Silently Watches - Faery Heroes

I welcome one and all to the first chapter of my response fic! Since only a few people have told me which of my story ideas they would prefer to see, I'm going to be posting both of them for a couple of weeks and judge which, if either, is being enjoyed more. This will (hopefully) be funny and happy, so please enjoy.

Disclaimer: Did Harry choose one girl at the end, and one of the worst available at that? If so, I don't own the Harry Potter franchise; it belongs to J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Press, Warner Bros., and whoever else she sold the rights to.

Chapter 1
Fae-Crossed Lovers

"No means no."

"Come on, Harry. Pleeease?" begged a blonde woman, her silver eyes glistening with tears as she gazed into Harry's emerald ones. "We haven't had pancakes in so loooong."

Harry stared at his lover in astonishment. "We had them yesterday!"

"But that was for breakfast, and it's dinner now. You never make us pancakes for dinner." Her point made, Luna pouted at him, cutely of course. She couldn't afford to lessen her chances to make him cave.

Harry, however, was unmoved. "I have enough trouble with you wanting them every day for breakfast, you're not having them for dinner. If you want pancakes that much, you or Hermione can make them."

Her glare was enough of an answer, but she followed it up in case he was being spectacularly stupid. "Harry, sweetie, Hermione may be an expert in potions brewing, but not even starving babies would eat her cooking. Don't you remember what her last attempt was like?"

"Nope." He grinned at her surprise and tapped his temple, "I dislike Lockhart for many reasons, but I do agree with him about Obliviate. It's a handy spell to have."

"What's a handy spell?" his other lover asked as she entered the den. "And what's for dinner?"

"Harry's making us pancakes!" Luna cheered. He could resist Hermione, he could even occasionally resist her, but he would never be able to resist them both.

"What! No I'm not!"

"Really, Harry, pancakes? You have to learn to say no to her eventually. But since you have decided to make them, I won't stop you this time."

He sighed, hung his head, and began shuffling to the kitchen, missing his girls' twin expressions of glee.

"And use some of those blueberries! There aren't many places we can get them, after all."

Whoever said having multiple girlfriends at the same time was a good thing had obviously never experienced it.

Even though they're pains in my arse, I wouldn't give them up for anything, Harry thought as he mixed berries into the batter for the trio's dinner. His time with them had been the happiest of his life, and it would be perfect if not for the conditions outside their manor. War had a way of putting a damper on one's enthusiasm.

Voldemort had not been quite as dead as everyone had hoped. The day before the battle, he had apparently been so terrified by the loss of his Horcruces that he created another, this one a simple stone that he left at the bottom of the Black Lake. Thanks to Lucius Malfoy's assistance, he had returned to physical form in just four years and immediately proceeded to take over the Ministry of Magic again and declare war on 'the enemies of all wizards', the Muggles. His first strike was an assassination attempt against the Queen and Prime Minister.

It failed miserably.

No one in the Ministry knew anything about how Muggles waged war. In retrospect, that should have been obvious; after all, their 'expert' was unable to recognize children's bath toys or even pronounce Muggle words correctly. When grenades and bullets rained down on Diagon Alley, there had been no warning and no quarter. Two years later, the magical population of Britain had fallen from its previous 14,000 to only 4,500, and those survivors all nearly worshiped Voldemort as the one man to recognize the threat Muggles presented. Strange how quickly they forgot who it had been who first stirred up that hornet's nest.

The trio of lovers had been more than willing to remain out of this new war and integrate into whatever society was left, and they would have been safe all this time if not for that red-haired, arse-kissing, back-stabbing coward

Harry took a deep breath as he relaxed his grip on the mixing bowl. The bloody Weasleys were a swift death to the iron control he had to maintain on his anger. After the Horcrux in his scar was destroyed, it became clear that the all-consuming rage he had felt during his fifth year and what should have been his seventh was less the influence of his and Voldemort's mental connection and more his natural temper. According to the portraits of his grandparents he had found while he was restoring Potter Manor following the end of the Second Voldemort War, he may look like his father, but no one could deny he was his mother's son.

The batter was ready and the griddle finally hot, so Harry was about to pour the damn pancakes when he heard Hermione scream. He was out of the kitchen before the bowl had enough time to hit the floor.

The entrance hall looked like a bomb had gone off inside, and for a moment, he feared the worst. A second glance showed him that the room was not damaged in any way, simply covered in soot and ash. He found Hermione and Luna standing against the front door with their wands pointed at the fireplace, so he too aimed in that direction and at the oddest-looking man Harry had ever seen.

Considering that he had met Luna's father, that was saying something.

The intruder was short; four-and-a-half feet would be a generous estimate. He wore red fur pants and jacket, both of which were strangely clean despite the filth covering everything else in sight. His clothing's white trim matched his hair and beard, which fell almost to his knees. Black boots covered his feet, and Harry knew that he would not be inconspicuous even in the occasionally colorblind Wizarding World.

Only after he reached behind him and picked up a bulging sack did they realize exactly who this man was meant to resemble. With a battle cry of "Gimme!", Luna was the first to react, pouncing upon him and wrapping her limbs around his bag with as much force as her svelte body could produce. She bit his hand until he released it, and then scurried over to Harry with her prize.

Her lovers were used to her occasional childishness, and were about to apologize to the man when he let loose several belly-shaking laughs. "You never change, do you, my dear?"

"You two know each other?" Hermione asked, alternating between watching the stranger and glaring at Luna.

The blonde looked up from her spoils at them. "Of course we do. This is Santa." Her contribution over, she crawled halfway into the sack, flinging numerous presents out of it as she progressed.