Chapter Text
Damon, Enzo, and Bonnie were more than glad to get home to Castle Black at the end of the exhausting year. But the war was over now and they could look to their futures. In this world, and after they went home. Not that this wasn’t feeling as much like home these days, but they still missed their real home. If not for the fact that they could take the people here with them going back would be a much more difficult decision than it was. But they still had a long time until that day came. The next big day of importance was Damon’s birthday two weeks away. The day he would come of age in this world. And then his wedding to Enzo two days after that on the solstice. If not for the elves handling most of the heavy lifting, they would never be able to pull it off in time. Either of the events. But with the elves, they got to spend much of the next two weeks relaxing and only had to make decisions about what they wanted.
Which included the fact that Damon wanted his birthday party to be a ‘kid’ event. Meaning only students, with a few recent graduates, invited. The important officious people could wait until the wedding for the face time with them. Damon wanted a nice lunch with just the marauders where they would give the family gifts and then the big party would start at two with anyone and everyone they’d said as much as two words to at Hogwarts. He didn’t care much about the menu at either event and told the elves to just do what they wanted there. They knew what the family liked and beyond that it didn’t really matter.
The birthday lunch with the marauders went much like any other lunch with the group. Plenty of laughter and fun and random conversations popping up everywhere. The wedding was a big topic of conversation since it was in two days. After lunch came the family presents. Starting the custom trunk that Damon had mentioned from Enzo, Bonnie, and Cedric. It was a combination bottomless trunk and a library trunk. Which had been some tricky spellwork. It basically had neverending shelves that could be cycled through. Damon had the idea to tie a book like Rowena’s library had to it once he figured out how. Where he could just write down the book or subject and have it come to the top.
He would make sure to check with Cedric first to make sure it wouldn’t affect the spells on the trunk. Trunks could be tricky that way. As could wizarding tents. Space expansion charms as a whole were a rather dangerous branch of magic since if it wasn’t done right, and it collapsed while someone was inside it, they would disappear. What happened to them no one knew, but they were never seen again and there was no body and none of them had ever come back as a ghost as far as anyone knew. And they had looked into that. He loved this new trunk though, and had every intention of testing it out by the end of summer. Though the real test would be when they were packing up Rowena’s library.
From Luna and the twins he didn’t get the crafting kit like Bonnie and Enzo had. He wasn’t so good with his hands and wasn’t a fan of making things. Instead he got a deluxe cursebreaker’s kit. He still wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life, but even if he didn’t go into cursebreaking, it would always be a hobby so he appreciated it greatly. Neville got him a selection of crystals and gems which prompted Enzo to ask something he’d been wondering about for a long time. “What is the difference between crystals and gems? I never could make sense of that in your books.”
“Gems have been cut and polished and shaped for things likes jewelry and adornments. They’ll hold magic well for enchanting, trapping the magic inside, but the work done to them doesn’t allow them to channel magic through them. Crystals are the raw form and have minimal shaping and cutting and even then only through specialized spells that don’t disrupt the magical channels. They won’t hold magic because of those magical channels, but they act as a focus sending magic through them. They’re used for rituals and scrying purposes,” Damon explained.
“The books for crystal magic focus on the uses and properties of the different types of crystals and how the cut and preparation affect the uses. They don’t go much into gems since the basic properties are the same and cut and preparation don’t matter so much,” Remus told them. He’d taken crystal magic too.
That explained, it was time for the last gift of the afternoon. Remus had asked to be the one to present this one. Bonnie and Enzo were both Blacks, despite Bonnie having kept Bennett tacked onto it. But Damon didn’t have the same official family tie. Their shared love of history had forged a bond between them, despite Damon not taking his class, and he wanted to take the fatherly duty this time. Sirius was happy to let Remus have this one, though he was with him just like Remus had been for him with Bonnie and Enzo. Remus opened the watch box and pulled out the fancy watch to hand over. When Damon got a look at the face of it and sucked in a sharp breath, he explained, “Enzo gave us the Salvatore crest to work with so that we could put it on there.”
“How did you get it in such detail?” Damon asked him curiously. “You couldn’t possibly have remembered that much from my old ring?”
“Your ring and the family crypt,” Enzo pointed out. “But no. I didn’t remember that much. You took Amate into your vault with you once which meant she could get in and swipe your ring. I copied the crest from there and then had her put it back.”
“Well it’s perfect,” Damon said happily, pulling his pseudo dad into a warm hug. He wasn’t as openly emotional as Enzo and even Bonnie had been, but it still meant the world to him. Having father figures who actually cared was a nice change from most of his life. Sirius got the next hug before Enzo got a tender kiss for his part in the gift before he strapped the watch on his wrist. The traditional symbol of his coming of age.
They had just managed to get the presents done before the floo started flaring. Sirius had, thankfully, remembered to pull down the war wards and the password for the floo was put in the invitations. Which would be changed after the wedding. There was no point changing it twice two days apart. They would just put a temporary ward over it for the day in between.
The next half hour had people streaming in via floo for the big party that was being held in the ballroom. Sirius had even managed to book the weird sisters to play live, and told them to consider it a party for all three of them since Bonnie and Enzo hadn’t been able to get the full deal being at Hogwarts for their birthdays. There were two open bars. One for the underage students and the other warded so that only those of age could approach. That one had the booze and was only warded for legalities sake. Sirius hardly cared if underage students drank. Everyone here was at least fifteen, most sixteen, and it wasn’t like he hadn’t gotten soused at that age from time to time. He even supplied his kids and their closest friends with booze every now and then. But when it came to the ‘public’ if he didn’t at least make a reasonable effort to prevent the underage drinking, there could be legal ramifications. That said, there were plenty of blind eyes turned as those of age handed off drinks to the underage group.
There were three tables for gifts, one for each of the kids represented that night, but they wouldn’t be opened until the next day. It wasn’t uncommon to have birthday parties over breaks for those who were at Hogwarts for their birthdays, so no one batted an eye at Bonnie and Enzo’s inclusion to the festivities. The party was hopping until midnight which was when the band quit and started some of the guests leaving. There was still music playing though and the last of the stragglers didn’t head out until two am. Damon and Enzo disappeared up to their room a little after one though, completely drunk.
Explicit continuation of this chapter in Chapter 1 of Zippers Down https://archiveofourown.org/works/73825916/chapters/192533166