Monday, April 16th 7:00 a.m.
Location: Unplottable Potter-Peverell-Grey Apartment, London
Tagline: Institutional Apologies, Magical Smartphones, and Tea-Fueled Financial Vengeance. Also? Indian Food with an Existential Crisis.
It began, as most disasters masquerading as miracles do, with a letter.
Not just any letter. A letter with mass.
Delivered by a goblin courier whose mirrored sunglasses reflected exactly how little he cared about your life choices, the envelope pulsed like a threatened magical heart—black with silver edges, sealed in the iridescent wax of the Gringotts High Tribunal. Level 7 Clearance. Which meant "touch without gloves and you'll shit glitter for a week."
Seraphina opened it. No gloves. No hesitation. Just centuries of suppressed rage and an eyebrow raised in ancestral contempt.
The envelope hissed. Popped. And dropped four objects of considerable aesthetic violence onto the breakfast table.
Two MCAT keys. Vault-linked. Charm-layered.
Four enchanted cards. Glittering black, soul-bonded.
Four iGlass phones.
They looked like Steve Jobs had made a pact with a demonic UI designer and blessed the result with ancient runes and Seelie spite. Razor-thin. Heatless glow. Slightly judgmental. Possibly alive.
Correction: Not phones. Weapons of financial mass destruction.
Caius squinted. "That's not a phone. That's what happens when capitalism learns necromancy."
Seraphina was already caressing hers like a long-lost familiar. "I'm naming her Tea Felicia."
Blood Fang immediately installed Corpse Concierge, the five-star app for discreet corpse logistics. (Tagline: Because mistakes happen. Clean them magically.)
Raphael opened a cursed legislation tab and began highlighting legal hypocrisies with the focus of a man building a case against God.
Caius hex-locked his with the name Grudge 2.0, background set to a rotating flaming middle finger that exploded whenever someone not-Grey tried to touch it. The app chime was a sword being unsheathed. It comforted him.
The preloaded apps read like magical satire disguised as a productivity suite:
MCAT – Personal vault, budget oversight, bloodline tax evasion alerts. (Seraphina disabled "Suspicious Purchase Warnings" immediately.)
GrubGringotts – Food delivery across all eight realms. Options included Screaming Bao, Soul Curry, and Cursed Mac & Cheese.
Hexagram – Magical Instagram. Filters included: Unseelie Glow, Resting Curse Face, and I Woke Up Hexy.
Xuber – Teleportation rideshare with driver ratings for Snark Level, Cloak Style, and Post-Trauma Hospitality.
HBay – Cursed eBay. Featured listings included: "Possibly sentient teacup, mildly racist" and "Enchanted lip gloss (may compel truth)."
HexPlot – A review system so brutally honest it had accidentally assassinated three businesses.
They didn't even need phone numbers. Tap to bond. Boom. Contact sealed. Probably soul-linked. Legal was still figuring that part out.
Seraphina whispered something to Tea Felicia and it purred, color-shifting to match her aura. She smiled like vengeance.
"Finally," she muttered. "A device that lets me ruin people politely."
Then came the ping.
> TRANSFER RECEIVED
Sender: Gringotts Ministry Resolution Fund
Reason: Apology for 17 Years of Institutional Incompetence, Mishandled Legacy Inheritance, and Gross Underestimation of Demonic Threats
Amount: 312,000,000 Denarii
Status: Confirmed
Seraphina blinked. Once. Twice.
"I think the Ministry just gave me hush money."
There was also a voucher for:
One custom wardrobe
Six pairs of enchanted murder boots
A yearlong tea subscription
Complimentary therapy
She filed the therapy slip in her "USELESS" drawer alongside:
Ministry apologies
Hogwarts sanitation plans
Emotional vulnerability coupons
It was alphabetized. Of course.
Now came breakfast.
Seraphina had, in a bold moment of heritage-exploration, used GrubGringotts to order a Traditional Unseelie Morning Feast.
The results?
Indian food.
Or what looked like Indian food.
Maybe cooked by a chef who had transcended Earthly shame.
Spiced biryani topped with what looked like edible obsidian. Smoky masala stew laced with nightmare spice and actual, functional rage. Chai that shimmered with murder memories and soothed like a stab wound done correctly.
She stared.
"…Is this Unseelie food?"
Blood Fang, between gulps of buttered void-flatbread, nodded. "Yep."
"It looks like… Indian food."
"It isn't. But it mirrors it. Realm-side mirroring. It happens."
Seraphina blinked again. The chai was giving her a hug and a threat at the same time.
Blood Fang elaborated. "We call it Sad Mirroring. Some cultures on Earth and the Realms? They line up. Not because of trade. Because the Tenth Realm—the Human Realm—used to be part of the Eight. Until the fracture."
Caius muttered, "You can't drop the word 'fracture' like a condiment and then walk away."
Blood Fang ignored him. "Basically, Earth was part of us. But humans were booted. Or quarantined. Depends who you ask. Some say they were colonized, others say cursed. Either way, the split created broken echoes—cultural bleed-throughs. That's why your blood likes Indian food."
Seraphina looked down at her meal. "You're saying… my love for chai is inherited?"
"Suppressed bloodlines always speak. You just called it taste. But your body was remembering a realm that never forgot you."
"…That's horrifying."
"Welcome to heritage."
Caius was chewing something suspiciously shaped like a talon. "So I hated British tea all my life not because I was picky, but because it was culturally inaccurate?"
Blood Fang nodded. "Also because it tastes like boiled shoe regret."
Seraphina was silent for a beat. Then:
"I thought I was weird for only liking chai and curry from real Indian joints and still feeling like something was off. Even though it was authentic."
Blood Fang smirked. "It was the mirror. Your blood was screaming, 'Close, but not home.'"
A long pause.
Then Seraphina sipped her tea again. This time with reverence.
"Oh. Oh gods. This is what it was always supposed to taste like."
Raphael looked up from his phone, where he had just finalized five legislative infractions against someone named Darius Woodlock for hoarding Unicorn tears.
He sipped his chai. "Delicious. Reminds me of the execution brunches back home."
They ate. Together. Quiet, for once.
Food in the Realms wasn't just food. It was identity. It was resistance.
It was memory served hot with ancestral rage and side dishes of "you tried to erase me, and yet here I am, eating like royalty."
Their phones chimed again. Updates from Hogwarts.
Tea Felicia flashed:
> "Your student account has been activated."
"You have seven spellbook pre-orders."
"You are required to attend one magical finance orientation."
"Welcome to academia. Please don't burn it down."
Grudge 2.0 vibrated. "I will not be attending orientation."
Blood Fang's iGlass beeped: "You have five unsorted bodies to schedule."
Raphael's sighed. "Three new petitions to make centaur land claims legally binding. Again."
Seraphina grinned. Chai in one hand. iGlass in the other.
The world had given her silence for seventeen years.
Now it gave her apps. Cash. Power. Tea. And the institutional equivalent of "please don't sue us, we're sorry, have money and murder boots."
And for the first time in her life—
She could text someone back.
And ruin them with a 5-star-rated app.