Joe's Note: It has certainly been a while for this story. Over two years, to be precise. Every story has its day when it comes to my muse, I suppose, and we're back at work on this one. One major note for people coming into this chapter: I went back and replaced Aayla in the previous chapter. We hadn't really done anything with her, so it felt like a safe change to make. But to be honest? The list of wives I started out intending to use and the list of wives I finalized are two very different things. Aayla became a bit of an outlier in that all the other characters were my player characters - or in Janet's case, the character I mained - from various games. So I decided to replace Aayla with my more youthful and quirky Togruta player character from Star Wars RPG. In addition, I went back and cleaned up all four previous chapters to fix some spelling and grammar issues. Nothing as worthwhile of a reread as the swap from Aayla to Chadaara Ko but I'm sure anyone who's archiving this for rereading will appreciate it. And with that? Let's get to said update.
Dedications & Thanks: To Nicholas, Howard, Samuel, Dale, Alexander, Tibor, Alonsis2, MJ, Daniel, Christopher, Stephen, Crusifikz70, Chris, Fablesrogue, Morgan, Janne, Joseph, Jason, mpop, RileyWestfall, bloodylord, Zachary, Marc, Ziryo, Timothy, Leigh, Chris, George, Koby, Dimitria, William, Frank, Mitch, Mauday, Stephane, Ken, Warslick, Paul, Pat, Edward, Elliot, Roman, Joel, Warren, Jess, and mikel for sponsoring me on , and making it easier for me to spend more of my time writing.

"Cheipystri. Cheipystri. Chay-pih-stree. What an odd name. Are we sure that your ancestors weren't in contact with… maybe Chadaara's people? Or Sorcha's?"

"Even if my kind are floating around somewhere in this universe, have made it to this galaxy, and visited this planet? Cheipystri is definitely not a Togruta word. Sorry."

"Can't be one of our words based purely on the fact that the Awoken don't have their own language." That earned Sorcha odd looks from her companions, making her shrug defensively. "What? It's not like I get a say in something that important or anything. Personally, though, I've always wondered why we don't. Sure, the Awoken are descended from the humans who were touched by the Darkness during the Collapse, but the Reef's Awoken developed their culture in isolation for hundreds of years before making contact with Earth again. They should have either forged a language blended from those spoken by the first Awoken or created an entirely new one by now or… something. But they haven't. And I don't know why."

Harry rolled his eyes, silently thankful for the thoroughly inane conversation as he did his best to ignore the various looks the group was receiving as they made their way through Diagon Alley. Fear was by the the most common, although suspicion wasn't terribly far behind. Hatred was a close third, and far more common than he would have liked to see on the faces of those who were supposed to be the 'good' people he was fighting for. He did his best to push those thoughts from his mind, though; he'd known this would happen and obsessing over it wouldn't help anything. "It's a compound word. A Cornish one, to be precise. Whoever built it evidently liked names that are blunt and to the point; it translates to 'magical house'." After a brief stretch of silence, Harry found himself the recipient of the odd looks that the others had been bestowing upon Sorcha. "There was a property summary document in the folder that Glassjaw gave me. I actually read it while you lot were passing around the pictures and debating about what renovations you think the place needs. While the house obviously looked like it would suit us, I wanted to make sure of it before agreeing to move into it."

The group continued walking in silence for a few more seconds, which was then broken almost inevitably by Janet deciding to share her two knuts on the matter. Harry was still trying to decide how he felt about that tendency of the redhead's; while it came in handy at times like this, he felt like it'd become less endearing over time if she didn't appreciate the concept of comfortable silence. "While I can't speak for the others? I for one am boggling that there's actually a language on this planet called 'Cornish'. That's just so strange. Why Cornish? Do they grow corn there? And since a lot of languages are the same as demonyms, that means there are Cornish people… from what, Cornia?"

After considerable internal debate, Harry decided to humor Janet's rambling and treat it like a serious question. Mostly because he didn't know her well enough yet to be certain whether she was genuinely curious or being sarcastically derogatory. "Cornwall, actually. Cornish people - and the Cornish language - are from Cornwall. It's where the Potters are from and where our ancestral seat is, so I wouldn't make fun of it too much. And there's no corn, at least to the best of my knowledge. Cornish is a Celtic language, and 'kernou' means 'peninsula'. The original settlers were the Cornovii; 'peninsula people'." Hah. And the Hermione of his last life chided him for 'wasting time' reading up on the area after finding out that the Potters hailed from Cornwall. Showed what she knew.

Before Janet could react to his little history lesson, there was a litany of pops as a group of dark-robed figures appeared out of thin air in front of Harry and his companions. While most of the Death Eaters were masked, one very familiar figure continued to eschew hers to take full advantage of the fear and terror that her infamous visage inspired. "Hello again, wee baby Potter." Bellatrix drew her wand with an almost indolent casualness, clearly not expecting any sort of organized resistance to her presence despite the fact that she was a notorious - and wanted - criminal. For that matter, the fact that six Hogwarts students had managed to hold off twelve of Voldemort's best at the Department of Mysteries until help could arrive had evidently slipped her dementor-addled mind. One thing that didn't escape her, however? His unusual new companions. Her eyes narrowed as they swept back and forth over the group critically. "What happened, Potter? Did your friends wise up after seeing what I did to dear cousin Sirius? Are you reduced to working with beasts now?"

While Chadaara appeared to be bemused by the taunt, Dianessa was considerably less so. Reaching behind her back, she drew her frighteningly large hammer and let the crystalline head drag across the cobblestones, kicking up a spray of sparks as she swung it upward into a ready position. "Would you care to repeat that, mage?"

With it becoming increasingly obvious that a confrontation between the two groups was inevitable, Chadaara unhooked a pair of strange, black and silver cylinders from her belt that reminded Harry of police batons even as Sorcha drew a positively massive revolver from the holster at her right hip. Presumably not requiring a weapon to fight, Janet instead chose to sidle up on Harry's left and bump her shoulder against his gently as she stared at Bellatrix with an uncertain expression. "Cousin Sirius? Psycho Goth Chick is related to the guy whose will just got read? Does that make her some sort of family to you too? Because if someone killing her is going to be a heart-wrenchingly emotional ordeal for you, I should probably get a head start on figuring out how to help you cope with it…"

Harry shot Janet a surprised look even as he drew his own wand; mental health was one area where the wizarding world lagged far, far behind their muggle counterparts and nobody had ever bothered to ask him how he was handling… well, anything that had happened to him. But that was a lengthy conversation for another time, when they weren't staring down the wands of a dozen or so Death Eaters. "I think Bellatrix is something like a fourth cousin, maybe once removed? We can look it up at home if you really care. But no, it's not going to bother me to see her put down like the rabid dog she is. Not after what she did to my godfather." Furrowing his brow, he tried to figure out what his first move would be when things inevitably went south. Sorcha was standing in front of him but just enough off-center to make it impossible for him to whip his wand up and send a spell past her at Bellatrix and her companions. Bugger. Given that they were newly arrived, the chances of the Death Eaters having raised anti-apparition wards was nonexistent. He'd never apparated more than one person before, but as long as he kept the hop reasonable… could he avoid the seemingly inevitable by apparating them all away?

…given the sheer mass of Dianessa alone? Probably not.

But before Harry could settle on a definitive first move much less concoct any sort of larger strategy that might see them all walk away from the encounter, Sorcha decided to take matters into her own hands. "Well if it's okay to just go ahead and kill her? I've been wanting to try this ever since my Ghost helped me decrypt a handful of old, pre-Golden Age hard drives that we found in Moscow. Just haven't had an opponent who speaks English." Much to Harry's confusion, the Awoken slowly holstered her oversized revolver before stepping forward and pointing at the robed figure directly to Bellatrix's right. "You there. Yes, you. What's your name?"

Despite being unable to see their opponent's face, Harry got the distinct sense that he was confused by being addressed. After looking back and forth between Sorcha and Bellatrix several times, the Death Eater cleared his throat nervously before responding. "…Bletchley. Miles Bletchley." That brought Harry up short. Bletchley? The bloke who'd played keeper for Slytherin's quidditch team this past year? Talk about making poor career choices…

Sorcha nodded sagely at the answer, even though logically she couldn't possibly have any idea who Bletchley was either in general or in relation to Harry. "Nice to meet you, Miles. Today's your lucky day; I'm going to let you walk away from this clusterfuck that you got dragged into through your terrible life decisions. But Miles, before you go… I need you to do one thing for me." Grinned widely, she raised her right hand and… pointed at Bellatrix? "Would you do me a favor and tell Miss Bella goodbye?"

"Do what now?"

"I said… tell. Miss Bella. Goodbye."

Even though he was quite obviously confused by the command - a sentiment that Harry both understood and shared at the moment - Bletchley turned out to be amenable enough to it. Turning to face Bellatrix, he offered her a hesitant wave. "Bye, Miss Bella."

Golden motes of light flared into existence, swirling their way down Sorcha's arm and coalescing into a revolver that was easily as large as the one holstered at her hip, the gun gleaming gold in the sunlight for a split second before bursting into flames. The Awoken sighted carefully before squeezing the trigger, loosing a single blazing shot that shattered Bellatrix's hastily-raised shield before continuing on to strike home. But if that alone hadn't been enough to make Harry's jaw drop, what followed definitely would have. Whatever Sorcha fired didn't just ignite the witch's body, it caused Bellatrix to detonate violently and spread what were clearly unnatural flames to Bletchley and two other nearby Death Eaters. As the men flailed, screamed, and eventually succumbed to the golden flames, Sorcha looked back at him and grinned smugly. "That was most definitely worth the sixty year wait."

Sixty years? Just how old was Sorcha? Before he could ask that - and possibly get himself in trouble in the process - a pair of unfamiliar snap-hiss noises as alien as both the weapons and their owner drew Harry's attention to Chadaara, watching as the Togruta gracefully spun twin swords made of blue light around her body as she sized up the opposition. "We're actually allowed to kill the bad guys here? Out-kriffing-standing. I've been getting so tired of chopping up droids just to knock out the sentients giving them orders. This is going to be a nice change of pace." Hefting one glowing… light… sword… baton… thing, she sent it spinning through the air toward the remaining Death Eaters, decapitating one before making a sharp tugging motion that brought the weapon flying back through the air to her hand. "I'm a defender of the peace, and sometimes the best defense is a good offense."

"For the naaru! For the light!" Evidently taking her companions' attacks as a sign that it was open season on the Death Eaters, Dianessa bent her powerful legs before lunging forward as she swung her hammer. But while one Death Eater manage to dive out of the way with a remarkably high-pitched shriek, the one behind him wasn't nearly as lucky, taking the blow full on to the ribs. The impact sent him rocketing through the air until a nearby wall interrupted his flight; from the nasty crunch and the way the man tumbled to the ground bonelessly, Harry doubted he'd be getting up any time soon. If he was even still alive, that was.

From there, the battle quickly became an almost farcical rout. Crazy as she might have been, Bellatrix had evidently provided some sort of leadership and discipline to the group that they were completely unable to function without, the nine-strong remaining Death Eaters descending into utter disarray with her sudden death. Then again, Harry somehow doubted that whatever training the men had received covered what to do when your target was protected by a giant goat girl wielding an oversized hammer. Or a girl with a gun. Or how to protect oneself against light swords or… Harry's estimation of Michelle's choices inched a bit higher as Chadaara threw one hand out, wandlessly hurling a Death Eater into the path of Dianessa's hammer. And then there was Janet, who…

…stayed right next to him the whole time. Peering down at the redhead, Harry bumped his hip against hers gently to get her attention as he returned his wand to its holster. "Aren't you going to help? Or do your powers have some sort of defensive use? Or… something?"

"Says the guy standing here watching his wives do all the work." Janet shot Harry a wink and a grin to soften the retort, continuing on to… say pretty much exactly what was on Harry's mind, albeit far more concisely than he would have managed. "But no, they're doing a perfectly good job all by themselves. If they weren't, I would risk it. But there's too good a chance that I'd end up getting in the way if I just threw myself in there. If I throw a bad sting and hit Dianessa, it could throw her off her rhythm and endanger her life. Or worse, if I fly in and startle her? I could end up a black and yellow smear on the end of her hammer. No thanks. Not keen on getting our cute piece of tail injured or killed, and even less keen on dying from a friendly fire incident. Once we settle in, we can spend the next week or two training together, and get to know how each of us fights. Until then, we're just liabilities to each other. I'm surprised this is going as well as it is."

Sorcha let out a low chuckle before stepping back to take up a similar position on Harry's right, holstering her pistol so that she could switch to a large rifle instead. "Speak for yourself; I'm used to fighting with a fireteam and having to work around others from at range. Dianessa fights like one of the Titans where I come from, while Chadaara is definitely a Warlock." Pausing, she snapped off a shot that decimated the kneecap of a Death Eater that - for reasons completely unknown to Harry - had decided to try sneaking up on Dianessa from behind. Peering back over her shoulder, the purple-skinned girl raised an eyebrow before casually pulping the man's head with a single swing of her hammer and moving on. "…Dianessa is definitely a Titan."

Fighting back the urge to vomit, Harry cast his gaze about in search of pretty much anything else that could hold his attention. That proved difficult given that in what was probably just over a minute, the three girls had completely decimated the entire dozen-strong force of Death Eaters that had tried to ambush him. Several were quite obviously dead in the streets, charred by Sorcha's initial attack or mangled by Dianessa's hammer or… Harry's eyes came to rest on the headless Death Eater. While he didn't necessarily share Dumbledore's belief that nobody was beyond redemption, he hadn't been responsible - directly or indirectly - for a man's death in years. He'd forgotten how heavily that knowledge weighed on his conscience.

"We should go." Janet tugged insistently on his sleeve, waiting for him to look down at her before nodding in the direction of the carnage. "Obviously I'm a stranger in a strange land here, but I'm pretty sure that anywhere even remotely civilized is going to believe in law and order. Which means they'll frown on massacres in their streets, and I really don't want to be standing at the scene of the many and varied crimes when the magical cops get here."

A fair point, especially given that while Janet and the others existed in the literal sense and presumably also on paper thanks to whatever magic had brought them into being as his wives? They were still - as she'd so succinctly put it - strangers in a strange land, and far too many questions would be asked. Assuming of course that the aurors accepted self-defense as a justifiable reason to kill a dozen Death Eaters. If they didn't, his wives' origins would be the least of their problems. "Agreed. Problem is, I'm not sure how I'm going to get you all out of here without using the floo, and the nearest public fireplace is all the way in the Leaky Cauldron. Janet, maybe if you shrink then I can side along both you and one of the others, but that would still mean leaving two of you behind."

Sorcha cleared her throat, offering a nervous smile as attention turned to her. "I know next to nothing about your magic and so this might be an incredibly stupid question, but if carrying capacity is a problem with… whatever it is that you're planning to do?" The air above the Awoken's right shoulder wavered as a strange, decidedly artificial object shimmered into existence. A collection of moving triangular points around a central sphere, it pivoted back and forth several times before pointing its lone glowing eye at Harry. "Could you do it while carrying just Janet and my Ghost?"

"I have the perfect girl for you to send Harry!"

Brought up short by the interruption, Michelle trailed off and raised a pink eyebrow before looking past Liara T'Soni to the group of people who had barged into her office. Or more accurately, two of her coworkers had barged into her office - blurting out the same sentence with eerie synchronicity - while two unfamiliar women lingered behind them in the hallway. "Well, this is awkward. I thought we'd agreed that Liara would be Harry's fifth wife? Hence me sitting here for the last two hours trying to sell her on the idea. Pro tip: trying to manipulate a century-old asari with multiple doctorates into doing what you want is a lot harder than it sounds."

Amelia and Lucienne gestured back and forth at each other as they edged their way deeper into the room, Lucienne finally rolling her eyes with a huff and deciding to take the lead on their joint intrusion. "I agreed that Liara was a good idea because you told me she was a doctor. Then I had my own Liara pass through, and I found out that she's a scientist. She has doctorates in stuff that have literally nothing to do with being a doctor. Which means that sending her down would break a cardinal rule when it comes to viable battle harems."

Her other eyebrow rising in genuine surprise, Michelle looked from Lucienne to Amelia with a healthy mixture of amusement and confusion. Given that she was the first to pull something like this, at least as far as she knew… "Since when do we have rules for viable battle harems?"

"I made an entire list when you first came to me for help implementing your insane plan. I forwarded you a copy. Didn't you read it?" Lucienne's disbelieving gaze slowly slid from Michelle's face to the giant pile of papers sitting in her inbox and then back. Sighing despondently, the blonde shook her head before reaching forward and tugging one thoroughly unremarkable folder out of the tower, dropping it in the center of Michelle's desk for her perusal. "Next time, I'll deliver it myself to make sure you actually read it. Moving on? While you managed to get something right by sending Harry a set of wives with a variety of skills, you're still lacking diversity in a key way. As it stands, you have three DPS wives and a tank wife. Liara is somewhere between a DPS wife and a support wife, which would be fine if you had picked her instead of one of the existing three. What you're still missing… the key to a guaranteed successful mission… is a healer wife. Hence withdrawing approval for your doctor who isn't actually a doctor."

While a small part of Michelle couldn't help wondering exactly what 'DPS' meant and by extension what made someone a 'DPS wife', a far larger part of her was more concerned with- "Wait, that's the reason that we're here?" Amelia looked from Michelle to Lucienne and back, visibly surprised by the revelation. Given that their fellow Reaper was a terrible actress with an even worse poker face, it was likely a genuine reaction. "I thought we were trying to dispose of some of our own problem clients while helping Michelle fuck with Harry for pulling one over on her with the whole Potter ring thing?"

Michelle let out an exasperated groan that was drowned out by Liara's indignant response, the asari instinctively switching to Common Thessian and showering the Reaper with what sounded like none-too-friendly words. Not that Michelle could blame her under the circumstances; if Amelia was dumping 'problem clients' onto Michelle for inclusion in her plan, and Amelia was the one who'd recommended Liara for participation? What could that possibly make the young maiden in her Reaper's eyes? Clearing her throat loudly, Michelle waited for Liara to trail to a stop and flush a darker shade of blue in embarrassment before turning her attention to Lucienne. "Well, seeing as how I'm pretty sure the two of you just destroyed any chance I had of convincing the lovely but already reluctant Miss T'Soni to help me out…" Crossing her arms over her chest in a vain attempt to offset her blush, Liara gave a decisive nod. "What have you got for me?"

"Since I honestly thought that we were still only doing the 'dump the undesirables' thing here?" Amelia took a step to the side, beckoning her choice forward before gesturing to the blonde like a prize on a game show. "I'd like you to meet Sera, a lovely young elven archer from a very swords 'n sorcery sort of world. Currently here for the seventh time since she joined Inquisitor Adaar's quest to return order and stability to Thedas. This time, she got impaled from behind with a sword while admiring how well the inquisitor filled out a pair of leather pants. Bonus points toward fucking Harry over? She's a magic-hating lesbian whose tastes mean that she'll more than likely try to convince Dianessa to run off with her when the whole Voldemort thing is taken care of. Probably succeed, from what I've seen of my versions of Harry."

Oh, what a positively brilliant idea that was, Michelle thought with a derisive snort. Send Harry a wife who was positively wrong for him on literally every conceivable level. That wouldn't, say, compromise his will to fight and increase the chances of him ending up back in front of her for the thirty-eighth time. She didn't even want to think of how big a black mark that would be, given that she'd broken out one of His plans - a supposedly foolproof plan - this time around. "The only reason I'm not automatically saying 'no' followed by 'get out' is because there's a chance that Lucienne brought me someone even worse than you did. Lucienne, please, prove me wrong."

Lucienne scoffed before waving one hand and then the other, returning first Liara and then Sera to the waiting room to free up a bit of space so that her own candidate could make her way into the office. "While she's here for the very first time, Eorzea is home to enough adventurers that I feel like she wouldn't be missed if you took her. Meet Kikyo Iteya, a Xaela Au Ra astrologian with a fair amount of training in the path of the paladin. In essence? She's a dragon girl whose skills are the inverse of Dianessa's: a healer who deals in protection in a pinch. And her aesthetic is right up the wizarding world's alley."

Well, save for the part where she was a blue-skinned girl with a tail, horns, and other visible signs of her inhumanity, of course. Loathe as she was to admit it, Lucienne had a point: not including someone with any real degree of skill when it came to healing was an oversight on her part. While Chadaara could serve that role in a pinch and so could Dianessa, neither were truly gifted when it came to the healing arts. Given that Harry and his harem were fighting a war? That was the kind of mistake that could lead to Harry's untimely return to her office. And so Michelle looked Kikyo up and down appraisingly, deemed her more than cute enough for Harry's tastes - especially given his thoughts about Dianessa - and then turned her attention back to Lucienne. "Is she sexually incompatible with Harry, does she hate the nature of Harry's existence, or have some other giant gaping personality flaw that would make her worse for Harry than Sera?"

"Don't think so?"

"In that case… Kikyo. I still have two candidates left to interview now that Lucienne has scared off my frontrunner, but assuming that you're a better fit for my plan than either of them? How do you feel about the name Kikyo Peverell?"