"And that," Ginny completed, "is how it all happens."

She dropped the chalk down onto the table and dusted her hands off onto her trousers. Harry—his face burning uncomfortably—looked over towards their daughter. She wasn't hysterically laughing like James had. She wasn't cringing like somebody was smacking her across the face like Albus had done. What was she thinking? Her face was impassive. She was still half-sitting, half-laying in the armchair as she'd been for the past half hour, her ankles propped on the coffee table, a sugar quill held loosely in her fingers. Her brown eyes studied the blackboard—now laden with spells, diagrams, and definitions—as she lightly gnawed on the end of the quill. Harry couldn't take the silence anymore.

"Lulu?" he asked hesitantly. "Do you...understand?"

Maybe it'd been too soon. Ginny had seemed confident that they needed to give Lily nearly all of the proper details this time, but Harry wasn't. And frankly, this entire situation made him feel vaguely nauseated. Had it made Lily feel the same way? Had it frightened her? She was still so young...still a child, still his little daughter. Yes, Harry decided, his heart dropping. He observed his still speechless daughter. Yes, it was too much! Oh, we're rubbish parents, the absolute worse; we've completely tainted her innocent childhood—

"Lily?" Ginny asked. She walked over and waved her hand in front of Lily's face. "You in there?"

Lily gave a tiny jump. Her feet slid from the edge of the coffee table as she struggled to sit up straight in the chair. She yawned a moment later.

"Sorry, what, Mum?" she asked.

"...You were being very quiet. Your dad and I wanted to make sure you were okay. How do you feel about all of this?" asked Ginny.

Lily bit down on the sugar quill. There was a fragile snap as the end portion came off. She chewed it loudly, her brow furrowing in confusion.

"About what?"

"About...all that. The things I just talked to you about for the past half-hour."

"Oh," Lily said. She pointed towards the blackboard with her sugar quill. "I already knew about all of that."

"You..." Ginny trailed off. She looked urgently at Harry, her eyebrows drawn together in alarm. Harry's heart leaped in equal fright.

"What?!" he blurted. "Lily—what do you mean?"

"I know about all of that," she repeated. She took another bite from the sugar quill.

"How?" Ginny demanded.

"Aster told me."

"All of that? She told you all of that?"

"Well, not the detailed diagram about boy parts. That was new. And I was right! No bones! Yes. It's so cool."

She looked oddly pleased with herself and her newfound knowledge. Harry locked eyes with his wife. After a moment of holding their incredulous shared look, Ginny threw her hands up into the air.

"Unbelievable," she said. "I can't believe Padma and Terry gave our daughter the talk."

"Indirectly," Lily corrected.

"I can't believe Padma and Terry indirectly gave our last child the talk before we could," Ginny repeated to Harry.

Harry wasn't exactly fond of giving 'talks', so he didn't feel necessarily deprived, but he was concerned about what Aster might've told Lily. In fact, the idea of those two discussing all of this made him extremely nervous, because there was no telling what sort of lies, misconceptions, and—though Harry loathed to even consider it—bets had sprung up between the two.

"Er...what exactly did Aster say about all of this?" he asked.

Lily blinked. "Oh, Dad, has nobody told you yet? Aw. So there are men and there are women and there are penises and—"

"No!" he hurriedly interrupted. "Don't be cheeky, Lily! You know what I mean."

Lily shrugged. Her eyes had widened with her familiar look of faux innocence. "You know."

"She didn't say—because it's not a competition—and there are plenty of great things in life to make bets about or dare each other to do, like..." his brain scrambled for something relatively safe. "Highest mark on an essay...who can eat the most chocolate in one sitting..."

"Dad, relax," Lily said. She recrossed her ankles and propped them on the table, accidentally sending some of Ginny's article drafts onto the floor. Ginny quickly dove to retrieve them before their kleptomaniac cat could. "Aster and I don't make bets. We make pacts."

"Pacts?!" he demanded, his heart actually skipping a beat in his alarm. "What do you mean pacts?!"

Lily furrowed her brow. "Are you all right, Dad? You look...peaky."

"A pact?" he repeated faintly.

"Oh, for Merlin's sake, Harry, get a grip," Ginny muttered to him. He ignored her.

"Yeah," Lily said. "Our pact says we aren't allowed to kiss anyone until the other approves. So Aster had to say she thought Caden was all right before—"

"Lily," Ginny said quickly. "Perhaps now isn't the best time to tell your dad all about your first kiss."

Lily blinked innocently. "What about the second or the third?"

Harry—disturbed by the notion that Lily was growing up, deeply unsettled by the idea of Caden Rowle kissing his daughter—blurted (without thinking it through): "Kissing is for adults, Lily!"

There was a long pause. Both Ginny and Lily observed Harry dryly. As they did, Harry had a quick mental montage of James and Nora snogging all over the house from their fifth year onwards.

"It's just too easy," Lily finally said to Ginny.

"Yeah, he didn't really think that one through," Ginny agreed softly. "Just let it go."

"Three times?" Harry finally demanded, before he could stop himself. "You let him kiss you three times? What do you see in Rowle, Lily? I'm really asking. I want to know. Why do you like him? Quinton Bell seems to like you. Why not Quinton Bell? He seems nice."

Lily scoffed. "Not Quinton Bell because Quinton Bell likes me too much. It's boring. If I already know he'd kill for me without much mystery or victory, what's the point?"

"Uh..." What sort of relationship did Ginny and I model for Lily where 'murder' is one of the requisites?!

Lily seemed to be waiting for another question. She looked eagerly between Harry and Ginny. Harry wondered if she'd wanted to talk to them about her 'relationship' for a while, but had been too afraid to. Had his attitude towards Caden impacted Lily's ability to be open with him? Had he created the rift he'd been worrying about for weeks? The idea made his heart ache. So—as much as he did not want to hear about Caden Rowle kissing and winning over his little girl—he asked: "What about Caden specifically is not boring?"

Lily smiled. She shifted and brought her legs up into the armchair. She tucked them beneath her.

"Well, Caden likes Caden more than he likes me," Lily answered immediately. "And I like me more than I like Caden. We get each other."

Harry felt his lips twitch. He withheld his incredulous, bemused laugh and nodded. "Okay, what else?"

"And I know he'll always tell me the truth. And he was the only one willing to practice the Imperius Curse with me and he understood why it was important to me. And when we're annoying each other, we can say 'you're annoying, shut it', and that's that, and nobody whines or gets their feelings hurt, and that's nice. Don't you think so, Dad?"

Lily was looking at him head-on, her expression intensely inquisitive, but he could sense a bit of vulnerability there, too. She wanted his opinion, he realized. No—she wanted his approval. She wanted to share this new part of her life with him and she wanted him to say that it was great—that he was happy for her. His throat narrowed, and for an alarming moment, he worried that he wouldn't be able to do it. He was always wrestling with the destructive thought that he couldn't be a good dad, couldn't be the dad his children deserved. From the corner of his eye, he saw Ginny's posture had gone a bit tense like she was holding her breath. She clearly realized what Harry had—that this somewhat silly conversation was actually really important to Lily. And Harry couldn't let them down. He wouldn't let Lily down like he'd let Albus down last year. He wouldn't let Ginny down, either.

"Yeah," he finally said. He scrounged for something positive to say about the 'relationship' he really wasn't okay with. "It's important to be able to...be yourself with someone. And I'm glad that you can be yourself with Row—Caden."

He must've passed the test because Lily's responding beam was radiant.

"Yeah! That's how I feel about it, too!" she exclaimed. She was still smiling. "And he doesn't want to be with me all the bloody time and he doesn't try to put his arm on my shoulders or hold my hand all the time, and that's really nice, too, because I hate that." There was a pause. "And I don't know if you've noticed, but he's really, really handsome. Probably the most handsome in the school. And he thinks I'm the prettiest in the school. And we're both clever. So we deserve each other."

Harry felt his worry give way to amusement. He smiled. "If you think he's handsome, I'll take your word for it."

"No, I don't think it, he is handsome," Lily corrected matter-of-factly. "And he makes me feel even more powerful. That might be the best part."

Harry shared a dismayed look with Ginny. While on the surface that admittance was innocent enough, he was getting the sinking realization that Lulu's teenage years were going to be a lot more trouble than he'd previously anticipated – and he had anticipated a lot of trouble.

Ginny walked over and perched on the arm of Lily's chair. She enveloped her in a warm hug.

"Just remember that you're plenty powerful on your own," she reminded their daughter.

"Oh, I know," Lily reassured her. "And so does Caden. So can we have the same detention time now?"

Harry was thrown for a moment.

"What?" he demanded.

"Our detentions. You gave me detention on week nights and Caden has them on weekend nights. Can we both have them during the weekend?"

"No!" Harry exclaimed, affronted. "That's what this was about?! This entire conversation?!" A beat. He felt childishly wounded. "I thought you wanted to share things with me!"

"Don't be a James, Dad, of course the entire conversation wasn't about that...just the part where I said 'can we have the same detention'. Why can't we?"

"Because you were doing shots of firewhisky, Lily!"

"Just two!"

"Two too many!"

"But why can't we do our time together?"

"Because then it's not a punishment," Ginny said. Lily parted her lips to argue, but Ginny lifted a palm, silencing her. "Let it go, Lulu."

Lily scoffed. "That's just unrealistic advice, Mum. I've never let anything go in my entire life."

Harry was readying himself to deliver another lecture when sudden, urgent knocking erupted along the main door.

Draco, of all people, yelled: "Harry! Open up!"

Harry scowled. "What's Draco want now? I swear if this is about the 'condition' of his living quarters again..."

"Dad!" they heard Albus shout. "Dad, c'mon! Mum!"

Harry was up from his seat in a second's time, his heart hammering hard in his head. He was immediately assaulted by fleeting images of worst case scenarios: Albus being tortured...Scorpius being tortured...

Harry wrenched the door open. He caught a whiff of flowers as Ginny urgently joined him. Draco pushed inside, followed by Albus, Scorpius, and—Iset Goyle?

"What happened?" Harry said at once.

Draco was incredibly pallid and Scorpius was no better. Albus had a tight grip on Scorpius's waist, and when Ginny tried to separate them long enough to pull shivering Scorpius into her arms, Albus absolutely refused to let go.

"Avery put the Imperius Curse on my SON!" Draco boomed. His sudden volume made Albus jump. Iset flinched away from Draco. And Harry's heart plummeted.

"What?!" he turned his full focus to Scorpius, who was now gripping tightly onto Ginny, Albus's hand still locked tightly around his. He was nodding as Ginny murmured assurances that Harry couldn't make out, her hand stroking through Scorpius's hair like he was her son. Harry was accosted suddenly by the memory of Molly Weasley's arms around him after Cedric died. His throat narrowed for a moment in time, and in that brief moment, he was only able to think with maddening reverence: Weasley women. But his son's furious words brought him back to their current issue rather quickly.

"Cyprus Avery used the Imperius Curse on Scorpius!"

"On my son!" Draco reiterated furiously.

"On my boyfriend!" Albus added, his tone equally fierce.

"Okay," Harry said. He looked between Draco, Albus, Scorpius, and Iset, his mind spinning. "Okay. We need to get Professor McGonagall."

"No! What I need to do—what I need to do—is go find Avery's son and—"

"Draco, no!" Harry snapped. He reached out and grabbed a handful of Draco's pajama shirt, refusing to let him storm to the door. "We have to be rational about this—"

"YOU WOULDN'T BE RATIONAL IF IT HAD BEEN YOUR SON!"

"It was my son! My sons were both attacked with Unforgivables!" Harry shouted back. What world were they in now where he was talking Draco Malfoy down from behaving rashly? But Harry understood. Scorpius being hurt changed everything.

"And that makes it okay for my son to be?!"

"NOBODY is saying that this is okay!"

Harry saw movement from the corner of his eye. He glanced over and saw Iset steadily stepping back towards the doorway, clearly wanting to get away from their explosive tempers. It was enough to remind Harry to keep a grip on his emotions. He took a deep breath; Draco did the same. Lily—who'd been standing nervously behind Ginny and Scorpius—crossed over to Iset. She reached out and took her hand. Harry was worried Lily would begin harassing Iset about what happened, but he was far from the mark.

"I heard you like cats," Lily said lightly. "This is a great place to be if you like cats because my mum hoards them. Have you ever held a Pygmy Puff?"

Lily gently pulled Iset over to the back of the living room. The two began trying to coax out as many cats as possible. Harry turned to Albus.

"Albus, what happened? Start from the beginning."

Albus looked angrier than Harry had ever seen, and he'd seen his son in a temper many times.

"We were leaving the Room of Requirement and Avery was near us, somewhere! We crossed paths with Iset, who was on her way to find Nora and Evvie, and I went to take her there but Scorpius didn't follow and then he had his wand out and his eyes were—" Albus's words broke off abruptly. "I think we should go find him now! McGonagall's rules aren't working! Draco is right! Let's deal with this ourselves!"

"No," Harry repeated. "That will only make things worse. What else?"

"I don't know, Dad!" Albus snapped, frustrated. "Iset said she was on her way to find Nora and Evvie because Avery had just tried to Imperiusher, but it didn't work, so she was able to get away and remember whose voice was in her head. She accused Avery and then Avery broke the spell and Scorpius came back to himself. I want Avery punished!"

"I know, Al. Believe me, I know."

"You don't know! You didn't see him like that! They took him away without even taking him anywhere!" Albus yelled.

The emotions were running too high. Somebody was going to do something they'd regret, and it was too early to tell which of them it might be.

"First thing's first, Al," Ginny interrupted. "Scorpius: are you okay?"

"I...yes. I think. My head aches but I feel like me again," he said.

He had stepped back from Ginny's embrace by now, but judging by the way he had his arms around himself, he wasn't feeling much better. His eyes kept darting to Draco. Harry could tell he really needed his dad, but Draco was too busy pacing and pulling angrily at his sleeves to realize that.

"Okay," Ginny said. "Then we need to alert McGonagall."

Albus was so angry that he was almost certainly grinding his teeth, judging by the way his jaw was working. Draco pursed his lips tightly. Ginny was watching Albus with a frown. Lily and Iset were buried beneath affectionate, furry pets. And Scorpius—

"Dad," he croaked, his eyes hazy behind a film of tears. That one word sent pain coursing throughout Harry, even though Scorpius wasn't his son and he hadn't addressed him. He still cared very much for Scorpius and seeing him so broken hurt.

Harry was readying himself to yell at Draco for Scorpius's benefit, but Draco was a better dad than Harry gave him credit for. He was at Scorpius's side immediately, and when he opened his arms, Scorpius threw himself into them.

"I almost hurt Albus," Scorpius said. His words were wobbly and nearing hysterics. Harry felt embarrassed for overhearing them.

"It won't happen again," Draco promised without pause. "Not ever again, Scorpius."

Harry looked awkwardly away. He locked eyes with Albus as Albus did the same. Harry wasn't really thinking about much as he closed the gap between them and reached forward. He just knew Albus had to have been upset. And at first, Albus was tense and refused to return the hug. But right as Harry was about to pull back, Albus reached up and held on.

"Are you okay?" Harry whispered.

"Yes," Albus lied.

Harry stepped back and looked down at Albus. He studied his green eyes; it felt like looking into a mirror.

"We'll get him. Avery. And we'll make this right."

Harry prayed that he and Draco weren't making empty promises to their sons.

"I'll go get McGonagall."

Harry turned to look at Ginny, alarmed.

"Not by yourself," he complained.

"Fine." Ginny turned. "Lily, want to go on a trip with me?"

"Not with Lulu!" Harry exclaimed, even more horrified now.

"Why not? Nobody's getting through the both of us."

"Yeah," Lily agreed, already scrambling to her feet. "Weasley women win. It's my trunk combination."

"No, let's all go," he said. Ginny gave him an annoyed look. "Please," he added. His concerned desperation must've slipped into his tone, because after another long moment, she nodded.

McGonagall's hand shook as she tightly tied her tartan dressing gown.

"Imperiused? Avery, you said?"

"Yes," Albus said, before any adult could respond. "I want him in Azkaban!"

McGonagall dropped her hands to her side. She peered seriously at Scorpius and Iset.

"You're both positive that it was Cyprus Avery's voice in your head?" she asked.

Scorpius nodded after a moment's pause. Iset didn't hesitate at all.

"Yes," she said. "I'm positive."

McGonagall nodded. "Very well. I will contact Hermione and retrieve Cyprus Avery myself."

Albus looked relieved. "So he can go to prison?"

"He'll certainly be charged. The Imperius Curse on two students in one night? Deplorable."

She crossed over to the ornate fireplace inside her office. Harry felt uneasy. He wanted Avery stopped—especially since he seemed to have it out for Harry's family and friends—but something about this situation didn't feel right. There were too many gaping holes.