"The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper." - W.B. Yeats
The drive back to Potter Manor passed in a comfortable, easy kind of silence, one both of them seemed to need. Before heading to bed, Harriet stopped by Yuna's room and pressed a small kiss to her cheek. "Thank you, Yuna. I really think this would have dragged on forever without you, and I genuinely needed that... give them hell, I'm completely done with them now." She said it with real reassurance in her voice, a genuine smile for all the support she'd received.
"Go on, get some sleep, champion. You're exhausted, and I need you in top shape for tomorrow, don't forget, we still have a few things left to discuss." Yuna said, satisfied with how the day had gone, giving her a hug before heading off to her own room.
Afterward, Harriet lay down in bed, unable to stop herself from running back through the entire day. It had been a long time since she'd genuinely let herself relax like that. She'd almost forgotten that the actual point of this new life was supposed to be relaxing, enjoying it. The problem was that surviving in this world took power, and if she let that become the only thing she focused on, she risked losing sight of the point entirely. She already had a fairly overpowered cheat code on her side, so she'd decided to take her time with the rest of it too. After all, she wasn't alone in this.
Her thoughts drifted back to the Dursleys, and the misery that had finally caught up to them. It was the first time she'd ever seen them like that, the first time she'd watched Petunia lower her eyes so completely. Even before, there had always been a small, unfounded fear underneath Petunia's cruelty, the fear of her own husband, one she'd apparently never quite admitted to herself, though it was obvious enough, if he could be violent with his niece, he could be violent with her too. It was the first time she'd seen Dudley go quiet, no snide remarks, no stupidity spilling out of him. The first time she'd seen Vernon look genuinely helpless, submissive even, standing in front of her.
Either way, she'd genuinely needed that small measure of revenge for the childhood she'd been forced to endure, and now she'd had it. Whether she'd truly won or not didn't really matter in the end. What mattered was that it let her move forward.
Petunia had been right to be afraid of magic. Her fear, though, had always been misplaced. As she'd seen firsthand tonight, a scientifically engineered piece of metal could be every bit as threatening as magic ever was. None of that had ever been a reason to treat her the way she had, though, if anything, she could have used that fear to prepare her niece for the world she'd have to face instead. She, of all people, was the first to know exactly how unfair that world could be.
The world they all lived in wasn't simple, not by a long shot, whether on the mundane side or the magical one, it didn't really change much in the end, life was difficult for everyone, one way or another. Stand out too much, and you get cut down, whether you've succeeded or failed, it's always the same story. In a world like this, in a society like this, a fundamentally logical one at that, some of the bravest people were the ones who simply chased their own freedom without asking anyone's permission for it, and that was exactly who she was. It was who Yuna was too, and even Mutsuko, once she grew into herself a little more.
In this life, she'd known both extremes, the lack of food, the cold shoulders from teachers and adults she'd once turned to for help, and fame too, along with every single problem that came bundled with it. And being average wouldn't have changed a thing either, everyone had their ups and downs, whether they wanted them or not. So she decided to keep moving forward, not to forget, never to forget, but to keep fighting, for herself, and for the people she loved. It wasn't a guaranteed win, but she'd find her place in this world eventually. Of that, she was certain.
It was with those thoughts that she finally fell asleep, ready for a fresher start.
...
Morning came, and at eight o'clock, Harriet woke up to the smell of scrambled eggs and coffee drifting through the house. She took a moment to freshen up before heading down to the kitchen, still in her pajamas. There, she found Yuna, also still in her own pajamas, having already set out two plates and two cups of coffee.
"I figured that would wake you up. I let the smell drift toward your room on purpose. So, sleep well, champion?" Yuna asked, in that lazy, self assured tone she always had, even more so in the mornings.
"Very well, thank you. And thanks for making breakfast, I'd almost forgotten Hogwarts house elves don't actually live in my house too." Harriet said, happy to see a good breakfast and Yuna both waiting for her the moment she woke up. "And you? Did you sleep okay? Looks like you've already gotten your bearings around the manor."
At that, Yuna chuckled. "I've been living here ever since I first came to England, purely for your beautiful eyes, don't you forget it."
"Yeah, yeah," Harriet said, "I don't forget. It's your house too, that's what I promised you, after all."
"I should probably be ashamed of myself, kidnapped and forced to count your money on top of it. Poor me, I'm probably suffering from Stockholm syndrome at this point." Yuna said, wiping away imaginary tears.
"You couldn't have landed a better kidnapper than me, you're lucky, really!" Harriet said, puffing her chest out proudly.
And so a perfectly ordinary breakfast continued between the two of them.
Around ten in the morning, Yuna led Harriet into the library, and the two of them settled into a pair of armchairs with a cup of coffee each. The moment had finally come for a proper conversation about the wider magical world.
"So, can you at least tell me how you managed to pass yourself off as a witch, Yuna? From what I've gathered, absolutely no one who's ever met you has suspected otherwise. And the breakfast smell that drifted to my room earlier, that was you moving the air itself, and I didn't see a single fan running anywhere." Harriet said, curious and more than a little excited to know her friend wasn't entirely defenseless. Yuna had refused to say anything on the subject until now, insisting she wanted to keep the surprise.
"Magic, obviously." Yuna said, with a small, crooked smile.
"That answers absolutely all of my questions, thank you." Harriet said, letting out a relieved sigh, deadpan.
"No, but seriously, I actually do have magic now." Yuna said, turning genuinely serious.
"Magic... but I confirmed you didn't have any, apart from the artifact. Don't tell me..." Harriet said, a little startled.
"That's exactly what happened. The artifact woke magic up inside me. And I'd guess your grimoire works on the same principle, even if you already had magic to begin with." Yuna said.
"Incredible, I never would have thought that was even possible. So activating the artifact changed your body too?" Harriet asked.
"More or less, yes. Once you're initiated, you're able to use magic. I've picked up a few tricks watching how you all use ambient magic around you. Speaking of which, you have internal magic too, don't you, but you never actually use it. Do you know why?" Yuna asked.
"Most people's mana pathways are atrophied, but even that little bit left is enough to manipulate ambient mana. That's true for British witches and wizards, anyway. The difference from the mundane side is that we have internal pathways, and even the small fraction that still functions is more than enough to connect to a wand and draw on the ambient magic around us. There are some people whose pathways are completely atrophied, though. We call them Squibs, I think that's the term." Harriet said.
"I'm personally able to actually reopen those mana pathways in my body through effort, but I'd be completely incapable of it without my grimoire, which lets me see the exact state of my body in real time, with real precision." Harriet continued, carrying the thought forward.
"I see, so that's the actual difference... and we'll circle back to what exactly you're doing with your body later, by the way." Yuna said, thoughtful. "That matches what I've experienced too, honestly, except it's not quite that I gained mana pathways the way you mean it. It's more that the artifact fused into my soul lets me do everything you can do, and more, and I'm still discovering what it's actually capable of. It's fairly powerful, from what I've seen so far."
"Can you tell me a bit more about that, then? And what does yours actually look like?" Harriet asked.
"Later. First, I need to walk you through the current state of the wider magical world, so you actually understand what's going on." Yuna said, and then began.
She started from the beginning, the way she'd pieced it together herself over the months. Well over five hundred years ago, possibly longer, the world had nearly torn itself apart in a conflict fought between three factions: Heaven, the Fallen, and the Devils. It had lasted for what felt like forever, and by the time it ended, none of the three sides had anything close to a real victory to show for it. The original four Devil Kings, the founding pillars of the Underworld's aristocracy, were dead. So were most of Heaven's original leadership, and a staggering number of the Fallen.
"Somewhere in the middle of all that, or possibly before it even started, nobody I've talked to seems totally sure, God apparently built an entire system called Sacred Gears," Yuna continued, turning her coffee cup slowly between her hands without actually drinking from it. "Artifacts, essentially, His own design, meant to let ordinary humans work miracles on His behalf. He's the one who decides who gets one and when, from what I understand, sometimes someone's born with it already active, sometimes it just sits there dormant for an entire lifetime until something wakes it up. Most people who have one never even find out. That's what a Sacred Gear actually is, Harriet. A tool God built and handed down to a completely ordinary person, usually without them ever knowing it's there at all."
She glanced up, checking that Harriet was still following, before pressing on.
"The Devils, meanwhile, came out of that war in a pretty rough state, both in numbers and leadership. With the original four Devil Kings dead, the Underworld didn't have anyone left to actually run it, and their own descendants ended up fighting a second war just over whether to restart the first one entirely, using the Devil race's dwindling numbers to try and finish what their ancestors had started. Most of the Underworld wasn't exactly thrilled about the idea of going extinct over it, though, so a rebellion formed against them instead. That one's usually called the Devil Civil War. It ended with the old bloodlines defeated, and an entirely new set of four Satans crowned in their place, unrelated to the original families: Lucifer, Beelzebub, Leviathan, and Asmodeus, same titles, completely different people, and from what I've gathered, a lot less interested in starting wars than the ones who came before them. Practically pacifists, by Devil standards anyway."
"One of the new ones, Beelzebub, a Devil named Ajuka, ended up inventing something called the Evil Piece system not long after being crowned." Yuna held up a hand, ticking the thought off almost absentmindedly. "Chess pieces, essentially, enchanted ones, that let a Devil reincarnate other species, humans included, into Devils themselves, just to keep their numbers from collapsing entirely after everything the war and the civil war both cost them. It's actually still in use, and it's a big part of how a lot of Devils in positions of power these days aren't purebloods at all."
"As far as I know, Heaven and the Fallen never really recovered the same way, no equivalent system on their end, at least not yet, from what I've gathered." Here, her voice dropped slightly, more careful than before. "There's actually something odd and pretty important about that, by the way, from what some rumors say, there haven't been any new angels born since. None at all."
She let that sit in the silence for a moment before continuing, watching Harriet's face for a reaction.
"There's more than just those three, too. Norse gods, actual ones, still active. Youkai in Japan, dragons old enough to remember a version of the world that doesn't exist anymore, Greek and Hindu pantheons still holding their own corners somewhere. The whole thing goes a lot deeper than three factions fighting over territory. It's an entire ecosystem, and Britain's little wizarding bubble barely registers as a blip in it." Yuna set the cup down at last, meeting Harriet's eyes directly. "Basically, assume every myth you've ever heard of could be real. That's about the safest starting point." Yuna finished.
"You know, that's a lot to take in... and honestly, maybe it's just me being weird about it, but I'm genuinely relieved you never mentioned anything like Cthulhu or whatever. That would've been a nightmare, and I mean that literally." Harriet said, after taking a moment to process it all. She wasn't entirely surprised, she'd caught fragments of informations about things like this before, but now it was confirmed.
Yuna shivered slightly. "Yeah, I really hope that's just some deeply unwell guy making things up. This whole new world is already scary enough as it is, honestly."
"Well, at least one thing's certain, and it applies to both of us... we've each got a Sacred Gear, and neither of us has been kidnapped for it so far, I can pretty much guess that someone out there probably came up with some way to track humans who have one. We just got lucky enough to slip through, somehow. Well... I did get kidnapped, technically, just not for that. Dumbledore beat whoever's hunting Sacred Gears to it. But on the bright side, if anyone calls me an evil little witch again, I can just point out that God clearly loves me enough to hand me one of His Sacred Gears." She said, thoroughly smug.
"That's the silver lining, I suppose. Yeah, we both won the lottery the day we were born. Congratulations to us." Yuna confirmed, and made tiny claps with her hands.
A/N: If you're enjoying the story so far, a quick review would genuinely mean a lot.