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Harry's head spun. He wanted to put his head between his knees and breathe for a little bit, but he was afraid that he'd miss something else. He'd apparently missed quite a bit.
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His Aunt had danced at some point in her life, and danced ballet, and did it well.
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His Aunt had kept up…whatever was necessary to dance ballet, which he assumed was a lot, and how did he miss his Aunt training for ballet?
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The Evans family was a lot more wide-spread than he thought, and all of the women he had met over the course of the evening had flower names. It was not helping him keep track of who was which.
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Harry hated resorting to Americanisms on general principle, but he was on stun and his brain kept going back to something he had overheard an American tourist exclaim, and thought it fit them well: his extended family were all Grade-A Badasses. Top-notch. Do not fuck with.
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There was magic, and then there was something else, and suddenly, Harry was a lot more forgiving about his treatment at the hands of his Aunt. Harry wasn't quite sure how his Mum got used to magic without massive amounts of PTSD with the "introduction" she had.
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His abrupt introduction to his…other Aunts? Cousins once-removed? family had not gone well. Not one of them liked magic. The black hair wasn't helping.
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He's restating a few different points in this one, but it's worth saying again: He was surrounded by women who protect him because he happens to be related, but because of their experiences with (it's not magic, pick a different word, Harry) the arcane, they were all wary of him, and they were lethal.
In short, Harry was safe. Very safe. Harry also didn't quite dare to breathe too suddenly.
His Aunt had put her hair up in a bun. For as long as Harry could remember, her hair had always been down, even when it got in her way. The closest that her hair got to being "up" was when she clipped back a portion of it. Her hair being up in a bun strangely suited her. Her face was naturally sharp, and the bun highlighted it. She looked like the ballerina she was: sharp lines and discipline and strength.
"Poppy, Daisy," Petunia said sharply. "Leave him alone. He won't hurt us."
"Magic isn't exactly to be trusted," one of the women guarding him said.
"What you'd find under a stone is different than his type," Petunia sniffed. "No less dangerous, but more diversity."
Which didn't make any sense at all.
"If he's Rionin's son, I might just kill him and be done with it, blood-family or not," the woman on the left said.
"If he's Rionin's son, he has no idea. He has Lily's gifts, not an affinity for darkness and skullduggery," Petunia said.
The woman on the right eyed Harry distrustfully. "But that hair…"
"He's the carbon copy of James Potter with bits of Lily, his father isn't exactly in question."
"Yet, we danced since we could walk for those who aided in our conception," one of the other women said. "The King kind of made it obvious that they don't need to do something so obvious as raping someone to produce a child."
Harry tentatively raised a hand and had eleven sets of eyes watching his every move. "Am I allowed to speak on my behalf?" he asked timidly.
"No," said eleven women.
"Okay," Harry whispered, lowering his hand.
"Ey, he'd be a pretty pathetic Prince with that attitude," one of them said, looking at him with something a little less wary.
"Jonquil," said his left guard.
"Am I allowed to laugh?" Harry asked quietly, doing his best to not burst into laughter at the Prince comment.
"No," said all the women but Jonquil.
"You can breathe and ask to use the bathroom," said his right guard.
"Can I send a letter so that more wizards don't show up?" Harry asked.
"No," said eleven women.
"Okay," Harry said.
Considering the carnage his Aunt alone had managed to level against the two invading Death Eaters, Harry was more concerned about the Order. In the event that something had triggered an alarm and the Order tried to come and rescue him, Harry was sure they'd be treated just the same as the Death Eaters.
That is to say, with a disdainful and lethal precision that had left Harry gaping and the Death Eaters very, very dead.
"Does he know anything?" one of the women asked Petunia.
"Do you really think I'd tell Lily's son, whom she'd birthed less than six months after Galen intervened?" Petunia demanded.
Harry had a lot of questions. He had so many questions about who these women were and why Vernon and Dudley weren't allowed to even look at them closely before being sent to Aunt Marge's place for the foreseeable future. He wanted to know why they were sarcastically calling him a prince and who Rionin and Galen were. He wanted to know what kind of magic came from under a stone and how all these women were affected by it. He wanted to know why his hair was a problem besides the obvious messiness. He wanted to know why all these women could dance as soon as they could walk.
"Yes, actually, because he's Lily's son," the woman said.
"He has self-preservation instincts, at least," his right guard said.
"No, just one, but all of you are standing on it and making sure it doesn’t run away," Harry blurted out before he could stop himself.
Jonquil snickered. A few of the others rolled their eyes.
Petunia covered her eyes. "Harry, shut up."
Harry shut up.
"Petunia, he doesn't have a clue. Besides his hair, he doesn't show any characteristics of Rionin, and he was foul enough to definitely pass on those traits to whatever he sired," one of the women said.
"I don't care, Rose! Lily up and left for magic and the only times I saw her was when we were at the Balls and witchcraft done by a Muggle was what freed us," Petunia shouted. "Lily disappeared for nothing, and then she was dead. So no, I didn't tell the Potter boy anything because if he's Rionin's son, I didn't want to give him ideas, and if he's Potter's, then he had other things to worry about than something that Galen ended before he was born!"
Witchcraft done by a Muggle. Harry had officially heard everything.
"Do you want an explanation?" Jonquil asked him curiously.
"I have so many questions, but Aunt Petunia is right," Harry said reluctantly. "I have more pressing things to worry about than something that ended before I was born."
"Like what?" his left guard asked.
"Like if I need to worry about someone coming to rescue me from the big, bad Death Eaters and you women tearing them apart," Harry said frankly. "I'd like to send a letter to tell my friends to stay away until I give the all clear, but you said no and I don't quite dare to breathe too hard with all of you watching me like I'll …I don't know, turn into a demon and bite your heads off or something."
"That one last self-preservation instinct," Rose said, laughing a little.
"It's hiding under the bed as soon as you leave. My Potions professor will have to drag it back out, kicking and screaming," Harry informed her.
"Petunia, he's a snarky, cynical little thing, why didn't you inform us of this?" one of the other women said delightedly.
"Because he's a sarcastic bastard that has a talent for jumping up and down on Vernon's last nerve, and then I have to deal with Vernon?" Petunia said dryly.
"Tuney, it's not that hard to jump up and down on Vernon's last nerve," his left guard said wryly.
"He's kind of a simpleton," his right guard agreed.
"You two are twins," Harry suddenly realized, looking from left guard to right guard. They both suddenly smiled at him, and suddenly, he wanted to keep them as far away from Fred and George as possible.
"Poppy! Daisy!" Rose said sharply. She sighed. "Don't give him whiplash."
"I'm friends with identical twin pranksters, whiplash is the least they do to me," Harry said, amused.
His left guard looked at his right guard. "Identical twin pranksters," she repeated.
His right guard shrugged. "Opportunities lost," she declared.
"Yeah, at conception, since you two are fraternal," another woman said, rolling her eyes.
Harry laughed.
"You do deserve an explanation," the same woman said, lingering amusement hinted at around her eyes.
Harry stopped and thought about it. He thought about Voldemort and the prophecy. He thought about Sirius. "Is this going to be life-threatening if I don't hear about it today?" he asked.
All eleven of them shook their heads.
"I want to hear the story, but I'm already processing… a lot. My brain will break if I have to process this story, too, I just know it," he said.
"It's family history that you might need to know about, in the event that you ever have daughters," one of the women said.
"Later," Harry said. "Much later. In like five years. After I kill Voldemort and assuming I survive the process."
All of the women looked at him, alarmed. "Voldemort?" Petunia asked. "Isn't he the one you got rid of?"
Harry cautiously scratched his head. "Yeah…well, he didn't stay gotten rid of. Unfortunately."
He watched as they all eyed him, and then eyed each other. Rose turned to him and demanded, "Explain."
So Harry told them about Voldemort's bids for another body until he succeeded, and the price of that body.
"Where have you been, mate?"
"I ended up getting attacked by Death Eaters and discovering that I have extended family on my mother's side…and all the women are terrifying and lethal and intolerant of magic. The Evans family is crazy."
"What?" Hermione gasped. "You were attacked?"
"He was safe as houses, Herms, did you not hear the part about 'terrifying and lethal'?"
"I want to know about the crazy term," Ginny said. "Storytime?"
"Well, I ended up getting rid of Voldemort through the power of ballet…which is definitely something that Voldemort knew not," Harry started.
"Ballet?" Neville said blankly.
"Voldemort's dead again?" Ginny asked, more relevantly.
"He'll be back," Luna said.
"It took like thirteen years for him to come back last time, we'll be prepared for him this time," Hermione said.
"Can I speak?" Harry shouted over the commentary. They all went quiet. "Thank you. The ballet thing, my crazy family on my mother's side, and Voldemort being dead is all related. Let me get through everything."
So Harry explained. He explained how the Death Eaters found his house, their quick dispatch at the hands of his Aunt. He told how his Aunt had called the extended family, which was a wide variety of cousins of his Aunt, and the occasional younger aunt of hers. He told of how they all moved the same, and bantered about this arse named Rionin who had apparently haunted his Mum since she'd been little and this other guy Galen, who was Rose's now-husband. The Evans family, who-knows-how-many generations ago, had bargained for the ability to have children from a barren mother with something that Harry had never heard of. The possible evil wizard/demon/dark creature/something else entirely had called itself King Understone, and had been apparently willing to wait however many generations to get his part of the deal: twelve brides for his twelve sons. The Evans family had grown big enough that twelve baby girls had been born within the same four-year timespan, so when Rose, the oldest, was four, she had suddenly found herself in King Understone's palace. Every night, from the time they were able to walk, the Evans girls had been transported to the palace and danced with their husbands-to-be for twenty years. Galen came along and managed to seal off the King's palace in the midst of his efforts to discover why Rose was so standoffish and to woo her.
Harry explained how, when confronted with a black-haired, pale-skinned son of Lily, the collective Evans family had just about decided to kill him for being Rionin's son. Upon determining that he really, actually wasn't Rionin's son, the women sat him down and asked if he wanted an explanation. He'd said yes, pending the change in Voldemort's living status, and they'd demanded to know what he meant. So he'd explained Voldemort, his Mum's sacrifice, and the problems that had arisen in the last two years.
And, despite the only one of the women who had been a witch had been his Mum, the other eleven women had gathered themselves up, terrified the Death Eaters, killed Voldemort, and had gotten back to Number 4 Privet Drive in time for lunch. In the meantime, Harry's last self-preservation instinct had been ground into dust.
Harry's friends had stopped reacting right around the time he'd started talking about the King's bargain for brides, and he was worried that he'd broken their brains.
"What the fuck," Neville said flatly after Harry finished speaking.
"Yeah," Harry agreed.
"What the actual fuck happened. That couldn't have happened. No matter how badass, Muggles can't just…waltz through Malfoy Manor wards," Ron demanded.
"Wait, did Galen help them?" Ginny demanded.
"I think Galen walked them through the reverse of what he did to the Palace over the phone," Harry admitted.
Hermione let out a high pitched shriek and then a vaguely maniacal giggle.