Green…
It was everything that Harry ever hoped for… down to the last detail.
The living room couldn't have been more perfect if Edward pulled the image directly from Harry's head and made Alice recreate it.
There was a giant tree, filling the space where Edward's piano used to sit. It was decorated so richly that Harry could hardly see a speck of green. Everyone in the family had a stocking with their names engraved in gold thread - even the twins had stockings.
"It's beautiful." Harry stood in front of the tree with Jasper's arms around his waist and he soaked in all of the warmth and cheer that the decorations brought.
"Next year we'll have three spoiled children," Jasper murmured before he kissed Harry's neck. "Imagine the utter insanity."
Harry smiled more, excited by the idea. He placed his hand on his stomach and felt one of the twins moving around, kicking Harry and their sibling.
"I can't wait," he said truthfully. "I think Rose did go a bit overboard though…"
Because Teddy had roughly fifty gifts under the tree and there were just as many boxes to ‘Twin A' and ‘Twin B'. Since the twins weren't there, it meant that Jasper was going to have to open them and see what ‘Aunt Rose' and ‘Uncle Emmett' bought for them.
There were more too, gifts from Carlisle and Esme to everyone, gifts from Harry and Jasper to everyone. The ridiculously expensive looking boxes were from Alice and the ones that looked like Teddy had wrapped them were from Edward and Bella… wrapped by Bella.
Teddy made everyone their own ornament, with some help from Harry. They were in little sparkly bags, Teddy had proudly kept them in their own area so he could hand them out in the morning.
Everything just felt right, the exact way that Christmas should feel.
Teddy was spending the day with Andromeda so they had all agreed to celebrate Christmas on Boxing Day and it meant that Harry got to spend Christmas Day with his husband and the twins that seemed to have started a kicking war inside of his stomach.
"Knock it off." Harry looked down at his huge stomach and spoke as firmly as he could. "Quit fighting right now, you're being pains."
Jasper, for whatever sappy reason, decided that was his cue to lift Harry up and carry him to the sofa. He laid Harry down, kneeled on the floor beside him, and started talking to the twins while he rubbed calming circles on Harry's stomach.
"You're hurting your dad," Jasper said, his voice so soft and musical that it was enough to have Harry closing his eyes in contentment. "It's unkind, babies. He is the one who feeds you, protects you."
"Tell them I'm going to give them daft names if they don't stop," Harry grinned.
"Ah, yes, a lifelong humiliation in retaliation for their abuses…" Jasper chuckled and the twins really were calming down some, the kicker was still trying to turn though, making Harry wince when he felt one good hit to what felt like his ribs.
"I need them out," Harry complained. The longer they were beating Harry up from the inside, the less daunting that being sliced from hip-to-hip sounded.
"Not long now, love," Jasper promised. "When the others get back from hunting, we can ask Carlisle to schedule—"
The delivery, that was what Jasper was going to say. When the others returned, they would ask Carlisle to schedule the birth.
Jasper didn't finish his sentence though because the second Harry saw a single red spark appear in the living room, Jasper flipped away from Harry and crouched in front of him, blocking Harry from what suddenly became a flurry of red sparks.
It was a really poor time for Harry to not have his wand on him, for him and Jasper to be alone in the Cullen house with only a very pregnant Bella upstairs asleep.
The sparks started to die down, leaving two people standing where the sparks had been. One of them gave Harry a painful jolt; he was tall, freckled, with red hair and merry blue eyes… it was Fred, Fred Weasley.
Fred Weasley, who died years ago in the war. Harry had been at his funeral, he saw his body be buried.
Harry was so fixated on Fred that he hardly noticed the other bloke at first and then his initial shock turned into full blown confusion because Harry was staring at… Harry.
"Harry?" Jasper had never sounded so lost before. "What did you do?"
"I didn't do this," Harry said quickly. He didn't… Did he? Harry tried to sit up, it was hard to do with his enormous stomach though and Jasper was too busy guarding Harry from the two blokes to help him.
"I'm afraid this was all me," Fred said. "I'll take your faces to understand I'm dead here."
"Yeah…" Harry squinted at them, trying to decide what they were. They were too solid to be ghosts, too human to be inferi. They were… people. They were Fred Weasley and Harry Potter in real flesh.
And Harry looked at Harry like he was a slug.
"What is wrong with your stomach?" he asked, his eyes that were identical to Harry's were bulging. "Are you sick?!"
"Pregnant," Harry huffed. "Very bloody pregnant."
"That's… what?!" The other Harry with his green eyes, his long hair, and the scar Harry saw tracing down the side of his face, sounded both horrified and disgusted.
"Maybe we all back up here for a second," Fred said. "Uh… Harry? Any chance you could call off your… attack vampire?"
Harry put a hand on Jasper's shoulder, wishing he had Jasper's powers just then. Jasper's muscles were quivering, he was ready to attack them. They might have to, but Harry didn't think that they were dangerous necessarily - extremely strange though for sure.
"Jazz, it's okay," Harry said. "I don't think they're going to hurt us."
"Not unless you try to suck our blood," the other Harry said. He had a weird voice, an accent of sorts, and a lazy drawl that Harry definitely didn't have. Ron said that Harry was picking up an American accent, but that Harry had something rougher, a little twang.
Harry kind of liked it, really, it was interesting.
"He won't," Harry told them. "Unless you do something, then he's going to kill you both."
Jasper was uneasy with moving any, as uneasy as Harry with the accent and Fred were with sitting on the other sofa. They all looked at each other for a moment, then Fred broke the silence.
"So… this is different," he said. "I reckon I'll start - I'm Fred Potter, my husband, Harry, of course. I invented a potion to dimension travel. You know, you're the first pregnant Harry we've met today."
It was a wild story, Harry heard wilder though. It was more wild than ‘you're a wizard, Harry', less wild than ‘I'm going to Egypt to sightsee with my perfectly human friends'.
"You've met others?" Harry asked, deciding that he was going to take it as truth. "What were they like?"
"Not pregnant," Harry with the accent said, his eyes still lingering on Harry's stomach. "Is this a vampire thing? Are you a vampire?"
"Er… no," Harry said. "This is something of a rather illegal thing that I'd appreciate you not mentioning to anyone else?"
It was a very illegal thing. Harry wasn't even able to go anywhere except for the Cullen's house, his house, the Burrow, or Grimmauld Place until the twins were born. And even once they were, Harry wouldn't be able to openly say that the twins were birthed by him. Jasper suggested that if they were ever pressed, Harry could claim that they used a muggle surrogate to carry them.
"Who would we tell?" Fred grinned. It was a good point. "Good for you lads though! You're together, right? So it's a vampire-wizard baby! They could be the perfect weapon, eh?"
"Our children are not weapons," Jasper said immediately, baring his teeth in the same disgust Harry had at the idea.
"My mistake," Fred said, raising his hands innocently. "I spend enough time with Harry and I start to see everyone as their weapon potential."
"Wait." Harry with the accent leaned forward and Harry really didn't like the light in his eyes when he looked at Harry's stomach. "They'll be vampires with magic?"
"Maybe?" Harry shrugged. "I'm not sure, dude. They're sort of the first of their kind."
"Did you…" Harry with the accent ripped his eyes off Harry's stomach to curl his nose at him. "Did you just call me ‘dude'?"
Yeah, Harry did. It was Jacob's fault and exactly what Ron snickered over constantly.
"Is that relevant?" Harry scowled. "The point was, they're unique and we won't know what they can and can't do until they're born."
"Brill," Accented-Harry said. "They could be the most powerful beings."
"Or duds," Fred said. It was so hard, looking at Fred. Harry was fairly certain that Jasper was keeping him from crying because it felt like a rip in Harry's chest to see him as he could have been, older and happy, making jokes and grinning.
"Our children are not going to be duds," Jasper said tersely, he wasn't used to Fred - it had been some time since Harry had been used to Fred. "Our children will be beautiful and wonderful creations."
"Powerful too," Accented-Harry said again. It was making Harry uncomfortable, the new light of hunger in his eyes when he looked at Harry's stomach.
"You look older," Harry blurted, searching for any topic to get away from the twins. Accented-Harry gave off a sense of danger and Harry didn't need a dangerous dimension-hopping wizard to become fixated on the twins.
"Older?" Accented-Harry tilted his head to the side and it was eerily familiar, though Harry couldn't place it. "How old are you?"
"Technically? Seventeen," Harry said. "I should be nineteen."
"So you are a vampire!" Accented-Harry cried accusingly. "Fuckin' liar, you are."
"I am not a vampire," Harry scowled. After Harry scowled, his nose started stinging in a familiar way… and his eyes watered.
Harry loved his twins, he did, but Harry hated having them messing with his emotions from the inside. They were just like their father, honestly.
"Do the vampire babies give you immortality?" Fred asked, sounding genuinely curious. "Because that's brilliant, everyone'll be trying to shack up with vampires."
"It's not that either," Harry said, blinking very quickly to keep from crying like an idiot. "It's - er… the Hallows? Gifts from Death?"
"Wait, you're fuckin' kidding me!" Accented-Harry said, somehow glaring even harder at Harry. It was strange, being glared at by… himself. It wasn't all that scary though, maybe Harry would never be as frightening as he hoped to be.
"How'd you get the wand?" he asked sharply. "Dumbledore had it."
"Er… he lost it to Draco Malfoy, I disarmed Draco, Voldemort took the wand from Dumbledore's grave, but it recognized me as its owner," Harry explained. It was complicated if Accented-Harry didn't know wand lore, but Harry wasn't likely to forget anytime soon.
Maybe in another thousand years. Maybe a thousand years after Harry had to bury Teddy.
"What a bastard," Accented-Harry breathed. "I wouldn't have had to kill Dudley if that bearded-fuck let me have the wand. Fred, look at him!" he pointed at Harry. "He lived!"
"Yeah, but he's going to look like a baby forever," Fred said flippantly. "They'd never make him Minister of Magic."
"Well, not with my criminal record," Harry said, desperate to change the subject. "Also, what do you mean you had to kill Dudley?"
"You've got a criminal record?" Accented-Harry asked quickly, too quickly. It was Harry's own ‘let's change the subject' tactic and sometimes it worked, but it didn't work against… himself.
"Tell me why you killed Dudley and I'll tell you about it," Harry said. Dudley was a git, but… he'd been alright, the last time Harry saw him.
Maybe Harry should write to him, once the twins were born and they were all resettled. Harry never even considered reaching out to the Dursleys, but he suddenly realized he never even found out if they survived the war.
Surely… surely someone might have mentioned it if they didn't?
"I had to," Accented-Harry said. "What's your criminal record for?"
"A crime," Harry said, just as stubbornly vague as… he was.
"Fine." Accented-Harry narrowed his eyes at him. "On three then, yeah? One, two, three…"
"Muggles saw me do magic."
"I needed to make a horcrux."
"Pft." Accented-Harry looked suddenly as disgusted with Harry as Harry was him. "That's it? You made it sound brill, didn't you? Muggles see me do magic at least once a fuckin' week."
"You - you made a horcrux?" Harry asked, actually nauseous about it. The twins even started kicking Harry, apparently they were disgusted too.
"Well, I wasn't Dumbledore's special little boy, so he didn't fuckin' give me the Elder wand, did he?" Accented-Harry snarled. "I won't apologize to you for wanting to live."
"At the cost of your cousin's life?" Jasper asked, quite mildly for the topic. "And you're able to sleep at night?"
"How do you sleep?" Fred asked loudly, defending his Harry. "How many have you killed just for a meal? One life so Harry could live is nothing."
One murder compared to Jasper's history wasn't much of a choice, but Harry would have died before he made a horcrux. It was… it was sick. It was inhumane.
"What'd you use?" Harry asked abruptly, suddenly curious about that. Harry spent the better part of the year searching for Voldemort's horcruxes, he spent one night in a tent laughing with Ron and Hermione about what they'd use and where they would hide it if they had one.
Hermione had the best answer with a pebble in the middle of the ocean. It was much more brilliant than Harry's idea of his broomstick.
Harry really liked his broomstick though.
"This." Accented-Harry pulled a red pocket knife from his pocket and flipped it out and opened so fast that he seemed half-vampire. It was a fluid motion, well-practiced. It was sort of impressive, mostly scary.
Why wasn't Harry that scary? Even when he wasn't what felt like fifty months pregnant, he didn't think he'd ever come across so threatening.
"Oh." Harry shrugged. "That's neat."
Still sick and disgusting though.
Accented-Harry's eye twitched at Harry's nonchalance. It didn't mean Harry wasn't still disgusted and horrified, but Hermione had mentioned the idea once after the war, Harry could see the appeal.
Making a horcrux to become invincible, then stabbing himself with a Basilisk fang to remove Voldemort's soul bit - it could have worked, thankfully Harry never had to find out. Also, at the time that Hermione mentioned it, Harry hadn't known he'd already become immortal and hadn't liked the idea one bit.
"You're not immortal?" Harry asked, looking him over slowly. He didn't seem immortal, not if his war ended the same time as Harry's, and Harry would swear that he was even taller than Harry was.
Which meant he either had a much better childhood or Harry could have had a growth spurt after the war.
"Fuck no," accented-Harry spat. "Bury all my friends? Bury my goddaughter? That sounds bloody miserable. I suppose Dumbledore didn't give a damn about you if that was his big gift."
Yeah - Harry wanted to argue about it based on accented-Harry being a dick, but he wasn't wrong. It wasn't much of a gift, not all of the time.
"I've got Jasper, his family, our twins," Harry said, hoping it was all true. "I'll never bury them. I'll have family for an eternity. What are you looking forward to at the end of your life? A place in the afterlife with your family? You ripped your soul, dude. You damned yourself."
It was true - Harry might never see the afterlife, he might never see his parents again, but he wasn't as damned as accented-Harry was. It was the first positive thought he had about the afterlife; if he ever did die, he had to hope that he'd at least get to see his family.
"Let's play a game," Fred said. "It's called shut the hell up."
Jasper's teeth snapped, clearly unimpressed. Harry wasn't as bothered, he knew he was right and he could see from the spark in accented-Harry's eyes that he knew it as well.
"How'd you get pregnant?" Accented-Harry asked after a minute of tense silence. "Is that some sick side effect of being the Master of Death?"
"What?" Harry laughed a little and put his hand on his stomach, feeling the twins kicking the hell out of each other. "No, it was a really illegal potion, actually."
"Wait!" Fred's glare started to soften and Harry saw it then, he saw the way Fred looked at his Harry and how their wedding rings flashed on their fingers. "There's a potion to get a bloke pregnant?" Fred asked Harry.
"Fred, no," accented-Harry said shortly. "Absolutely not. Look how ridiculous he looks, I am never going to get pregnant."
"I'll do it!" Fred offered quickly. "Harry, darlin, I'd do it. You wouldn't have to."
"I'm not having kids," accented-Harry said firmly. "I'd be a rubbish father and you know that."
"I don't know that," Fred argued. "I think you'd be wonderful."
"I used to think that," Harry cut in, shrugging when all of them looked at him. "I, er… well I didn't know how to be a dad, right? Then I just kind of decided to watch other parents, see what they did, and copy them. It's not as hard as I thought it would be."
Teddy was proof enough of that. Harry wasn't ruining his childhood, he didn't think. Teddy seemed happy, loved. That was all Harry wanted for his kids.
"He's knocked up by a vampire after being cursed by Dumbledore," accented-Harry told Fred, completely disregarding Harry's attempt to empathize with him. "Clearly, he makes fuckin' bad decisions, Fred."
Since it wasn't entirely untrue, Harry didn't argue against it. Plus, Harry could see in Fred's eyes that he wasn't going to let it go - Fred wanted to have a family and Harry got the feeling that he would get it.
Accented-Harry and Fred started sparking red before either of them could argue about having a family anymore and Harry pretended like he wasn't very relieved that they might be leaving.
"Oh, so soon?" Harry said, stretching his back out when he stood up to offer them his hand. "Shame. It was great to meet you, really."
"I'd say the same, but I'm not a liar," accented-Harry said, briefly grasping Harry's hand. "I am curious though, when you were arrested, did you go to Azkaban?"
Harry flinched at the thought and the twins finally settled down, as if they worried they were the one making him unhappy.
"Er… no, God, no," Harry said. His eyes widened, "Did you?"
"See?" Accented-Harry dropped Harry's hand and scowled at Fred. "Dumbledore's special boy."
"Yeah, but you killed Dumbledore and Timmy, so who really wins?" Fred grinned.
He - he killed Dumbledore?!
"Tonks," accented-Harry said flatly. "Bloody bint stole my dad, my job, and she's still ruining my life…"
"Wait!" Harry wanted to ask about that, but there were sparks covering them both and Jasper was blocking Harry so he wasn't burned by them. "Tonks is alive?" Harry asked desperately, shocked by that.
All Harry heard before they disappeared from view was a very snarky, a very irritated, ‘God, he killed her too'.
Harry stood frozen in place, blinking stupidly at where they had just been.
"That was…" The staircase creaked and Harry looked over to see Bella climbing down the last few steps, apparently she'd been awake and eavesdropping. Bella shook her head, unable to find the right word.
"Horrifying?" Jasper offered, moving quickly to give Bella his arm so she could waddle more efficiently toward the couch where Harry sank back down to.
"Interesting?" Bella said instead. She settled in beside Harry and Jasper took Harry's other side, pulling him over so Harry could lay his head on Jasper's shoulder.
"Sometimes I think Harry's the most terrifying and stressful person I know, but now he's not," Bella said. "Because as it turns out, he could be worse."
Harry huffed, only a bit amused by that. The twins wiggled around at his huff and started nudging him gently, maybe a quiet apology for using his body as a wrestling ring.
"Aw, you think I'm scary?" Harry asked Bella, heartened by that. "I was worried that I'm starting to go soft with pregnancy."
"Yeah, well…" Bella put her hand on her own huge stomach and they shared a grin. "Pregnancy makes us stupid."
"I was always stupid," Harry joked. "You used to be smart, then you went and shagged the worst husband in the world and got yourself knocked up."
It was true, not that Harry thought Bella regretted a single thing.
"It worked out alright," Bella said, tilting her head to lay on Harry. "And Edward's not so bad, I could have married a massive douche bag like that other Harry."
When she put it like that… yeah, maybe their lives were just fine. Sure, they were pregnant and Harry was counting down the hours until he could evict his twins, but at least Harry had never been as much of a douche bag as accented-Harry.
"They called me an attack vampire," Jasper said. "I am not an attack vampire."
Since he definitely sort of was, Harry didn't say anything. Harry only sat on the couch with his best friend, his husband, and felt his twins moving around inside of him - promising that the rest of Harry's eternity would be with people he loved.