“Masters, come quickly”, Kreacher seemed upset. “Scum, villains, servants of the Dark Lord. Mistress Cissa and Master Lucius caught them”, he croaked.

“Is everybody safe?”, Harry took charge immediately.

“Yes. The children are safe, and the Lord and Lady Malfoy are safe. Kreacher thinks villains are not safe”, he laughed viciously.

They all looked at each other and started relaxing. “I think I have an idea how this developed”, Viktor grinned.

“You go first, we’re can’t rush in this condition”, Hermione nodded. The women were eight months pregnant and were already hardly waiting to give birth and get it over with.

…

“Mommy, where are grandpa, grandma and daddy?”, Lily asked Lyra.

“They went to the Ministry to make a statement and put the bad men in prison”, she smiled at the child. “Tell me, what was it like?”

“Grandpa was reading to us, and grandma was playing with us before. Then Kreacher came and was very upset. Said two bad men are at the front door, trying to break in. Grandpa told Kreacher to watch us, and he and grandma went downstairs, there was a noise, and they came with two men. They couldn’t move, but they said nasty words I didn’t understand, and then grandpa and grandma pointed sticks at them and talked to them in Latin, but I don’t think the men liked it very much”, Lily nodded seriously.

Lyra smiled. “No, I don’t think they liked it very much, either”, she giggled.

“Did those men want to hurt us?”, James looked worried.

“I think they did, sweetheart, but grandma and grandpa are very powerful and would never allow it”, she nodded and hugged the boy. “You are both perfectly safe”.

“Mommy, grandma told me that one can have only one mommy and that my mommy is Hermione and not you”, Lily looked like she was about to cry. “Is that true?”

“It’s true in a way”, Lyra confirmed. “You see my big belly?”, she pointed, and the girl nodded.

“There’s a new baby inside. When it comes out of my body, I’m going to be its mommy. You came out of Hermione’s body that way, so she’s your mommy. However, I love your mommy very much, and she loves me very much, and we both think of both of you as our babies. We don’t make a difference”, she hugged the girl.

“Does it mean I can call still call you mommy?”, Lily smiled.

“Of course you can. I love you very much, and I wouldn’t love you any differently if it was I who gave birth to you, and not Hermione”, Lyra ruffled the girl’s hair.

“I love you too, mommy”, the girl beamed.

…

“We interrogated them properly at the office”, Viktor looked grim yet relieved. “Of course you didn’t get all of them”, he nodded to Lyra. “They were from the same group as those five, but they waited at their base, if you can call it that. They wanted revenge so they planned to kill our children”.

“They were planning this for a while. Since nobody but the residents can apparate inside, they lurked at the door and waited for all four of us to leave, and then they tried to break in through the door with spells. This alerted Kreacher, he alerted Lucius and Narcissa and that’s how their plan came to a bad ending”, Harry finished.

“Azkaban is too good for those two”, Lucius looked murderous.

“It is, but what upset me the most is that I looked at them and they were almost identical to the scum that roamed our home when the Dark Lord was there”, Narcissa frowned. “Worst of all, I looked at them and realised that they don’t all look like that by accident. The Dark Lord was producing such people because that’s what he wanted us all to be: nasty, filthy, vicious, cruel, without love, kindness or virtues. He would do superficial displays of good manners, but it was as if he never actually realised what manners are for. Manners are there to make people feel welcome, cared for, accepted and safe. With him, it was the opposite – a way to make cruelty and terror even more vicious, and people like those two used to snicker like hiyenas when her would torture and kill people. What’s worst, I could see us turning into those monsters, the way Bella turned from my kind and gentle sister into a perverted, vicious monster with dog-like devotion to the Dark Lord, and contempt, hatred and viciousness for everybody else”, she finished, as Lucius nodded. “We came frighteningly close, and it’s a fate worse than death. I think what saved us is that we had a daughter we loved, unlike the rest of them, who were childless, loveless and less than human in other ways as well”, he frowned.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t deal with it more quietly and the children saw it”, Narcissa smiled at Lyra and Hermione.

“We are grateful to the two of you for dealing with them”, Hermione bowed and smiled, and others nodded seriously.

“It was our great pleasure”, Lucius bowed back. “I’m so glad we were here, and not the two of you, who look as if you are about to give birth any moment now”, he beamed at the women.

“I fervently hope so”, Lyra sighed and smiled.

“You said not to use space magic wandlessly because it’s so easy to get yourself killed by accident. But I think there must be more. What else should be careful with?” Harry looked at Lyra.

They went out to the woods to practice while Lucius and Narcissa told children stories, and the day was particularly dreary.

“Let’s get the obvious out of the way; if you’re doing something complicated in a high-stress environment where your mind is all over the place, the probability that you’ll get something wrong and very much unwanted becomes all-but-certainty”, Lyra smiled. “So, in battle, keep it simple. Freeze, disarm, incapacitate, or kill. No complex, over the top charms. With a wand, you can be pretty sure that the spell goes the way where your wand points, and even then people sometimes have things backfire, which is what Voldemort failed to learn when attacking you multiple times. With your mind, your main enemy is mental chaos, turbulence, exhaustion, or inability to tear your mind off of something. This means you have to fight extremely calmly, and that’s not always something you can do”.

“What’s the non-obvious part?”, Viktor noticed where this was going.

“The non-obvious part concerns the nature of the spells themselves. Some spells are inherently harmful to the caster. They affect the target, but they also affect you. The unforgivable curses are an excellent example. Avada Kedavra, for instance, requires a specific destructive mindset of a cold-blooded murderer, where it hardens your heart, makes you cruel, unfeeling and horrible, more like Voldemort than a normal human person. With a wand, it’s bad enough. However, to cast it wandlessly, you need to focus that intent with your soul directly, and manipulate that kind of magic directly. It’s like being immersed in hot corrosive acid while you do it. It harms you, and horribly so. The damage you incur is a multiple of that which you would incur using a wand. I tried, and it took me a while to recover, despite the fact that I killed a mere cockroach. I felt as if my soul fractured slightly, and I only healed after feeling very painful remorse.”

“So, that’s why you paused time when I saw you fight; it gives you time to do thing peacefully and makes the situation calm. But what was that red light you applied to their hearts? I expected green, if anything”, Hermione wondered.

“My own modification of Reducto. It combines heat, lightning and fragmentation of the target. It instantly stopped their hearts and thermally destroyed the heart muscle, but as far as difficulty goes, it’s basically a cooking spell. Zero backlash. Highly blockable, though, and I wouldn’t recommend it against an active target because Protego shields against it completely”.

“Kind of hard to cast Protego when you’re frozen in time”, Harry noticed.

“True, but there are always artefacts, such as those protective hats George’s shop sells”, she warned. If someone wears that, your spell might backfire, so it’s always a good idea to wear such an artefact yourself”.

“Did you?”, Hermione asked.

“Why of course”, Lyra smiled. “That sweater of mine is more than just cozy and warm”.

“Sneaky”, Viktor nodded approvingly.

“I have two questions”, Harry scratched his neck. “First, if we don’t actually have a choice, and we have to use a curse that will harm us, what’s the point of irreversible damage we can never allow ourselves to cross? And second, if there are corrosive spells, are there spells that do the opposite? Heal the soul when used?”

“Both questions are excellent”, his wife nodded approvingly. “The point that should be avoided at all cost is actual murder, defined as killing an innocent person with malicious intent. With a wand, that will fracture your soul. Wandlessly, I’m afraid it would shatter it. There’s a big difference between that and using the same spell out of righteous anger against a horrible murderer you want to stop, but still, it’s harmful, and I recommend killing with other kinds of magic. As for the second question, the answer is yes. Exalto, my anti-Dementor spell, is one. It heals the soul by invoking the deepest, most complete fulfilment. It destroys Dementors because they are localised spiritual emptiness that is negated by such a spell. I guess it would cause incredible remorse and suffering with possibly fatal consequences in really broken humans. It creates profound spiritual ecstasy in pure souls, which you would well know”, she smiled. “The second such spell is Cordem Revelio, if used with a healing intent. It reveals your heart, but it also heals it. However, if someone like Voldemort used it, I think it would shatter his soul rather than heal it, because it would activate remorse for all his sins at once and that would not be survivable”.

“So, in short: destructive, torturous and murderous magic will greatly harm us, while healing magic, especially spiritually healing magic, will heal us?”, Viktor summarised.

“Exactly”, Lyra nodded. “We’re Aurors, so doing our job with healing magic isn’t really possible, at least not typically. However, stopping time, disarming, paralysing, shielding and so on are all harmless spells, and even when I used a cooking spell to boil their hearts, I used it with protective intent and, well, here’s the interesting part: target and context matter incredibly. If I used that spell against an innocent, I would probably die in spiritual agony. Using it against horrible cold blooded murderers of the innocent actually felt good. It made me feel calm, at peace with the deeper layers of the world, harmonious and whole”, she looked at him seriously.

“That’s interesting, and it confirms my own theories”, Harry mused. “When I used Crucio against the Carrows, I had absolutely no adverse effects. My intent was righteous retribution against vile, sadistic villains. But I feel I wouldn’t fare as well if I abused it against a good person”.

“You are exactly right”, his wife confirmed. “Intent matters far more than one would expect. It can never justify harm, so you can’t say you meant well but committed horrible deeds. It doesn’t work that way. But if you’re healing the world, opposing evil, protecting the good and the innocent, this intent shields you against adverse effects that would normally accompany evil means”.

“This would imply that Snape suffered no adverse effects for killing Dumbledore because they agreed it between themselves, and he only did it to protect Dumbledore from an inevitable and more torturous death?”, Hermione asked.

“Indeed. Had I done it, I think my soul would never have recovered”, Lyra shivered. “However, Snape’s motivations were all noble and kind, and he remained whole”.

“I have a serious problem with justifying evil ends with good intentions”, Viktor’s face was dark. “Grindelwald did that, and his moto was ‘for the greater good’. Historically speaking, evil means only ever lead to evil ends, and justifications of that kind serve only to make committing evil deeds easier”.

“This is true”, Lyra nodded. “However, there’s a big difference between what’s actually true and what you make yourself believe in order to rationalise evil things. The consequence you suffer from spells is alleviated only if the deep magic of the world agrees with you. What you delude yourself with is of no consequence. I can’t make that clear enough. If you can’t kill with love in your heart, don’t kill. I killed those five men because that was the necessary thing that protecting Hermione and every other innocent person that would have become their victim required. I don’t know how to explain it, but I allowed myself to be guided by the deep magic, more than I actually commanded it to do my bidding. I just followed the course demanded by the feeling of rightness, protection, care and love. That’s another reason why I wore that cozy, comfortable sweater. It makes me feel a certain way, and I follow that feeling in a fight – I remain soft, kind, soothing, comforting; even when I kill. That’s why I could transition instantly to comforting Hermione – I never actually left the state of mind where I could do that. I never had to harden my heart enough to kill. I killed because I love”, she smiled.

“I think I understand”, Viktor nodded. “You actually do what you say, rather than say things that make you feel good about what you’re doing”, he grinned.

“I understand it too”, Harry smiled. “I used the cruciatus curse to punish villains who harmed the good and the innocent. When I fought Voldemort, I actually tried to make him repent for his sins, because I saw what was to become of him, on the other side, and it was terrible. In fact, he killed himself with his own curse; I merely disarmed him”.

“I still don’t understand what’s the actual problem with space manipulation”, Hermione wondered. “I understand the moral issues with the dark curses, though”.

“Space manipulation is a problem because of the chaotic state of mind you will have unless you’re perfectly peaceful. If you’re not, and you touch space with magic, it might warp in uncontrolled ways and you might find yourself anatomically inverted, or present in multiple parts of the world at the same time. I do not wish to be more precise with that, but remember what they taught us about splicing, when they taught us apparition?”, she looked at Hermione pointedly, and the woman shivered.

“I understand now”, she gulped. “No space magic. Keep it simple. Do things out of love and protective care. Never justify evil ends with fluffy words”.

“Good girl”, Lyra hugged her. “Let’s go home, I’m cold and hungry”.

“I have my reservations regarding the historical objectivity of the ancient historicists, Lyra”, Hermione took a sip of her tea.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I don’t think they even had the concept of impartiality and differentiating between facts and opinions. Tacitus and Suetonius seem to have merely wanted to write their perspective down for posterity, so that when they outlived their enemies, they could adversely influence historical memory thereof”.

“I don’t necessarily disagree”, Lyra nodded and took another biscuit. “However, I also don’t necessarily see a problem there”.

“What do you mean?”

“You seem to think there’s such a thing as objective facts, and we should merely write those down, as divorced from opinion and interpretation as possible, in order to allow people to make up their own minds later”, Lyra postulated.

“That’s exactly what I mean”, Hermione nodded.

“Well, I’m not sure that’s either possible, useful or morally allowable”, Lyra looked her straight in the eyes. “Imagine writing history of the last three wizarding wars while trying to maintain a middle ground between Dumbledore and Grindelwald, and later between the Order of Phoenix and the Death Eaters and Voldemort, where each side should have a power of veto over any statement of fact or interpretation thereof that they might disagree with. You would get a moral abomination of a history”, she concluded.

Hermione was silent for a while as she considered it. “You do have a strong point there. I’m assuming an impartial observer that would write things as they are, but such an observer would also be in a compromised moral position if they remained impartial in a war against abject evil, so their opinion would necessarily reflect their own cowardice or moral indifference, giving us an opinion of a psychopath as historic evidence. I’m trying to understand whether having some ‘neutral’ coward’s opinion preserved as historical fact could ever be preferable to, for instance, Dumbledore’s or Harry’s, and I am at a loss”, she was lost in thought. “Were yours and Harry’s arguments at school like this?”

“Pretty much”, Lyra smiled. “With more hand-holding, though. That made it incredibly hard to try to win the argument at the expense of hurting the other person”.

Viktor descended the stairs, stumbled and hit his ankle. “Пйздец! Ёб мать свою!”

“Виктор, в доме дети”, Lyra chided him gently.

He looked at her with shock overriding the pain in his foot. “Ёбать! Ты тоже по-русски говоришь!”

“Enough so to keep you honest”, she smiled. “But how come a Bulgarian going to a German school swears in Russian?”

“I was Igor’s favourite student, remember? And Russian is similar enough to Bulgarian that I picked it up easily”, he limped.

Hermione looked at her suspiciously. “Wait a minute. How many languages do you actually speak?”

“What do you mean by ‘speak’ exactly? Enough to write essays and poetry, enough to participate in a conversation or enough to do shopping?”, Lyra whispered sheepishly.

Hermione just looked at her.

“OK, OK, I speak French, German, Russian and some Italian”, she was now honest. “Maybe some Spanish and Portuguese in a pinch if I had to order in a restaurant”.

“No Greek or Sanskrit?”, Hermione was laughing now.

“Only the basic terms, to know if someone’s messing with me”, Lyra looked embarrassed.

“Viktor, I might need one of those t-shirts you and Harry are wearing for Quidditch to mess with us”, Hermione looked at him.

“You mean, ‘team dumbass’?”, he laughed.

“Yeah, that”, Hermione looked at Lyra. “How in the name of all that is holy did you manage to be that smart?”

“I had an international Death Eater headquarters in my home, remember?”, she grinned. “You kind of want to know what they are talking about in their own language, when they don’t want anyone to know”.

“I’m still not convinced you’re a mere human”, Hermione giggled.

“Are you mad at me?” Hermione sat alone in thought and Harry was worried she was upset for learning he didn’t trust her enough to tell her things.

“What? Oh, no, I was just thinking about something related. I’m actually proud of you, and I feel very warm and cozy about it, because knowing you kept her secrets means you would keep mine as well, and that makes me feel secure. No, I was thinking about Ron. When I told you something, it remained between us. But when I would tell Ron something, it was in the public domain. He would even mock me over it in public, and that made me furious. But somehow, I always forgave him for it. During our first two years at school, I can remember a dozen things he said to me, or about me, that hurt me as much as anything Lyra ever said, and yet we locked Lyra out instantly as an enemy, and Ron was seen, I don’t know, as an insecure, well-meaning buffoon, I guess”, she seemed to be angry at herself.

“I was thinking about that too. Not now, but other day. How we just assumed his heart is in the right place – he’s a Gryffindor. He’s a Weasley. They’re all good folks. But Lyra felt dangerous, focused, in enemy camp. If Ron said something hurtful, we assumed he’s insecure and trying to prop himself up. If she did it, we assumed it was a weapon intentionally aimed to hurt us. I don’t even understand how he got sorted into Gryffindor, but then again Peter Pettigrew was a Gryffindor. I just foolishly assumed then that everybody in Gryffindor has to be good, and everybody in Slytherin has to be bad. And they all kept giving us those baleful looks, unlike the Hufflepuffs who were nice to everybody, or Ravenclaws who were aloof”, he reminisced.

“Part of it was just childish competitiveness. If you sort kids in two classes, each class will start trying to prove they are better and see the other as the competition”, she noted. “Even if the classes are sorted completely at random, and they are called A and B”.

“That’s true”, Harry conceded. “However, when you add serious politics and war into the mix, it becomes really bad. I was told – by Ron, as a matter of fact – that Slytherin produces the most dark wizards of all houses, and that the Dark Lord and all his followers were from Slytherin, and their children are now going to be sorted there as well. You can imagine how I reacted to that. Also, I saw Ron in rags and looking neglected, complaining about being the youngest in his family and how everybody is appreciated more than him and whatever he does will not be seen as special, and I saw myself in that – I was also in rags, I was always told I don’t matter and I’m just a waste of space and food. When I look at it now, I see him as an inherently insecure, ungrateful kid who never really learned to appreciate anything and was just entitled, felt everything he had was nothing and wanted more because he thought he deserved it. And you don’t even know the half of the nasty things he said about you when you weren’t there, and I’m not repeating those”, he grinned.

Hermione giggled. “And then Lyra came to our compartment, looking confident and important, well dressed, dignified, and we both interpreted that as haughty, spoiled and nasty, and she made faces at Ron’s clothes and even more when I said that my parents were muggles, and made that hamster joke when I was already sensitive to having those big front teeth”.

“Nice hamster you’re having, Potter. Did you buy it in Diagon Alley, or did it follow you on its own?”, Harry reminisced. “That felt like such a nasty thing to say to someone, that I instantly sorted her in the same box as Dudley and all other nasty bullies I ever met”.

“It was nasty, and it hurt”, Hermione remembered, “But it was by no means worse than what Ron kept saying about me, if you remember”.

“I do, in fact, and I can’t understand why I didn’t react the same way to him. Probably because he looked poor and neglected, and in my mind people were either poor and neglected, or bullies”, he frowned. “Now that I think of it, he was a terrible pig who cared more about food and his personal comfort than people, and she was a wonderful person who just managed to say all the wrong things”.

“And then she got sorted into Slytherin and we took it as a confirmation that she’s an enemy, and he got sorted into Gryffindor and we took it as a confirmation that he’s a trustworthy friend”.

“Exactly”. They looked at each other in silence.

“Whenever she tried to approach me in the hallways, I would give her a nasty look, because she was the enemy, a bully and a nasty person, and never even talked to her if I could avoid it. I didn’t see her as a person – she was just something you need to fight and defeat, and the fact that she looked like a pretty girl felt like a trick of the enemy that made her worse”, Harry remembered.

“And then she had enough and saved us from our own nastiness and stupidity by ordering you to take out your wand and kill her, if she’s the enemy and vermin, and if not, to treat her with dignity”, Hermione smiled.

“I was too self-righteous to feel ashamed of anything at that time, but she really made me feel ashamed of myself”, he smiled. “She forced open the box I put her in and made me realise that she’s a girl with feelings and that I actually treated her horribly”.

“That, and how smart and dignified she was, and how articulated and sophisticated under stress. I already knew she was a top student, but class is one thing; seeing that display was quite another. I went from having classified her as a nasty cow, to wanting to be like her”, Hermione smiled. “And when you talked to her and explained how she was, I felt really miffed for missing out”.

A perfectly balanced tray levitated itself beside them.

“Snacks”, Lyra shouted from the kitchen.

“Thanks”, they shouted back. “Smoked salmon, buttered toast, Earl Gray tea”, Hermione noticed. “You’re spoiling us”, she shouted.

“Shut up and eat, you’re pregnant”, Lyra shouted back.

“I’m not missing Ron any more”, she gave Harry a conspiratory whisper as he snickered.

“Did you know?”, Hermione gave Harry a mock-suspicious look.

“That Latin is her second native language and that she read the classics in the original? Of course”, he smirked. “Since we were thirteen”.

“And you never told me”, her look became judgmental.

“A gentleman never tells”, he took a bite of his croissant. Viktor choked on his coffee, while Lyra pretended not to notice and smiled into her cup.

Hermione pointed a finger at Harry, tried to say five things at once, was left without words, and just stood like that while everybody broke into laughter in earnest.

“I’m pretty sure this statement wasn’t meant to cover those circumstances, but I do applaud your discretion”, Hermione eventually finished and smiled.

“We talked about lots of stuff that was private, and I felt comfortable talking about it only if it were politics, and stuff I felt both of us would feel comfortable talking about in the mess hall, to others”, he got serious. “It felt sacred. I still feel I’m allowed to mention any of it only if she already told you herself”.

“Thank you”, Lyra whispered.

“I think it’s a wonderful family tradition”, Viktor nodded. “Knowing the langue of the ancient family books really gives you a sense of connection to your ancestry, makes you able to participate in it properly”, he smiled at Lyra. “Will you teach the kids? And I’m including myself”.

“I would be honoured, if everybody agrees”, she looked at them and they all nodded. “And if you don’t mind, I would like to include Lucius as a fellow teacher, since he’s feeling pretty low and abandoned; and Narcissa can teach them the family lore and lineage, the way she taught me, because Lucius wasn’t the only caring and diligent parent”, she smiled.

“That’s a great idea. They must feel terribly lonely and possibly guilty in that big house, all alone”, Hermione nodded. “And honestly, I would love to learn enough Latin to be able to actually read that book you gave me”.

“De incantationibus by Apollodor of Syracuse?”, Lyra winked. “Oh, I might actually read from it to all of you and translate; that’s a much better way to learn than cramming declinations”.

“What is it about?”, Harry was curious.

“Oh, ancient spells and basics of verbal magic. The original was in Greek, and this is a second century BC translation. Interestingly, the spells themselves were in Latin, but slightly messed up, as if created by a non-native speaker who didn’t really know the grammar. I think the original was written around second century BC, soon after the Roman conquest of Syracuse, so the author might have been a contemporary of Archimedes, or close enough. He even explains how he made his wand from Phoenix feather and olive, and consecrated it to Athena and Apollo, invoking their blessings upon both components as their gifts”, Lyra explained.

“Woah”, Viktor was the first one managing to speak.

“Exactly”, Harry nodded. “Now you see why I spent my school years feeling like a dumb kid who somehow lucked into being taught stuff by the two smartest girls in the world”.

Hermione blushed. “To their credit, they never actually bragged or treated me like an idiot, they just slowly brought me up to speed”, Harry smiled at both women.

“I felt guilty when I realized how poorly you were treated by those horrid muggles, while I was pampered, taught and loved”, Lyra took his hand and kissed it. “The least I could do is share”.