"Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor." — Alexis Carrel
Harriet returned to Grimmauld Place without anyone truly noticing.
Which, in itself, said a lot.
The members of the Order were busy—always busy—running errands, relaying messages, watching shadows, carrying out Dumbledore's quiet little plans like loyal pieces on a chessboard. As long as they believed Harriet was safely tucked away behind four ancient walls, they had no further demands. No questions. No inspections. No interference.
The illusion was enough.
And Harriet had learned, very early in both her lives, that illusions were often all people truly wanted.
She closed the door behind her softly and leaned against it for a brief moment, exhaling. The house felt the same as ever—dusty, old magic clinging to the walls like stubborn memories, the air heavy with secrets no one dared clean out properly. Grimmauld Place was many things, but welcoming was not one of them.
Still, it was quiet. And after the weekend she'd had, quiet was… appreciated.
She moved through the corridor almost mechanically, dropping her bag in her room, sitting on the edge of the bed without even bothering to remove her coat. Only then did the events of the past two days truly settle in her chest.
France.
Fleur.
The theatre.
And Furina.
Furina de Fontaine.
Harriet let out a short breath, something dangerously close to a laugh.
Of all the things she had expected to encounter in this world—Voldemort's shadow, corrupted magic, twisted prophecies, angels and devils straight out of biblical scripture—meeting her had not been on the list. And yet, it felt… inevitable. As if destiny itself had nudged her forward with an almost mocking grin.
Harriet hated destiny.
She hated the idea that her life was some prewritten script she was forced to follow, stumbling from misery to misery because some abstract concept decided it was "necessary." Fate had never been kind to her. Never gentle. Never fair.
But… she wasn't above accepting its gifts when it offered them.
And Furina was a gift. Or at the very least, reassurance.
Seeing her—hearing her voice, watching the way she carried herself, exaggerated and theatrical yet undeniably real—had stirred something deep inside Harriet. A memory not of a single moment, but of a presence. Something familiar in a way that went beyond logic or coincidence.
Someone she remembered.
The world was bigger than she had thought.
Not just witches and wizards. Not just dark lords and ancient bloodlines. Angels and devils existed—she'd seen enough to confirm that much. Creatures straight out of scripture, walking the streets, hiding behind barriers that pushed ordinary humans away without them ever realizing it.
Which begged the obvious question.
If the beings of the Bible existed… then what about the others?
Other pantheons. Other gods. Other myths.
Harriet's fingers curled slightly against the fabric of her coat.
She intended to find out.
Her thoughts drifted back to Furina—no, Fukaros. The name itself carried weight. Harriet had spent enough time buried in forbidden texts and demonology to recognize it instantly. Fukaros. Listed among the demons of Solomon. Alongside names that echoed far too closely to those of the other Archons.
Coincidence was becoming harder and harder to accept.
Was Furina truly the Hydro Archon of Teyvat, reborn into this world? Or something adjacent—fragmented, reinterpreted, reshaped by the laws of a different reality?
She would have to ask.
And she would ask.
Because beyond mere personal curiosity and simple appreciation, there was a very real, very practical reason to keep Furina close.
The exorcists.
Harriet's expression darkened as she recalled the scene—how casually they had spoken of devils, how confidently they behaved, how little hesitation there had been in their actions. Those people were dangerous. Not in the theatrical, exaggerated way of Death Eaters, but in a cold, professional sense.
They knew what they were doing.
And that made them far more terrifying.
Even Voldemort, as she remembered him, would have struggled against opponents like that—especially in his earlier incarnations. And Harriet hadn't even seen the worst of what they could do.
Furina, on the other hand…
Harriet closed her eyes briefly, replaying the moment in her mind.
The instant manifestation of water.
The effortless control.
The sheer freedom in her movements.
Three water hammers, formed and deployed in the blink of an eye, without incantation, without strain. No wand. No visible buildup. Just will, answered immediately by power.
It wasn't just strength.
It was mastery.
Furina was strong. Undeniably so. Stronger than anything she had ever seen… perhaps even beyond Dumbledore. Beyond Voldemort.
And that raised an uncomfortable question.
Was that strength purely because she was a devil?
If so, where did she rank among them?
If exorcists were willing to confront her directly, then either they had grossly misjudged her power… …or she wasn't considered an impossible target, and they were simply outmaneuvered by a hidden play. Neither possibility was comforting.
Harriet needed answers. Needed context. Needed a scale to measure herself against.
But more than anything else, she needed to grow.
Power for power's sake was pointless. Measuring who had the biggest ego—or the biggest metaphorical dick—could come later. Right now, what mattered was survival. Adaptation. Improvement.
She lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling as the house creaked quietly around her.
This world was far more dangerous than she had anticipated.
And far more fascinating.
Harriet smiled faintly.
Good.
The rest of the week passed almost entirely inside the Black family library.
Harriet barely left it.
The shelves were a labyrinth of forbidden, obscure, and often deeply unsettling works—grimoires bound in skin-like leather, treatises written in dead languages, observations recorded by minds that had clearly walked too close to the edge and decided to stay there. Fascinating, all of it. Infuriating, too.
She still couldn't quite get over the fact that Molly Weasley had thrown part of it away.
Books deemed too dark, too dangerous, too unhealthy.
Another black mark, added to a growing list of quiet resentments. Not because Harriet glorified darkness, but because ignorance—especially chosen ignorance—was infinitely more dangerous. Knowledge did not corrupt on its own. It merely revealed what already existed.
Or perhaps she herself had perks that make her indifferent to dangers she doesn't even realize?
And what existed, Harriet was beginning to realize, was far more complex than the magical education Hogwarts provided.
Her so-called "cheat"—the advantage she carried with her—continued to prove useful. Yet the more she learned, the more she questioned its nature. Perhaps it wasn't a cheat at all. Perhaps it was simply a product of this world, something anyone could have accessed under the right circumstances.
One thing was certain: the grimoire had gone unnoticed, hanging around her neck all this time without anyone reacting. The Dudleys, perhaps—they might not have seen it because the grimoire itself was magical, or some protection prevented others from noticing it—but neither Dumbledore, nor the living magic at Hogwarts, nor even the Sorting Hat had detected it either.
That thought alone was both sobering and motivating.
Yes, she had grown stronger. Rapidly, even. But she was also painfully aware of how far she still had to go.
The encounters she had witnessed—devils, exorcists, beings that operated on entirely different principles—made one thing clear: external magic alone would never be enough. Wand-based spellcasting, clever as it was, relied too heavily on manipulating ambient magic rather than generating power from within.
What she needed was internal mana.
True internal mana.
If even half of what she remembered from other literary works held true, then a real witch—not merely a spellcaster—could stand toe to toe with gods themselves. Whether that was exaggeration or myth hardly mattered. As long as she believed it was possible, she would pursue it.
Belief, after all, was the foundation of all magic.
Instead of chasing some mythical ultimate tome or blindly searching for a single breakthrough technique, Harriet chose a different path. A slower one. A more methodical one.
She studied biology.
Anatomy. Physiology. Magical theory intersecting with the physical body. She devoured medical texts alongside arcane manuscripts, cross-referencing, annotating, hypothesizing. If magic flowed through her, then it had to do so somewhere. And if there was a difference between a Muggle and a witch, it would manifest biologically as well as metaphysically.
Her grimoire updated itself gradually as she worked, its pages shifting and rewriting as new observations were recorded on her own body.
And then—she found it.
A network.
She hesitated before naming it, almost afraid to define it too early. But the comparison was unavoidable. It spread throughout her body much like blood vessels or nerves, threading through muscle, bone, and organ alike.
Certain spots pulsed more brightly than others—at her heart, in a central core at her abdomen, lighting up her mind, and flowing through her hands—small concentrations of mana lingering like quiet reservoirs waiting to be discovered.
A mana network.
The discovery was exhilarating… and horrifying.
At least ninety-nine percent of it was shriveled.
Not absent. Not destroyed. Just atrophied.
The implication struck her hard. The difference between witches of this world and those who wielded internal mana elsewhere wasn't that one lacked power—it was that they had learned to rely on an external crutch. Hogwarts-trained sorcerers used a tiny, localized reserve of mana within their bodies to manipulate the magic around them, rather than cultivating and expanding what lay dormant inside.
It was efficient.
And limiting.
Harriet formulated a hypothesis: if she could force mana to circulate repeatedly through the few functional pathways still open, she might be able to slowly reopen and strengthen the rest of the network.
The method was… unpleasant.
Painful, in fact.
Circulating mana through such a restricted area felt like forcing liquid fire through brittle glass. Every attempt left her trembling, nauseous, muscles aching as though she'd overworked them to the point of tearing. More than once, she had to stop herself from collapsing outright.
She realized, bitterly, that she should have started younger.
A child's body would have adapted more easily. More flexibly.
Still—she could feel it.
That was the crucial difference.
Where other witches remained oblivious to their own internal flow, Harriet had sensed it. And once she sensed it, she could influence it—slowly, carefully—thanks to her grimoire acting as both guide and stabilizer.
After a full day of effort, the progress was minimal.
Disappointingly so.
At this pace, she estimate it would take at least five continuous years to fully restore the network.
Five years of discipline. Of pain. Of restraint.
She hope—no, she intend—to find a way to accelerate the process. But even this gave her something invaluable: perspective. A future path that did not rely on borrowed power or external artifacts.
By the end of the week, the air around Grimmauld Place felt… anticipatory.
Scabbard's search hadn't turned up anything yet, but it had stirred plenty of attention. People were taking notice, both locally and abroad. One thing was certain: Voldemort—or any Death Eater—could have disposed of him for a single Galleon. For now, Peter Pettigrew was probably hiding with his rat friends in the sewers, exactly where he belonged, and Harriet couldn't have cared less even if it took time to capture him. Even if the rat were found and clumsily dragged before the court, something would inevitably block Sirius from regaining his freedom. With the Ministry's corruption and the Minister's questionable allies, release was out of the question.
In a week, she will need to return to Hogwarts.
Still, before boarding the iconic train at Platform Nine and Three-Quarters the following morning, she has one final appointment.
A meeting with a financial expert had been arranged for tomorrow, because she need to put her money in motion, make it work for her instead of just sitting there.
Preparation, after all, extended beyond magic.
And tomorrow, she will begin moving the first piece of a much larger game.