บท 14: Chapter 13

"Master… Master!" Bell called insistently, not having to be stealthy as only Ron was left in the Gryffindor dorms this late in the morning, and even he was at least up, walking back into the room with a towel around his waist.

"Where's the dreams that I've been after?" he sang, nodding at Bell in a, 'it's so cool you know about that,' way, closing his curtains and therefore missing her look of cluelessness.

"I didn't know you were a metal fan," Harry grumbled throatily, blinking his eyes open.

"I'm a fleshy fairy…" she corrected quietly, completely mystified.

Harry didn't hear her.

Instead, he reached out and snagged her, drawing her under the covers with him.

"Today is a 'stay in bed' kind of day, don't you think, Belly?" Harry asked, nuzzling the tiny woman against his neck like a cat.

"It's Thursday…"

"Shh," Harry cooed, lowering his lips to press them into her hair. "None of that now dear, daddy's trying to sleep."

"We're already late for class," Ron informed his sleepy dormmate, stepping from behind his curtains as dressed for school as Ronald Weasley ever got.

"You're missing your tie," Harry told him, not bothering to open his eyes.

"I'm like ninety percent sure you're butt ass naked under that blanket…" Ron shot back, both challengingly and uneasily at the same time.

"I am not."/"He is."

Harry slowly pulled his grinning smallguide up till her tits were poking over the top of the covers.

"You are very close to getting grounded, young lady."

They both knew he was joking. They'd just recently gotten over the light awkwardness the mean-spirited tone he'd used with her before the prelims had caused.

"You bastard!" Ron shouted, hurling a pillow at his suddenly laughing friend, who made a threatening motion towards the duvet covering him.

That sent the redhead speeding from the room with the quickness.

Laughing together at his hastily beat escape, Harry swung his bare legs over the side of his bed and stood, revealing a pair of normal black briefs to the empty room.

"As if I would grace their unworthy eyes."

Looking down at his Parva Dux, who was rolling around on top of his ruffled blanket playfully, Harry asked, "And why'd you really get me up, Bell? You know I've got Binns for my first class today. That makes this my sleep-in day."

Looking up with a pout, Bell chirped, "You're the one who told me make sure you're up by ten, Master. The hell if I know why, I'm just your loyal slave who does whatever you tell her to."

Shooting a deadpanned look down at the suddenly gyrating fairy, Harry just said, "Oh, that's right," and turned around, grabbing a wad of 'clean' clothes off the floor and heading towards the showers.

After a quick wash under the hot spray, Harry returned, dressed and ready to go. Collecting Bell, he, apparently remembering what he'd wanted to do, made his way past the classroom he was supposed to be in.

After a quick pit stop at the kitchens to snag a cookie, which he split stealthily with Bell, Harry headed straight, past the Great Hall, until finally coming to a stop outside.

"What are we doing today, Master," Bell whispered loudly from his pocket, a tiny periscope he'd made for her peeking out of the fabric.

Looking around the sunny Hogwarts Grounds, Harry smiled and began heading in the direction of the Forbidden Forest.

"I am going to do something so immensely stupid, they'll be forced to add an annotation referencing me in the dictionary when you look up the word, 'idiot'."

"That was a bit of a mouthful," Bell observed, "but count me in!"

"Actually, Belly, daddy need you to be quiet for a little, okay?" Seeing the little periscope swivel in his direction, he smiled and pressed a finger to his lips. "We're going hunting."

"For exotic, beast-pussy?" she asked in that innocent way Harry found ridiculous.

"Not today cupcake. We're hunting fruit. El Diablo la Alma; The Devil's Heat."

Her periscope wobbled curiously, and Harry started explaining as they walked across the short grass, "El Diablo al Alma, which is also extremely fun to say, is a magical fruit the size of my head. It's supposed to take on the flavor and texture whoever is eating it finds most appealing, almost like a fruit version of the Mirror of Erised. Pretty cool, huh?"

The little silver tube nodded.

Stepping past the house sized pumpkins Hagrid was growing for Halloween, Harry added, "There's a bit of a catch, though. The Devil's Heart only grows near arachne nests, and is also poisonous as shit if it's not eaten within a few days of when you pick it, and it screams when you cut it up."

"Cool," Bell decided.

"I know right?" Harry agreed, stepping past the first line of trees and into the Forbidden Forest proper. "Gabby said she likes fruit so I'm gonna go pick one."

"Where did you even learn all of this, Master? I'm pretty sure you didn't know about it when I was born."

"Class," Harry answered simply, hopping over a dead log as he did. "And either come out and watch my back or shush. It'd be the height of lame if I got eaten by an acromantula out here."

Bell must have been in a talkative mood, because she slipped out from Harry's robe and perched backwards on his shoulder.

"So what's an arachne?" the naked fairy asked, idly kicking her feet but still maintaining a keen eye on the forest behind her Master. "Some kind of spider creature, by the name, right?"

"Yeah," Harry answered. "Think centaur, but with a spider bottom instead and all female. Same size, though."

"All of them are female?" Bell asked curiously. "Penis in vagina kind of seems like a winning formula in this world. Why'd they deviate?"

"They didn't really," answered Harry. He stopped to smell some flowers but decided against it when they started leaking acid. Shaking his head ruefully at the deadly but beautiful forest around him, he added, "Supposedly thereis a male arachne, for a little anyway; a single fertilizer who puts the new queen into a permanent state of pregnancy, and then dies. She then produces a whole brood's worth of offspring over her lifetime all on her own. Once she's older, the queen will birth her final two children, a princess arachne and a fertilizer arachne."

Remembering what the book he read said, Harry continued to explain, "The male will fertilize the princess and then get eaten. The queen won't have any more babies herself, but will instead help guide and direct her daughter for the last few decades of her life. It's a self-contained cycle."

"That's kind of neat."

"Yeah," Harry agreed. "It's also why El Diablo la Alma is so rare- with only a single queen in the whole brood, which can be as large as a dozen arachne, the whole nest would die out in a single generation if she died before her princess was born, and that means that she's protected constantly by her infertile daughters."

"Oh wow," Bell gasped in amazement. "That's so strange! It makes it sound like getting the fruit is going to be very dangerous though, Master. Will you be okay?"

"Yeah," Harry shrugged, unconcerned. "Don't worry about it Belly. If you couldn't tell, I've done my research."

At that particular moment, a long, black, spear-like leg shot out from nowhere. It would have stabbed Harry clean through his forehead had he not bent backwards at the last moment.

"The only magic they can cast gives 'em invisibility," the incubus commented lazily, "And I don't exactly need to see a pussy to know one's there, you know?"

A monster, all smooth, leathery black widow from the waist down and soft, supple, nude woman from there up appeared.

She was larger than Harry by a good bit, but still smaller than the illustrations he'd seen said she should be.

'A younger one,' he deduced, leaning back up to study the arachne now that she'd withdrawn her deadly leg, seemingly unsure of how to act now that her surprise attack had failed.

Her face was delicate and her hair was long, wavy, and brown- the same shade as her eyes. Her nipples perked up and forward atop her firm breasts, and a smooth belly led from the bottom of the attractive swells down to a thin, clit-less slit that was a little chubby.

"Yo," Harry greeted, sticking his hand out, "nice to meet you."

A few seconds passed as the young arachne studied him in confusion. She eventually looked left and right, as if for answers, but, finding none, very awkwardly mimicked his action, sticking her hand out face down.

Grabbing the pale skinned arachne's hand, Harry leaned down and placed a kiss atop her knuckles.

The spider-girl looked at him in utter confusion, but smiled anyway.

"You understand me, right?" Harry asked. They book had said they could, but she hadn't given him much reason to believe it yet.

She started to move.

An arrow came whistling out from behind a tree before the arachne had a chance to respond. Had he not already have banked a telekinesis charge on his hand, Harry would have had a tough time stopping the stone-tipped missile from sinking into the spider-girl's breast in time.

Taking a quick look at the arrow and recognizing the craftsmanship, Harry took a step in front of the now wide-eyed arachne and shouted, "Enough, centaur! Show yourself."

Slowly ambling out from behind a squat, gnarled oak tree, the would-be killer revealed himself. As Harry had thought, it was a centaur, with the torso of a furiously scowling almost-man sat atop a darkly shaded horse body. More important than his appearance was the fact that he still had a heavy looking recurve bow strung and pulled.

"Un-notch your arrow," Harry called, his wand pointed towards the ground.

"Get away from it, Harry Potter!"

"Seriously, I said lower your bow."

Snorting angrily, the centaur adjusted his aim and pulled the string back further.

"Coelicola Aqua!" Harry gritted out, frustrated.

A filmy square squelched into existence between Harry and the scowling centaur. As the creature's bolt flew through Harry's barrier it was transfigured, changing from wood and stone and feathers into harmless water, which continued on to splash weakly into the peeking girl behind him.

A sound of surprise escaped the clueless arachne as she was doused, but Harry was too busy baring his teeth at the horse-man in front of him to notice.

"What's the big fucking idea?!" the incubus shouted, now openly pointing his wand at the centaur.

When he reached for another arrow, Harry barked, "If you don't wanna have to eat grass through a straw for the next couple lunar cycles…"

He let the threat hang dangerously.

"You were almost killed, Harry Potter," the centaur said, stomping his hoof angrily, though his hand returned to his side all the same. "Any other student would have been killed."

"I had to force my way through some world-class aversion and rerouting wards to get this far into the forest. I appreciate," he continued, stressing appreciate in a way that made it clear he really didn't, "your trying to help, but killing a child because they lash out is not okay. Go back to your herd."

"You don't know who you're protecting!" He insisted, reaching back for his arrows again. "She's-"

"Expelliarmus!" Harry shouted angrily, casting the blue spell with enough power that it forced the horse-man back as it ripped his bow and anything even approaching sharp from his person.

Completely unarmed, the centaur had little choice but to beat a hasty retreat, help along by Harry's showy, "Duodeidei!" which conjured a disturbing set of scissors attached to two hairy, human legs.

Watching his monstrosity run creepily after the fleeing centaur for a little, Harry eventually turned around and caught sight of the arachne.

She was soaked, with little beads of water trailing down her skin, dripping off of her pebbled nipples every now and then to quietly splash against the dead leaves on the forest floor.

"Are you okay?" Harry asked, steal an appreciative look until he noticed that the spider-girl was shivering.

"You guys don't like water too much, huh?" he asked with a smile, remembering a note of just such a fact in the book he'd read. Shaking his head, Harry motioned down and said, "Sit. We'll get you dry real quick, and then we can talk."

The eight legged girl still had yet to speak, if you didn't count the little "Eep!" she'd let out when the water had hit her, but she seemed to understand the incubus well enough, folding her multiple legs underneath her and settling onto the ground.

Silently conjuring a big, fluffy towel, Harry went to work drying the girl off, taking care not to let his touch linger (too obviously). Finished with her human body, he hesitated a second and then, shrugging, made sure to towel down her spidery half as well, silently marveling at the dark skin's smoothness as he did. When that was done, he roughed the dryer half of the towel on the girl's head, drying her long hair as best he could.

When he finally finished, the arachne was as dry as could be expected without using a charm, which he refrained from using for obvious reasons (rude!).

"She's still shivering, Master," Bell noted from within Harry's pants pocket, where she'd retreated when the fighting had started.

"You're right," he agreed. The spider-girl, who had silently let him towel her off, was holding her shoulders for warmth. Sighing, the incubus removed his robe and offered it to the girl. Her eyes lit up in obvious wanting, but she didn't seem too sure on how to put the thing on, so he helped her with that as well.

With the girl now warm and dressed (kind of, her pussy slit was still visible) Harry did his best to explain why he was there.

When he finished, he was rewarded with a blank stare from the arachne, who looked adorable in his school robe- in a weird sort of way.

"Gah!" Harry huffed, throwing his hands up, "Just show me where your mother is woman!"

Smiling in understanding, the spider-girl took Harry's hand and began speeding through the forest.

Stumbling at her speed, Harry did his best to keep up, but unfortunately more legs seemed to equate to more speed and he was having trouble.

Looking over and seeing his dilemma, the arachne hefted the incubus up easily, setting him on the back of her smooth abdomen.

"Woah," Harry mumbled shakily, wrapping his arms around the girl's belly for balance. "Warn a guy next time…"

As fast as she was speeding through the forest, the arachne probably didn't hear him.

Settling in on the spider-girl's surprisingly comfortable back, Harry loosened his grip on her bared belly and looked around.

The forest was surprising still and peaceful under the late morning sun. Shattered pillars of sunlight breached through the leafy treetops far overhead, illuminating the brown coat of dead timber and leaves that carpeted the forest floor. He thought he saw a trio of deer, a buck, a doe, and their fawn, briefly through the foliage, but it may have just been a trick of the eye.

He smiled softly all the same.

A few more minutes passed in comfortable silence, the arachne easily maintaining her fleet sprint even with his extra weight on her. Harry couldn't help but wonder why the young creature had been so far away from her mother, but admitted to not knowing everything when Bell mentioned it, suggesting that arachne may simply command a lot of territory.

Either way, it wasn't much longer that Harry noticed his unorthodox mount slowing. Appreciating the creepy vibe the darker, web-filled area of the forest they'd entered was putting out, Harry idly began counting the number of attractive arachne around him.

Spotting five, and sensing two more through their invisibility, all older that the one beneath him, the incubus leaned forward to peek over top his chauffeur's head, spying the massive, web lined burrow they were approaching with impressed eyes.

"I like your house," he commented politely as the still silent arachne beneath him strolled casually into the darkness. "It's very… homey."

The robe-garbed girl remained silent, but turned around to flash a cute smile back at him.

Heading deeper into the bus sized tunnel, Harry had to cast a whispered night vision spell on himself to see.

With a better picture of his surroundings, Harry was able to spot a widening in the tunnel they were headed towards. Sure enough, they continued on a little and arrived within a chamber the size of the Great Hall at Hogwarts.

"Cool," Harry whispered to himself, admiring the intricately woven designs that decorated the great den on both sides. Looking closer, they almost reminded him of Nordic wall stories, with little spider women doing various things from one section of web covered wall to the next. The two walls ran down in almost artificially straight lines after widening a little, leading up to the large silhouette of who Harry suspected was the arachne queen.

"Thank you," the shadowy figure purred out, uncrossing and recrossing her front two legs. "I worked very hard on my home."

Feeding a little more magic to his eyes, Harry was able to see the queen for the first time.

She was a goddess, with large, heavy breasts, a mature face that was beautiful with it's refined, noble features, and hair as white as it was wavy. Her eyes were pure black, like Bell's, but her spider half was royal white, smooth looking like the arachne he was riding, and with the same distinctive red hourglass standing out boldly on her back as well.

"Mikko, darling, who is this you've brought to me?"

The spider-girl beneath him began gesturing wildly, mimicking her attack on him and his backwards dodge. Understanding the girl's intentions, Harry slipped from her back as she continued to mime out the short story, adopting a scowl and stomping her foot while pretending to hold a bow in what Harry thought was a great imitation of the shit-head centaur they'd run into.

When she gestured out the way he'd protected her and fought the centaur, her mother turned appraising eyes on him, her eyebrows raised.

Harry blushed and looked away.

Her daughter, 'Mikko,' Harry remembered, finished the tale by showing off the Hogwarts robe she wore and wrapping her arms around her belly, smiling and blushing prettily in the Choiceling's direction.

"Is what my daughter says true?" the Queen asked.

Harry though 'says' was the wrong word to use but was too polite to point it out.

"I think so," he answered, scratching at the back of his head.

"Then, well," she tried, showing a surprising difficulty finding the words she wanted, "thank you, wizard. You have been very kind to my sweet Mikko and may have even saved her life. If there's any way that I can repay you…"

"Actually," Harry chimed in, "there is. The original reason I came out here in the first place was to pick some El Diablo la Alma."

"The Devil's Heart," the Queen murmured, rubbing her chin and nodding slowly. "Of course. To you humans, it's flesh is delicious, from what I understand."

"I hope so. I'm actually going to split it with a veela, and I'm a Choiceling myself, so whether that'll impact the taste or not is something I'm not sure about yet."

'Not sure about?' Harry repeated in his head, suddenly afraid he'd wasted a trip. 'Try hadn't even considered! If this fucking watermelon tastes like crap I'm gonna punch something.'

"C-choiceling?" the Queen began, stuttering and drawing Harry's attention. "This veela, is she your… wife?"

Blushing at the thought of Gabrielle in a white wedding gown, calling him darling and smiling as she walked down an aisle, Harry denied, "N-no, we're just friends."

"If that is the case…" the Queen said hesitantly, walking forward till she was close. Reaching out, the great spider-woman slowly took Harry's hands in her own.

The incubus, already a little off-balance, was doubly startled to note welling tears in the corners of the Queen's all-black eyes.

"If you really are what you say you are, I beg of you- please, save my family."

Frowning in confusion, Harry looked to his arachne friend for help, only to see she too was confused.

"Hey," the boy wizard tried, reaching up to brush away the older queen's tears for lack of knowing something better to do, "no crying, you guys don't like the wet, remember?"

Mikko smiled a little worriedly, but the Queen just continued to stare down at him pleadingly.

"I'm sorry, but I don't know what you need from me. Is there somewhere we can sit down and talk a little? I want to help but I need to know what it is you're asking before I can say."

Pulling back a little in surprise, the Queen blinked and then shook her head at herself, breathing a long, shaky sigh out.

"Forgive me, young incubus. I have been alone in my burrow with my thoughts for so long- well. With only my daughters around, all of whom know the situation, I did not stop to think you would not." Straightening back up, she called, far more steadily, "Come. I will take you to the prize you seek and explain on the way."

And so they began, heading back out of the grand chamber, only through a different tunnel this time.

"I had my suspicions since I was young," the Queen started, her head aimed forward. "Something in me felt… wrong, for lack of a better word. When I started birthing, the feeling grew, but by then I was a woman of ten and already used to the feeling to the point of ignoring it."

Turning at a crossroads, Harry listened on as the spider-woman told her tale.

"My first daughter was healthy and strong. She remains one of our brood's most talented huntresses to this day."

There was obvious pride in the creature's voice, and the incubus smiled.

"My next, a beautiful child, willful and talented with our magic, was born without vision in one of her eyes."

Looking back, Harry thought he remembered one of the arachne having an eye patch.

"My next nine girls each were born with defects of their own. Some got off with as little as a muted sense, but one of my girls can't turn invisible at all…"

Harry thought that that must be a very unfortunate thing for an arachne to go without, judging by the solemn expression Mikko wore and the way her mother's head hung.

"When I finally had my princess, Mikko, who was born without the ability to speak, it was clear that something was wrong with me."

The younger arache shook her head and scurried over, wrapping her human arms around her mother fiercely, but other than leaning her head into her for a moment, the Queen didn't seem willing to allow herself much comforting.

"I can tell already- my body will not birth again, and without a fertilizer, my family will fade away. We will die out within the next hundred years… Of that much, I know and have known to be true."

Coming to a stop, the spider queen looked down at Harry, with such fragile hope shining in her inky eyes that he recoiled.

"Unless," she began haltingly, "by some miracle, by some act of the gods, a magically powerful creature, with universally potent sperm and a compatible physiology, was willing to- to help us."

Harry stared at the Queen with wide eyes as the implication of what she'd just said sunk in. The naked woman-creature was almost shaking in repressed hope, but Harry forcefully stopped himself from agreeing to her plan on the spot, no matter how pitiable she looked.

Turning to Mikko, Harry noted that she looked as surprised by her mother's suggestion as he felt. Another second of study, however, revealed that she shared none of his reservations, as made apparent by the coy way she started appraising him through her thick eyelashes, red as a tomato all the while.

"Are you asking me," Harry began, half to make sure there wasn't some grand misunderstanding unfolding and half to stall, "to impregnate your daughter?"

A few seconds of silence passed in the lightless tunnel as the three creatures stared at each other.

"Please," the Queen whispered out beseechingly. "Until ten minutes ago, when you showed up, I had thought that my family line was predestined to die out. It has been years since I reached this conclusion- you're the first flicker of hope that my defective body won't cause the extinction of my mother's bloodline…"

"And your plan is for me to father your grandchildren, now? Is that right?" Harry asked evenly. Looking at his mute would-be mate, he asked, "What do you think about all of this, Mikko?"

The arachne princess just smiled at him and rubbed her belly, looking unbearably cozy in his clothes.

"I know," the Queen began tentatively, sensing the corner she'd backed the powerful incubus into and not wanting to provoke him and risk ruining her family's chance at a future, "that for humans, at least, the act of reproduction is… special." Shooting the young incubus an earnest look, the Queen insisted, "My offspring mean everything to me. I can't make for my daughter what she needs to become a queen and take her place in the world, but you- youcan give it! You, a powerful, virile, incubus- and a Choiceling at that! That makes all the difference! You can provide her with children, and my bloodline, which has been around since the castle you learn magic at was built, can live on. Please, incubus, help us."

Tense silence hung thickly in the earth-scented air once the Queen had finished her begging. Harry slowly alternated his gaze between mother and daughter and back again, giving her plea serious thought. Reaching a decision, Harry looked at the Queen and sighed lowly.

"I'm sorry," he began, and immediately her face crumbled. "There's just no way I can make a decision like that on the spot," he explained.

Walking to Mikko, he slid a hand up her belly, parting his robe and revealing her peachy breasts to her mother. Squeezing one lightly, he rolled her nipple, watching as her face pinched in pleasure.

"There's just too much I don't know about you," he apologized, looking Mikko in her warm eyes. "Would you use these breasts to feed our children? Am I expected to just walk away once we're done?" Sliding his hand from her scrunched nipple to her face, he whispered, "I could never not be with my children."

Stepping back to look at her mother, he listed, "And it's not just that we're such different species, either. Even if you were human, and we'd all spent every day of our lives together, and were madly in love, I still don't think I could make a decision like that without some time to think about it." Sighing, he went on to admit, "The veela I'm getting that fruit for- I really, really like her. Would doing what you want jeopardize my chance with her, longshot that it is already? I just don't know."

"You have questions-" the Queen interrupted, latching on to something she thought she could work with, "I understand. We do breast feed, we don't lay eggs, and the undersides of our abdomens are very sensitive- I will happily spend the rest of my life telling you all about our species, so please, don't say that you won't help. As far as your role, it's whatever you want! I-I can't really begin to think what being a father of arachne would entail, but there's no good reason you can't pioneer it. Mikko is kind, my sweetest baby- she'd love to be your wife, if you want to marry her first. I know that's the norm for witches and wizards."

Harry scowled at the Queen for speaking on her daughter's behalf, but when he turned and received a smiling nod from the younger arachne, he remembered that she kind of had to.

"You said you have a veela you plan on breeding with, yes? That's perfect- veela and arachne get along very well. You could raise the children together, if you wanted. All three of our species age at about the same speed and live for the same amount of time. We live out here because it's beautiful and safe, but I have heard of my kin finding homes among other creatures and even wizards."

"Ma'am," Harry interjected quietly, his stomach in knots at the distress he was causing the woman.

"It's Sadira, sweetie," the spider queen corrected speedily.

Smiling a little ruefully at her, Harry replied, "My name's Harry. Harry Potter." Looking at the ground and then back up, he forced himself to say, "No matter what you say, I'm not going to be having sex with your daughter today, Sadira."

The Queen wilted.

"However," he stressed out, not wanting the fretful mother to go on another sales pitch, "I never said that I refused to consider your situation."

Aiming a little smile at Mikko to reassure her, he continued.

"I grew up never knowing a family and I still feel that loss to this day. If you're sure that a Choiceling is your family's only hope-"

Sadira nodded empathetically, and even Mikko bowed her head.

"-and Mikko is one hundred percent on-board with this-"

Another nod from the spider princess.

"-then this is what I can offer: Give me some time. Let me see what the girl I'm in love with thinks about this whole situation. Let us get to know each other, and for magic's sake, at least discuss the very real mountain of details that need to be sorted through before we even think about moving forward with anything. Allow me all of this, and I will promise to very seriously consider starting a family together."

He'd said a lot, but so much more still needed to be explained. His 'quota' if Mikko didn't already know, his fame, his expectations, his dreams, his fears, the person he was and the man he wanted to be, and a whole list of other things that Harry felt anybody he was going to have children with needed to know about him first, and all things that he wanted to know about his partner as well.

Sadira must have been crazy to think Harry would impregnate her daughter on the spot.

Still…

"Look," Harry sighed, staring up at the Queen, "I'll admit that I really can't imagine what it must be like, to have to live in such a hopeless situation for as long as you did, only for its solution to show up and slap you in the face with a 'maybe', but that's really the best I've got right now. I have sex every single day without batting an eyelash, but to actually have children is… well, it's just on a whole different level, you know?"

Kicking at the ground, Harry went ahead with the rough almost-plan he'd stitched together in his head, saying, "Let's go. I want to get that Devil's Heart and go; I've got a lot to think about. But I promise," he said firmly, looking Mikko in her eyes, "in a week's time, I'll be back. I don't know if I'll have an answer, or if it'll be the one you want to hear, but either way, I'll come back for you."

And that was that. Mikko seemed shyly excited at the prospect of getting to know her potential mate, and even though Sadira didn't get exactly what she wanted, the prospective future for her family was looking better than it had in a long time.

Harry was just happy to get away from the two spider women. They were exotic and beautiful and intense, and they wanted things from him he had been sure he was dying to give but, when confronted with the opportunity, had turned down. It was all so much more than he'd bargained for when he'd set out to pick that stupid melon to impress Gabby.

Eyeing the swinging fruit in question, which looked like a giant pearl and had been a bitch to cut from its vine, screaming the whole time, Harry thought, 'As if, 'would you be my girlfriend while I continue to paint the country white' wasn't already a difficult enough conversation to have. Now it's, 'and also, what do you think about arachne? I hear they get along well with veela… want one as a third point in our hypothetical relationship?'

Groaning as he trudged through the Forbidden Forest, radiating his displeasure and inadvertently scaring the wildlife off, Harry summed up aloud, "Another fucked up year in the life and times of Harry Potter."

Bell was smart enough to stay quiet. She'd likely have some insightful counsel to offer him later, but for now he wanted to stew.

It wasn't even that he was particularly upset. The idea of sharing his life with Mikko, while hilarious in its abruptness, wasn't altogether unappealing at a certain, more general level. She was beautiful, a creature like him (if a tad more obvious about it), and she seemed interesting and nice enough.

Slowing to a stop, Harry stared blankly at the ground, his cheeks dusted pink.

"I could have her all to myself," he quietly acknowledged. The image of Mikko holding her swollen belly and smiling at him came to his mind unbridled.

Harry looked back with lidded eyes in the direction he knew the burrow to be.

'It's tempting,' he admitted.

She'd never given so much as a hint that she had a problem with it, but in Harry's mind, he was sure Gabrielle would refuse to start a real relationship with him while he was still under his instincts' control, no matter how badly he wanted to try.

'If she did,' he supposed, turning back to trudge towards Hogwarts, 'then it would only be until she grew to resent me.'

Looking back, Mikko hadn't so much as blinked when her mother had suggested their relationship wouldn't necessarily be exclusive on his end. If anything, the arachne had looked excited by the prospect of having a veela around.

He tried not to, but Harry caved and indulged himself- allowing his mind to run wild with the dangerous idea the arachne queen had implanted in his brain. Mikko and Gabby…

Harry almost stopped to look over his shoulder in paranoia, so strong and sudden was his greedy desire that for a moment the incubus feared he'd been cursed.

There was nothing there, and he admitted that perhaps the idea was simply that attractive.

Calming down, he started walking again.

'It wouldn't work anyway,' Harry realized, and then felt dim for not having seen it sooner. 'To be with Gabby and Mikko at the same time, I'd need to keep this set of instincts and they'd need to be okay with an open ended relationship.'

In the next moment, he remembered something that spun his thoughts around again.

'Oh, no. No they wouldn't.' Growing a little excited despite his best efforts, Harry thought, 'Mikko only needs sex the one time- after that I could Choose and be with Gabby, and then-'

Stopping himself, Harry realized that he was breathing a little harshly.

"Relax," he told himself. "You've got a week to think, and then plenty more time after that too." Ducking under a low hanging branch, he continued to monologue. "And you're fourteen for fuck's sake! Maybe try focusing on something other than marriage and having babies! You're like a fucking girl."

Despite his self-scolding, the incubus really couldn't think of anything in the world he wanted more than a family- if not soon, then at least at some point.

His instincts screaming at him to hurry up and impregnate somebody 24/7 didn't help.

"You've still got the Tournament, tourneys, school, and a ton of other shit you need to focus on. Remember Voldemort, idiot? Maybe try focusing on keeping your own life from ending before you get too wrapped up trying to make a new one."

Stopping to look up at the sun, not needing to cast a tempus to tell that he had completely missed Potions (oh no!), Harry mumbled, "Speaking of, the First Task is Saturday. That gives me less than two days…"

The dark haired Choiceling sighed and started walking again.

Feeling his Smallguide shift in his pants pocket, which couldn't really accommodate much more that the bottom half of the little fairy, Harry asked, with a defeated tone, "What do you think about all of this, Belly?"

Peeking up at him, the fairy gave a little shrug of her shoulders, still just a little reluctant to speak too openly on the subject.

Harry noticed and resolved to make her completely comfortable with him again.

"Well," she began, helped along by a trusting look from Harry. "I'm not really sure what to say. I want whatever will make you the happiest, Master. Whatever that is," she added, smiling at him kindly in a 'sorry I have to say this' way, "it's probably gonna involve a whole bunch of long, serious talks with Gabrielle. I know it scares you," she continued, pushing past Harry's weak scowl of disagreement, "but until you talk with her about your feelings, you're never gonna be able to figure this stuff out. Either things will work out between the two of you or they won't, but you're just gonna think yourself into insanity if you keep trying to puzzle out a plan without all the pieces."

Harry had long since come to a stop, absorbing his companion's unexpectedly wise words.

"I could turn around and go back and impregnate Mikko right now," Harry protested weakly, imagining a hundred different ways trying to open up to Gabrielle could go wrong. "Play it safe, you know?"

Shaking her tiny blue head at him, Bell matter-of-factly disagreed, "No, Master. You've been so worried about the possibility of never even finding a life partner that you're not thinking clearly, now that you've got an easy out. I am magic of your magic; flesh of your flesh- blood of your blood. I know you."

Harry's eyes widened as he realized how right Bell was.

"Regardless of what the future may hold, right now, you know next to nothing about the arachne princess. You don't know how old she is, what her likes or dislikes are, whether she prefers waking up early or staying up late- you don't love her."

Looking up at him seriously, Bell asked, "Would you have children with a woman you don't love?"

"I could grow to love her," the incubus argued half-heartedly.

Bell just smiled at her master's crumbling stubbornness.

"I agree," she said. "She seems nice enough, and eventually, any girl would fall for you."

The fairy's eyes were soft, and Harry looked away.

"All I'm saying," she finished quietly, "is you've never been one to do things by half. Don't let your own fears stop you from chasing your dreams, even if they seem unobtainable. It's very possible that things won't work out, but if you don't try, it's like they already haven't."

Spotting the grey walls of the castle through the slowly thinning trees, Bell slid down to curl up in Harry pocket. Before she disappeared in the fabric, though, she warmly advised, "Face forward, Master. If things aren't the way you want them to be, grab the world by its throat and make them how they should be. You're charming, and kind, and so powerful that the only person capable of stopping you is you."

Vanishing within his pocket, Bell whispered, "I'm so proud to have you as my Choiceling, Harry. Just do your best and that'll be enough for me…"

'Bell,' Harry thought tenderly, eyes suspiciously bright as stared down at the soft lump in his pocket. Clenching his fist, the incubus promised, 'I won't let you down.'