“Have you ever thought about how much stronger you are than Dumbledore at this point?”, Harry asked his wife as they lay in bed.

She considered it. “I don’t think about him in those terms, ever. With him, it’s never a matter of power. I know people see him as the most powerful wizard of the modern age, but I see him as the ultimate protector and moral authority. When I die, I hope to have lived my life in such a way as to be worthy of his praise”, she smiled gently. “In my mind, I’m still that girl who begged him on my knees to save my family. Comparing my power to his would feel like sacrilege”.

“I see what you mean. I literally experienced that – dying and having him welcome me there and give me advice, and it felt so wonderful to have him praise me. He’s the closest thing to a father I remember having, other than the few very early, faded memories of my actual parents”.

“The one I compare myself to is Voldemort. He was the one who frightened me, degraded my family, could take everything away from me, and turned my life into a living nightmare”, she frowned and held him tighter. “I started feeling truly safe only after I advanced my magical skills to the point where I could beat someone like him easily, at any time, any conditions, with all of his followers supporting him. I hated feeling like everything I have is merely conditional – I have it just because he or someone like him didn’t come here to take it, the way your parents had everything until he came that night to take it. I swore I’d practice so that nobody could come in the middle of the night and take everything away from us”, she kissed his neck. “But right now, I’m already counting my miracles. We managed to finally have sex. Finally. Please, let’s sleep because I had four hours of sleep in the last two days and if the babies wake up now, I swear to God I’m going to go insane”, she giggled. “Sleep. Now. No talk”.

“Yes Ma’am”, he smiled and kissed her goodnight.

…

“Lady Lyra, we apologise for asking you to come to us so soon after your childbirth, but we do need to ask you some things, and we promise we’ll let you go home quickly”, an elderly gentleman in the Wizengamot addressed her apologetically.

She nodded. “Please, ask whatever you will”.

“We wish to know the true extent of your power”, an elderly lady spoke. “There have been rumours, but we wish to hear it from you”.

Lyra smiled, and closed her eyes. A big pile of wands was arrayed neatly on the desk before her. “Please, all of you, take out your wands”. They tried, and found them all missing.

“You will see that they are all here with me”, she smiled.

The gentleman who spoke first addressed her again, with a trembling hand this time. “You disarmed us all in a blink of an eye. All fifty of us. Some of the most powerful witches and wizards in the country are in this room, and you completely overpowered us, in a heartbeat, and we couldn’t do anything about it”, he fumbled.

She smiled, closed her eyes and the wands vanished. “You can now check your pockets again”.

They did, and nodded – each got their own wand back.

“How can we know that you won’t abuse your power?”, another man from the audience voiced.

“You can’t, and even if you could, you couldn’t do anything about it. But fear not – you were never the ones who kept me in check in the first place”, she smiled. “There are greater forces at play than you”, she looked at them gravely. “Forces like my wish to be the kind of a person that deserves my family’s love. Or my wish for my husband’s approval. Or a wish for Headmaster Dumbledore’s approval when I die and meet him. Those things keep me fettered very tightly”, she smiled. “I ask that you trust me. I had to live three years in the house of horrors that Voldemort made my home into. I don’t wish to become one such monster, who would keep some innocent person in fear. That is the limit placed on my power. As for what I can do, this, I think, is no longer important. I can do quite a lot. The important question is what I actually did, what I actually do, and what I wish to do in the future. As for that, I wish to sleep more, because my baby keeps waking me because she’s hungry or bored or has a full diaper”.

They all laughed, despite themselves. “I can understand that”, an elderly lady giggled. “I am also very sorry that we wasted your time with this inquiry, because there is truly nothing you did that would require it. It is what you could do that worries us, but I guess someone who can trivially disarm the full court but wishes only to have a good night’s sleep is the last person in the world we should be worried about”. Almost everybody nodded and murmured in assent.

A band of light started blinking red on Lyra’s wrist. “This is my sister Hermione letting me know that the babies are awake and will soon start making a mess because they miss me”, she smiled. “So, unless you have news about the impending end of the world, return of the Dark Lord or Santa Claus falling from his sled and ending up in St. Mungo, I will have to excuse myself”, she shrugged apologetically.

“By all means, Lady Lyra”, the first gentleman smiled. “Give our love to your family, and again, please accept our apologies for disturbing you so soon after childbirth”.