Nagini update: Yep, she is still in the house, and no, the adults have not discovered her yet.

WARNING: Lots of swearing in this chapter.

Chapter 16 - Persephone Luna Potter

Albus could barely concentrate on the meeting. His mind was restless.

Harry had time travelled.

Harry had defeated Tom.

Harry had married Andromeda Black, a witch two decades his senior, and had three children, raised four, with her.

Harry was out of his influence now, Severus had slipped his leash, and the Potter children?

Albus might have been the most powerful wizard of their age, but the Potters weren't from his age, and with their titles, powers, connections, and the chance he might drive Harry further away… he could not afford to push.

But he burned to know what more the future held.

Where was Tom now? Did they know?

"Where is Karkaroff?" Olympe demanded.

"He isn't coming," Severus said with a long-suffering sigh.

"Why not?" she asked.

"His message said there was some trouble with his students. A few parents were involved and he couldn't make it out."

"All our discussions must wait then," she said, "Or we will have to have them again."

"Hardly," Cornelius said, "Different countries, different laws, we would have had to talk to you individual at some point. How many horses did you say you were bringing over the border?"

And so their meeting dragged on, Albus hardly able to pretend to care.

Teddy spent his first two weeks dodging questions and hiding in his room. Which sucked big time as none of his three friends were in his house.

He saw Astoria in a few of his classes, but they weren't able to talk because anytime Teddy opened his mouth everyone stopped to listen.

Listen to the Time Traveller.

Teddy didn't have the heart to yell at them all, Astoria had tried, but they had all ignored her. Luna seemed to be getting bullied worse than ever, and Hermione…

They were hounding her almost as badly as they were him.

In other words, the first two weeks were bad. Really, really bad.

Finally having enough, Teddy wrote home to his godfather asking for help.

He wasn't quite sure what Mapoppy would do, but deep in his bones, he knew it would be effective.

Harry was headed up the stairs to tell everyone lunch was ready when his heart stopped at the sight of her.

His wife, his beautiful, beautiful wife, stood barefoot on top of the marble steps and her body…

Gone were the lush curves and her ever-growing baby bump. Her dark eyes were sunken, her cheekbones sharp under her sallow skin.

He tried to say her name, but only a croak came out.

Is this an illusion or a curse?

He took the steps two at a time and approached her. She hunched away from him as he neared. He slowed, carefully outstretching a hand toward her.

She looked at him as if she expected him to beat her, like she was some feral animal who had never seen a human before and was convinced bigger meant meaner. She held very still under his touch. He ran that hand down her sleeved arm, but it wasn't until he cupped her face with his other hand, until his skin met hers, did he realize his mistake.

Her eyes were too dark, too heavy-lidded, and her hair was darker, sleeker, than Andromeda's.

He should stun her, he should kill her. She watched him, waiting for him to do it, allowing him the opportunity to hurt her if he wished.

Harry tilted Bellatrix's head down so he could lay a soft kiss to her brow.

She let out a long sigh as his spell caught her, a sleeping charm he had learned for Persephone. He lifted Bellatrix, his sister-in-law, into his arms as her body went slack, a puppet with cut strings. She smelled like Andromeda's conditioner as if she had just had a shower.

"Harry."

He spun, looking up the left stairway Andromeda hesitated on. Guilt and worry showed across her face.

"What did you do?" he asked, voice low.

"Harry-"

"She can't be here, Andromeda."

"You don't understand, Harry, she's mine again," she pleaded as she came down the steps.

"You think she isn't dangerous? I saw what she did the last time she escaped."

"She won't-"

"The hell she won't. She isn't yours, she is a Lestrange and she was put in prison for a reason."

Andromeda shook her head, "She doesn't belong there."

"The Longbottoms-"

"I healed the Longbottoms! The world turned its back on us. There was no one to protect my sisters and I-"

Harry leaned closer to her, Bellatrix held between them, "Did the world turn its back on you, or did you turn your back on them? You were the one who didn't protect your sisters."

Pain flashed through her eyes, swallowed by anger.

Good, Harry thought, we can be angry together.

"How dare-"

"How dare you put our children in danger!" Harry roared. "Are you so desperate to rewrite the past that you've chosen your sisters over our little ones? What the bloody hell are you thinking!?" He jostled the woman in his arms, "Given the chance she would kill us all with a smile."

"She wouldn't-"

"Her actions were as bad as Voldemort's!"

"She's mine! Harry, she's mine, I've been working with her for months. We are her family. She will love you, she would never hurt our babies. You don't know the-"

"No," Harry snarled, "No, I know the mad witch who killed my godfather with a laugh, who tortured my best friend. Tortured her in this house!"

Andromeda reached out to him and he stepped back from her. Her brown eyes swam, "It will be different this time. The cuffs on her wrists and ankles are fueled by her power keep her from using her magic. They can't be taken off until she dies. Bella needs me, she needs help, she has always needed help. She belongs in St. Mungo's not prison. I can take care-"

"Can you?" he snapped. "Restricting her power doesn't stop her from wielding a knife. How are you going to keep her hidden? How are you going to keep her away from my children?"

"I dug up a curse, the Aurors are burying what they think is her body today. I bound Bella to this property with the cuffs, she will be under permanent house arrest. And she isn't a danger to our children."

Harry had never, ever, ever, felt like striking out at Andromeda before. But it was not love in his heart as he looked at her now, it was fury, fury and fear.

He trembled with it. He knew Andromeda wasn't the sanest person in the world, frankly, neither was he, but this was going too far.

"Andromeda, no, she can't stay here. She cannot be allowed near our children."

"You aren't listening to me, she's chang-"

"Listening!?" he repeated. "Listening? I wasn't fucking listening to you? You didn't fucking tell me you were going to do this! And you didn't tell me because you knew, knew, this was a senseless idea. You knew she was too dangerous! If you really believed this was the right decision you would have told me."

Andromeda motioned toward him, "Then you take her back."

"Excuse me?" he asked, his tone sounding like a threat.

Her voice was a challenge, "If you think it is the 'right' thing to do, then you take her back."

You bitch, he thought but did not say aloud. Andromeda knew how much he hated that place, how despite their world's need for a prison, how he thought that the dementors for the prisoners, kissed or otherwise, was a fate worse than death.

He looked down at the woman in her arms. In sleep, her resemblance to Andromeda was uncanny, and Bellatrix's sanity…

What if it had been Persephone?

His youngest daughter was not stable nor was she an independent thinker. She was impressionable in the extreme and her ability to cope with change, with pain-

What if Bellatrix had been like that when she was young?

What would have become of Persephone had she been raised in a home with curality and hatred? What if she had been the oldest and alone for years until her sisters could have been able to help her? What if she had been given to a man who liked to torture, then given to a dark lord who cared for nothing and no one but himself?

Persephone would not have survived it, not intact.

Harry knew Bellatrix, knew her from the stories Narcissa and Andromeda had confided to him. She had not been evil, but Bella had always been broken and when Andromeda had left with Ted, the same not as her wedding to Lestrange…

Could Harry bring her back to Azkaban? Could he submit this broken soul to a sentence of torture until death?

No. Damn Andromeda, but he couldn't do it, he couldn't be the one to make that choice.

"Where are you going?" Andromeda asked.

"I am putting her to bed," he said without looking back as he climbed the stairs. Bella was frightfully light in his arms.

He heard Andromeda's sigh of relief and knew without seeing that she had reached out toward him again.

"Don't touch me," he spat. He agreed that Azkaban was an unjust fate, but he still thought the idea of her being allowed near his children was unacceptable.

Andromeda followed him to one of the spare bedrooms and pulled back the covers for him to lay her down in.

"Where are you going?" Andromeda asked as he turned his back on them.

"I am taking the girls out. We will be home late. Don't wait up," he said and shut the door between them.

Narcissa was attempting to get Morwenna to identify the characters in a book she had just finished while nudging Ophelia to read Fantastic Beasts as she had gone endlessly about how childish she thought her picture books were.

Meanwhile, Persephone was color coding the library. This was harmless, as Narcissa had spelled the entire shelvings to a reset point. Morwenna had taught her the necessity of such a spell when she had one day reordered everything by the second letter and third letter of every second word in the title of the book, and if there was only one word in the title, she would sort the book by the third letter every by every seventh shelf.

That had been revenge for making her redo her math homework from the previous year.

The little brat.

Narcissa couldn't lie though, she loved them, she loved having them here. Their chaos broke through the monotony of the years before them. The years of quiet and properness, of waiting for Lucius to give her something to do, of trying to raise Draco in the old way without the pain from their own families.

Lucius and she had failed Draco in the end. In the end, no one had hurt him more than they had. They had allowed Voldemort into his home, made the wrong friends and likewise, directed Draco down the wrong path as well.

Of course, Draco wasn't exactly liking having his world turned upside down. And Lucius was… depressed.

Narcissa couldn't quite decide what had them so upset. It was more than the Potters, that much was plain.

"Morwenna, I know you read it, tell me something you thought about it?"

The tanned girl with her bright green eyes, gave her a baleful look as if to say, You don't want to know what I thought about the book.

Narcissa opened her mother to chastise the stubborn little monster, she was her mother incarnite, when Harry stormed into the room.

His power road the air, and Narcissa stood up at once. He didn't greet her, or look at her even, he went straight for Persephone. He picked her up, the youngest Potter immediately wrapped her arms around her father's neck, resting her head on his shoulder while petting his hair.

"What's wrong, Harry?" Narcissa asked as Ophelia ran to hug him around the legs.

His eyes flicked toward her, glowing dimly from within from his power. "Go ask your sisters." He held a hand out toward Morwenna.

She skipped to his side, utterly unafraid of his anger, he wasn't angry at them after all. Morwenna asked, "Where are we going?"

"To the zoo, then out to lunch, shopping, and then out for dinner. We won't be back until late." And the moment his hand wrapped around hers, Harry disapparated.

Leaving Narcissa blinking at the suddenly empty room, Harry had never interrupted one her lessons before.

And then what he said sunk in.

Sisters.

She ran out of the room. She passed Lucius' study and then backtracked.

He was sitting at his desk reading the paper, he looked up at her, his grey eyes soft, "Narcissa," he started gently. He stood, walking around his desk to her. He took her hand and his, "there's something you need to know."

Her thoughts were spinning, she was thinking, No, Andromeda couldn't have been that stupid. She wouldn't. She is pregnant, she would not risk-

"Bellatrix died last night."

Narcissa closed her eyes, clinging to her husband's hands like a lifeline.

Fuck.

Lucius tried to pull her into an embrace, but she resisted. Unsheathing her wand, she led him down the hall.

"Narcissa?" he asked.

She went straight to the guest bedroom furthest from them the children's room. And she opened the door, asking the question, "You daft bitch, what were you thinking?"

Andromeda sat at the foot of the bed, Bellatrix was blinking awake, her clean hair spread over the pillow.

"Merlin…" Lucius breathed behind his wife.

"It's alright," Andromeda sighed.

"Your husband seemed to disagree with you. He took the kids."

"Potter left? For good? So much for the honeymoon period."

Narcissa gave Lucius a scornful look at the hopeful note in his voice. "He's pissed, but he would never leave, not for good," she said, before turning back to her sisters, "But maybe he should after this spectacular screw up."

Andromeda glared at her, "I didn't screw up, it isn't as if I accidentally freed her from Azkaban."

Bella sat up, blinking at them. She looked thin and like she hadn't seen the sun in a hundred years, but she looked better than she should have, better than Sirius had looked at any rate.

"Cissy?" she asked.

And Narcissa's heart cracked a little. She was crazy, a monster, but Narcissa had mourned her passing.

Andromeda patted the blankets above Bella's leg, "Yes, Narcissa, and Lucius, you remember them don't you?"

Bella observed Lucius cooly, "The peacock."

Despite herself, Narcissa's lips twitched at the old joke as Lucius glared at her.

Just then they heard a loud cheer from down the hall, and then pounding feet as someone ran while shouting, "I did it! I did it!"

Regulus burst into the room -Narcissa and Lucius stepping to the side as one, holding a large stack of papers like a trophy. "I did it!" he announced triumphantly.

He waited, seeming to think they should be rejoicing at this news.

"You did what?" Lucius asked blandly.

Regulus held out the pages and looked at him as if he were daft for not understanding.

More pounding feet, and Sirius appeared behind his brother, "What's going on? What's with all the shouting this morning?" Then he caught sight of who was on the bed, "Bellatrix? What the hell?"

Regulus looked round, seeming to notice his third cousin for the first time, "Bella!" He approached and flopped onto the bed beside her, Bella scooting over to make room for him. He laid the papers down on her lap. "I finished writing a new history book. The one we used in school was all wrong. Very misleading. But before I went in the wall I did a lot studying from others, and I had a long time to think about it. And now I have put it on paper! It's outside of my head now!"

Bellatrix looked at him the way she had when they were all children, put upon, but unable to shove him away from her. "What do you want me to do with it?" she asked, caustically, her voice coherent.

"Read it?" Regulus asked her hopefully, his bottom lip pouting a bit, as if he too had never grown up.

Bella sighed dramatically, but flipped over the title page, gently resting it on Regulus' lap, and began to read.

Regulus laid a kiss on her cheek, "Thanks, Bella."

Bella didn't answer, but she did lean closer to him, and he wrapped in an arm around her in a half hug, resting his head on her shoulder like he had when they were small enough to not understand that there was a world and life outside the walls of Grimmauld Place.

Sirius said what Narcissa and likely Lucius, were thinking: "Seriously, what the hell?"

Harry was pretty sure the zoo staff would have kicked them out if they could have found a legitimate reason.

Unfortunately for them, children hissing at snakes wasn't against the rules. Harry was pretty sure the one guy in the corner remembered him from -what was for them, three summers ago. His eyes were flicking between Harry -an adult version of a child who had stood and spoken to the very serpent behind him.

Harry had cast a spell on all the glass enclosure so that sound could penetrate them. He would reverse it once they left, but it was currently a gloomy, cold, rainy day, and they were the only family who had ventured to the zoo this early in the morning.

"Brazil is a very far trip from here, meu amigo," Harry hissed under his breath, as he heard Persephone ask a viper if it liked its water warm or cold.

"It was still worth the excitement, they don't treat me as they used to. I am not some stupid serpent now. They call me cursed."

"And this is something you like?" He asked the boa.

"I heard them talk about returning to me to the wild, they were not sure if I could catch prey on my own."

Harry looked at the snake, "And what do you think?"

The snake flicked its tongue, "I think they might be right. My world is small, but I am well fed. And I am entertained with their fear. I am the cursed one."

"I am happy for you then."

"Valeu, meu amigo."

Morwenna let a harsh sound and began debating loudly enough with a cobra that the zoo staff finally felt like the could step in and ask them to go.

Harry smiled at them, "Of course, sir, must'n fuel the children's imaginations. I did hear rumours about children becoming a part of the exhibit in the reptarium here."

The man paled but glared at him, seeming to decide that Harry was indeed somehow related to the child from said incident.

They did leave, Ophelia and Morwenna sharing what information and stories they had gleaned from the reptiles. Persephone clung to him like a monkey, hugging the stuffed snake he had bought for her.

"Oh, look at that bird," Ophelia said, pointing at the distant tree.

It was a hawk of some sort, and Morwenna said, "It isn't Mama. Mapoppy, why didn't Mama come today too?"

"What bird?" Persephone complained.

Ophelia pointed again, "That one, on the top branch."

"Where?" Persephone asked again, straining in Harry's arms to look around.

He gently turned her head, "Do you see it? It's in the tallest tree."

"Right there!" Ophelia said, exasperated. "You never see anything."

Harry's heart clenched at that phrasing. He stopped walking and he looked closer at his youngest. Surely he hadn't missed-

"I can't see it!" Persephone cried, growing more and more upset as she was missing something everyone else saw.

Harry pulled off his glasses and handed them to Persephone, "Try these," he said. He squinted and could make out her placing the too big frames on her nose. She squinted up at the sky.

"I see it, Ohli! I see it!" She waved at the sky, "Hi birdy!"

Harry felt as if someone had just punched him. How had he not noticed Persephone needed prescription glasses?

Truthfully, he had never taken any of his children to an eye-doctor before. Metamorphmegi could change any body part, any feature. If any of Andromeda's descendants had been born with poor eyesight, they could have altered their own version.

But of all of them, Persephone did have the least amount of control, the least understanding of her own powers. And it wasn't even being the youngest, at her age, Morwenna had been bounds ahead, Teddy unquestionably more so.

But Persephone wasn't as powerful as her siblings and she didn't have their control.

Persephone shoved his glasses back at him, breaking his thoughts, "Mapoppy, your glasses hurt my eyes."

He sighed, that at least was a good sign, it meant her eyesight wasn't as bad as his, though how he was supposed to know if his daughter was close to being blind or just as klutzy as her other metemorphmegi siblings was beyond him.

"How would you like to get a pair of your own?"

"Will they hurt?"

"No, they won't hurt. They'll be just for you."

She grinned up at him, "I want mine to look just like yours."

He smiled down at her, "Of course, my dear."

"I do not want glasses," Morwenna announced.

Ophelia rolled her eyes, "You don't need them, fool."

"Be nice," Harry said as he walked his daughters -much to the zookeepers' relief, out of the zoo.

That night they got home late, and Harry enlarged Persephone's bed. Morwenna and Ophelia slept to either side of him.

Persephone slept on his chest, her new round glasses resolutely on her face.

It just went to show him how little he knew what the future had to offer them. But as long as he could keep them safe, keep them together, they would make it through.

Somehow.

Portuguese Translation provided by Nauze18, because Spanish is not a Brasilian national language: Muito Obrigado, meu amigo.

AN: Please comment with your thoughts and reactions?