An Ugly Bastard's Legacy (Ugly Bastard CYOA/HL/HP) 1 (Patreon)

22 February 1980; 1654 hours

12 Church Lane, Godric’s Hollow

“Ah, Little Jamie, do come in!” the older woman, if Lily had to guess she’d say she was in her fifties, who opened the door greeted James with a hug, before turning to face Lily, “and you must be Lily, so wonderful to meet you!”

Lily found herself the recipient of a similar hug, though she noticed the woman was more cautious with her than she’d been with James, on account of the swell of her stomach. “Mrs. Garlick, I presume?” Lily asked.

“Oh please, call me Mirabel, everyone does. Come in, come in!”

Lily followed James inside the warm house, taking in the various nicknacks on the wall, the painting of Hogwarts above the mantle, the small picture of an older gentleman on the side table. Passing her coat to James, Lily stepped up to the side table, picking up the framed picture. “Is this your husband?” Lily asked as Mirabel walked past.

“Hmm?” the older woman paused, looking at the picture. “Oh, no. That’s a picture of Eleazar Fig, he was the Professor of Magical Theory at Hogwarts when my Jacob was admitted. He took it so hard when Eleazar passed, Jacob is still convinced to this day that he wouldn’t have made it through his first few months without Eleazar’s help.”

James seemed to start at that, drawing Lily’s eye, “I find that hard to believe, he knows more magic than anyone else I’ve met.”

That made Lily turn to look at her husband in surprise, even as Mirabel laughed softly, “I quite agree with you Jamie, he would have been just fine. But Merlin help trying to convince him of that. I suspect it is from his late start, even if he rose to the occasion even better than any could have predicted.”

“Late start?” Lily asked, as Mirabel guided both her and James to the table.

“I was misdiagnosed as a squib when I was a child,” a gruff voice came from behind Lily, and the speaker soon walked past her to wrap an arm around Mirabel’s waist.

Lily did her best to keep her initial reaction from showing. He was… well, the only word for it was ugly. She couldn’t point to any specific feature that stood out (certainly not his age, he looked to be of similar age to Mirabel), but something about how they came together was unpleasant to look at. The only feature she could point at as standing out was the fact that the skin over his left eye was…closed over, like a painting where the painter forgot there was supposed to be an eye there. Forcing her revulsion down, Lily took a sip of the tea that Mirabel placed in front of her.

The flavor danced over her tongue was one unfamiliar to her, and as she tried to place it, she listened with half an ear as he explained, “Never did any accidental magic growing up, and once my little brother started showing accidental magic before he was even out of diapers, our sperm donor saw no reason to keep me around. So I was disowned, stripped of the family name, and kicked out of the house at ten without so much as a knut to my name. My magic didn’t come in until I was fifteen, and then there was a whole mess with the era’s version of the Death Eaters and a goblin who was even more of an arsehole than the rest of the species.”

Lily set down her cup, listening in on the conversation between Jacob Garlick and James as Matilda sat next to her, “If you don’t mind my asking, dearie, how far along?”

“Oh, I’m four months along,” Lily answered, her hand drifting down to her stomach, where her baby bump was just starting to show. She and James had been discussing names, and while they’d agreed on Harry if they were a boy, they still hadn’t settled on one if they were a girl.

“They’ll be powerful, Jacob has a gift for magic, and he could tell when you and Jamie moved in next door.”

That was something that worried Lily. Voldemort was getting so powerful so quickly, and with how both she and James had thwarted him so often in the past…

“Don’t you worry, dearie,” Matilda said, patting Lily’s hand and pulling her from her thoughts. “If you ever need help, we’ll be happy to do so. Why, we even have a mano-”

“Matilda,” her husband interrupted, a hint of warning in his voice. Something in his tone made Lily’s stomach squirm, and she placed a hand over her baby bump, hoping not to have to have the nausea come up like it had yesterday.

The rest of the evening passed uneventfully, dinner was a surprisingly juicy chicken with several sides made from plants she hadn’t seen since her herbology classes. More tea was served and drank, conversation was had, and the evening felt like one of the dinner parties that Lily remembered her parents having with some of the neighbors.

“Before you leave,” Jacob Garlick said as Lily and James were preparing to leave. “I have some information I believe you will be quite interested to hear. Despite my retirement, I maintain contacts in my old line of work, and I learned of a rather… interesting piece of information.”

“What kind of information?” Lily asked, something about the look in his eyes unsettling her.

“Riddle, the self proclaimed Dark Lord running around, was made aware of a prophecy last week. His informant didn’t hear the entire prophecy, but what he did hear spoke of ‘one to vanquish the Dark Lord’ was coming. That they’d be born either at the end of July or beginning of August, and that they’d be born to those that had ‘thrice defied’ the wanker. Does any of this sound familiar?”

The question, mocking in tone, was clearly rhetorical. Lily’s hands wrapped around her pregnant stomach. Voldemort was going to target her baby? A wave of despair filled her, she’d do everything in her power to ensure that her baby had a safe and happy life, but she was under no illusions: if Voldemort came for them, there was little that she could do.

“However,” Jacob Garlick spoke up again, drawing both Potter’s attention, “I do have another residence, in the Scottish Highlands, where you will be safe. Your child will be safe, Riddle will never be able to breach the defenses in place, and you will be able to raise your child in peace.”

“What’s the catch?” Lily asked, even as James’s eyes narrowed and he glanced repeatedly between Jacob and Matilda.

Jacob gave a smirk that oozed…not smugness, or satisfaction, but it gave the sense that he had something planned, and was certain that he’d already won. But he answered all the same, “The nature of the wards means that only I can enter and exit at will. Even house elves need me to move them in and out. If you accept my offer of sanctuary, you will be leaving behind everyone you currently associate with. Friends, family, coworkers, you’d be leaving them all behind. But, as I said, your child would have a safe and happy childhood, with both their parents.”

“Come Jacob, let’s give them a chance to talk among themselves,” Matilda said, standing and taking her husband’s hand in her own.

James waited until the older couple left, before turning to Lily, “What do you think, Lily?”

[hr][/hr]

I let my smirk out as the door closed behind me. I’d been waiting ninety five years for this moment, and everything was falling perfectly into place. Buying the country estate of my “family” from my nephew, who was so deep in debt to the goblins that he was considering selling his wife to pay it off, was the first real step. The hardest part was laying low once I graduated from Hogwarts, ensuring I didn’t cause enough butterflies to prevent James Potter and Lily Evans from getting married and my multiple times great nephew from squirting a brat into her.

I swore to myself when Professor Fig told me that I wasn’t a squib, that I had magic, that I would have my vengeance on the line of Tiberius Potter. And the subtle potions in the tea that James and Lily had been drinking all night ensured that they’d make exactly the decision I wanted them to make. While also ensuring that the last Potter would be one much more suitable for my plans.

Once James and Lily were in the old Potter Estate, which had been mine for the last seventy years, I’d deal with Riddle, after all, Dumbledore hadn’t actually interviewed Trelawny yet. He wouldn’t until the first part of the summer. So no prophecy saying that only one individual could defeat him.

“Is everything alright, dear?” Matilda, or rather, Mirabel asked, pulling me from my woolgathering. Looking down at my wife, I had another reason to look forward to returning to the estate: once there I could reverse the spell that had her showing a semblance of her actual age. Even after ninety years, I hadn’t gotten tired of fucking my broken and corrupted Herbology Professor.

“Seeing the young mother-to-be had me thinking about planting another seed in you,” I told her, reaching down and firmly grabbing her ass through her robes.

“Oh, you naughty boy,” she said with a giggle, her eyes filled with the submissiveness and devotion that I’d quite happily trained into her. She’d been so reluctant initially, so defiant. But really, halfway through my first semester I had Professor Sharp saying that I was a better potion brewer than most of the seventh years, what chance did she really have?

The key to Mirabel, and the Potter’s, downfall wasn’t in anything blatant like Amemortia. That was a blunt instrument with all the subtlety and effectiveness of open heart surgery with a chainsaw. No, the most effective tool in getting what I wanted wasn’t in the more powerful potions and spells. It was in the weaker ones. After absorbing the Ancient Magic under Hogwarts, I’d had more power than I knew what to do with, but it was going to be the weaker, and less easily noticed, tricks that would pave the way forwards.

I’d already slipped Lily a tasteless potion to ensure that the child growing inside her would be a girl. By the time she was old enough to go to Hogwarts, not only would she have been raised to give anything and everything to me, I’d have Lily trained to the point that she’d eagerly coach her daughter how to please me with her body.

A knock on the door pulled my and Mirabel’s focus back to the here and now, and I schooled my expression back to my normal expression. Re-entering the sitting room, we sat across from the young married couple, who had resigned looks upon their faces.

“We accept, if… if the Dark Lord’s going to target our baby, we’ll accept any cost to protect them,” James Potter said, his thumb running over the back of Lily’s hand.

I forced down the annoyance that swelled up in me at that, Lily Evans wasn’t mine just yet. But she would be, it would take a little time but she’d be completely and utterly devoted to me by the time her daughter was walking. After that, I’d give her some siblings, no more need to hold back on the number of children I spawned.

[hr][/hr]

“Welcome to my estate. I purchased it seventy years ago from an idiot wizard who got it into his head that gambling with goblins was a good idea,” I said as Mirabel rubbed at Lily’s back. Magical travel was never pleasant, especially for pregnant women, but she’d be fine after a moment or two. “Hold still a moment, and I’ll let you through the wards.”

I closed my eye, pulled out my wand (blackthorn and dragon heartstring, nine and a half inches), and began pouring magic into the air. The Ancient Magic that formed the foundation of my estate’s wards responded to the familiar touch of my magic, opening a corridor for the four of us to pass through. Walking past the wardline, I felt a smile spread across my face, the familiar scent of home filling the air.

“Dropsy,” I called out, letting the wards close behind us. There was a crack, as a smartly dressed house elf appeared in front of me.

“Master called?” the grandson of Deek asked, standing stiff and upright like a proper British butler.

“These two will be living here from now on, get them situated in one of the double suites,” I ordered, gesturing to James and Lily. My miniature butler gave a nod, before snapping his fingers and sending the small amount of luggage that the couple had brought to whatever room Dropsy had assigned them.

“If guests will follow Dropsy,” he said, motioning for James and Lily to follow him.

I eyed Lily’s ass as she walked away, admiring the shape and fullness of it. I could hardly wait until that ass was bouncing on my lap, but there’d be time for that later. It wouldn’t do if I had to get heavy handed because I was impatient.

Refocusing, I called out for the other head house elf working here, “Tipsy.” A female house elf appeared with a curtsy, dressed in a non fetishized french maid uniform. “Anything I should be aware of while Mirabel and I were away?”

“Miss Lyla had an accident in the Potion Lab,” the house elf answered. “Tipsy and Dropsy took care of it to the best of our abilities, but Miss Lyla now has kitty ears and tail.”

I blinked, “Did she put her cat’s hair into the Polyjuice I was brewing?”

“Indeed, Master. That is what Miss Lyla said she did.”

Right, I now had a ten year old cat-girl to see. But it did give me some ideas, down the line with Lily, maybe with fur from a doe? Questions for later, there’d be time for that after I’d seen to my daughter.