slapped herself lightly on each cheek, summoned her armor in a brief flash of pale silver light, and twenty minutes later was kneeling on the polished obsidian floor of Odin's throne room with her head bowed and her white hair frizzing out from under the side of her helmet in a way she was still ferociously hoping nobody would notice.
She heard one of the wall guards mutter something to the other one. Something that might have been 'bed head' and might have been 'did she sleep in a hedge?'
Rossweisse's face went hot. She reached up under the rim of her helmet with one armored finger and frantically tried to comb the worst of it back into place.
Why? Why is this my life? I have a master's degree! Two of them! I speak nine languages. I composed an entire sonata about the historical importance of Norse trade route diplomacy, and these idiots are giggling about my hair!
Odin lounged on his great wooden throne above her, one leg crossed lazily over the other. He had a mug of something steaming in one hand and a bowl of pomegranate seeds balanced on his thigh. His one good eye was bright and watchful. He looked entirely too cheerful for the hour.
"You summoned me, Lord Odin," Rossweisse said, in her most carefully professional voice. "On my day off." She let just a little bit of the day off part bite. She was a senior Valkyrie. She was allowed to be snarky.
Odin did not look even slightly sheepish. "Harry Sitri," Odin said the name.
Rossweisse's whole face went red.
Oh no. Oh, by all the gods, no!
Did the All-Father know she had been having a steamy dream about her baby sister's King? Did he see? Could he see? Was that a thing he could do? Was she about to be branded a scarlet woman in front of the entire Asgardian court!? She would never recover. She would have to flee to Vanaheim. Change her name. Open a small bakery—
Odin gaped down at her. "Duh fuck…?"
Rossweisse blinked.
The wall guards had gone very, very still.
"Ah. I just said all of that out loud, didn't I?" she squeaked. Instead of in my head. Where it belonged. She wanted, very badly, to crawl into a hole, die in the hole, decompose in the hole, and have her bones dug up by future archaeologists who would name a small unremarkable species of beetle after her.
Odin, slowly, set down his mug of whatever he was drinking. He shook his head. He pinched the bridge of his nose under his eyepatch. "It is not fair," he muttered, to nobody in particular, to the ceiling, to the universe at large. "All the beautiful maidens are going after those handsome devil brats now! It's either them, or it's those pretty boys in South Korea getting all the bitches. What about gods? What does a god have to do these days for some appreciation—"
"My lord," Rossweisse said, in a strained voice, cheeks puffed out and burning. "My lord. You summoned me. About Harry Sitri. Why?"
Odin snapped out of his sulk and waved a hand. "Oh. Right. Yes." He cleared his throat. Adjusted his eyepatch. Tried to look like an authoritative figure of vast cosmic importance, which was a stretch given that he was now spilling pomegranate seeds onto his lap. "Harry Sitri owes me two favors."
"Yes, my lord."
"And I, in turn, happen to owe someone else a few favors."
Rossweisse's eyes narrowed slightly. Was her God in debt—again!? And now once—again—she was going to have to pay it off? "...Yes, my lord."
"So I have decided," Odin said, settling back on his throne with an extremely pleased look on his face, "to loan young Harry Sitri's services to that annoying gentleman instead. Cancels two birds with one stone. Or one bird, in this case. Cleans up my ledger. Makes me look magnanimous."
"And me, my lord?" Rossweisse asked, already feeling the cold slow dread of where this was going.
"Ah. Yes. You." Odin pointed a finger at her. "I have already sent young Harry his letter. He will be reading it any minute now. You will be teleporting to Scotland in approximately fifteen minutes so you can join Harry Sitri on his mission. The mission should take the entire weekend." He paused and eyed her. "And before you complain, we both know you do not have any plans anyway, because you are single."
The wall guards, in unison, made a noise that was not quite a snicker but was related to one.
Rossweisse's cheeks puffed out further. I am going to murder a god. I am going to actually murder a god.
She had been planning to spend her day off in her bathrobe with a book about ancient Vanir agricultural reform and a bottle of something fortified. That had been the plan. That was, she now had to admit to herself in the privacy of her own deeply mortified skull, not a plan.
She straightened her shoulders. Bowed her head a little lower. "Understood, my lord," she said, with as much professional grace as a hungover Valkyrie with sex-dream hair could manage. "I will of course assist Harry Sitri on whatever mission you require."
At least I can visit Lilja again.And maybe just say hello to Harry. Politely.
Odin nodded, picked his mug back up, and resumed scattering pomegranate seeds onto his beard. "Oh, and Rossweisse?"
"Yes, my lord."
"Comb your hair before you go. You look like a haystack went to war."
The wall guards openly snickered this time.
Rossweisse rose to her feet with all the wounded dignity of an underpaid civil servant of the Aesir, saluted crisply, and marched out of the throne room with her armored heels clicking on the obsidian and her face the exact shade of a ripe summer apple.
XXX