Despite what had occurred that night, things didn't deteriorate much afterward. Tense, yes. Awkward at times. But it wasn't permanent.
With everything I had lived through, I had plenty of topics for conversation. Even when Hannah tried to keep her distance, she eventually drifted back. It wasn't hard: making her laugh, distracting her, restoring the sense of familiarity by my side. Unless she actively shut herself down, I could dissolve the barriers she raised… and soon we were almost back to the way we were.
I suppose, in a way, it was a form of exposure therapy.
Anyway, we continued wandering through the jungle for a while longer until we finally made contact with other humans.
And that's where a new problem arose.
When we found the first person—a traveler, or something of the sort—we understood immediately that we couldn't communicate. The language was completely different.
I had the [Subtitles] skill, and after leveling it up, I could understand what he said… but not vice-versa. He couldn't understand us.
Our first encounter was chaotic. We were different in every way: race, clothing, language. Our youthful appearance didn't help either.
I wouldn't say there was a fight, but communication was so poor that I don't even know if we managed to convey our intentions. Everything was resolved, more or less, when we displayed magic.
As soon as we did, the man fell to his knees before us, trembling. Through [Subtitles], I saw him pleading for mercy, calling us something equivalent to a shaman, warlock or witch doctor.
With mimicry and a bit of transfiguration, we managed to ask him to guide us to a settlement. He accepted immediately.
Thus, we solved one of our immediate problems.
...
We arrived at a small village. Very small, compared to what we knew. Hut after hut, made of plant fibers, fragile, rustic.
The other natives watched us first with curiosity… and then with fear. The man who had guided us walked ahead, pale and shaking, which only worsened the misunderstanding.
Hannah and I tried to fix it. We offered gifts; we tried to show goodwill.
It didn't work.
The natives began to bring everything they considered valuable, kneeling before us to hand it over. Not as gratitude, but as an obligation.
I didn't know what reputation wizards had in this place, but it was clear they were feared. Every gesture of ours seemed to be interpreted as an implicit threat. Even our gifts were seen as a forced exchange.
I sighed and accepted the situation, at least temporarily. Hannah, on the other hand, was not comfortable at all. She didn't like being feared.
We stayed in the village for several days while I tried to gather useful information.
Language was the main hurdle, though I knew learning it might not help in other parts of the Amazon. Then there were the directions. The village barely reached fifty people, and few even understood what it meant to look for an ancient or "cursed" temple.
Still, I learned of larger settlements—something akin to cities—quite far away. In fact, if we had followed certain routes I ignored before, we might have already reached one.
The directions were vague and imprecise, but at least now I had a plan: reach one of those "cities" and ask there. The greatest difficulty of this mission didn't seem to be the enemy… but finding the path.
While I gathered information, Hannah lived through her own reality check.
She was both marveled and horrified by the life of the natives. Hunger, disease, death. None of it was unusual for them. For her, however, it was unbearable.
Unable to help herself, she began to assist.
She healed wounds, cleaned infections, and improved basic conditions using everything she had learned so far. It was then that she realized how fortunate she had been to be born in the future. Simple things for her were miracles for them.
So our days passed there. We slept away from the village. They offered us the best hut, but we turned it down; we didn't feel comfortable taking these people's meager homes from them. Still, although Hannah won their admiration, the fear never entirely disappeared.
On the last day, some curious souls came out of the Fiefdom to see what this primitive world was like.
Tonks, with a belly barely showing the pregnancy. Elise's avatar. And Helena.
Hannah didn't know which one to be more surprised by.
Elise left her speechless. That creature radiated an elegance and majesty even superior to that of unicorns. She wasn't like when she saw her before: now she had wings. The fact that she spoke was shocking… but nothing shook her as much as discovering she was also one of my women.
Hannah's expression upon realizing it was sublime. Now she understood that, for me, doing it with an Occamy might not be such an extreme thing.
She didn't dare say anything. Elise's dominant aura was crushing. Hannah could only lower her head while Elise showed her affection toward me without any shame.
It seemed twisted to her... but she couldn't help feeling envy seeing me ride her, fly with her, and lose myself among her fur and feathers.
One part of Hannah thought I was a degenerate. Another wanted to ask me if she could touch her.
Elise soon returned to the Fiefdom. There was nothing here to keep her. She planned to finish some modifications to her avatar and then travel through this world to perfect herself as we had agreed.
Then there was Helena.
Hannah recognized her immediately… and was stunned. Among my partners, there weren't just women and magical creatures, but also a ghost. And not just any ghost, but one from Hogwarts.
Each new revelation moved her further away from any human understanding of me. She no longer knew what to think or how to judge me. I had surpassed any mortal expectation.
Furthermore, the Helena she had in front of her was not the one she saw at Hogwarts.
This one provoked a deep, instinctive fear in her—a void in her chest and hopelessness. She didn't know it, but it was because Helena was not restraining her undead aura at that moment.
Over time, Helena had continued to master necromancy and increase her negative energy. She was powerful before, but now she was entering a completely different level. Not only could she interact with the physical world naturally, but she could also cast magic without restrictions, though almost always linked to death.
If I had to estimate, I'd say she was half a step away from reaching categories like those of Dumbledore or Voldemort. She wasn't there yet, but the nature of her magic—so strange, so definitive—made her dangerous even before reaching that level.
Hannah and Helena spoke several times. It wasn't something I planned or asked for: it just happened. Helena, with her unsettling calm and sharp intelligence, helped integrate Hannah effortlessly, as if she understood exactly what to say and when.
The girl's curiosity was immense. But the more it was sated, the more confused her emotions became. She didn't understand how I had achieved so much, or why everything seemed to fall in my favor. On more than one occasion, she even wondered if, perhaps, her initial rejection of my polygamous lifestyle hadn't been as justified as she thought.
That changed upon meeting Tonks.
Unlike Helena or Elise, Tonks didn't have a supernatural presence or an impossible existence. Among them all, she was the most "normal." And yet, there was something about her that eclipsed the others.
She was pregnant with my child.
That detail hit Hannah harder than any previous revelation. Knowing that one of my partners was already expecting a child of mine, and that I was practically her same age, left her completely disoriented.
Since they were both from Hufflepuff, the conversation between them flowed with surprising ease. Just as it had with Chiara. Unfortunately for me, Tonks was not as compliant as Helena when it came to softening my image.
They stepped aside to talk alone. Many times. About various topics. But all of them, in one way or another, ended up revolving around me.
—
"How did it all start… if you're so many years apart?" Hannah asked, genuinely intrigued.
"I didn't think anything would happen when I met him either," Tonks replied, with a smile full of nostalgia.
—
"Did you really… have sex? I mean…" Hannah trailed off, embarrassed, looking at Tonks's belly.
"I know, I get it," Tonks replied naturally. "And yes, a lot..."
—
"He has so many partners…? All of them...?"
"More than he should be allowed," Tonks said with feigned indifference. "But yes. There are many of us. And he doesn't seem to be stopping."
—
"What does it feel like to be pregnant?" Hannah wondered.
"Weird. Very weird. And sometimes, a nightmare," Tonks blurted out honestly, absentmindedly stroking her belly. "They say I'm lucky because it hasn't hit me that hard, but that 'ease' gives me a bad feeling. I should be bigger for how far along I am. Red and Chiara insist it's nothing, but I would have liked to stop by St. Mungo's to have them confirm it."
"And... is it really Red's?" Hannah doubted.
"Hey! You don't say those things to a pregnant woman," Tonks replied with a spark of indignation, though without losing her tenderness. "I would never cheat on my husband; I'm not as much of a scoundrel as he is. So yes, Red is the son of a bitch responsible for this," she concluded, with a smile that danced between love and hate.
—
The conversations were intense. It was part of the Hufflepuff character: talking, sharing, trying to understand the other. Tonks was the only one Hannah could truly empathize with. Neither an alicorn, nor a ghost, nor people with whom she shared no language could help her process what she felt.
That night, sitting together under the starry sky, they spoke alone for the last time.
"Are you really okay with all of this… with Red?" Hannah asked in a low voice, watching Tonks, who kept her eyes fixed on the night sky.
"I already told you no," she replied with a sigh. "I don't like it; I just accept it. I will never deny that I wish ours was normal, that he wasn't a damn unfaithful boy with a small dick…" She spat the words with venom, though Hannah noticed there was no real malice, just a deep exhaustion.
"And you don't tell him? You don't try… something?"
"You think I haven't tried? That I haven't thought about it a thousand times?" Tonks let out a dry laugh, full of resentment. "That son of a bitch always gets his way. He manages to convince me, usually he fucks me until I lose my senses and I end up giving in…" As she remembered, Tonks experienced a shiver—a mixture of disgust at her own weakness and the echo of a pleasure she couldn't ignore.
"But… shouldn't that make you want to leave him more?" Hannah furrowed her brow, genuinely confused.
"You don't know him, Hannah. The sex is too good. By the time you realize it, you're already asking for more and you feel that you simply can't leave him. It's a drug." (Tonks)
"Oh…" Hannah stammered, not quite grasping that kind of enslavement. "But haven't you thought seriously about demanding things from him? He's usually serious about his promises. And now you're the mother of his child."
"He already has another daughter, at least…" Tonks made a small pout, a childish gesture that contrasted with the bluntness of the talk. "I don't feel like I have the right to demand he be only mine because I'm pregnant, even though I was his first girlfriend."
"And… you accept it like this? You never think about escaping and leaving it all?" Hannah insisted with frustration. "I know you're expecting a baby, but my mom once threatened to leave dad just because she thought he was cheating. I've heard similar things from other women. That's how it happens in stories, shouldn't it be...?"
Tonks arched an eyebrow, breaking her trance with the sky to look at the young girl. "You have too many questions for someone who shouldn't be concerned with our private life."
"Sorry…" Hannah murmured, realizing she had crossed a line.
"It's okay. I know why you do it." Tonks's face softened and she let out a sad laugh. "You like him, don't you? Or maybe not him, but the idea of him. You thought that if he didn't have that giant harem, he could be the perfect boyfriend. What a silly girl…"
"I don't—"
"I'd tell you to guard your feelings and not play his game, or you'll end up like me. But if you're already under his gaze, I suppose you've already fallen into his honey trap." Tonks sighed and looked at her intently. "I'll be honest with you: I've lost count of the times I've cursed him, wishing I had never met him. Especially when he slept with my mother."
"He slept with your mother?!" Hannah recoiled, horrified.
"Yes. And I throw it in his face whenever I can, whether he's there or not." Tonks began to stroke her belly, and this time her eyes filled with tears that began to roll uncontrollably. "If I could choose between having him all to myself or leaving far away… I don't know. I know that if the world went back to a point where we never met, I would be desperate to find him again."
A heavy silence followed. Tonks was now staring into the void, her face soaked.
"I hate him, but I love him. We've been through so much together that I couldn't stand a life without him. He is part of me, of who I am… without Red, I wouldn't be Tonks. If to have him I must accept that there are other pussies around him, I'll have to do it, because I won't leave his side. But just as I endure that, he will have to accept my complaints and my tantrums forever."
She finished with a happy laugh through tears. Hannah remained speechless, her heart sinking. That talk hadn't brought the clarity she sought, but rather a web of doubts and intrigues much darker than she imagined.