The Nightmare Man

Epilogue

A few months later

The heat lay thick in the air, the sun blazing down. The summer was turning out to be hot and humid with little to no rain.

Harrison solved this by having at least three or four of his children nearby when outside. The Dementors were naturally chilly, and cooled the air around them which he still didn't know the reason for, and they were only too happy to be near him to cool him down.

"You're weird," Harry commented. "Now please make a swimming pool."

After having Harry explain what exactly a swimming pool was, Harrison did make one and Harry refused to leave it except at night. More or less. Someone, possibly Severus, dragged him out when he tried to sleep there.

On this very day, Lucy was learning to swim with Elise and Joanne as her teachers. They did like the pool nearly as much as the children did. As heat apparently wasn't good for small children Angel was inside, away from the sun, with Severus as baby-sitter. The title sounded very odd, but at least he kept up with the rumours of actually being a vampire, unable to handle the sun. Harrison had offered to give him a set of fake fangs for when he returned as a potions professor at Hogwarts, and Severus hadn't said no.

But for now Harrison didn't want to do or make anything.

"Summers didn't use to be this hot, did they?" he said once Lucian approached. "They can't have been."

"It's quite normal nowadays. You've just been spending too many summers locked in a cell underground."

"At least there was no bloody heat down there…"

The Dementors moved closer as Harrison fanned himself. Lucian sat down next to Harrison, in the shade, and said:

"Why not use a cooling charm, master?"

"I'm not good with those kinds of spells, you know that," Harrison said. "It's a bit embarrassing, really… I can move a mountain, no problems, but ask me to levitate a spoon… Merlin, magic is complicated at times."

"You can levitate things, master."

"Have you ever seen me levitate a spoon, Lucian?"

Lucian thought this over as Harrison tried to get more comfortable.

"No," he had to admit.

"Well, there wasn't much left of the spoon after I tried, to be honest."

"… Our great master, defeated by attempting to levitate a spoon."

"You know, I can hear the laughter in those words… oh, Voldemort's here. Doesn't that man ever stop working?"

"No, I don't think he does," Lucian said.

"At least he didn't run into Harry this time. That was one awkward silence I walked in on."

It had happened not too long after the final battle that finally killed off Dumbledore and most of his Order. Harrison had been dungeons preparing some guts, for some reason he didn't remember now, and no one else had been in the hall when Voldemort arrived. Well, no one else but Harry.

Harrison had walked up ten minutes later to a tension he could cut through. To make that tension go away he had made perhaps a bit stupid decision and painted stripes on Harry's cheeks with the blood on his fingers, making the teen shriek in rage. They ended up having a physical scuffle that made Voldemort snort and the tension was gone.

Harry was still wary of the Dark Lord but they did manage to greet each other politely before one of them fled from the room or corridor they happened to meet in.