Chapter Text
A.Z. Fell’s & Co., Soho, London, June 29th 2009
“It’s been a week, Crow, what more could we possibly need?” Xena asked Anthony for the third time that day. Harry’s lost count how often she’s asked him that this last week, even if he honestly agreed with his twin wholeheartedly.
Anthony and Azira, or Uncles Crow and Zira, as Xena had taken to calling them, and roped Harry into as well purely because Azira kept beaming at them and Anthony got a little softer every time they said it, had gotten them, well everything.
They each got their own room with beds, proper beds like the ones at Hogwarts, a desk and a big wardrobe to put things in. They were allowed to practice magic (under Uncle Zira’s carefully watchful eye), had already done their homework and had even been allowed to both owl and phone their friends.
What more could they possibly need for Uncle Crow to consider them ‘moved in’?
“I’m not even going to dignify that with an ansssswer, Kitten,” Uncle Crow hissed at her and yanked the door of the bookshop open. “Now get in the car.”
“Why?” Xena demanded.
“Becausssse, looking at your roomssss makesss me feel like we’ve sssssstuffed you both into a prisssson ccccell,” Uncle Crow hissed at her again.
Harry really didn't get it.
The cupboard under the stairs was more of a prison cell. Their rooms here are practically five-star hotels.
He only made the mistake of saying that once out loud two days ago. Uncle Crow hissed in despair for about an hour afterwards and Uncle Zira pranced around the bookshop like an enraged bird, scaring off customers and his own husband alike. Harry wisely kept the rest to himself.
“We’re going to pick up coloursss, decorationssss, ussssselesss sssssshit with perssssonality, not have you sssstuck in that grubby white endlessss void!”
The hissing was a very useful scale on how upset Uncle Crow was. The more he hissed, the worse it was.
And Harry wanted to help, he really did, he just didn't understand how.
Xena sighed heavily. “You’re not letting this go, are you?”
“NO!”
Xena heaved a mighty sigh, the mightiest Harry had ever seen her heave. It honestly made him a bit worried she might have pulled on her stitches, but when she deflated dramatically and slunk to the car with the kind of newfound theatrics Harry was sure she learned in the Slytherin dorms, he assumed she was alright.
If she could spare the energy to be this dramatic, then she was fine.
Probably.
“C’mon Harry. We might as well get this over with.”
Turns out the ‘this’ she was referring to was Uncle Crow’s idea of shopping. It was horrible. Especially when Gabe showed up about half an hour into it and dragged Xena off to… somewhere, and left him to Uncle Crow’s tender mercies.
In the end Harry had his room repainted in yellow and red, had several posters, both of the magical and non-magical variety taped to his bedroom walls, was the proud owner of new curtains, three sets of personalised bedsheets and was watching Uncle Crow struggle to put up shelves for his massive box of, as promised, completely useless nicknacks that Uncle Crow bought if Harry even so much as looked at them for a second too long.
He was a bit uncomfortable that someone was spending so much money on him, but it seemed to make both his new Uncles happy. It also made something warm and fierce flutter in his chest. He kind of liked it.
Another screw fell loose and the shelf smacked Uncle Crow directly over the head for the third time. He hissed at it in warning. Harry didn’t have the heart to tell him the shelf was probably unintimidated.
The new plant they got for his room though? Oddly enough that one shivered every time Crow hissed.
Harry stifled a giggle as Crow readjusted the shelf, patted the plant in what he hoped was comfort and wondered what exactly Gabe had dragged Xena into.
***
“Feathers, for the love of the Vishanty, what are we doing here?” Xena asked for the third time in as many minutes, as they skulked about Gringotts. “I’m sick and tired of standing around looking at crooked buildings with bad vibes.”
“Aaaa, but do you know why those bad vibes are there, my fiery little kitty-kat?”
“Gabe for the love of god, stop using that abhorrent nickname,I am quite literally begging you here.”
Gabriel rolled his eyes.
“Where’s your sense of mystery gone, Evans? And besides, I thought you’d be thrilled to have a chance to do something useful this summer.”
“Yes, something useful, Gabe. Not just stand around and try to not look suspicious!” she hissed at him and hunkered back down on the roof they were sitting on.
Gabe gave her a funny look.
“Didn’t Tywin talk to you about Aerys’ horcruxes?”
“Yes he did. What about them?”
Gabriel gestured to Gringotts.
“I thought you’d wanna scout.”
Xena shot him a flat look. “Gabe.”
“What?”
Xena sighed. “While I admire your faith in me, even I can’t sense something I’ve never sensed before from Fates know how many levels above it.”
Gabe gave her a strange look.
“You can’t?”
“Not in this body, no!”
“Yeesh Evans, I’m sorry. No need to shout, by Mom’s name. When did you even get this loud?”
Xena growled at him.
He lifted his hands in surrender.
“Sorry, sorry, yeesh. How about I try and snoop around a bit? Maybe get a feel for it or something?”
Xena shot him an unimpressed sort of look that had Gabriel suppressing a snicker.
“I’ll feel the place out and you can draw the map?”
Xena narrowed her eyes, growled one more time and pulled parchment and a quill from her bag.
“Fine. I suppose there’s nothing wrong with giving it an honest go.”
Gabriel clapped her shoulder dramatically. “That’s the spirit, kiddo!”
Xena really wished she'd have picked better friends.
Oh, who was she kidding here, she adored these weirdos to death. But a little bit of complaining never hurt anybody, right?
***
“Do you need help with that, Crowley?”
The man who stood in the doorway to Harry’s new room was tall, but lean. His eyes were a deep rich brown and almost glittering red in the light, and his black hair was graying at the temples. He looked extremely amused at Uncle Crow’s poor shelf predicament.
Uncle Crow hissed and then suddenly there was giggling coming from behind the man.
Harry tilted his head forward to look around him and found two teenagers, around Rob and Margery’s age standing there.
They both had high cheekbones, piercing eyes and black hair. But the girl’s was bleached blonde at the tips. They snickered completely unapologetically, and when Uncle Crow hissed at them, they only snickered louder.
“Why not just magic it up there?” the man, their father maybe?, asked Crow, his voice hiding a laugh as well.
Harry wasn't sure what to make of the whole situation and turned to his Uncle for directions.
Uncle Crow looked as sullen as Harry had ever seen him and muttered, “it wasss sssupposed to mean sssomething.”
Harry furrowed his eyebrows. “You thought you had to do it by hand or I wouldn’t want it?”
Uncle Crow only hissed sadly. Harry furrowed his brow further. “But magic is so cool? Why wouldn’t I like a shelf you got me, especially if you magiced it up.”
“Yes, magic is a bit like a miracle, isn’t it?” the man agreed with an amused glint in his eye and Harry nodded.
“It’s cool. And I promise I’ll like the shelf one way or the other. Really Uncle Crow.”
Anthony studied him for a moment, then hissed one more time, snapped his fingers and the shelf popped into place. Harry whooped.
“Now we just need to make sure your head’s not concussed or something,” Harry told him solemnly and this time the man straight up laughed.
“Oh, ssssshut up, Laufey,” Crow snapped at the man and got to his feet. “Aren’t you and the brats here to decimate the dessspair Kit-Kat has the audacity to call a room?”
“We are, but some of us have manners, Crowley. Stopping by to say hello seemed like the decent thing to do,” the man, Laufey, arched an eyebrow and the two teenagers behind him snickered again.
“Oh, stuff you and your mannersss somewhere else, your regal majesty,” Uncle Crow hissed again and pointed to the door to Xena’s room across the hall. “I don’t wanna see your blue arses outside that room until there’s no more,” he wiggled his hands in a motion Harry couldn’t describe with any words he knew, “depressing coming off of it.”
“Sir, yes, sir!” the two teenagers behind Laufey snapped to attention in an odd salute. Crowley pointed a finger at them.
“And keep the brats away from my plants, they ssssspoil them.”
Laufey raised an unimpressed eyebrow and turned to the teens. “Truly?”
“Yes! Mother was soooo disappointed when she found out,” the girl snickered.
“Well, if it disappointed both your mother and the Serpent, then I suppose I ought to congratulate you instead.”
“Laufey-”
“And how, pray tell, does one spoil a plant anyway?” Laufey cut off Crow neatly and arched an eyebrow at him instead.
“Uncle Zira says you give them pets and ‘tell the poor dears they’re doing well’,” Harry repeated Zira’s words sagely.
Laufey’s eyes snapped to him and the corner of his mouth ticked up. “Ah, yes, of course. That ought to do it. Forgive my poor manners, I am Laufey, and these two menaces are my children, Sylvie and Helblindi. My youngest, Byleistr, is downstairs with Aziraphale. You must be Xena’s brother Harry.”
Laufey offered him a hand to shake and Harry took it. “Nice to meet you, sir.”
“No sirs, please. Just Laufey will do.”
“Laufey then. You know Xena?”
Laufey’s smile went oddly soft. “She saved my life. And my children’s lives too. I owe her a lot. Gabriel roped us into decorating her room as a surprise. I think all of us were well aware she was never going to do it herself.”
“Oh, that’s nice. So you will be decorating while Gabe drags her around to distract her?” Harry asked. He had no idea how he was supposed to ask how or when Xena had time to save multiple people’s lives.
But then again, she had served a lot of detentions with Lannister, and if hers were anything like his… well there’s no telling what kind of chaos his sister got into, especially with several Lannisters around to, presumably, do absolutely nothing to stop it.
Laufey’s chuckle brought Harry out of his thoughts.
“Us three, my wife and two more friends. Aziraphale was kind enough to offer to watch Byl for the time being. But Hela, Kali and Anubis are running late. Apparently Kali and Anubis have been arguing over curtain embroidery and whether giving her a statue is more likely to have her set it or us on fire.”
“A statue?” Harry asked, appalled. What would his sister even do with a statue?
Well, Laufey had already answered that. Either set it on fire, or set the people who gifted it to her on fire. He’s seen the way her hair lights up in bright green flames when she was really mad several times in his life. And now that he’d spent half the school year watching Hermione light things on fire on purpose, he dreaded to see what his, sometimes literally, flaming sister was capable of.
“I hope Kali wins and they end up getting it,” Sylvie pipped from behind her dad. “I wanna see her try and explain to Little Auntie how ‘every self-respecting goddess needs a good statue’ and somehow not get banished into a parallel universe.”
Harry snickered with her and decided he liked these people. He was looking forward to meeting the others.
***
Xena had the weirdest friends. They were quirky, a bit intense, but absolutely hilarious to watch as they argued over whether or not an ornate gold encased mirror was too much or if they should have got her one in pure silver instead.
Laufey’s wife, Hela, had stabbed several daggers and swords into various surfaces and called it decoration.
Anubis, who turned out to be a big black dog, somehow kept insisting on them putting up a massive scroll it got from… somewhere, but Kali insisted it would take up too much of the wall and ‘clash’ with the wooden wall hangings she got.
Sylvie and Helblindi had been arguing over the placement of a large ornate vase for the last half an hour, and Uncle Zira had shown up at some point to ‘help’ Laufey paint the walls, a small boy who must have been a year or two old at best, on his hip.
Byleistr was promptly deposited into Harry's arms as soon as Zira and Laufey started their paint argument, and he was absolutely adorable.
He kept the both of them well out of the way of the others as they argued about everything and the little boy proudly displayed both the plush wolf he had with him, as well as all of his teeth, he turned blue when he sneezed and at some point made a cloud of snowflakes dance around the both of them. Harry was never giving him back.
During that time Xena’s room somehow ended up with all of the walls covered in different colour splatters everywhere. Like someone had a colour fight in here.
It looked absolutely chaotic.
He was sure Xena would love it.
Especially since they agreed to skip the statue.
Byleistr sneezed again and Harry couldn’t find it in himself to not coo at him.
***
“Surprise!”
“Aaaaahhh! GABRIEL VALENTINE FELL!”
“Oh shit!”
“Run, kid, run!”
“Not helping Lauf!”
“Gabriel!”
“SurpriseKat,okImmaheadoutbye!”
Gabriel did actually run, thought Harry was pretty sure it was mostly for the dramatics of it... and to avoid Xena’s lecture.
Or her attempt at one anyway anyway.
As soon as she started, Sylvie and Helblindi gave her matching puppy-eyes, deposited their youngest sibling into her arms and she melted on the spot.
Gabriel came back 15 minutes later with a large stack of books for the new shelves in Xena’s room.
She loved it. Even if she did complain to the whole lot of them about her poor aging heart and surprises. Harry didn’t have the heart to tell her that if she was old, then he must be ancient.
***
In spite of everything it still took Uncle Crow another two days to declare them officially moved in.
Harry took as many pictures as he could to send to Ron and Hermione, and Xena spent that time carving runes into both the door and window frames, as well as painting several more into the walls, even those down in the bookshop and the one in Crow and Zira’s room.
Harry also spent several days arguing with his new Uncles on who got to cook and how often, since Crow insisted children shouldn’t be ‘slaving away in the kitchen’ like Aunt Petunia made them do.
Harry argued that he was good at cooking and he should be allowed to do something for them.
In the end his twin had the final vote. Xena popped her head into the room covered in paint, offered Harry help and banned both of their Uncles from the kitchen on the grounds of Zira lacking patience and eating things half raw, and Crow starting a fire trying to make a salad.
Harry wanted to know how someone managed that, and Xena immediately jumped at the opportunity to bully Crow and Zira into taking them on a day trip to Tadfield to meet Adam, their ‘antichrist’ nephew from one of Zira’s eldest brothers.
He had apparently bore witness and had photo evidence of the Salad incident.
They agreed, under the stipulation that Xena try to sleep more. Harry hadn’t even noticed she wasn’t sleeping properly to begin with. He felt bad, but tried to remind himself his sister was good at hiding things, and that now he wasn’t alone in taking care of her.
It produced some mixed results.
***
Adam was really nice. And super fun. Him and his dog (named Dog, because no one in this new family of theirs should really be 100% sane) were both a pair of sweethearts, and Harry really had no idea why on Earth would anyone ever call Adam the Antichrist or Dog a Hellhound.
Really, he should probably get used to both Xena and everyone else being just slightly off their rocker from now on.
It would probably be easier in the long run.
Turns out the photo evidence of the Salad incident had ‘miraculously’ gone missing, but Adam was more than happy to reenact the whole thing.
Harry agreed with Uncle Crow that it was really all Laufey’s fault, if only to get him to stop hissing at someone.
Especially after Adam and Xena sequestered themselves into a corner in the garden and started experimenting with… something. And after an hour of it, a massive ‘boom’ toppled everyone off of their feet and Zira spent the next few minutes convincing the rest of the village that all was well, and that it was simply children being children.
The next door lady, Anathema, seemed awfully unconvinced, but ushered everyone away anyway.
Xena and Adam were fine, and for some reason, Xena seemed to have regained a bit of her colour afterwards.
She even slept on the drive back in the car. Uncle Crow carried her inside like she was a little princess. Harry snapped a picture and kept it in case he ever needed his sister to do him a favour.
He snapped another one when Uncle Crow seemed to be too lazy to try and figure out the stairs and door, and just plopped both himself and Harry’s twin on one of the couches in the bookshop, tossed off his sunglasses and promptly started snoring.
Uncle Zira asked him to take one with an old-fashioned camera that printed out a picture, after he had tossed a blanket over them.
Harry gladly did.
***
“The little Princess, here all by herself,” Kronos cooed.
Pain ripped through her and Xena woke up screaming.
Crowley nearly jumped out of his skin and brandished one of Aziraphale’s prized books as a weapon.
It took them two hours to fall asleep again.
***
Xena was slowly losing her mind. She was sure of it.
She and Harry had been at the bookshop for almost three weeks now, and the voices were getting worse. And somehow it seemed that between a literal Archdemon who was quite possibly a fallen Archangel, but not like Crowley would ever confirm that, a never-sleeping Principality and a decently powerful, if teenage, wixen in the house, she was still the only one who could hear them.
And ever since Tadfield, they had gotten worse. As had the nightmares.
But those were easier to ignore. Kronos was locked up tight in Tartarus, and he could traverse her dreams all he wanted, but that was all he could do.
That and make her relive her past pains, but Xena was actively not thinking about that.
No, she was actively thinking about the voices.
Two different ones, she was sure of it, but where were they coming from? She had no clue.
They couldn’t be coming from something inside the house, both she and Tywin had warded the entire bookshop to the hells and back. Ergo; she was slowly losing her mind.
There was just no other blasted explanation.
She had asked both Crowley and Aziraphale about some sort of friendly ghosts lurking about, and gently prodded Harry if he had heard anything.
Nothing.
Zero.
Nada.
All three of them.
And she was too scared to tell Tywin at this point.
If he found out she had been hiding ‘an affliction’ from him since her absolutely gentle crash landing in the Hospital wing, he’d flip.
“What do you reckon she’s looking for?” the first voice asked.
“Beats me, man. Could be anything,” the second voice replied, completely unphased. Xena’s eyebrow twitched.
“Maybe she’s looking for spots she missed when she was re-doing the security,” the first one mused again.
“Oh yeah, that’s probably it! Paranoid little bugger,” the second one added enthusiastically.
She had the inexplicable feeling that the first voice was wiping away a fake tear as it said, “that’s our girl!”
She cast a presence-detecting charm for the third time in as many minutes. She could feel the pressure of the spell finally put a dent in her depleted magical reserves. She could feel the blood start to slowly pour from her nose.
“Uff, that can’t be good.”
“Yeah, someone should go get Uncle Zira.”
“Not me man, snitches get stitches!”
“You don’t even have a physical body, how you gonna get stitches?”
“I didn’t mean it literally, you duffus!”
“Who you calling a dufus, you leather-bound ball-sack?”
“I’m not even wearing leather, you horse-faced beachball!”
The two voices devolved into incomprehensible screeches before fading out.
Xena wanted to scream.
That same night she kept turning and turning in her bed. Really, at this point in the night anything was preferable to staring at the ceiling.
At some point her bladder started to protest too loudly to ignore any further. She got up and snuck out of her room. She did her best to try and not wake up anyone else in the house. Or disturb Aziraphale, as the Principality didn’t really sleep on principle.
She crept into the hallway and immediately regretted getting out of bed.
The voices… the voices were back.
And they were back with a vengeance.
“Lumos,” she whispered quietly and the hallway lit up. Her temple protested her lack of wand sharply. She blinked past it and attempted to scan the corridor for any sign of them. It hadn’t worked any of the last few times, but she was damned if that was going to stop her.
She scanned the hallway and blinked.
She blinked a few more times when she found nothing but a few more shadows than was strictly necessary.
The two smaller ones, barely reaching halfway up to her knees in height, were whizzing around the big one. That one was bigger than she was right now. Almost as big as she was when she had grown on her unprompted time adventure.
“Shut up, you dick!” the first one snapped.
“No, you shut up, you moron!” the second one snapped back.
The third one, the biggest one, her shadow, stayed silent and unmoving, only its eyes, the damaged eyes she was supposed to have because of Kronos’ curse, blinked at her and then back down to the other two.
Xena stared at it.
“What did you just call me?”
“Oh, you heard me.”
“Why you little-”
One of the smaller shadows charged at the other one and they started a… Well, Xena would call it a fight if it didn’t look more like a really artistic 2D animation that had a ball randomly morphing into one or two vaguely human-like creatures.
And the voices… The shadows were definitely the ones talking and screaming obscene profanities at each other. Xena tilted her head deliberately and kept her eyes on the largest shadow.
It was definitely attached to her. And it was definitely her shadow… but for some reason it did not move when she did. It looked rather independent really.
“You’re an egotistical communist rectum waffle!” one of the smaller ones screamed.
The large one tilted its head towards the two in annoyance.
“And you’re a slimy bonner wanna-be whiffer!”
“What does that even mean?” Xena asked, apparently out loud because the two figures fighting froze.
"Why's she staring at us?" one of them asked.
"Dude, she's not staring at us, don't be stupid," the other snapped at it, but kept looking at Xena.
"I'm stupid? You're stupid! She's staring at us!"
"After 700 years? Man, nah, no way."
Now that they were staying still long enough for Xena to get a good look at them, she could see their ‘faces’ had small white dots and slits where the eyes were supposed to be.
And one of them had a vertical slit where its right eye was supposed to be and a dot for the left, and the other had a diagonal slit for its left eye and a dot for the right one.
Xena swallowed thickly.
These must have been hers.
They matched the injuries Kronos had cursed her to suffer through, just like the bigger one… or at least they did where facial disfigurement was concerned.
Xena was infinitely glad she woke up in her old body with both eyes functioning and all her limbs still attached.
“700 years?” It took her a while to register that it was she who spoke. “What do you mean 700 years?”
The small shadows on the floor looked at her like she was stupid.
“The 700 years we spent lost in time?”
“Yeah! That 700 years!”
Xena stared at the two of them hard. Her mind was whirling.
They’ve been here the entire time?
“Wha-...”
Silence reigned for a few moments.
“I think we broke her…”
“Oh, ya think?!”
“I- I’ve seen you before… A few times, I think,” Xena kept rocking her brain hard.
That’s why the voices sounded so familiar.
“Yeah, duuuh…”
“Even mental barricades as strong as yours can’t keep all of your arcane magic at bay all the time.”
“Yeah, especially not in Gotham.”
“What’s so special about Gotham?” Xena asked.
“Ehh, no clue. Just know that usually when you were able to see us, it was near it.”
“Or in the aftermath of crash-landing there,” the other one snickered.
It got an ‘elbow’ to the ‘ribs’ for that one.
“Come to think of it, how come you can see us now?”
“Yeah! You’ve been nowhere near the Americas, much less that pothole in decades.”
“I…” Xena hummed. Why could she see them now? “I don’t know.”
She turned to the biggest one.
“Do you have any ideas?”
The smaller shadows snickered.
“Oh, Sig doesn’t speak.”
“Yeah, never has, never will.”
Xena stared at them.
“700 years and she hasn’t uttered a word. Didn’t even make a sound.”
“Nothing!”
“Nada!”
“Zero!”
“Ok, ok, ok, I get it,” Xena waved them off.
They stared at her expectantly.
“Soo…”
“Soo…” Xena echoed.
“You reckon you’re here to stay?”
“He means, do you think you’ll be able to see us now? I mean it can get pretty boring with just the two of us, you know?”
“Yeah, Sig’s not much fun, ya know? No offence dude,” he waved her off.
Sig stayed silent.
“Uuuu… I don’t know, guys,” Xena scratched the back of her neck awkwardly.
“Wh-what are your names anyway? After 700 years you must have picked some,” she said to fill the awkward silence that stretched on after her admission.
“Oh, yeah, I’m Crash,” waved the one with the vertical line.
“And I’m Eddie,” waved the one with the diagonal line.
“And that’s Sig,” they said in union.
“Yeah, I figured that out myself.”
There were a few more moments of awkward silence. Xena had a sneaking suspicion the shadows were looking at her with something resembling ave.
Or it could have just been they had a bit of a trouble believing she wasn't going to just get up and forget they existed.
It was hard to tell.
“Xena Potter,” Xena whipped her head around and bit back a scream. The two tiny shadows didn’t have that kind of self restraint before they barreled away and morphed into their bigger sibling? Parent? Version? Xena didn’t really want to think about the technicalities at the moment.
Because standing at the end of the dimly lit hallway was Aziraphale, his unnatural angelic body on full display and why he was walking around like that instead of his perfectly crafted and maintained corporation, Xena had no clue.
Several tens of thousands of glowing blue and gold eyes peered at Xena from the dark, highlighted by the pure snow-white wings behind them.
“What are you doing out of bed?”
And ho-boy, did his indignant preening look so, so, sooooo much worse like this.
“Uncle Zira!” Xena pretended her voice did not crack there at the end. “I love you?”
She didn’t have ‘nearly a million eyes narrowing at her in suspicion’ on her bucket list, but she supposed she could cross it off anyway.
“Most adorable. Want to try again, my dear?”
Ho-boy, Xena was now officially sure she had gone completely and utterly off of her rocker.
***
About a week later Harry, Crow and Zira had been having a wonderful morning. Harry and Zira made crepes together (Zira only got the ingredients from the fridge, but he liked to feel included), Crow was pulled out of bed by the promise of coffee and Xena had finally, finally, decided to sleep in for a change.
Harry had gotten a little bit better at judging when she had and hadn’t slept. Uncle Zira was still the best at it though.
Then shortly after breakfast, Crow was coerced into driving them to a farmer’s market on the outskirts of London and they stopped for ice cream on their way back.
Zira got the tomatoes he wanted, Harry got some nice, plump cherries and Crow only hissed at three different people in the two hours they were there.
All and all it was a good day so far.
“Uncle Zira, since we’re making spaghetti with tomato sauce today, can we make roast beef and potatoes tomorrow? I know Xena likes it.”
His Uncle beamed at him. “Of course, my dear.”
The lunch preparations were going wonderfully. Zira helped and praised Harry for his cooking skills and, as it turned out, if Harry was making food for someone who actually wanted to try it, and not just because he was told to, Harry adored cooking.
It also helped a lot to know that at any point he could just decide he didn’t feel like it and the only thing anyone would say to that was for Uncle Zira to beg Uncle Crow to take them to one of the restaurants he adored.
But Harry loved the way Zira beamed every time he took a bite, how he would sometimes moan before complimenting him for the whole meal, how sometimes even Crow who barely ate at all, ate some of it and he especially loved it when Xena would nudge him under the table and wink at him before showing more food on both their plates and neither of the adults even batted an eye for it.
“Crowley, dear, could you go wake up Xena? Lunch’s almost ready.” Zira called from the kitchen. They heard an annoyed hiss from the front of the shop and Harry giggled. Zira shook his head. “That willy old thing.”
“Uncle Crow, pleaseee,” Harry called out and a soft hiss was followed by footsteps this time around.
“One of these days that trick’s going to lose its punch, Potter, mark my words,” Crow wiggled a finger at him before he slinked off past the kitchen and up the stairs.
Harry and Zira giggled again.
“I’m almost sorry to send him to wake her, but she’s thinner than you are. Really, if we’re not careful, we might have the both of you blown away in the breeze.”
Harry snickered.
“Don’t laugh my dear, have you any idea how difficult of a conversation that would be to have with Tywin?”
Harry snickered again.
“Granted, if I send Crowley to deliver the news, I might still have enough time to pack my books and fly off to Alpha Centauri,” Uncle Zira rubbed his chin thoughtfully as if he would ever leave his husband to deal with Professor Lannister by himself. “I’m fairly certain even someone like him couldn’t follow me-”
Rushed footsteps clambered down the stairs and Harry and Zira froze.
A crash.
A curse.
A loud hiss.
And then Uncle Crow smacked head-first into the doorframe of the kitchen with a look of sheer panic on his face.
Harry’s eyes widened when he took him in. His face was pale, his eyes wide and his breathing laboured.
“Dearest, what’s wrong?” Zira asked him cautiously.
“She’s gone.”
If the room wasn’t deathly silent, Harry would have missed it.
“I- What did you say?”
“She’s gone, Angel,” Uncle Crow whispered again, as if he was having trouble believing it himself.
“Gone? Who’s gone Crowley? Do you mean Xena? How do you mean she’s gone?”
“She’s dead,” Harry whispered to himself and both heads snapped in his direction.
“What? No, no she can’t be, can she?”
“O fuck, sssshit, no, no, no kid,” Crow pushed himself into the kitchen and wrapped Harry in his arms just as he felt the first prickle of tears.
She was gone.
They finally had something nice to show for in life and now she was gone.
Dead.
Lost forever.
“Harry, sssshit, no, that’s not what I meant, kid, breathe,” Crow went on and Harry froze.
“W-Wha…”
“I meant she’sss missing! I went to wake her up but her room’ssss empty. Mussst have been gone for a while now.”
A hysterical laugh bubbled out of Harry’s throat and Zira visibly depleted over Crow’s shoulder.
“You willy old serpent! You scared the Almighty out of us! Me and Harry both!”
Harry laughed again, this time a bit less hysterically as before, as Uncle Crow picked him up and spun around so that he was facing his husband. He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly.
“Ughh… ssssory Angel. Didn’t mean it like that. Just panicked.”
Uncle Zira shook his head and looked at the two of them.
“So she’s all right, just…”
“Missing.”
A beat of silence as everyone contemplated this.
“Something tells me she won’t be alright when we find her.”
Zira looked at Harry with a determined set to his jaw.
“Right you are, my dear boy. Right you are.”
Another beat.
“Sssssoooo… Anyone know how to track down a rogue witch in the middle of London?” Crow asked.
Zira pursed his lips.
“I know someone who does.”