Bear's Beauties: Existential Crisis 20 (Patreon)

[center]<<Hyacinth “Harry” Potter>>[/center]

It had been ages since I’d been in Diagon Alley, fortunately the Hogwarts lists had finally arrived. But that meant that everyone was crowded into the Alley with barely a week left until the start of term. First up was a trip to Gringotts to get the money needed to buy new supplies. Including robes, I’d outgrown the robes I had last year (and maybe some lingerie, a part of my mind whispered while pulling up images of Nikhol and Bear).

“Alright there, Harry? You’re blushing,” Rhonda asked, a teasing grin on her face, “thinking about Halloween?”

If Rhonda hadn’t told me I was blushing, there was no doubt about it now. Not from the way my face was burning.

“Like you’re any better, Rhonda?” Hermione asked, even though there was a bit of pink on her cheeks as well.

“Is there an issue here?” the silky smooth voice of Lana asked, pulling the Coven’s focus from the… intimate images in their imaginations back to the present.

“No, just… erm…” I swallowed nervously, trying to think of something to say while distracted by the thoughts of whether or not Lana knew about Nikhol visiting me and the fantasies I’d shared with her.

Lana got an amused smirk before walking up to me and whispering, “If you’d like, I can point out some pieces that would have Nikhol drooling over.”

My blush had to be luminescent at her suggestion, and I gave a quick nod, not daring to say anything, if I did I’d probably squeak. And that certainly answered the question of whether or not Lana knew about what happened when Nikhol returned my invisibility cloak.

“Now, I believe we need to collect some funds,” Lana declared more loudly, leading the group consisting of the Coven as well as two guards from the Order.

Personally I thought that the two from the Order were a bit excessive with Lana here, but when I had said so back at Sirius’s, Mrs. Weasley went on about ensuring our safety until Tonks had told us to humor them. I admit, it was a bit surreal to watch Mrs. Weasley shouting at someone who didn’t have red hair.

Shaking my head, I banished the thoughts from my head as we ascended the steps to Gringotts. After the chaos a few weeks back (I don’t know the full details, but Harley had said that there was something in there they needed to make sure Voldemort could “come down with a sudden an’ permanent case o’ dead”), Gringotts had increased its security, so there were several armored goblins carrying big halberds lining the walls and adjacent to each door.

Lana led us to a teller who looked down at Lana with suspicion, “Here to check your new vault?”

“You are mistaken, I am simply the chaperone,” Lana answered cooly, her voice far more stern than I’d ever heard it. “Please summon a cart so the girls behind me can access their vault.”

The goblin glared down at Lana for several moments, before ringing a bell and calling out, “Gripsack!”

We followed the called for goblin to the carts, Lana with an unusual look of distaste on her face and her hand near her lightsaber the entire time. In the span of a few minutes, we came to a stop outside the Coven’s shared vault.

“Vault 438,” Gripsack said with a bored tone as he got out of the cart and walked over to the door. Coming to a stop, he glanced over to us and in the same bored tone asked, “Key please?”

Hermione handed her key over, and Gripsack slid it into the keyhole before turning it. The doors opened with a series of mechanical clanks, revealing the shared money meant for the entire Coven. I’d thus far been the primary donor to our shared funds. Hermione’s parents didn’t come into Gringotts very often and the Weasleys didn’t have the extra funds necessary to provide more than a few knuts every now and then. Rhonda had grumbled, but I won her over eventually.

Hermione, Rhonda, and I each picked out a bag of coins, though Rhonda’s was noticeably smaller than ours. No matter how often I told her she had equal claim to everything in this vault, she didn’t like taking more than she had to. She’d only ever taken enough to cover the cost of school supplies and a tiny bit extra. Hermione and I had said on more than one occasion that when we were out of Hogwarts, Rhonda was going to be in charge of the Coven’s finances. Rhonda thought we were joking, but she was smarter with money than I was, and Hermione’s brain was oriented more towards academia than economics.

With the three of us having the money needed to get our supplies, we returned to the cart and from there to the surface. As we left Gringotts, Lana seemed to relax a little, but not completely.

“Is everything alright?” I asked her.

Lana gave a comforting smile, “It’s quite alright, dear. Goblins just remind me of the worst aspects of some old acquaintances. Now then, shall we get your school supplies?”

I had a feeling there was more to it than that, but in the middle of Diagon wasn’t the best place to have that conversation so I let it go. First up was potion supplies, followed by a stop by Quality Quidditch for some maintenance kits and to take a look at the latest model of Firebolt, Eeylops’ for owl treats, Flourish and Blotts for the updated school list, and wrapping up at Madam Malkin’s Robes.

It was at Madam Malkin’s that Lana lived up to her promise made when they first arrived. She pulled me aside from Rhonda and Hermione and began barking orders to the assistant. I was pulled into a side room and marched up onto a raised platform.

“Strip,” Lana ordered, a strange gleam in her eye.

“W-what?” I asked, immediately blushing.

“If I’m going to help you find something that entices Nikhol, I’ll need to see how it looks on you. I’ll provide a privacy screen when it’s time to change, but trust me, you have nothing to be ashamed of.”

I wanted to believe her, but… being the Girl-Who-Lived had left scars. Literally. The only people who’d seen me without a shirt, without anything covering the worst of the scars, were Rhonda and Hermione. Even Angelina, Katie, and Alicia, the other girls on the Gryffindor Quidditch team hadn’t seen them. During the time with Nikhol, my shirt had stayed on. But, slowly, reluctantly, I pulled off my robe and started to unbutton my shirt, my fingers shaking from how nervous I was.

“It is alright,” Lana spoke up, making me pause in my undressing as I looked up to see the understanding look on her face. She gave an encouraging smile before turning around to face away from me, before reaching down and gripping the bottom of her shirt. Pulling the fabric up, I was treated to the sight of a mass of scar tissue covering her back.

The fingers of my left hand flexed, tracing the similar patterns of burn scars on my palm from Quirrel as I gazed at the sign of trust Lana was showing me. Having seen Lana’s own, much worse scar, my fingers were steady as I finished unbuttoning my shirt and pulling it off. I was reaching for the button of my pants as Lana pulled her shirt back down and waved her hand, a privacy screen flying up to surround me moments before the door to the side room opened.

“I brought several examples of what you asked for, ma’am,” the voice of the worker said as I slid my pants off, kicking off my shoes at the same time.

“Very good. I’ll send for you once we’ve made a decision regarding these,” Lana said, the dismissal, and order, in her words perfectly clear.

“Of course, ma’am. If you need anything, just give the word,” the worker said before the sound of the door opening and closing echoed through the room.

I heard Lana walking up to the raised platform, and she gently asked, “May I come up?”

I swallowed the lump in my throat, before steeling my resolve and saying, “Yes.”

The privacy curtain opened and Lana stepped up with half a dozen pairs of lingerie, her orange eyes taking in my body in my sports bra and boring panties. I held my head high, doing my best to ignore the shame of the scars and embarrassment of someone I respected as much as Lana seeing me so exposed.

Lana’s gaze roamed over my scars, from the one I got in second year fleeing from Aragog’s children that started over my left breast and ended under my right, to the one on my arm from the basilisk later that year, to my most recent ones, a series of dots and lines from the Graveyard when Voldemort destroyed a tombstone and the stone shards were buried in my gut over my stomach. Slowly, Lana walked up and the back of her hand ghosted over the scars from the Graveyard.

“Do you know what Sith like Nikhol and myself see when we see scars?” Lana gently asked, her voice soothing and almost hypnotic. “We see evidence of a will to survive. We see the marks left behind of facing the challenges that life has thrown and rising up to overcome them. Someone without scars has lived an easy life, one that hasn’t tested or challenged them. Every person’s scars are unique to them, something that appeals to the Sith’s focus on individuality. To Sith, a body without scars isn’t something to be cherished.”

I blinked away the tears that were starting to form, ones I have no clue why they were forming, “But…”

“Let me put this another way,” Lana cooed as she placed a finger to my lips, before leaning in and whispering in my ear, her voice dropping to a low, seductive purr. “Sith find scars sexy.”

[hr][/hr]

I had mixed feelings about what Lana eventually picked out, despite assuring me that if Nikhol saw me in them they’d drive her crazy. They were a lot more risque than I was used to wearing, but maybe that was just because I’d never worn underwear that was meant to be sexy before?

“Hello Harry,” a familiar voice jolted me out of my thoughts as I walked into the main part of Madam Malkin’s.

“Luna!” I cried out in surprise and joy as I ran up and hugged the blonde, which she quickly returned, her arms wrapping around me. “It’s good to see you, how was your summer?”

“Alright, Daddy and I went to Ireland to inspect the fairy forts for wrackspurts or snorkacks,” Luna said as we broke apart from our hug.

“We were just telling her about some new friends,” Rhonda said, making me blush as I realized I’d completely missed Rhonda and Hermione standing there in my happiness to see Luna.

“I hope I’m among those friends,” Lana said as she joined us, the package containing multiple pairs of the lingerie she’d chosen for me floating behind her.

“You have very pretty eyes,” Luna said as she first looked at Lana, making the older blonde smile.

“Thank you.”

“Well, well, if it isn’t Potty,” another voice from school, this one more masculine and decidedly unwelcome, spoke up.

“Malfoy,” I said in deadpan as I turned to face him. The blonde ponce looked as smug and full of himself as ever, a sneer on his face as if he was smelling something foul.

“Now, now Draco, play nicely,” his father chided as he stepped into the store.

“Lucius Malfoy, I presume?” Lana asked as she stepped forwards, subtly pushing the package she’d been floating into the pile of our school robes in the process.

“You presume correctly, may I inquire as to your name?” Mr. Malfoy asked, looking at Lana with a measure of… was that wariness?

“Lana Beniko, heir to the Beniko line. A very old family, but I doubt you’d have heard of us.”

“You would be correct, I can’t say that I have. Is your family from Eastern Europe?”

“No, but I can understand why you would think that. ‘Malfoy’, your family originally hailed from France, did it not?”

“The first of the Malfoy line to move to Britain came in the eleventh century, and have maintained proper lineage since then.”

“So they came as part of the Norman Conquest, interesting. From my studies in the period, wizards regularly practiced the art of the sword in addition to magic. Has House Malfoy continued this tradition?”

My eyes widened and jaw dropped at how easily Lana had boxed in Mr. Malfoy. Either he admitted that the Malfoys had discarded a traditional art, or admitted that they practiced something so mundane as fighting like a muggle.

“While many members of House Malfoy have indeed studied the… art of the blade, I unfortunately lack the aptitude. My gifts lie with the mystic and political fields rather than the physical,” Mr. Malfoy responded cooly, a look of grudging respect on his face. “If you will excuse us, we have much shopping to do.”

“Of course, we just finished ourselves,” Lana smoothly agreed.

As Lana and the Order guards herded us away, I managed to overhear Draco speaking up for the first time since his father showed up, “Father? Why…”

“When encountering a potential rival as skilled as Lady Beniko, only a fool engages unprepared. There is little shame in biding one's time to gather information, Draco,” Mr. Malfoy answered, before we made our way into Diagon and I couldn’t hear anything else.

[center]<<Bear Sandosen>>[/center]

“So, Dumbledore. I happened to get a look at the Defense Against the Dark Arts textbook this year,” I opened with as I sat down across from him.

“Defensive Magical Theory, by Wilbert Slinkard I believe?” he asked rhetorically.

“Having thirty years taken off has had an effect,” I quipped just as Dumbledore popped a candy into his mouth, “I feel like his name’s something dirty.”

Dumbledore’s eyes went wide before he started coughing as his sweet was inhaled and went down the wrong tube. I moved to pat his back in case he started choking, but the much older man waved me off as he got his coughing under control and gave a raspy but amused chuckle.

“I admit, it’s been a long time since anyone’s surprised me like that,” he said before taking a moment to clear his throat and pick the sticky candy out of his beard. “But I suspect the textbook this year isn’t why you came by.”

“True. The Defense Professor’s one Umbridge, isn’t it? Were you unable to find a desk Auror who was willing to sign a one year contract?” I asked.

“You are correct on both accounts. I fear that even with the explicit limited time on the contract, no one was willing to sign on, leaving me little choice but to go with the offered services of Madam Umbridge.”

I let out a frustrated sigh. I’d hoped that we’d changed things enough to do away with her, but apparently some stations of canon couldn’t be avoided. I’d give her a chance, but if she tortured the kids here in Hogwarts, she wasn’t going to make it to Christmas if I had any say in it.