lomonaaeren

Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the end of the story.

Part Three

Orion stared at Abraxas. Abraxas stared at Orion.

It had been Abraxas’s suggestion that they spend some time together so that they could strengthen their own bond, the way that each of them had spent time in private with Harry and around their families. Orion had agreed to it.

And now…

The bond between them lay like mud. Orion bit his lip. He hated admitting that Madam Livia might have been right when she called them earth and water, but he hated more admittting that he didn’t know what else they could do to revitalize it.

Abraxas cleared his throat awkwardly. “Do you like the Chudley Cannons?”

“We spent seven years in the same dormitory and you think I like the Chudley Cannons?”

Abraxas bristled. “I was trying to find something we had in common so we could talk about it, Black. Surely you agree with me that sitting here and trying to think of subjects until our brains leak out our ears is substandard?”

Orion snorted and leaned back in his chair. They were in the library, a nook that had a window on the wall streaming sunshine. The light was purely magical, so it wouldn’t fade the books. He couldn’t help contrasting it to how it had felt to sit here with Harry. That had been so natural.

This was just awkward. Abraxas was a natural ally, not a natural husband.

“I should choose the conversational tropic next time.”

“Well, do it, then. Or do you want me to go home and tell my mother that we made no progress on our relationship in the time that we had here today?”

Orion winced at the thought of Madam Livia swooping down on them, especially because for some reason Harry was able to get along with her well, and she would compare him and Abraxas to Harry and find them wanting. (That was something that had already started with his own mother; he didn’t want to encourage Madam Livia).

“All right,” Orion said, and randomly reached out to a conversation topic he was pretty sure Abraxas wouldn’t want to share. “Tell me why you started following Riddle.”

Abraxas’s eyes widened. Orion leaned forwards. He had never noticed before what a dark grey they were, darker than the eyes of any member of his family. “Come on,” he whispered. “Or are you too scared to share?”

“It won’t tell you anything new,” Abraxas said, and the bond between them twanged in a highly unpleasant way as he leaned his head back. “I wanted to be sure that I had some choices in my life. Not just to take up the work or marry the person my parents chose for me. I wanted someone who would shelter me.”

Orion knew it was the truth, given that he and Abraxas couldn’t lie to each other, but he found himself blinking as he stared at Abraxas. “You—you thought Riddle would shelter you?”

“He was powerful. He had no connections to my family socially or by blood except in the last year or so. Yes, I thought he would keep me from being crushed by my family’s vision for my future.” Abraxas gave his head an irritated toss. “Are you going to truthfully tell me that you didn’t accept Riddle’s lordship for the same reasons?”

Orion grimaced and looked aside. Abraxas knew he had. They had confessed that to each other before they started talking about the ritual to bind Riddle to them, after all. “I wouldn’t phrase it the same way.”

“How would you phrase it, then, O Mighty Hunter?”

Orion flushed. Yes, he appreciated the way that his family concentrated on Astronomy and star lore, but sometimes he thought they could have chosen something more obscure, so not everyone he encountered would know what his name meant. “I would say that I wanted Riddle to show my parents that I could make choices that didn’t involve them. I wasn’t afraid of them the way you were.”

“You still didn’t want to tell them that you had no desire to marry your cousin.”

“No, apparently I had to marry a git and Harry instead.”

They glared at each other.

Abraxas finally settled and closed his eyes. “If we can tell Harry that there’s no way he can return to his own world and time because the bonds are indestructible, then we can tell ourselves the same thing, Orion.”

Orion nodded, reluctant but agreeing, and not just because it made his bond with Abraxas feel better. “We didn’t sacrifice as much as we might have thought. We did gain a powerful wizard bonded to us who will treat us as his equal.”

“Even a wizard with a trace of Tom Riddle.” Abraxas smiled, but it was clear from the bond that his mind had already moved on even before he spoke again. “What do you think will happen when Riddle demands that we attend him? Will Harry allow it?”

“Of course not.”

Orion spoke the words without thinking, but from the way that Abraxas gaped at him, the truth wasn’t as obvious to him as it had been to Orion. “He won’t have a choice, will he?” Abraxas asked. “We swore ourselves to Riddle.”

“We never took his Mark. And I think that’s the only thing that would supersede the bond we have with Harry.”

Abraxas hesitated for a moment. Then he said, “I don’t think Riddle will listen to that argument, especially once he knows we’re bonded to a half-blood.”

Orion snorted. Their mothers were handling Harry’s introduction to society, including deciding how they should represent his relationship to the Potter family and his blood status. “I don’t think that Harry cares about that, and he would probably scold us for wasting time on it, too.”

“We have to decide how to handle the problem of Riddle.”

“Do we? Or do we have to handle it in consultation with Harry and our families?”

Abraxas blinked and sat back in his seat, and Orion felt a flash of pity as he realized that had never once occurred to Abraxas. He touched the bond and gently filled it with blue coolness, the reminder that they had someone they could turn to now who would defend their interests against their parents as well as against Riddle. Abraxas closed his eyes and sighed.

“I despised myself for a long time, you know.”

The confession was so soft Orion almost didn’t hear it. For a moment, he considered pretending he hadn’t.

But that would also mean ignoring the courage it had taken Abraxas to make the confession in the first place, so Orion leaned forwards and fixed as encouraging a look on his face as he could. “Tell me what you mean.”

“For not being able to stand up to my parents. For choosing to follow someone.” Abraxas struggled with something invisible for long moments, then opened his eyes again. The bond between them turned totally transparent in sign of his absolute honesty. “For being a follower instead of a leader.”

Orion hesitated, and then made himself be more honest with Abraxas than he had ever been with Harry. “I’m the same way.”

“No, you’re not. You were the first one to swear yourself to Riddle—”

“The first one to become a follower, you mean? Are we going to be arguing about whose follower tendencies are stronger now?”

Abraxas blinked several times, staring at Orion with a furrowed brow. Orion simply looked back. He wouldn’t turn away from those tendencies in Abraxas that might mark him as less strong than Riddle, the tendencies that Madam Livia would probably call those of water or earth.

Frankly, Orion didn’t think he or Abraxas needed more than one wizard in this marriage with fire. Harry had it. That would be enough. Orion was glad to know that he also had a husband who was more like him, who understood him. Harry hadn’t mentioned his Hogwarts House in his own timeline, but he had to have been a Gryffindor.

Orion would appreciate that, admire that, like that. In time, he thought he could come to love it. But he would also never forget who had stood at his back and been, at one time, Riddle’s follower, when no better option seemed to present itself.

Abraxas leaned slowly across from his chair and held out his hand. Orion clasped it without hesitation. Frankly, he knew how much courage this was taking Abraxas, and he refrained from most of the things he could have said.

Abraxas took a long breath. “Thank you, Orion.”

“You’re welcome.”

*

“Of course, no one will accept that you are anything but a distant Potter relative. But we can say that you are very distant. Raised by family in Australia and deciding to come back to Britain to complete the last stages of your education—”

“I’m not going to Hogwarts, Madam Livia.”

Abraxas shook his head as he watched Harry and his mother sit on identical white-and-silver chairs a few feet apart and argue. He was better now about standing up to his mother, but it still puzzled him how Harry apparently had no fear of her.

“I never said that you were, Harry. I said that we will tell the public you have come to Britain to take your NEWTS.”

“Why didn’t you just say that, then?”

“You will learn, Harry, that some situations require a more refined way of speaking.”

“In private, with family?”

Abraxas watched Mother’s chest lift with the breath she was struggling to control. Harry might not know how much those words would affect Mother, but Abraxas, who had watched, on one never-to-be-forgotten night, Mother comfort Father over the knowledge that they would never have another child?

Oh, Abraxas did.

“Well said, young man.”

Abraxas started and turned his head as Father came walking into the sitting room. He nodded at Abraxas with a smile that probably only Abraxas would have noticed the proud edge to.

Abraxas swallowed. He hadn’t realized how much he had missed making his father proud of him.

Come to think of it, his father’s pride had stopped the summer that Abraxas had announced he would follow Riddle.

Father stepped up to Harry’s chair. Harry narrowed his eyes but didn’t stand. “I’m Hadrian Malfoy. And you’re Harry Potter?” Father made it a question, which was probably less challenging than it could have been, and held out his hand.

“I am,” Harry said cautiously, shaking it. The bond in Abraxas’s head was stormcloud-grey with agitation.

“Then you will be my son-in-law.” Father stepped back, and this time, the bond tensed as Harry obviously braced himself for some kind of disparagement. Abraxas hoped he kept the frown off his face, and not because Mother would scold him for it. What exactly had Harry endured that made him assume every adult would be so unfriendly to him?

Or is that every pureblood? Or every Malfoy?

Abraxas shook his head. Whether Harry had traveled from another world, or only another time, what had happened in his time would never happen here.

Abraxas would make sure of it.

He was still grappling with his own newfound determination when Father nodded, smiled at Mother, and said, “I like the look of this one.”

“He does wear the dress robes very handsomely,” Mother agreed.

“I more meant the spirit in his eyes.”

Harry blinked. Mother nodded again as if the compliment were all for herself. “You know that he is much better for our Braxie than that Rosier daughter you favored, Hadrian.”

Braxie? Harry asked down the bond, full of delight that made the silent words sound like a cackle.

Shut it, Harry.

Harry laughed a little, but did calm down enough to smile at Father, who had wisely not tried to defend himself against Mother. “Thank you, sir. I hope that you know I’ll do my best to protect Abraxas and not let him get into any more situations like the ritual that summoned me in the first place.”

“Hadrian, please, Harry. And does that mean that you’ll be doing something about Tom Riddle? Nasty piece of work, that one.”

“Father!” Abraxas hissed.

“Yes, of course, Hadrian,” Harry said, staring into Father’s eyes as if trying to pull out Father’s soul with his sheer gaze. “He can’t be allowed to keep and use my husbands the way he was trying to do.”

Abraxas opened his mouth, then ended up closing it. Mother’s gaze said clearly that if Abraxas somehow intervened to talk Harry out of this, she would ensure he heard three Lectures over the next few days. (It would have been more than that, probably, but each Lecture took longer than five hours, if they deserved the capital letter).

Father laughed and clapped Harry on the shoulder in a way that managed not to make him start, the way Abraxas had seen him do when Abraxas or Orion moved too quickly. “Then welcome to the family!”

Harry smiled, and Abraxas settled slowly back. That had gone much better than he’d thought. And if sometimes it seemed as though Harry was the son Abraxas’s parents had always wanted…

At least he was teaching Abraxas to be more like him.

*

“So this is the young man who’s stolen my son’s freedom.”

Harry stiffened a little when Arcturus Black walked into the library. Everyone else around him had acted like Madam Livia was the hardest future in-law to please, but the minute he met Arcturus’s eyes, Harry knew that wasn’t true.

“He was the one who called me through time and space,” Harry said, not bothering to bite his tongue the way he had around Madam Livia and Mrs. Black at first. (Right, he had to remember to call her Melania). “You could say that he stole my freedom instead.”

The bond he had with Orion promptly became filled with murky red and black, always the sign that Orion was getting upset about something. Harry soothed him with a gentle touch on the bond, not looking away from Arcturus.

Arcturus looked the most like Orion of any of his relatives Harry had met so far, but where Orion’s face had a softness that seemed to come from anxiety, Arcturus looked confident—and cruel, and harsh, as if his features were carved of stone. He took a long step towards Harry. His robes were a black-spangled silver, the uniform that Hit Wizards had also worn in Harry’s time. “You dare to complain that you are here, bonded to two pureblood men who are wealthier than your wildest dreams?”

“You dare to complain that I’m bonded to them?” Harry countered right back. He stood up, because hell if he would have this confrontation sitting in a chair. “I thought perhaps you were smarter than the Blacks in my time. What a pity that you’re as stupid.”

Someone choked from across the room. Lucretia, by the sound. Orion’s bond was full of the agony of embarrassment, like always. Mrs. Black was sitting very straight in her chair, eyes narrowed and hands folded.

Arcturus stared at him. There was no change in his eyes. “I could dissolve these bonds.”

“How? Everyone has told me they’re unbreakable.”

“By killing you.”

“Arcturus! That’s enough!”

Melania’s voice was so sharp that Harry thought it cut the air like a chisel. But Arcturus didn’t turn to face her. He kept looking at Harry, and then his hand dropped to the wand holster that poked out of his left sleeve.

Harry promptly crouched and grabbed his own wand.

“Father, Harry, you are not going to duel each other!”

“Why not?” Arcturus’s eyes glittered like ice chips. “He has insulted me. He has insulted our family, by thinking that he was worthy to bond with our son. He stands there and he isn’t sorry for it. He’s a half-blood.”

“Wow,” Harry said. “I see why Orion chose to follow Riddle.”

“What?” Arcturus’s voice was soft, and it seemed as if all the other sounds in the sitting room had ceased.

Harry met his eyes without flinching this time. “Because you hold stupid opinions and ideas, and you think of your son as a possession. Riddle probably does, too, but he’s better at hiding it. At least he doesn’t act as though someone who had no choice about coming here is responsible for this triad marriage he didn’t choose.”

Harry? Orion whispered, while Arcturus stood in front of Harry and stared at him, apparently frozen with rage.

It’s all right, Orion.

But if you regret the bond…

I’m trying to make this stubborn old goat see reason.

Orion sent a tide of grey uncertainty down the bond, but he did withdraw back into his own head. Harry remained still, wand trembling in his hand, and already knowing what spell he would cast first if Arcturus forced this into a duel. His Patronus would charge Arcturus and trample him under hooves and toss him with antlers that would be substantial if Harry told them to be.

Unexpectedly, Arcturus chuckled.

Harry narrowed his eyes. “This was a joke, you wanker?”

“Harry!”

Now Melania was angry at him, but Harry didn’t move his stare away from Arcturus. The man simply inclined his head and said, “A test. I had to be sure that you were worthy of bonding with my son, and would defend him.”

“Why? You didn’t defend him from following Riddle.”

“Harry.” It was Orion’s turn to say his name, but in a low moan of embarrassment that just made Harry flap his hand at his husband without taking his gaze from Arcturus.

“We tried to speak to him the summer after his sixth year, when he first announced his intentions.” Arcturus shook his head, his mouth pulling into a sharp line of disgust. “He declared that we didn’t understand. Of course we couldn’t do anything about it. He would only have seen us as interfering parents.”

“Who cares how he saw you? If it saved him—”

“You speak those words very easily, as someone Orion’s own age and bonded to him.” Arcturus sneered at him. “You will save him, yes. That is your place. That is surely the reason that you were brought across time and space.”

“I was brought because Orion and Abraxas—”

“Surely you know that some things run deeper than that. That some things are part of the course of fate.” Arcturus’s eyes went to Harry’s forehead and lingered heavily on his scar, then returned to his face. “And you were brought here to save Orion.”

“Not Abraxas?”

“The doings of the Malfoy family matter little to me.”

“They will have to matter more, dearest,” Melania said, with a bite to her voice that at last made Arcturus turn to face her. Honestly, Harry was a little out of breath from the confrontation. “Given that the bonds are mutual between all three of them.”

Arcturus looked startled for the first time. Viciously, Harry thought it was a look he could stand to wear more often. “What? I thought Orion had a bond to Harry and Abraxas had a bond to him. I did not realize that all three were bonded in a true triad marriage.”

“Yes, dear. We are part of Livia and Hadrian’s lives now in a way that we are part of Harry’s.”

Arcturus closed his eyes. “Fuck.”

“Mother,” Lucretia pronounced with a smile that made Harry have to hold back his laughter, “Father swore.”

“Yes, I am well aware of that,” Melania said. “And he will get used to not doing so when we have Madam Livia and Hadrian over for planning sessions.”

Arcturus turned a pathetic look on Melania. “It’s not her. It’s him. Hadrian Malfoy has never done a thing in his life! He just sits around and lets his wife take care of him!”

Harry blinked. This Arcturus was—different from the one he had thought he was seeing. He shot a glance at Orion.

He does love me. He does want to make sure that I would be protected, Orion sent down the bond. He hesitated, while the bond sloshed and turned the color of starlight on water. And he really thought that he couldn’t do it himself.

Was he right about that?

Maybe.

Harry nodded, accepting that. Do you know what Riddle’s reaction to our marriage is? Has he sent you a letter yet?

He probably wouldn’t do that. He’s welcome in the wards of Grimmauld Place, so he’s much more likely to show up himself.

Harry narrowed his eyes. Well, that’s something to look forward to.

*

Riddle did indeed show up in Grimmauld Place, more quickly than Orion would have counted on. But it was a day when he and Abraxas and Harry were all there together, with their families arguing about future plans for the marriage downstairs. Perhaps Riddle knew that somehow, had planned it.

It wouldn’t surprise Orion if there was a curse on him and Abraxas that neither they nor their parents nor their wards had ever noticed, and which was tracking all their correspondence and movements. Riddle was intelligent enough to have done something like that.

Harry wouldn’t have noticed it, either. For all his power, Harry was naïve sometimes and ignorant most of the rest.

Like about the importance of NEWTS.

“I know your dad wouldn’t get me out of it,” Harry was whinging to Orion when he heard the Floo blaze downstairs. They were sitting around a table in Father’s study, where both Father and Mother seemed to think they would spend the most time concentrating on books. “But I can’t take the Runes exam. I never studied Runes!”

“Runes are the most important field for your future,” Abraxas said, imitating Mother. He didn’t seem to have heard the Floo, or was ignoring it.

“That doesn’t matter, does it, if I can’t pass the bloody NEWT?” Harry sank his hand into his hair and tugged a bit. His bond had darkened, and his eyes darted to Orion. Orion half-nodded. Yes, they could feel Riddle coming. “I’ll just make a fool of myself instead of proving myself smart like your mother intends.”

“You could still—” Abraxas picked up on the tension in the bonds and froze, his face going so pale that Orion thought he was going to shatter like a porcelain dish. Then he managed to pull his head back and take a deep breath, but his nostrils were quivering. “Riddle,” he whispered.

“Stay behind me.”

Harry flowed to his feet. Orion stared at him, and then snapped his eyes to Abraxas. Abraxas was staring at Harry in what looked like a mixture of bewilderment and enthrallment—which it was, according to the bonds.

Orion was feeling much the same thing himself.

In Hogwarts, everyone except Dumbledore cowered from Riddle in some way. They feared him, or they adored him, or both. Either way, Orion was able to see clearly now, they gave Riddle power over them.

Harry was the only person Orion had met, again with the exception of Dumbledore, who wasn’t going to cower that same way. He stood between Orion and Abraxas and the door of the study, which was a heavy slab of dark wood banded with iron, and slightly ajar. Harry’s arms were folded, his wand hanging along the inside of his arm, his posture charged with tension.

But not with fear.

For the first time, Orion believed, with his whole heart, that he and Abraxas had found someone who could defend them from Riddle after all.

*

Abraxas watched as the door swung open and Riddle entered Arcturus Black’s study, both motions equally soundless. Riddle stopped as if he’d run into a wall, though, and a little sound came out of him as he saw Harry.

“Who are you?” he demanded, even though he must have known, after the marriage announcement in the papers. Mother and Madam Melania had decided that all three of them would go by their birth names; any combination was viewed as lessening someone’s importance.

I’m thinking about this when Riddle’s in the room?

But he was, actually. Abraxas took a little gasp. It was intoxicating to be free of terror in Riddle’s presence for the first time since his second year.

“Harry Potter, you idiot.”

Arcturus choked on air. This was worse than watching Harry handle his mother. Yes, almost everyone found his mother intimidating, but more than one person wasn’t overawed by her, which was not the case with Riddle.

Well, now there’s more than one not overawed by him, either.

Riddle’s eyes widened. Abraxas could remember finding them handsome and debating with Orion and others about whether they were amethyst or purple or merely dark blue. Now they were stained with red, and locked on Harry, and his hand was drawing the yew wand that made Abraxas flinch with memories of the Cruciatus.

Hush, Abraxas. It’s all right. I’m here.

Abraxas shivered at the way Harry’s words poured through him, and thought that Harry must have sent similar ones to Orion. Orion settled back against the chair behind him, a small smile playing on his lips.

Abraxas wouldn’t go as far as smiling, but he did watch as Harry lifted his own wand, which seemed to be made of holly.

“You are in my way,” Riddle whispered. “I have disobedient servants to punish.”

“Maybe they were your servants once, but they’re my husbands now.” Harry’s gaze didn’t waver from Riddle. “So you can turn around and leave the way you came, which would probably be the best way to prevent bloodshed, or you can stay and duel me.”

“The blood shed will be your own, Harry Potter,” Riddle said, his voice crisp and dark. He shifted to raise the yew wand.

Harry laughed and—hissed something?

Abraxas found his mouth hanging open. Orion was at least doing the same thing beside him. They’d had no clue that Harry spoke Parseltongue.

Does he know that he could have obviated any objection that anyone had to him if he’d told us?

But Abraxas didn’t have time to think about that, because Riddle was shrieking madly, mixing the shrieks with a cacophony of hissing, and the first spell he had cast was arcing towards Harry in a deadly mixture of purple and green and gold.

*

Harry hadn’t realized how angry he would feel at seeing Tom Riddle again. Angry, and pleased. This was a threat he knew how to take care of, unlike what might happen if he failed a NEWT or failed to please one of his new in-laws.

And Riddle had been fool enough to come wearing the Gaunt ring. That meant it would be easy to destroy one of the Horcruxes after Harry had destroyed him.

“I will kill you! I will kill you!”

“Don’t like someone else speaking your language, Tom Riddle?” Harry said, and dodged the curse that had been launched at him, whatever it was. It crashed into the large mirror that for some reason Arcturus kept on the wall of his study and sent shards of glass scattering. Harry swirled his wand and turned the glass into projectiles flying at Riddle.

“I will kill you!”

Merlin, he might be more insane than Voldemort. He certainly seemed like it, unable to do anything else but shriek at Harry and cast spells that were easy to dodge. Maybe it was because he’d made two Horcruxes close together, or because he hadn’t expected any opposition to trying to reclaim Orion and Abraxas as his servants.

Maybe it really was just because he’d thought he was unique as a Parselmouth, and meeting someone else who could speak that language undid him.

Either way, it affected his dueling. He kept trying to use all kinds of spells that were undoubtedly Dark and deadly on Harry—except that none of them landed. Harry just kept dodging and shielding and striking. Riddle wasn’t even trying to defend himself from things like the shards of glass cutting his cheeks open. His mouth was parted in the rictus of a snarl, his eyes blazing and demonic.

Harry dodged a spell that looked like a blue Stunner and grabbed Riddle’s wand hand. Riddle slashed at him with his free hand, nails curved like claws. Harry dodged it, and then Riddle jammed his wand up under Harry’s chin and cast again.

“Avada Kedavra!”

Harry had no time to react. The green light blazed through him, and there was a glimpse of furious whiteness that made him feel a plunging despair—

And then the whiteness vanished, and he snapped right back into the battle, into his body, in the face of a Riddle with steadily widening eyes.

“No!”

“Fuck off, Riddle,” Harry hissed back, and cast a spell that he’d learned as an Auror trainee and been told sternly to never use in any except the most desperate situations. Riddle’s rib cage shattered as the spell pulled his heart out of his chest.

Riddle sagged to the floor, his wand clattering and rolling free, his hand drooping so that the ring fell free. Harry aimed his wand at it and cast Fiendfyre without stopping, the adrenaline still surging through his veins.

It wasn’t the best way to control Fiendfyre, as he discovered a moment later, when it roared loudly and tried to consume Arcturus’s study.

Oops.

*

Orion staggered. He had felt the moment when the marriage bonds between him and Harry, and between all three of them, had seemed to snap, and the desolation that had filled him had been as real and terrible as a desert beneath an endless sky.

And then they had simply reversed and hauled Harry back into his body and the bonds back into existence.

I suppose he really can’t be slain by the Killing Curse.

Orion had time for that thought, and then really noticed the fact that Fiendfyre was filling his father’s study, snapping and snarling at the books on the shelves. Orion yelped and aimed his wand. His father was going to be angry enough about the destruction of the mirror! Orion really didn’t want to imagine what would happen if the books burned.

He cast the spell that would give him control of the Fiendfyre—a rare one the Knights of Walpurgis had studied together—at the same time as Abraxas. Orion assumed that he would gain control of one half of the looming flames and Abraxas the other. It was clear that Harry knew the spell to summon the fire, but not the one to control it.

Instead—

The bonds thrummed, and magic flowed from him to Abraxas to Harry and back to Orion again in a steel triangle. The invisible bridle fell down and covered the head of a basilisk nipping at the edge of a huge tome with delicate fangs. Orion found himself drawing it backwards and down into the general wash of Fiendfyre with exquisite control.

I could never do this before!

You were never married before, Harry responded. Orion hadn’t even realized that he’d sent the thought.

Now we can accomplish more than we dreamed of, Abraxas said. So Orion’s thought must have been broadcast to the triple bond that connected all three of them.

Orion shook his head, shoved away the temptation to be embarrassed about the inadvertent sending, and concentrated on bringing the damn fire under control.

*

Abraxas had never felt anything like the way that the Fiendfyre danced to their tune, one of the most dangerous Dark spells in existence brought down and tamed by the tripled force flowing through his wand, and Orion’s, and Harry’s.

He had never been part of something like this before, even when he was studying with the other Knights of Walpurgis. In fact, the spell to control Fiendfyre was one that he’d never managed to cast successfully.

He couldn’t have done this on his own. But neither could Harry or Orion.

His parents couldn’t have succeeded at this on their own. Or even working together.

Abraxas felt as if his mind were soaring as he and his husbands coiled the Fiendfyre around itself and made it turn into a harmless spark that dissipated on the carpet. The carpet had scorch marks, and Riddle’s body was blood-streaked ashes, the ring that had rolled off his hand a puddle of gold and slag. For some reason, the stone in the middle of it hadn’t burned, but maybe the fire hadn’t been hot enough for that.

Riddle’s wand was less than ashes, Abraxas took pleasure in noting.

Harry lowered his wand and took a long, deep breath. Then he turned and looked at Abraxas, and the bond between them was the clear blue of a brilliant summer sky.

“That was awesome,” Harry said.

“I quite agree,” Abraxas said, and smiled at Orion as he let go of the last of the spell. Orion had been the one to begin casting it and the one to guide it, but he couldn’t have accomplished this without Abraxas and Harry, either.

I am brilliant. I am successful.

I am powerful. Together, with them.

Abraxas didn’t think he had ever really known the meaning of joy before.

*

Harry was shaking. He knew that he would have to say something about the Fiendfyre to Arcturus and Melania later. He would have to come to terms with the fact that he’d killed someone and destroyed a Horcrux. He would have to find the diary, which right now he didn’t have any idea how to find.

But for now…

This was an awesome beginning.

Looking at Abraxas and Orion, he thought he could foresee the time when he would want to kiss them, touch them, hold them. He certainly couldn’t imagine wanting to break the marriage bonds and step back into his own time, now. The moment when he had thought he would die and go back to the white King’s Cross station had been dark despair.

Am I actually immune to the Killing Curse? If I am, can I make them immune?

Another idea to research. Unlike the books he had to study for the NEWTS, Harry actually thought this would be an interesting thing to try and find out.

He gave the Resurrection Stone in the middle of the carpet an annoyed glance—another problem for later—and stepped up to his husbands. They were both watching him with wide eyes and bonds so open that Harry felt as if he were bathed in streams of clean water.

“Thank you for saving my life,” Harry said softly. “I didn’t know the spell to control Fiendfyre or how to cast it.”

“You’re most welcome,” Orion said. He was staring at Harry’s lips.

“You saved us,” Abraxas said. His smile was more self-confident than Harry had ever seen it.

“Then we all saved each other,” Harry said, and turned his head as the study door banged open.

“What were you doing?” Melania snapped.

“Fiendfyre in my library?” Arcturus said, just behind her.

“You cast a Dark curse, and I missed it!” Lucretia wailed.

“Perhaps a preferable punishment to having his neck broken,” said Madam Livia. “I am given to understand from the house-elves that it was Tom Riddle who came through the Floo, and that he was most unpleasant.”

“Is he really gone?” Hadrian demanded.

Harry smiled more widely. These people weren’t Ron and Hermione, they were purebloods who probably still had some ideas about blood purity, and they weren’t perfect by a long shot.

(And they probably wouldn’t get him out of having to take the NEWTS).

But being pulled through time and space like this had given him the one thing he’d always wanted—a family—and right now, Harry couldn’t imagine giving any of them up.

He stepped backwards until he could feel Orion and Abraxas at his shoulders and said, “Most unpleasant. We controlled the Fiendfyre, and yes, he’s really gone. We’ll just need to make sure that he didn’t leave any equally unpleasant little surprises lying around.”

“You still cast a Dark curse I missed,” Lucretia said, and folded her arms. “How are you going to make this up to me?”

She’s so annoying, Orion complained.

Glad that I’m an only child, Abraxas fervently agreed.

Harry smiled at Lucretia, reached back to take his husbands’ hands, and said, “We’ll have years and years to think of something.”

The End.