Against all her better instincts, Harriet somehow falls for the idiot blonde.

It wasn't a sudden revelation, but throughout an entire year, Bettino never stopped visiting her, bringing her gifts and babbles everytime. After her suspicion turned into exasperation, she saw that Bettino was just another human.

There was always an air of reluctance around him, regardless of the fact that he was the one to visit her. Whenever she opened up just a little more, he brightened, and the corners of his eyes turned up just a tiny bit as he broke out into a smile.

Then Harriet realized she had been inflicted with lethal lovesickness, and the little flickering flame inside her roared to an inferno whenever she thought of him.

One day, when Bettino came over to her little cottage, she took him to the waterfalls up the river. After both of them made it to the top, one laughing, one whining, but both smiling, Harriet stood up on her tiptoes and kissed him.

Bettino didn't say anything, but he pulled her closer and she felt the a pair of curved lips against her own.

Later that evening, feet in the water and hand in hand, they both said: "Hey, can I tell you something?"

("Aren't you a bit wimpy for a mafia boss?")

("I always knew you were special.")

They held each other's hearts in their hands. A wide open sky and a heavy rolling fog, Bettino lit up her world and Harriet gave him a home.

The next summer, when Teddy paid his favorite (only) aunt a visit, it was to the Cavallone Mansion on the northern coast of Sicily instead of a cottage squirreled away in a hidden part of France.

"That was fast," Teddy remarked drily, completely unimpressed by the grandeur around him, "your fall from grace was faster than Uncle George predicted."

"And how long exactly was George's prediction?" Harriet asked, tone taking on the same quality of sandpaper as her godson's. One day George was going to get an earful about adding oil to the fire by taking a Marauder's son under his wing.

The corridors were filled with ancient paintings and priceless china and the floor was a polished walnut. Teddy made judgemental noises eveytime he walked past anything newer than the Baroque style.

"I think it was around a century," Teddy smirked, laughing at Harriet's indignant spluttering.

Harriet fumed. Oh, George was going to get it the next time she saw him. "Anyways, you see how this place is slightly fancy right? You really need to see their finances."

Three hours later, Bettino walked in on Harriet ripping his accountants a new one and Teddy snarking about their incompetence.

"Uncle Bettino, there you are!" Teddy said pleasantly when he saw Bettino's head peek around the doorway. "I need to have a talk with you!"

"It is a tradition for each head of house and their guardians to plant a tree in this garden," Bettino beamed at Harriet as he carefully placed the orange royal poinciana sapling into the ground. "Each person picks their own tree, and the color of the tree tends to correspond to the flame types of that individual."

The sun bore down (too brightly) on the garden, and Harriet grunted from her plot twenty feet away. She still didn't know why she had actually accepted the idiot's request, but she could be honest to herself and admit that being here made her happy. She carefully patted the soil around her sapling, a beautiful violet lilac whose petals she could see intermingling with orange flowers. "Your tree suits you, Bettino. Loud and ostentatious."

"You're so mean, Harriet!" Bettino whined, but Harriet cold hear the happiness buried underneath. "But still, I'm happy that you are here with me."

It was the mystery of life, how Harriet had gotten herself attached to such an idiot. But instead of replying to Bettino, Harriet looked at from her position on the ground. "I can't wait to see these trees reaching up to the sky together."

"When spring comes, the first lilacs will bloom," Bettino grinned. "Let's come see them together!"

Harriet smiled and took Bettino's hand. The idiot still didn't know that the lilacs in her heart had alrerady bloomed.

[line]

The next spring, Bettino knelt down on one knee in front of the lilac and the royal poinciana, and gave her a simple emerald ring. ("I don't deserve you," he smiled, "you are so strong and so smart, you could have anything in the world.")

Harriet kissed him. ("But I want nothing but you," she whispered, "because you are my world.")

She knew about his insecurities - how her flame was so much stronger, how she was so confident, how she was so courageous. So Harriet showed him everything - how she couldn't stand small spaces, how she woke at night screaming, how she was scared that he would leave her one day.

In this world, they we're all human. No one was perfect, is perfect, or will be perfect. But Bettino was there to life her up when she fell, and she was there to help him stand.

One year later, they welcomed a new member to the family. On February Second, Valentino Arcturus Cavallone opened soon-to-be emerald eyes and screamed in a crying Bettino's ear.

"We're calling him Valentino," Harriet said stubbornly. "He came into this world almost on Valentine's Day."

Bettino flailed. "But-" he withered under Harriet's petulant glare. "His name is Valentino."

"Boss is so whipped," the mob of bodyguards pressing their ears against the door murmured. The two occupants of the two pointedly ignored them.

"At least Valentino means brave in Italian," Bettino sighed. "Welcome to the family, Valentino Arcturus Cavallone!"

A cheer went up outside the room.

"We're having a moment in here!" Harriet called out, rolling her eyes at Bettino, who scratched his head sheepishly.

When Harriet had first found out she was pregnant, she panicked. Her childhood wasn't the greatest, and her teenage years were equally depressing. What if her own demons caught up with her? What if she couldn't take care of a baby properly? So she barged into Bettino's office the moment she found out, and spewed out an incomprehensible flood of words somewhere along the lines of I'm pregnant and I'm scared.

It took her husband a minute to process the words, but the moment he understood he picked her up and swung her around with a blinding smile on his face. Later, after both of them had gone various stages of hysterical sobbing, earth-shattering fear, and another round of giggles, Bettino managed to calm down.

"Our child would never have to worry about being loved," he kissed her forehead, "because he has the greatest mother in the world by his side."

During the months of her pregnancy, Harriet sequestered herself in the finance department and went over all the records with a fine-teeth comb.

She found the most ridiculous expenses. Five hundred thousand for a statue of a flaming horse, and ten thousand for a lawn makeover were some of her favorites, considering the fact that the flaming horse statue was a fountain centerpiece and the lawn looked like any other lawn in Surrey.

Along with Bettino, she caught some nifflers in the treasury department, and restores a few zeroes back onto the family balance.

She never finishes with sorting all the external connections, because there's suddenly a screaming newborn devouring all her time. Valentino was a crybaby, neither Bettino or her had slept more than more than three hours straight for the last two months, and Bettino often looks like he's about to cry along with his song.

(She's not going to mention the time she found Bettino holding a diaper and sobbing his heart out, while Valentino stared up at him from the changing table.)

Her sweet son was adorable. Rosy cheeks, emerald eyes, and a head full of golden hay. One day, when Bettino and Harriet took him out to see the autumn leaves, he said his first word(s).

"Mapa! Pama!" Valentino pointed to her first, then at Bettino.

Harriet couldn't stop her laugh at Bettino's stupefied face. She turned Valentino toward his father, "Look at your Pama, Valentino! Say Pama again!"

"Pama! Pama!"

"Wait no! Say Mapa!"

Then according to mafia tradition (why was that a thing), Harriet and Bettino needed to officially present Valentino Arcturus Cavallone as the heir to the family on his first birthday. At that gossip party (Harriet stubbornly refuses to it call it anything else), certain accidents happen.

Well, she said accidents, Bettino said schemes.

Maybe one or two people choke on thin air after insulting her family, or maybe someone who is a little too generous with their thoughts ends up taking a dip in the punch, but it was a party, so naturally people would get drunk.

To Harriet, time seemed to pass like a movie, with significant events standing out. Valentino taking his first steps, then falling on his face and crying. Teddy coming over during at staring in horror at the baby who drooling over his essays. A trip back to England, watching Bettino get threatened by Weasley males and a single Malfoy, and everyone else cooing over Valentino.

Two years passed, but for Harriet, it was the blink of an eye.

And then she receives a letter with an invitation.

Author's Note: Well, I'm clearly not dead, just stupidly lazy. I have no clue when the next chapter will be up, but I've posted a teaser for the next chapter on the Livejournal. Things might be moving fast, but that's just me trying to get to the plot.