"Home is people. Not a place." - Robin Hobb
Yuna wiped the last of the blood from her cheek with the back of her mitten, the cut already closing over into a thin, pale line, and looked at Harriet with something that bordered on genuine approval.
"Alright, that's enough for today." Her bear costume vanished, leaving her back in her regular clothes. "You'll need to keep developing for a while yet, but we're already on the right track, wouldn't you say?"
"I'm nowhere near your level, but at least it gives me a real gauge now. The last Devil I actually saw was Furina, the actress I met in France, and she managed to knock out the exorcists in an instant, people by the way who could probably give Dumbledore a decent fight even if it's a losing one." Harriet said, pushing herself back up and stretching, the pain having mostly faded by now, the whole point of the fight had never been to actually hurt her, after all.
"Ah yes, your dear Furina..." Yuna started to say.
"She's not my dear anything!" Harriet shot back quickly, but was promptly ignored.
Yuna continued. "We can summon her whenever you want, like you originally planned. Honestly, I'd like to talk to a Devil myself, I've never actually seen one in person. I was thinking of setting up some protections beforehand, wards, runes, anything to restrain her if she tried something, but..."
Harriet went quiet for a second, the flyer that had lived folded between two books in her bag for months suddenly feeling a great deal heavier than it actually was.
Harriet picked the thought back up. "But you're strong enough now to hold her back at least for a bit, I think, and either way... starting things off like that wouldn't exactly be honest of us. I already told you, she didn't seem like she meant me any harm. I trust my gut on this one."
Yuna said, "So yes, we can summon her whenever, it's your call in the end."
"I'll think about it." She said, which, from her, was about as close to yes, soon as anyone was going to get.
"Fine, we'll do it whenever you're ready, then." Yuna said. "For now, let's go see Sirius. Not many people around at his place today anyway, and he'll be happy to see you."
"Sounds good, let's clean up all this mess, and clean ourselves up too while we're at it, before we head out." Harriet said, with noticeably more energy now.
They cleaned up what could be cleaned, left the rest of the training room to whatever house magic the manor still had lurking in its walls, and by the time lunchtime came around, they were standing on the doorstep of Grimmauld Place instead, Harriet genuinely happy to see her godfather in this life again.
The door opened before she'd even finished knocking, and Sirius pulled her into a hug that lifted her clean off the ground for a second, laughing into her hair like he hadn't seen her in a decade rather than a few months.
"There she is. Look at you, you've gotten taller, and you're looking a lot healthier too." He set her back down, holding her at arm's length to actually look at her properly. "Come in, come in, Remus and Tonks are already here, we were just about to eat."
"It's good to see you too, Sirius. Looks like you've gotten your bark back, no pun intended." Harriet said, once she'd been set down, looking him over properly, and it was true, he no longer had that half drowned stray dog look he used to carry around like a second skin.
"We'll invite ourselves in, then, Sirius. Hello, by the way." Yuna said, stepping forward and settling in beside Harriet.
"Oh, Yuna, good to see you too." Sirius said, clearly pleased to see his accomplice.
They made their way to the kitchen, and as they crossed through the manor, Harriet noticed it was considerably cleaner than she remembered, and that tedious, screaming portrait was nowhere to be seen either.
"Did you redecorate? And where's your dear old mother and her lovely vocabulary these days?" Harriet asked, marveling at the fact that the place no longer looked like a crime scene.
"Partly Hurricane Molly's doing, but mostly we've got new house elves now, and the manor's runework finally got repaired properly. As for the portrait, took some real effort, but we managed to strip the charm holding it to the wall. Genuinely impressive work, whoever did it, though I can't imagine why anyone would put that much effort into fixing that particular thing to a wall in the first place. Shame my father's not around to ask." Sirius said.
"New house elves? What happened to Kreacher?" Harriet asked.
"Kreacher... well, Kreacher's not really a problem anymore. We sent him off somewhere else entirely and barred him from the house. He'd gotten a bit too unhinged living here, and he wasn't exactly all there to begin with. So we brought in a couple of new, loyal house elves instead."
"This suits you better, Sirius, the energy, a clean house, you're almost starting to look like an actual human being." Harriet said, teasing.
"Well, yeah, I've started taking my lifestyle a little more 'Sirius-ly' lately, but hey! You know full well I'm your proud dogfather, I've got a role to play here." Sirius said, delighted to have the excuse. "But yes, everything's looking up for once, and I'm hoping it stays that way."
"Careful, Sirius, next thing you know you'll be saying you're getting married right before heading off to war, and we'll get the full tragic backstory package." Harriet said, dryly.
And so they arrived in the kitchen, two kids trying to reconnect and one grown adult shaking her head somewhere behind them.
The kitchen table was crowded in that particular way that only happened when people actually liked each other's company, Remus with a stack of papers he clearly hadn't looked at in the last twenty minutes, and Tonks sitting close enough to him that their chairs were nearly touching, her hair shifting through three different shades of pink as she laughed at something he'd apparently just said. She caught Harriet's eye over Remus's shoulder and gave her a quick, conspiratorial wink, the kind that said don't ask.
Harriet filed that away for later use.
Once the greetings were out of the way, a hug from Tonks and an awkward one from Remus, along with a proper introduction to Yuna, whom Tonks and Remus had only briefly met before, everyone settled around the table, lunch already laid out, courtesy of the new house elves: a proper shepherd's pie, still steaming, a bowl of buttered peas, a plate of thick cut bread, and a pot of tea.
"So, how was it?" Sirius asked, pulling out a chair for her and dropping into the one across from it, propping his elbows on the table like a man settling in for the good gossip. "The school year. All of it. Don't leave anything out."
So she started talking, careful not to go too deep into certain details. She told him about her year, how it might have been her best one yet, and possibly the worst for most of the other students at the same time.
"When you stop caring what everyone else thinks, life gets a lot easier, I've noticed. Not the case for most people, though. Umbridge showed up, and now you practically need her permission to breathe, it's become miserable for a lot of people. Have you two heard anything about it?" Harriet asked.
"We've heard, yeah, not that it sounded quite this bad, though. The Ministry stuck her there, unfortunately, you know as well as I do, Harriet, those people are useless at anything that actually matters outside their own little bubble, but inside it, they know exactly how to make everyone's life miserable." Sirius said.
"Hey, Auror right here!" Tonks cut in.
"That proves every..." Sirius started to say.
"Do not finish that sentence, Sirius, or God have mercy." Tonks said.
"Dumbledore's doing his best with the situation. We just have to hold out, and it'll sort itself out eventually. His hands are tied, but he surely has a plan." Remus said, and at that, three sets of eyes rolled in unison.
"Anyway, that woman needs to fall down a very long flight of stairs." Sirius said, entirely too casually for the suggestion contained in it.
"Working on it." Harriet said, equally casual, and left it at that.
After that, she started talking about everything that had happened with the Slytherins, just how much Malfoy had it out for her, and exactly how she'd chosen to respond to it.
That worried Sirius and Tonks both, but they understood well enough that it was probably a good sign, her actually saying it out loud in a room full of people who cared about her, rather than keeping it bottled up somewhere. Yuna, for her part, listened with quiet amusement, trusting Harriet enough by now to know she'd never bite off more than she genuinely believed she could chew.
Remus, for his part, had been listening more carefully than he'd been letting on, and once Harriet mentioned, almost in passing, the general shape of a few of the more physical confrontations she'd been in over the term, without any of the actual details, his expression shifted into something far less amused.
"Harriet." His voice had that particular tone, the one she recognized instantly from every lecture he'd ever given her, even if the actual number of those lectures wasn't especially high, given how little he'd actually been present in her life, patient, careful, and completely unwilling to let something slide just because she wanted it to. "You cannot keep escalating every single conflict into something physical. There are proper channels, people you can go to, Dumbledore, the professors …"
"Come on, Remus, let her actually reconnect with us first. We've got good food and good company here, and let's not pretend we didn't go looking for trouble with Slytherins ourselves back in the day." Sirius said, mildly amused.
"That was different. From what I understand, she's handling this entirely on her own, and not looking for help anywhere else. That's what Dumbledore's there for." Remus said.
"Right, because that's worked out so well for me so far, I mean asking him help." Harriet said, flat.
"It takes time, Harriet, you know that."
"It's exactly the point you're making, Remus, you just don't like how it sounds out loud." She leaned back in her chair, arms crossed. "You want to lecture me about how I should react while I'm the one actually living inside the situation you're describing from a comfortable distance? Save it. I've had enough people tell me how I should have handled being nearly killed to last me a lifetime, and none of them were there for it. If all you've got to offer is 'do nothing, go ask for help from someone who's doing absolutely nothing himself,' then that explains a lot, actually... anyway, you don't know what you're talking about."
The table went quiet for a second. Tonks's hair flickered, briefly, to a shade of grey that suggested she was deciding whether to intervene.
Remus, to his credit, didn't back down entirely, but he didn't push further either. "I worry about you. That's all this is."
Tonks, for her part, felt a certain pull to defend Remus, but understood well enough that this wasn't the moment for it, and said what she actually thought instead. "For what it's worth, I think you're handling it, the fighting, I mean, better than half the Aurors I trained with would, at your age or any other, though I'll admit not many people would even think to train alone the way you apparently have... Don't let him make you feel bad about it. He's just a worrywart, it's not personal."
"It's a little personal." Remus muttered.
Sirius, watching the whole exchange with the particular delight of a man who hadn't had this much normal family chaos around his table in over a decade, finally cleared his throat.
"Speaking of proper channels, though," he said, glancing at Yuna, "any progress on my actual case? Or are we still stuck in the same lovely limbo I've been enjoying since summer?"
This was the part Yuna had actually been waiting for. "Better than limbo, as it turns out, though we're not quite there yet. Putting a bounty on Pettigrew's head is actually going to help a lot with all this, whether he ever gets captured or not."
"Let her continue handling it. Whatever paperwork, whatever legal maneuvering needs to happen, follow her lead exactly. I mean that. Don't try to be clever about it, don't try to handle any part of it yourself, just do what she tells you, when she tells you." Harriet said, with enough weight behind it that Sirius actually sat up a little straighter.
"That serious, is it?"
"She got the Dursleys to hand over their entire lives to her, without much effort really, and that wasn't even the actual priority. Your freedom is a considerably higher priority to both of us." Harriet said. "So yes. That serious."
Sirius glanced at Remus, who shrugged, clearly having already had some version of this conversation without Harriet in the room. "We've actually had some movement already, since you ask." Remus said. "Pettigrew's been spotted, twice now, once near a farm outside Ottery St Catchpole, stealing food out of someone's henhouse, and once again a few weeks later closer to the coast. For now it's all still just rumors, nothing's actually been confirmed."
"I can actually confirm that much, for what it's worth, that the rumors exist, and that they're taking up a fair amount of space at the office lately." Tonks said.
"So he's mostly confirmed alive." Harriet said.
"That's the actual win here," Yuna said, speaking up for the first time since they'd arrived. Until now, she had been content to simply watch the family dynamic unfold from the doorway, with the quiet interest of someone filing away information for later use. "You don't need him in custody to get a trial moving. You just need enough doubt in the official story that the Wizengamot can't keep ignoring it. And the more doubts there are, the better the chances that your case gets reopened. We'll move from there."
"That reminds me why I'm paying you again." Sirius said, though the grin on his face gave away exactly how relieved he actually was.
"You're not paying me. Harriet is. Or, more accurately, I pay myself. I just happen to be very, very good at what I do." Yuna said, entirely unbothered.
"She really is." Harriet said. "Terrifyingly good, actually."
Sirius laughed, properly this time, the sound real and unguarded rather than something he was forcing, and reached over to ruffle Harriet's hair the way he probably shouldn't have been allowed to get away with anymore at her age, and did anyway.
Later, once lunch was properly underway and the conversation had drifted into safer, lighter topics, helped along by Tonks somehow managing to trip over absolutely nothing on her way back from the kitchen and sending half a stack of plates crashing to the floor, the whole thing finally settled into something resembling a normal family lunch. The tension gradually melted away, allowing everyone to relax and simply enjoy each other's company.