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+\section{I Am Also Thy Brother}\label{i-am-also-thy-brother}
+
+\textbf{Story:} I Am Also Thy Brother\\
+\textbf{Storylink:} \url{https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3189131/1/}\\
+\textbf{Category:} Harry Potter\\
+\textbf{Genre:} Tragedy/Horror\\
+\textbf{Author:} Lightning on the Wave\\
+\textbf{Authorlink:} \url{https://www.fanfiction.net/u/895946/}\\
+\textbf{Last updated:} 01/05/2007\\
+\textbf{Words:} 543467\\
+\textbf{Rating:} M\\
+\textbf{Status:} Complete\\
+\textbf{Content:} Chapter 1 to 107 of 107 chapters\\
+\textbf{Source:} FanFiction.net\\[2\baselineskip]\textbf{Summary:} AU,
+part 7 of Sacrifices. In the wake of death and disaster, Harry struggles
+to be everything he is: leader, lover, son, and brother. Yet what will
+survive the War diminishes every day he does not find and destroy a
+Horcrux.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 1*: Last and
+Darkest}\label{chapter-1-last-and-darkest}
+
+\textbf{Title}{I Am Also Thy Brother}
+
+\textbf{Disclaimer}: All recognizable characters, settings, objects, and
+spells in this story belong to J. K. Rowling. I am making no money off
+this story, and am doing it solely for fun.
+
+\textbf{Summary:} AU, part 7 of Sacrifices. In the wake of death and
+disaster, Harry struggles to be everything he is: leader, lover, son,
+brother. Yet what will survive the war diminishes every day he does not
+find and destroy a Horcrux.
+
+\textbf{Genre:} Tragedy/Horror.
+
+\textbf{Warnings: Character deaths} (multiple, and most of them major
+characters), \textbf{gore, violence, torture, rape,} slash \emph{and}
+het \emph{and} saffic (femmeslash) in varying degrees of explicitness,
+language, references to past child abuse, \textbf{emotional trauma}.
+
+\textbf{Notes:} Welcome to the seventh, and last, story in the
+Sacrifices Arc, the sequel to {A Song In Time of Revolution}. This is by
+far the darkest, and there are long stretches absent of any sort of
+fluff, with lots of scenes that may be triggering for people. And lots
+and lots of characters don't survive this one. Feel free to stop reading
+at any time.
+
+The titles of this story and a good many of its chapters come from
+Swinburne's poem ``Hymn to Proserpine,'' one of the most glorious and
+tragic poems ever written (in my opinion, of course).
+
+And yes, I'm starting this a few days early. Couldn't be helped. If
+you're interested in babble as to why, the link to my LJ is in my
+profile.
+
+\textbf{First chapter warning: Cliffhanger}
+
+{\textbf{I Am Also Thy Brother}}
+
+\textbf{Chapter One: Last and Darkest}
+
+Harry woke in the night to the sound of sobbing.
+
+He sat up slowly, fumbling at his glasses, his sleep-fogged mind trying
+to understand how someone else had arrived in his and Draco's bedroom.
+The tug of a heavy arm around his midriff proved that Draco was still
+asleep, and shouldn't have been standing in the darkness beside his bed
+and crying. Neither did he stir when Harry moved, though, which he
+thought unusual, until he remembered that Draco had gone to sleep
+wearing the Dreamer's Crown. He would be caught up in his lucid dreams
+and the choices he made in them until morning.
+
+"\emph{Lumos}," Harry whispered, holding up his left hand. Pale yellow
+light sparked through the darkness, revealing one of the last faces he
+would ever have expected.
+
+``Professor Trelawney?'' he asked, staring.
+
+She stared back at him, with the expression of a wrecked woman. Her hair
+hung loose in frizzing curls around her face, and her eyes showed the
+effects of too many sleepless nights and too many cups of sherry.
+Remembering what had happened last night---in fact, he believed he'd be
+thinking of it on his deathbed---Harry shifted cautiously backwards. He
+had reason to fear people not sleeping well as he thought few other
+wizards in the world did.
+
+``I tried to resist it,'' Professor Trelawney whispered, and her head
+shook as though it were a balloon tied to the end of a stick. ``I tried.
+But it brought me here. It won't let me leave the room until I do what
+it wants.'' She folded her arms around her torso and bowed her head,
+while Harry looked in several different directions, trying to see the
+magic she meant. ``It wants to be said,'' Trelawney whispered.
+
+The splinters of ice that Harry had felt lodged in his heart for a day
+now seemed to extend outward.
+
+``A prophecy,'' he said, and his own voice sounded hollow. \emph{Well. I
+knew there was one coming. I just didn't know it was now.}
+
+``Yes.'' Trelawney stared at him with wrecked eyes again, glittering
+behind her glasses. ``I have to be a Seer and know what I said now, for
+only the second time in my life. Will you listen?''
+
+The pain in her face testified to how long she'd tried to resist this.
+Harry didn't want to know the prophecy, but there was too much pain in
+the world that he could not ease right now, and this suffering, he
+could. Besides, he \emph{had} to know it. It might, if he could figure
+it out, provide valuable clues to how the future war with Voldemort
+went.
+
+It was strange, when he thought back on it later, that he hadn't ever
+dreamed the prophecy wouldn't concern the war with Voldemort. Of course
+it had to. That was the central reality of his life right now.
+
+He gripped Trelawney's hand and nodded to her, once.
+
+She gave a little whimper of relief and spoke quietly, shakily. Harry
+heard the words anyway. He thought she could have whispered them in a
+catacomb and he would have heard them. The prophecy wanted to be said,
+but even more than that, Harry thought, it wanted to be heard. And the
+thunder that filled the room as the professor spoke proved that this was
+a true prophecy, the fourth she'd made in her life, the last and the
+darkest.
+
+"\emph{At the end of all things,}
+
+\emph{Prophecies run out.}
+
+\emph{It is on humans to take wings}
+
+\emph{And makes themselves human past the doubt.}
+
+"\emph{The first thing is the smallest thing,}
+
+\emph{But the center of many hearts still.}
+
+\emph{But, oh, savior, watch for the sting,}
+
+\emph{For the smallest things may kill.}
+
+"\emph{The second, no one can afford}
+
+\emph{To ignore the curse that seems a wall.}
+
+\emph{But that curse is true, and from the Lord,}
+
+\emph{And its only destruction is a fall.}
+
+"\emph{The third, amid the shining roses},
+
+\emph{Waits for hearts to inevitably harden.}
+
+\emph{But there will be others' important choices}
+
+\emph{Within night's poisoned garden.}
+
+"\emph{The fourth, in the old hatred curled}
+
+\emph{Has found its way to move and end.}
+
+\emph{Beware, for when you most wish to hide from the world,}
+
+\emph{You'll be taken by one who's a friend.}
+
+"\emph{So much pain running without a halter,}
+
+\emph{More than is traded every day in gold.}
+
+\emph{Yet remember that even prophecies falter,}
+
+\emph{And it is up to human hands to hold}
+
+"\emph{And cling together at the end of all things.}
+
+\emph{Prophecies will, inevitably, run out.}
+
+\emph{It is on humans to take up wings,}
+
+\emph{And makes themselves human past the doubt."}
+
+Trelawney's head sagged back, and her mouth fell open and slack, as
+though she had sung something wonderful. Harry swallowed, and his skin
+prickled as he felt eyes on him. He glanced to the side.
+
+A sleek black dog sat in the corner of the room, wreathed with what
+looked like a golden-green bridle. Harry had seen a similar vision once
+before: in the Department of Mysteries, when the Stone tried to turn
+time against him. The dog's eyes were rich, deep, expectant---the eyes
+of Lady Death, the eyes of the Grim that waited on Regulus Black's arm
+in place of the Dark Mark and had enabled him to resist the call from
+Voldemort.
+
+The dog tilted back her head and gave voice to a soundless howl. At the
+same instant, the thunder stopped rolling around them, and Trelawney
+vanished from the room. The dog watched Harry a moment more, then
+collapsed into shadow and faded, too. Harry was left alone in the
+company of his own rushing breath and a deeply sleeping Draco.
+
+\emph{No. Not just those. I still have my mind.}
+
+And Harry knew that he had to make a decision. Now, when he would be
+almost alone except for the sworn companion he had to take with him, was
+the best time to make it.
+
+He scribbled a note for Draco and left it on the table beside the bed.
+Then he slipped out into the Slytherin common room. He'd intended to
+cross to the seventh-year boys' room and wake Owen Rosier-Henlin up, but
+he paused when he saw Owen sitting in the middle of the common room. He
+rose to his feet when he saw Harry and gave him a soft smile.
+
+``Couldn't sleep,'' he said, by way of explanation. ``And knew you would
+want company.'' He touched his left arm, which bore the lightning bolt
+shape of his swearing to Harry. ``Upwards?''
+
+Harry nodded. ``The Astronomy Tower.''
+
+Owen looked startled for a moment. ``I thought the Headmistress had
+sealed that off.''
+
+\emph{She very well might have,} Harry thought distractedly. He knew
+McGonagall had been awake since early that morning, firmly telling the
+other professors that Hogwarts \emph{would} stay open until at least the
+end of the term, and that she trusted Severus Snape to behave himself
+until she was up and walking around the hospital wing. But Harry hadn't
+been aware of whatever other decrees she might have made. The day had
+been---long, telling the Bulstrodes, Narcissa, Draco, and the Weasleys
+of what he had seen, and doing what he could to comfort them against
+their losses to death or Voldemort, and also doing what he could to
+comfort Snape.
+
+``As close as we can get, then,'' he said, and set off towards the
+common room door. ``I need to feel fresh air on my face, and I don't
+think that I dare go outside the wards right now.''
+
+He could feel Owen's startled, thoughtful glance on his shoulder blades.
+It wasn't long before that Harry would have resented having a guardian,
+resented the idea that he shouldn't leave the wards, and sneaked off on
+his own just to prove that he could. Owen would be wondering what had
+changed him.
+
+\emph{Last night did,} Harry answered, though not aloud. \emph{Voldemort
+can reach most anywhere, and not many other people than me have a hope
+of standing up to him. I} have \emph{to think of my own safety more than
+I have. I can't go flying on my broom to think, and the Astronomy Tower
+is still well within the wards.}
+
+\emph{There are decisions I need to make.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+It had begun with a flare in the Floo connection, which he kept open
+night and day now, and someone he hadn't recognized at first shouting,
+"Sir! \emph{Sir!} Elder Juniper! Minister Scrimgeour is dead!"
+
+It had turned out to be one of the Aurors who had started moving closer
+to him after Scrimgeour's mindless debacle with Cupressus Apollonis.
+Accusing a prominent Light wizard of child abuse when nothing of the
+sort had been happening would, of course, lose the Minister followers.
+He hadn't seemed to care about that before he made his move, though.
+
+Struggling into his dressing gown, Erasmus Juniper demanded the story
+over again, and received it. The Minister's still body. The death of
+Percy Weasley, his closest companion. How the Aurors standing outside
+the door had heard nothing, but had gone in to find three bodies,
+including that of the young woman who had helped the Minister against
+the Dark Lord Falco Parkinson, sprawled on the floor. The broken wall,
+and the hovering Dark Mark.
+
+The Thorn Bitch's work. You-Know-Who's work.
+
+But Erasmus knew a different name for it, and when he'd snapped an order
+to the Auror to back out of the Floo connection so he could come
+through, it was humming in his head.
+
+The \emph{Dark's} work.
+
+Times had changed. This was the full-blown beginning of the Second War,
+not that pitiful contest between Lords two years ago. The magical world
+needed to remember the lessons of the First War, and it needed a strong
+leader who would work for the \emph{Light}, which was the Dark's
+opponent.
+
+Erasmus Juniper knew he was that leader.
+
+He moved fast, because it was necessary. He listened to the Aurors'
+stories. He viewed the bodies for himself, wincing at the destruction of
+Percy Weasley's, and ordered the victims' families to be notified. He
+stooped over Rufus, who had died looking oddly peaceful, and made a
+private vow that none of the others heard.
+
+``You left them in my care. I'm going to take care of them, I promise.
+As one Light-sworn wizard to another, I promise.'' \emph{And if I take
+better care of them than you did, well, that is only to be expected. The
+world has just become simpler than it was when you were Minister. Whilst
+you had to move cautiously, I may move openly, and I will not use or
+bargain with the Dark as you did.}
+
+He had ordered the Wizengamot to be gathered. Technically, he didn't
+have the authority to do so, but the people around him cried out for
+\emph{some} kind of authority, perfectly legitimate or not. They hurried
+to do as he had commanded, and the news of the Minister's death spread
+throughout the Ministry. Erasmus passed many people crying as he made
+his way to Courtroom Ten. And why not? Rufus had been disliked, but
+almost always for political reasons. As a \emph{person}, people had
+liked him.
+
+Erasmus shook his head. It was that likeability that had killed him.
+Despite the third body on the floor in his office and its lack of a Dark
+Mark, he was sure that the young woman who called herself the Liberator
+had provided the key to Rufus's destruction. Perhaps she had been a
+witting pawn, perhaps not, but somehow she had let Indigena Yaxley into
+the Ministry. What Britain needed now was a Minister who would never
+allow such a thing.
+
+There were other things he would never allow, either. During the First
+War, the Aurors had been briefly granted permission to use the
+Unforgivables legally, which had led to endless torture of innocents
+when the Aurors had a grudge against them or were drunk on power.
+Erasmus would not order such measures, ever. He would do what was right,
+not what was expedient.
+
+Courtroom Ten slowly filled. Most of the eyes Erasmus looked into
+shimmered with tears, or terror, or both. There were a few exceptions,
+like Griselda Marchbanks, but not many. They had all heard the news now;
+those who might not have heard it before they arrived knew it the moment
+they stepped into the courtroom. Their world was leaderless, sent
+reeling. Something had to be done.
+
+Erasmus would be the man to do it---not because he was politically
+ambitious, but because he was the best wizard for the position, and he
+knew it.
+
+``Wizards and witches of the Wizengamot,'' he said, drawing their
+attention immediately, ``what you have heard is true. Minister Rufus
+Scrimgeour has been assassinated, killed by the hand of Indigena Yaxley,
+the Thorn Bitch working in You-Know-Who's service. She entered the
+Ministry, by means as yet unknown, and slew everyone in his office, then
+broke free again.''
+
+Loud murmurs and complaints made it impossible to continue for a moment.
+Erasmus waited, one arm curled around his hip. He was wearing, under his
+formal cloak, the robe with the depiction of the firebird on it, the
+oldest symbol of organized Light. The stitched talon curved around his
+hip. He thought he could feel gathering warmth from it, as though the
+old Light approved of his measures.
+
+``I grieve for the death of Rufus, as all of you do,'' he went on,
+lifting his voice. "But there is no time to spare. We \emph{must} act,
+to prevent panic and its attendant plagues from sweeping the whole of
+Britain. This is a war against the Dark, and the Light \emph{must}
+rise."
+
+``I suppose you have a plan for that?'' Griselda asked, her voice creaky
+and soft but able to make itself heard nonetheless, her eyes on him.
+
+Erasmus nodded to her. She was one of the few opponents who might be
+able to convince the others to elect her Acting Minister, if he allowed
+her time. He did not intend to allow her that time. Griselda would be a
+disaster, through no fault of her own. She had obligations to the
+goblins that would make her hesitant to do some of what must be done for
+fear she would be held personally accountable for any injuries to them.
+And she was too close to the \emph{vates.}
+
+Erasmus's mouth tightened as he thought of the \emph{vates}. More news
+was coming in, though he had not heard all of it before he summoned the
+Wizengamot, talking about an attack at Hogwarts. Nothing was said of the
+\emph{vates} being dead, but Erasmus was sure that he and his Death
+Eaters were tied to this somehow.
+
+\emph{Well, no matter. He will yield, or he will be counted as a tool of
+Voldemort. This is no time for personal disputes. He must work with the
+Ministry. We cannot afford a civil war, or a war on two fronts.}
+
+``I do,'' said Erasmus. ``I have built an alliance with several
+prominent Light wizards, and where they go, their families and allies
+will follow. Their members include Aurora Whitestag---whom I think most
+of you might have some reason to remember---Cupressus Apollonis, Terin
+Griffinsnest, and others.'' He took the prepared scroll out of his robe
+pocket. ``Here is the list of names. I will pass it around the courtroom
+so that others can see it.''
+
+``And what is your proposal, Juniper?'' Griselda asked, with that
+relentless, tiresome patience.
+
+``That the Wizengamot appoint me Acting Minister, for now,'' said
+Erasmus calmly. "That the alliance of Light wizards be allowed some
+power in the Ministry, enough to organize the Aurors and other
+Departments against this threat. That we examine the recent decrees and
+promises that Rufus made and see how many of them are necessary now, and
+how much it will cost us to keep them if they are determined to be so.
+That the Ministry shift to a war footing \emph{immediately}. That some
+of those we know to be high risks be brought in for questioning." He
+stood, eyes locked on Griselda's, waiting for her to challenge some part
+of a proposal built all on calm reasoning.
+
+Griselda opened her mouth, but another Wizengamot member, Linda Hooplan,
+overwhelmed her. ``I agree,'' she said, fear falling from her mouth, her
+eyes. ``We must do something to counteract the Dark, and I agree.''
+
+Others began to voice their agreement. Erasmus smiled slightly. He had
+known it would be simple, though he had anticipated more of a battle. In
+times of fear, groups of people would let their instincts guide them,
+and follow the one who seemed most prepared. Since he \emph{was} the one
+who was most prepared, he had not had to work very hard for the
+appearance of it, either. There would be a few who opposed him; besides
+Griselda, Elizabeth Dawnborn also looked doubtful. But the rest of the
+Wizengamot was shouting for him, clamoring for him, more
+enthusiastically than they had ever done in the last days for poor
+Rufus.
+
+Erasmus accepted it. He had not wanted the position thrust upon him like
+this; he would have preferred to come to power as Minister through a
+legitimate election, and to have some idea of how to deal with the
+\emph{vates} beforehand. But no one had expected Rufus to be
+assassinated, and no one had expected the war to come upon them so
+suddenly. Erasmus had laid contingency plans for such a measure, and
+they were in effect now. As the only one with a set of plans, he rose
+easily to power.
+
+There were no Dark wizards on the Wizengamot, or at least none stupid
+enough to say so in public. There were only Light and undeclared
+wizards, and they knew where the power flowed now.
+
+So that was how he came, a day later, to be sitting behind the
+Minister's desk, and to be writing out his second order. The first,
+which was not, in some ways, as urgent, and would go out in tomorrow's
+\emph{Daily Prophet}, was an edict outlawing use of the \emph{absorbere}
+gift. It was the most powerful and dangerous Dark magic in Britain at
+the moment, and had no legitimate effects to outweigh its bad ones.
+Also, though, it was a test for Harry Potter. If he obeyed the edict, he
+would probably fall in line with the Ministry; if not, then Erasmus
+would know him for an enemy.
+
+The second was more a precaution than anything else, but Erasmus knew
+that these people had valuable information, and also that the
+\emph{vates} would try to keep them away from the Ministry if he could.
+Seizing them this way couldn't be helped.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Somehow, even after his mother's description, Draco hadn't imagined the
+Dreamer's Crown would bring him to a place that looked like this.
+
+He stood on a high hill, covered with misty grass, stalks of light that
+swayed slowly back and forth. The fog that crept in and out between the
+blades was the color of milk lit from within, and twined cold fingers
+around his legs. To the left one path stretched away, and to the right
+another one. In front of him was what Draco supposed counted as the
+situation he put on the Crown to lucidly dream about.
+
+He walked slowly towards it. It showed him and Harry, facing each other,
+still replicas that made his skin prickle slightly with how identical
+they were to the real thing. His own expression was angry. Harry's was
+simply closed.
+
+From the tales, he knew what he had to do. It just wasn't that easy to
+do, in the end. But, needs must.
+
+He took a deep breath and stepped into the replica of himself.
+
+Sound and motion absorbed him at once, and he found himself standing in
+a corridor of Hogwarts, not the misty meadows the Crown had brought him
+to. Part of his mind remained hovering behind the rest, though, able to
+see and judge. So when the words emerged from his mouth, he didn't have
+to own up to them as being \emph{completely} his. Which was rather a
+comfort, given what those words were.
+
+``I don't care!'' he was shouting. ``You shouldn't have done it! You
+didn't know what was out there!''
+
+Harry simply watched him, face colder than Draco had ever seen it
+before. Harry usually wore a mulish expression when he'd been caught
+doing something wrong and didn't want to admit to it, or an emotionless
+one when he'd fastened on a course of action \emph{he} thought was
+right. This look, though, was one of exquisite, cold anger. This was a
+Harry who was keeping his word about not suppressing his emotions. He
+did hold his tongue, though, apparently waiting for the end of Draco's
+tirade.
+
+"And don't tell me that you \emph{knew} what was out there, thanks to
+your visions," Draco was raging on. ``You know how dangerous those
+sendings from Voldemort are. Any one of them could be false. Why in the
+name of Merlin didn't you come and get me, Harry?''
+
+Harry's head lifted. The motion exposed his throat, but Draco didn't
+think he had ever seen his partner look less vulnerable than he did
+right now. Steady rage burned in his green eyes.
+
+``I did fetch other people,'' Harry said quietly, in a voice that made
+the stones of the corridor frost over. ``Just not you.''
+
+The scene froze. Draco could feel the words leaping to his tongue in
+response, accusing Harry of not valuing him enough. This was the point
+where the argument turned. Either he spoke those words, or he choked
+them back and admitted that, yes, he'd been rather impossible to fetch
+at the moment Harry needed him. The right-hand road led to what would
+happen if he said those words, the left-hand one to what would happen if
+he admitted he was wrong.
+
+Draco watched as the two figures of himself and Harry dissolved and spun
+away into the reaching mist. Down the right-hand road the vision sped,
+and he saw Harry drawing away from him, keeping more secrets, leaving
+Draco behind more and more often, because all he did when fetched was
+complain about the problems of his own life. The ending of that road was
+uncertain, since it reached into war, but Draco was sure it ended either
+with Harry dying in battle, alone, or surviving but leaving him
+completely, hardening himself against needing Draco when Draco served
+mostly as a source of stress.
+
+Down the left-hand road the vision spread, and he saw things changing
+between them during the war, and not always for the better. But he could
+be a support at Harry's back when Harry needed one, and a Dark wizard
+who could make decisions and urge tactics that a Light wizard wouldn't,
+and the counterbalance---
+
+Draco jerked his head and made a disgusted noise in his throat. Must he
+serve as a counterbalance to Harry's \emph{brother?}
+
+But the left-hand road seemed to be saying he would whether he wanted it
+or not. Draco put his hands over his face, and let out a loud and lofty
+sigh.
+
+When he peeked between his fingers, the vision was still there.
+
+\emph{All right, then. I'm wise enough to know which I prefer. I thought
+I was done becoming an adult, but obviously not.}
+
+A voice answered him, low and amused. Draco wondered if it was his own
+voice, from the future, or the voice of the crown itself, or perhaps
+even the voice of a more adult Harry. \emph{It does not end until you
+are dead.}
+
+And the vision dissolved in turn, and Draco, his decision made, woke up.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+It was gone.
+
+He had been right. Pulling free of Voldemort's hold the way he had had
+substantially damaged his mind.
+
+Snape leaned his head against his hands and fought down the urge to
+scream, to rage, to lash out. It was not easy. His concentration was
+truly in tatters. The art of focusing intently on one thing that he'd
+developed for so long---to brew potions, to come up with revenge against
+his enemies, to catch a student making subtle mistakes in class---was
+slipping from him.
+
+He was an Occlumens. He knew his own mind. He had patrolled it the
+moment the initial excitement had died, with Harry back on the Tower,
+having told them the news of the visions he had witnessed, and all of
+them making their way back down to the hospital wing and Minerva.
+
+Large parts of his memories, especially his younger ones, were missing.
+Wounds in his Occlumency pools meant he would have a harder time
+suppressing his emotions than usual, for now and a long time to come.
+But the biggest casualty was his concentration. That was not a surprise.
+Voldemort had used Snape's intensity to his advantage when he had
+planted those dreams. And Snape had shredded that part of his mind in
+getting away.
+
+Though he also felt lighter for the first time in years, no longer
+carrying some of his hatreds, he was not entirely sure if this was worth
+the trade. Harry needed him as a father, as a skilled Potions brewer, as
+a man who would not go mad if something emotionally draining happened,
+but could handle it calmly and efficiently. Was Snape going to be able
+to do that, with his mind damaged the way it was?
+
+He stood over his cauldron of purple poison, which he would turn against
+Voldemort and his Death Eaters now, and let himself taste weariness. A
+horrid childhood, loathsome school years, an equally horrible---at least
+now---service of three years to Voldemort, eleven years of unshaken
+allegiance to Albus Dumbledore, a change to Harry's side, and now,
+another change. He was continually being required to rise from his bed
+and rebuild his life, or endure some new and innovative torture over
+part of it. Could he do it again?
+
+\emph{Yes. Again and again.}
+
+He had made a choice that was really a myriad of choices on the night
+Harry had rebuilt his mind and magic after the Chamber of Secrets. He
+had said he would choose from day to day, recast his allegiance again
+and again. He had made that choice, of course, much less weary of body
+and mind, certain he could do things that now seemed impossible or
+beyond him.
+
+\emph{Yes. You can do this. You must. Again and again.}
+
+He forced himself to his feet and towards the Potions books on the far
+shelf of his office. He had thought he brewed a potion to cure
+Occlumency wounds, when in fact he had brewed a version of liquid
+Imperius under Voldemort's direction. The Imperius potion could still be
+useful, but now he \emph{needed} to trace the steps of research he had
+never actually performed, and create the potion that would heal his own
+wounds.
+
+He would become what he had to, to survive and to aid his son.
+
+\emph{I belong to myself. And I choose this. Again and again.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Narcissa defied embraces.
+
+Her son had hugged her that day. Harry had hugged her, after he had
+explained, as gently as he could, that Lucius was gone back to the Dark
+Lord. Even Regulus had hugged her, as awkwardly as possible, before
+stepping back and giving her a thoughtful look.
+
+``You didn't like that, did you?'' he asked.
+
+``No.'' Narcissa didn't bother glancing away from the fire. She sat near
+one of the hearths in Silver-Mirror, one that didn't have a Floo
+connection, so that no one could possibly come through and disturb her
+on accident. ``Now leave me.''
+
+And Regulus had nodded and climbed to his own bed, leaving Narcissa, the
+night after the night it happened, to stare at the flames. Anyone who
+was in the same room with her, and not privy to her thoughts, would
+probably have imagined she was brooding.
+
+She was not brooding. She would have a right to, given the family she
+was born into and the family she'd married into, but she was not.
+
+She was murderously \emph{angry.}
+
+When Harry had explained the basis of the hatred Voldemort had used to
+snare his Death Eaters back again, Narcissa had nodded, and said she
+understood. But she had looked at Severus, still standing at Harry's
+side, and Peter Pettigrew, pale but there. Regulus might be said to have
+an unfair advantage, with the mark of Lady Death on his arm in place of
+the Dark Mark. But the others had resisted and fought back of their own
+free wills, and managed to remain.
+
+Lucius's love for her was not strong enough for that, and the knowledge
+curdled like sour milk in Narcissa's stomach.
+
+Narcissa did not have to brood. She felt anger striking through her,
+keen and clear and white as the trunk of a young birch. She was not
+required to think of other things in order to keep from thinking of
+Lucius and going mad. She would think of him without going mad. She
+would think of him with disgust shining in her like a star.
+
+She would face him again, of that she had no doubt. Lord Voldemort
+wanted to kill those Harry loved, and torment those he had taken. Of
+course she and Lucius would have to duel with such a dark mind behind
+the scenes.
+
+She would do it gladly, and bring Lucius back or kill him.
+
+She lifted her head, knowing her teeth flashed like a wolf's in the
+firelight, and glad of it.
+
+\emph{I do not want a husband whose love is not as strong as mine. I
+will not be the dependent one.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Somehow---she was not sure how, because, really, since she was the baby
+of the family, she would have expected it the opposite way around---she
+was the one moving quietly, competently, in the background, doing what
+needed to be done, while everyone else raged and cried and vowed
+vengeance.
+
+And she was the one who noticed, and worried about, Ron.
+
+Ginny wiped her hands on a towel and put the last plate down. She was
+good at the cleaning charms for the dishes, but not the drying charm.
+She turned, slowly, to stare at Ron, the only one remaining at the table
+in the Burrow's kitchen. Everyone else had retreated to the drawing
+room, where they could talk to each other about Percy, and continue
+crying and raging and vowing vengeance, without being separated by the
+width of the table.
+
+Her mother had not stopped crying since Ginny and Ron, returning home by
+Floo from Hogwarts, told her what Harry had told them. Her father had
+been pale and mumbling since official confirmation and condolences had
+come from the Ministry, via an owl with a black envelope. Bill and
+Charlie had arrived in the middle of the afternoon, and appeared
+inclined to comfort their parents half the time and half the time
+reminisce about Percy and his life. The twins were talking intently to
+each other about what they'd do to the person who'd killed him.
+
+Ron was silent.
+
+\emph{Am I really the only one who noticed?} Ginny thought, studying
+Ron, whose face was so pale it made his freckles stand out like spots of
+blood on snow. He'd clutched his wand the entire time, too, and refused
+to meet anyone else's eyes. Every hour that passed just saw him become
+stiffer and stiffer, his jaw clamped so tightly shut it had to hurt, his
+nostrils flaring like a wild horse's.
+
+Ginny knew he couldn't be blaming himself for Percy's death. He wasn't
+that stupid, to think he could have prevented it. And he didn't blame
+Harry, either, or else he would have punched Harry in the jaw the moment
+he told them about Percy. Ron wasn't one to suppress his feelings.
+
+But she didn't know what else this was.
+
+``Ron,'' she said quietly, and sat down next to him.
+
+He didn't respond. It was Ginny's belief that he honestly didn't hear
+her. She reached out and threaded her fingers with his, forcing him to
+let go of his wand. When it rolled down the table, he startled and
+scrambled after it, knocking the chair down. He'd got quite big the
+previous summer, and even though he'd hit his seventeenth birthday and
+received his full complement of magic, Ginny didn't think he'd stopped
+growing yet.
+
+When he had his wand in his grip, he went right back to being a statue.
+Ginny, though, was tired of that. She didn't even care about the magic
+that hung around him and muttered like a thunderstorm. She had lost one
+member of her family tonight. She wasn't going to lose another because
+Ron went dashing away in some mad quest for revenge, or---or did
+something else. Ginny couldn't imagine what else he might do, but she
+knew it would be bad.
+
+``Ron,'' she said.
+
+He at least looked at her this time, but only to shake his head and
+whisper, ``Go away, Ginny.''
+
+``No.'' At least he blinked at her, then, as if he couldn't imagine that
+she wouldn't obey him. Ginny stared straight back. Ron had obviously
+forgotten whom he was talking to. They'd been quite close as children,
+as the two siblings closest in age, and because the twins had each other
+and Percy fussed so. But they'd also fought most often. Ron had a
+terrible temper, one that Bill and Charlie rarely roused, Percy was
+afraid of, and the twins laughed off. But Ginny wasn't afraid of Ron.
+She never had been.
+
+``Ginny,'' he said, and his voice was so polite and calm that she might
+have been fooled if she hadn't seen the expression on his face
+beforehand. "\emph{Bugger. Off.}"
+
+``No.''
+
+Now he was shaking, his magic swirling around him, dancing up and down
+restlessly. Ginny let out a careful breath. Fred and George were the
+strongest wizards in the Weasley family, and geniuses with modifying and
+creating spells. But Ron had a \emph{reserve} of power that none of the
+rest of them did, connected to his temper, and since the first of March,
+he'd been managing curses and hexes and jinxes that had been beyond him
+a week before that. Fred and George could badly hurt an enemy. Ron would
+go on hitting back long after he should have fallen.
+
+``Ron, listen. To. Me,'' she said. ``I know that you're upset about
+Percy---''
+
+Ron gave a jagged laugh and ripped his hands away. At least, he tried.
+Ginny braced herself on the chair, and retained a grip on one wrist. She
+wasn't as strong as he was, but she was just as stubborn.
+
+``You don't know the half of it,'' he whispered. "You \emph{don't}, so
+don't dare pretend you do! Selfish git, why did he have to go and
+\emph{die} like that?"
+
+And suddenly, Ginny did know what this was about. The last time Ron had
+seen Percy, over Easter holidays, they had argued terribly, mostly
+because Ron's ultimate loyalty was to his best friend Connor---and,
+through him, to Harry---while Percy had made a point of standing with
+Minister Scrimgeour even when he'd moved openly against Harry. Percy had
+ended up leaving the Burrow early. Ron hadn't apologized to him.
+
+And now Percy was dead, and there would be no chance of an apology, and
+it was obvious that Ron blamed himself and his temper.
+
+``Merlin, Ron,'' said Ginny, and leaned forward and hugged her brother
+despite his struggles. ``He didn't die blaming you. You have to believe
+that. He knew it was just politics. He argued with other people, and he
+didn't so much make up with them as mumble something at them later and
+then talk like everything was normal again. You know that. Percy's
+temper embarrassed him. He was your brother, and you were his, and he
+loved you, and he died defending the wizard he was loyal to. I promise,
+it's all right. You didn't make his last moments any more miserable.''
+
+Ron's magic was a stone weight on her shoulders. Ginny wondered, for a
+long moment, if what she said would be enough.
+
+Then Ron uttered one great, crackling sob, and with that the dam broke.
+
+Ginny held him as he cried, and after a time bowed her head and joined
+in. She felt his arms come around her in turn, and hold her close. It
+had been the longest day of her life. She had turned out, unexpectedly,
+to be the strong one who thought of food and other basic necessities
+when no one else did.
+
+But even the strong ones needed to collapse sometimes. And even Ginny
+had done her share of arguing with Percy, and was perfectly capable of
+feeling that she hadn't appreciated him enough when he was alive, and
+now he was \emph{gone} and she would never have the chance to tell him.
+
+So she cried, and Ron stroked her hair and whispered to her, and so they
+mourned their brother together.
+
+SSSSSSSSSS
+
+Millicent did not cry. It was not allowed.
+
+She went home to her mother at once when the Headmistress gave her
+permission, and she told her about what Harry had seen in the vision,
+and Elfrida nodded and put her arms around Marian and rocked her, and
+there were a few tears, with Marian crying because her mother was
+crying.
+
+There were no tears for Millicent. She was her father's magical heir,
+and she might soon have to fight him. Besides, she knew what all the
+oldest codes of behavior for Dark families said, and the Bulstrodes
+followed the oldest ones. When a family member turned traitor to a cause
+the family had sworn to---as Adalrico had; the formal family oath would
+not let him fight Harry or Connor, but it would let him fight Harry's
+other allies---the head of the family was supposed to execute that
+person.
+
+Millicent was the head of the Bulstrode family in the wake of her
+father's defection.
+
+She stood with her hand on her mother's shoulder, and stared into the
+fire, and gave commands in a low voice. The house elves took care of
+things, including setting up wards of their own strong magic around a
+sheltered room that would be Marian's and Elfrida's last retreat in
+times of trouble.
+
+Millicent intended to find a stronger, more secure sanctuary. She had no
+doubt that Voldemort would send her father against his family, too, and
+Adalrico knew all the secrets of the Blackstone estate, including some
+that wouldn't be revealed to Millicent until his death.
+
+She did not cry. She told her mother and her little sister and the house
+elves what to do, and then went to the Floo to contact her family's
+solicitor. If her death occurred, in battle or otherwise, it was
+necessary to designate Marian her heir, so the family properties could
+pass on smoothly. The family was always more important than the
+individual.
+
+\emph{Duramus}, her family's motto was. \emph{We endure.}
+
+\emph{We endure anything,} Millicent thought, as she waited for the
+solicitor to speak to her. \emph{Anything. Even this.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+The Headmistress had indeed sealed off the Astronomy Tower, with a
+series of wards. They weren't linked to the school, however---Harry
+thought McGonagall was probably too weak from Snape's attack, still, to
+call upon the might of Hogwarts for a temporary measure---but were
+spellwork, which all the professors had worked together to build. Harry
+simply took them down, waited until Owen was past them, and then put
+them back.
+
+Together, they climbed the stairs Harry had pounded up in frantic
+concern last night, and descended again early this morning. Or was it
+this morning? Harry cast a \emph{Tempus} charm, and shook his head. Not
+technically. It was one-o'clock in the morning on the eighth of June.
+
+He wondered if he needed to be so precise, but he thought it would help
+him achieve the mindset he needed. He began to pace, back and forth, on
+top of the Tower, while Owen guarded the stairs and watched him, the
+sky, the staircase, and the other Towers more or less simultaneously.
+
+\emph{What do I need to do in this war?}
+
+The answers tried to come clustering in as one great wave and overwhelm
+him, but Harry refused to allow them. He streamlined his mind into cool
+quietude, instead, glancing at the stars when he needed to see what that
+looked like. He had promised Henrietta he would not suppress his
+emotions again, but he had said nothing about suppressing thoughts. He
+knocked out the cold chains of logic in his mind, until he could hold
+them up and twist them around and admire what he saw.
+
+\emph{Destroy the Horcruxes. Those are the key to destroying Voldemort.
+I don't yet know a way around the Unassailable Curses, which makes it
+hard to set up a timetable for that. Nevertheless, I need to get rid of
+them to have any chance at getting rid of the Dark Lord.}
+
+\emph{Make sure he doesn't take me through the hatred, the way he almost
+did last night---the night before last. Occlumency would be the simplest
+way, but I made that vow to Henrietta, and I won't go back on it.
+Besides, suppressing my emotions only leads to all sorts of other
+problems, and we cannot afford that now, for me to collapse and build
+myself back up. So---}
+
+\emph{What is it to be, then?}
+
+Harry paced back and forth in the light of the stars to which he'd sent
+the phoenix song as a cry of defiance. The moon was visible this time, a
+faint, slowly waxing sliver.
+
+\emph{It will have to be pushing straight through,} Harry thought at
+last, reluctantly letting the realizations trickle through his head.
+\emph{Not suppressing my emotions. Not hiding from whatever visions he
+sends me of attacks and cruelty. Not giving in to the hatred.} Living
+\emph{with it, no matter what happens.}
+
+\emph{I know what kind of war it will be. Voldemort has his Death
+Eaters, and none of them are vulnerable, not in the way that the people
+I want to protect are. I have innocents, Muggles as well as wizards, and
+I'll be fighting a defensive war almost exclusively. With long lines.}
+Harry grimaced. \emph{Voldemort could strike anywhere in Britain or
+Ireland, and he won't always send me a vision when he does. Even if he
+does send visions, to try to wear down my resistance and make me hate
+him, some of them will be false, or will be after the fact, so I can't
+do anything to prevent the attacks.}
+
+\emph{My best hope is to give people in local areas the ability to
+defend themselves. Call on some of my allies to help in particular
+places---the werewolves in London to help with protecting London Muggles
+and wizards, for example. Give what training I can to those who will
+accept it, so that their curses and wards will grow stronger. Establish
+safehouses where the most vulnerable people can hide. Let at least some
+Muggles---those who already have contact with the wizarding world, like
+parents of Muggleborn students---know what's happening, so they can make
+their way to the safehouses, take precautions, or do whatever they think
+is appropriate.}
+
+He would have to be careful, he knew. If he was correct, Juniper had
+already taken the Ministry. He was the strongest politician in the
+Wizengamot after Scrimgeour, either because the people following him
+sincerely believed in him, or because they wanted to use him and saw him
+as accommodating their purposes, or because they wanted what he wanted.
+Harry was almost sure he and the man would clash over the defensive
+measures Harry wanted to employ. And talking to Muggles about the
+wizarding world at all risked treading on the International Statute of
+Secrecy meant to separate the wizarding world and the non-magical one.
+
+Harry was a bit surprised to find a well of indifference where he once
+would have been fretting about that.
+
+\emph{This is war, and lives are more important than laws. I'll do what
+I have to do. There are certain standards I'll never break---never using
+compulsion, for example. But I---I'm going to have to give up some
+pedestals I've placed myself on.}
+
+Was it compulsion to use his name and reputation as the Boy-Who-Lived, a
+power he had still barely tapped? No. Nor was it compulsion to keep
+secrets instead of being totally honest, or tell judicious lies to lure
+in allies who were purely political, or refuse to help those who wanted
+some insanely dangerous concession from him while they offered something
+temporary or slender in return. And if he believed that people like
+Juniper and Aurora Whitestag were hurting the wizarding world more than
+they were helping it, Harry would not hesitate to scorn them and strike
+out on his own.
+
+\emph{What's changed me?}
+
+He knew the answer to that, of course.
+
+\emph{The revelation of what Voldemort can do. I forgot you, you
+bastard. I underestimated you. I won't do it again. I will become what I
+have to, do what I must, to survive this war and win it for others and
+myself, without breaking those principles dearest to me.}
+
+He knew it would not be any easier than fighting through the hatred
+Voldemort intended to press into his mind. For one thing, these were
+surely the same kinds of promises Dumbledore had made himself during the
+First War, and that had eaten his morals until he agreed to anything,
+thought of anything, scrabbled after anything, to try and preserve a
+scrap of what he valued.
+
+\emph{I must not become Voldemort. I must not become Dumbledore. I must
+not become Juniper. I must steer a path through all of them, and one
+mistake has the potential to lose me everything.}
+
+Harry snarled softly, and a wave of blue phoenix fire sprang up around
+his shoulders and raced down his arms, intensely bright in the darkness.
+
+\emph{If that's what I have to do, that's what I have to do. And I have
+to take precautions with my own life, and not do stupid things, and
+trust others to make their own decisions about fighting, and rely on
+other people as well as having them rely on me.}
+
+\emph{I've never been good at any of those.}
+
+It didn't matter. The war demanded that he be good at them, and they
+were changes Harry was willing to make to accommodate the war. Those
+things he could not give up, he would protect and defend with all his
+might, but he would---not be as pleasant or as honest or as trusting as
+he had been. Those were virtues more appropriate to a time of peace than
+of war.
+
+\emph{So I'll bring peace back again. And think of what lies beyond the
+end, not just in this war. Like Connor said, show Voldemort he's only a
+tiny cloud in the sky of my life. I won't use compulsion because that
+means the end of any chance of my becoming a} vates. \emph{I won't
+sacrifice lives unless forced to make that choice or unless someone else
+willingly chooses to become a sacrifice, because I want as many people
+as possible to live and enjoy life beyond the end of the war. I won't
+destroy institutions just to destroy them, because we'll need them when
+he's dead.}
+
+Harry smiled faintly. He thought he had made the choices he could make,
+with the road he had in sight. If he had to make others as he went
+along, he would do so.
+
+He spun and went back towards the stairs with Owen on his heels, opening
+and shutting the wards behind them. The moment they were back in the
+main school, Harry could hear a commotion, people bolting down the
+halls, someone shouting. He frowned and started towards the hospital
+wing.
+
+Madam Pomfrey was there, of course, hovering with her wand out over
+McGonagall. The Headmistress was arguing with her about getting out of
+bed, but she turned around and changed her tone the moment she saw
+Harry.
+
+``Harry,'' she said precisely. ``I'm sorry. I couldn't stop them. I
+would have raised the school's wards against them, but---''
+
+"You could have done that if you wanted a \emph{heart attack!}" yelled
+Madam Pomfrey, looking more flustered than Harry had ever seen her.
+Harry supposed she might have finally found a patient who flustered her
+more than he did.
+
+``Please explain what happened, Headmistress,'' Harry said calmly, his
+eyes fastened on hers.
+
+``Ministry Aurors came through the Floo,'' McGonagall said, after
+studying him for a long moment. She was pale, but her voice was clear.
+``They took Poppy as a hostage, and by implication, me, I suppose. They
+had warrants for the arrest of Severus Snape, Peter Pettigrew, and
+Regulus Black. I'm sorry, Harry. They've taken them to Tullianum as
+suspected spies for Voldemort.''
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 2*: Their Wills Be As
+Steel}\label{chapter-2-their-wills-be-as-steel}
+
+Thanks for the reviews yesterday! Quite a welcome back.
+
+\textbf{Chapter Two: Their Wills Be As Steel}
+
+``I see, Headmistress,'' Harry said, calm as the wind before a storm.
+``Thank you for telling me.''
+
+Minerva put one elbow beneath her to urge her body up, hating how weak
+she was, even now. A night to recover should have done more than this.
+``Harry,'' she said softly, knowing her efforts were probably useless,
+but feeling she should say this anyway. ``Do nothing unwise.''
+
+"Oh, Headmistress, I wouldn't \emph{dream} of it." Harry's eyes, meeting
+hers, were guileless as a first-year's. That would have stood no chance
+of fooling her even if he'd made an effort to modify his tone of voice
+to less than sickly sweet. ``I think enough unwise things have been done
+in the last hour. Don't you agree?''
+
+She drew breath to respond, and then fell silent as she felt the magic
+in the room gather and blow through a change. Harry's brow flickered
+with true lightning to match the lightning bolt scar. Through the
+windows of the hospital wing came the sudden scream of thunder, where
+before the night had been calm. Poppy let out a little exclamation and
+moved over to shut the windows with swift taps of her wand. Minerva was
+sure that that motion carrying her further from Harry was only
+coincidence in the way she was sure the Aurors had only chosen Severus,
+Peter, and Regulus to question by coincidence.
+
+``Harry,'' Minerva murmured. Her heart labored unnecessarily hard. This
+was Harry, a student---a child---she had come to know well over the
+years. ``I meant what I said.''
+
+His eyes blinked, then focused on her. ``So did I,'' he said, and it was
+unnerving how his face remained so calm while outside the wind picked up
+and wailed. Perhaps its voice was speaking for him, though, Minerva
+thought, expressing all the anger that could not come from his mouth. "I
+will not go alone to the Ministry. I will not assassinate Minister
+Juniper and cause us all trouble and havoc again. But I \emph{will} get
+my father back, and Peter and Regulus, too. They've been through enough.
+Even if the Ministry treats them with utmost politeness, they don't
+deserve this, too."
+
+Minerva stared. She didn't think she had ever heard Harry refer to
+Severus as his father like that, without hesitation or flinching or
+consciousness of who might overhear the name. He turned and strode
+towards the doors of the hospital wing without giving her the chance to
+comment, either. The Rosier-Henlin boy, who had been hovering in the
+corridor, caught up with him and said something of which Minerva could
+only make out the word ``Draco.'' Harry shook his head and gave a
+clipped response, and the other boy nodded and kept at his heels. He was
+Harry's sworn companion, Minerva remembered. He had heard the
+declaration that Harry would not go to the Ministry alone. He would
+insure Harry kept that promise, if his own word did not.
+
+``I could Stun him and keep him here, quietly,'' Poppy said, coming up
+beside her.
+
+Minerva snorted and glanced at the matron from a corner of her eye. ``Do
+you really think you could, Poppy? Answer me truthfully now.''
+
+``No.'' Poppy sighed and patted at her graying hair with her wand. ``No,
+damn it, I can't.'' Minerva expected it when she turned fiercely on her.
+"And \emph{you}! You are to lie still and quiet! What did you mean,
+sitting up like that and reaching for the wards when the Aurors came
+through the Floo?"
+
+Minerva ground her teeth. Poppy tended to treat every patient in the
+hospital wing like a recalcitrant first-year Gryffindor, unless they did
+exactly as she said. That only two of those descriptions applied to
+Minerva made her all the more resentful. ``I meant to keep them from
+harming anyone under my care, Poppy---''
+
+"You are \emph{meant} to lie still and quiet," Poppy repeated, and
+abruptly charmed her bed to lie flat. Before Minerva could sit up again
+in startled outrage, Poppy cast a binding spell, and then an alarm that
+would tell her if Minerva moved. Since her wand was on the bedside
+table, Minerva could only ineffectually glare.
+
+``We are not going to lose our Headmistress,'' Poppy answered her gaze,
+as if that made up for the indignity, and walked towards the back of the
+hospital wing, probably to fetch another foul-tasting potion.
+
+Minerva closed her eyes. She hated her weak heart. A witch should still
+be strong and active in her seventies, not tied to a bed, even if the
+ropes were invisible.
+
+Her only chance was to recover as quickly as she could. The world
+outside the hospital wing needed her too badly to let her lounge around
+in bed.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry's mind raced smoothly through the steps he would have to take as
+he went back to the dungeons with Owen. He was glad that this crisis had
+come after he'd made his decision and not before. If it had come before,
+then he might well have wavered and tried to let Juniper have his free
+will, twisted and hurtful of others as that free will was. Or he would
+have remembered that he didn't want a war on two fronts and been
+prepared to let the Ministry get away with almost anything.
+
+But now---
+
+He still didn't want a war on two fronts, and neither did the Ministry.
+Therefore, they shouldn't have taken Snape, Peter, and Regulus away. And
+someone else's free will ended when he tried to kill or imprison another
+person who had committed no crime. Harry had defended the Hogwarts
+students against Voldemort and his Death Eaters, not letting them have
+their free will simply to kill them.
+
+This was another case where he would not let anything happen to people
+he loved and had sworn to protect.
+
+He lengthened his stride as they passed the stairs that led to the
+Hufflepuff rooms. ``Owen,'' he said over his shoulder. His sworn
+companion inclined his head to show he was listening. ``Fetch Syrinx, if
+you would.''
+
+``No need,'' said a soft voice from near the top of the stairs, and
+Syrinx Gloryflower appeared. Her eyes were wide and clear and an
+unnaturally bright green; if she ever looked tired, she must do it in
+the moments when she was away from him. ``I am here.'' She touched her
+left arm when Harry raised his eyebrow. ``The scar felt when you had
+need of me, sir, and pulled me.''
+
+It still made Harry uneasy to hear a girl his own age call him ``sir,''
+but titles had fallen to the bottom of his list of things worth arguing
+about.
+
+``Who else would you recommend?'' he asked Owen bluntly.
+
+``Where are we going?'' Syrinx asked, and Harry told her the situation
+in a few terse sentences while Owen bowed his head in thought. She
+nodded, her eyes growing wider and clearer and more serene.
+
+``It depends on your goal, my l---Harry,'' said Owen, looking up again.
+``Do you want simply to free your father and his friends, or do it in a
+way that avoids open conflict with the Ministry?''
+
+``Freeing them is the first priority,'' said Harry. ``Everything else is
+secondary. Including avoiding or inciting war with the Ministry.'' He
+saw Syrinx's eyes fire, but of course they would. She was in training to
+be a war witch, and she preferred conflict to words. ``I will try words
+first. There is no need, as the Headmistress says, to be unwise.'' He
+heard the storm scream outside, and he barely suppressed the impulse to
+lift his head and scream back to it. ``But I will need those who won't
+hesitate to fight beside me against the Ministry if something goes
+wrong.''
+
+Owen nodded. ``Then I would recommend Alastor Moody, the werewolf
+Camellia, and Narcissa Malfoy.''
+
+``I won't disturb Narcissa,'' said Harry, crushing down his immediate
+impulse to complain about the length of time it would take his allies to
+get here, and what might happen to Peter, Regulus, and Snape in the
+meantime. \emph{Yes, it will take a few minutes to Apparate here. But I
+will not go unguarded. I promised I wouldn't.} ``She's grieving. And are
+you sure about Moody? He worked for the Ministry for decades.''
+
+``I can judge loyalty,'' said Owen quietly. ``He's loyal to you, Harry.
+You give him something to fight for. And the Ministry was never a good
+fit for him, except maybe during the First War. He's too wild, and his
+standards of justice are his own. Summon him.''
+
+``And if you won't call Mrs. Malfoy,'' Syrinx put in unexpectedly,
+``call Nymphadora Tonks. She knows the Ministry, and I don't think
+she'll look kindly on what they just did.''
+
+``Thank you, both,'' Harry murmured, and then turned to use the
+communication spell. Camellia would have to have someone Apparate her,
+since she was Muggle, but she lived with several werewolves who were
+witches and wizards, and it was a long way from the full of the moon.
+All three allies were excellent candidates, he thought, now that Owen
+and Syrinx had mentioned them.
+
+\emph{Do you see?} whispered a part of his conscience that he rarely
+listened to. \emph{It is better to consult with others when you can. It
+gives you a context for your own decisions. It stabilizes the way you
+react. And it is wiser and more adult than simply running off to the
+Ministry on your own.}
+
+\emph{It does hurt more, though,} Harry responded, and then heard
+Moody's voice through the flare of phoenix song, and turned to
+explaining again.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Aurora lifted her head, uneasy. Erasmus had called for her a few hours
+ago, after he was convinced that he was secure in his power, and she had
+not left the Minister's office since. They'd spent time looking through
+paperwork, discussing those laws and funding requests Scrimgeour had
+been considering when he died, and there was nothing in any of them to
+cause her the feelings she experienced now.
+
+She looked up and out the enchanted window. Of course, since the
+Ministry was underground, the window wasn't real, but it was charmed,
+currently, to show a view of Muggle London at night, and probably would
+be for quite a long time. Erasmus believed in looking reality in the
+face as much as possible.
+
+The night had been calm and clear when she last looked, riding under the
+last light of the slowly waxing moon. And now---
+
+``Erasmus, look,'' she whispered, gripping his arm.
+
+He looked, just as clouds rushed together in the middle of the sky.
+Lightning seared over the buildings like a Muggle torch magnified to
+elephantine size. It spat once, and then a steady rain began to fall.
+Aurora found the rain more terrible than the thunder, somehow. It spoke
+of cold, unwavering vengeance, and slow floods, not uncontrolled strikes
+like the lightning did.
+
+``Is this a Dark attack?'' Erasmus asked, not moving his arm from her
+grasp.
+
+``Not He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named,'' Aurora said, finding a name and a
+face, now, for the magic that she could feel boiling throughout London
+and heading towards the front door of the Ministry. ``That's Harry.''
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Erasmus was prepared by the time Harry and his---troupe, was perhaps the
+best name, given that no other single word could possibly encompass the
+two teenagers, two former Aurors, and werewolf who followed him---came
+to his office. One of the Aurors, one who had remained loyal to the
+Ministry, had questioned him on what to do, and Erasmus had told him to
+let them in. This was the most perfect test for the \emph{vates},
+really, to see what would happen when he was face-to-face with the
+Minister he \emph{had} to accept would take Rufus's place.
+
+On their own, Mad-Eye Moody and the werewolf, who was snarling softly
+and not attempting to conceal her amber eyes or her teeth at all, might
+have been intimidating enough. Nymphadora Tonks and the other two
+children were trying, but they could not quite manage it.
+
+Harry outshone them all.
+
+He paced through the office door in wild silence, his eyes finding
+Erasmus and not wavering. Their deep green was not, as the \emph{Daily
+Prophet} had often and ridiculously described them, the color of the
+Killing Curse. Instead, Erasmus thought, they were the color of a
+stalking tiger's eyes. And Harry obviously believed that he had prey in
+front of him. His magic quietly piled through the door after him and
+filled the office from end to end. He would never have dared that with
+Rufus.
+
+Erasmus decided he would let the boy speak first. What he said should be
+revealing. So he sat, and studied them, and listened to the werewolf's
+snarl with a shudder of distaste, and clamped down on Aurora's arm when
+she would have stood or spoken.
+
+``Let them out,'' Harry said.
+
+\emph{Blunt. Lacking eloquence.} Erasmus lifted his head and his
+eyebrows in the same moment, to show that he was not afraid. ``I assume
+this is about the servants of You-Know-Who?'' he asked.
+
+``Voldemort,'' said Harry.
+
+Erasmus couldn't help it; he flinched. He had seen the victims of the
+spells Voldemort had woven to make his name so feared. He saw Harry note
+the flinch, and his eyes changed again. Now they were hawk-like, staring
+and imperious, and the small, contemptuous smile that curled his mouth
+was that of a strong man faced with weakness.
+
+Erasmus shook the impression off. He was \emph{not} afraid. The boy must
+learn that he could not get his way all the time simply because he was a
+powerful wizard. ``I took them into custody on hearing of the attack on
+Hogwarts,'' he said calmly. ``We need to understand how this Dark magic
+that apparently possesses the minds of its victims and causes them to
+nearly kill Headmistresses works. I promise, they will be well-treated.
+I appreciate that Severus Snape was able to stop short of the kill.''
+\emph{Though I would wager McGonagall had more to do with that than he
+did.} ``I only want to ask them questions in an environment where we
+will not be interrupted.''
+
+``You could have done that at Hogwarts,'' said Harry, who was, really,
+dreadfully unwilling to compromise. ``Behind a privacy ward.'' He
+shifted, and Erasmus was startled and disconcerted to see that the two
+adolescents behind him, a tall, dark-haired boy and a golden-haired girl
+who looked as if she had a good Light pedigree, mimicked him without
+thought. \emph{He has sworn companions? That, I had not heard.} ``There
+was no need to bring them to Tullianum.''
+
+``It was a precaution only.'' Erasmus softened his voice as much as
+possible. The magic felt like claws resting against his face, ready to
+rasp and take off skin. The boy had anger and to spare, given the storm
+outside and that sensation. Erasmus would avoid upsetting him if he
+could, but the truth remained that the boy \emph{had} to learn to face
+reality. ``As I said, we still do not know all the details, but we hope
+to learn them. If they had been traitors and servants of You-Know-Who,
+we would have to isolate them from others. If they are not, there is no
+harm done. We are questioning them now---''
+
+Harry stiffened. The claws on Erasmus's face dug in until he knew they
+could shear down and open his jugular. Outside, the lightning flashed
+several times. Beside him, Aurora sat still as still.
+
+``Questioning them, you said.'' Harry's voice was calm and flat. Given
+the magic, Erasmus could have found his control
+terrifying---\emph{would} have found it so, if he would let himself feel
+such emotions around a boy so young.
+
+``Yes,'' Erasmus said.
+
+``How?''
+
+If fear was permissible for a Minister with so much on his shoulders,
+Erasmus would have felt fear then. The boy had taken a step forward, and
+his green eyes seemed to swallow up the world, and his soft voice was
+only a further terror.
+
+``We are not barbarians,'' said Erasmus. He knew why the boy was so
+upset, but he was allowed to be resentful at the implications of Harry's
+anger. ``We do not torture our prisoners. We are merely using
+Veritaserum.''
+
+``And were they given a choice in the taking of it?'' Harry asked,
+cocking his head.
+
+``Such choices are usually suspended in a time of war,'' said Erasmus.
+``As this is.'' He became aware that he was leaning away from Harry, and
+he forced himself to sit up straight, though he still maintained the
+grip on Aurora's arm. She had had---unfortunate---tensions with Harry,
+and might say something even now unless he made it clear that she should
+not. "I am acting within the letter and the spirit of Ministry law,
+\emph{vates}, I assure you."
+
+``I don't believe you.''
+
+Erasmus raised an eyebrow high, irritated at last. ``I am an Elder of
+the Wizengamot, child. I do know Ministry law and edicts better than you
+do.'' He knew that the claws against his face might grow sharper, but
+some things had to be said. He would continue to do what was right, not
+what was expedient.
+
+Harry simply stared at him.
+
+``Do you have any evidence to the contrary?'' Erasmus demanded. ``Have
+you seen into the cells where we are questioning them, to know that our
+Aurors are abusing their authority?''
+
+``Now that,'' said Harry, ``is a good idea.''
+
+The floor turned transparent, images of shining stone overlaid on air.
+Erasmus found himself staring straight down as floor after floor
+changed, and then they could see into the underground recesses of
+Tullianum, the blank, bare walls somewhere between gray and yellow in
+color. Harry's magic, unsurprisingly, had taken them straight to the
+Death Eaters.
+
+The view changed and swooped, making Erasmus's stomach heave and his
+mind rebel. Given the angle they were looking at, they \emph{should}
+have been gazing down at the heads of the Aurors and their prisoners.
+But Harry had changed everything, and now they were looking at them
+straight on. And the Aurors could see them as well; Rippleworth actually
+dropped a vial of Veritaserum, which rang on the stone. Erasmus watched
+tiny drops of clear liquid escape between shards of glass, and tried to
+contain his anger.
+
+This cell held Severus Snape, understandably surrounded by five Aurors
+holding their wands, since he was the most dangerous Death Eater, and
+had almost killed the Headmistress. His head lolled, his face slack with
+the effects of the truth potion. Erasmus did not need to look at Harry
+to feel how intensely his concentration focused on the man who was, if
+rumor must be supported, not only guardian but like a father to Harry.
+
+``Was he given a choice about taking the potion?'' Harry asked. Erasmus
+started to answer that he had instructed the Aurors to explain what
+refusing Veritaserum in such a situation would do, but it was
+Rippleworth who answered, his voice as high and frightened as a much
+younger man's.
+
+``I---we told him that he had nothing to fear if he really wasn't
+guilty. He still would have refused, so---'' And then he stuttered to a
+stop, though more, Erasmus thought, because someone in the room had cast
+\emph{Silencio} on him than because it was his choice.
+
+Long moments passed in which Erasmus thought his own heartbeat
+irregularly loud. Then he realized it was the magic's heartbeat, surging
+back and forth a few pulses behind the thunder that continued to rage
+outside the windows.
+
+Their vision of the cell moved a few times, showing, clearly, red
+finger-marks on either side of Snape's face, where the Aurors had
+probably gripped it and held his nose in order to force him to swallow.
+
+``I see,'' Harry said.
+
+Erasmus glanced at him. He intended it to be a quick look, so that he
+might turn back and reassure his Aurors they had done nothing
+wrong---they \emph{needed} to know the truth about what had happened at
+Hogwarts, and if Snape had been innocent, he really need have nothing to
+fear from the Veritaserum---but he found himself transfixed by Harry's
+eyes. The flare in them this time was deepest, purest rage.
+
+``I am taking them now,'' Harry said. Still calm. But the magic pressed
+closer and closer, reminding Erasmus of a chained dragon, and the sworn
+companions the boy had acquired in defiance of all law and custom were
+shifting from foot to foot as if they longed to charge. "They have done
+nothing wrong, and their rights have been \emph{violated}---" that word
+was a whipcrack ``---by the Ministry. If you are unsatisfied, I will
+give you my memories of what happened at the school to place in a
+Pensieve, and I am sure Headmistress McGonagall will be pleased to do
+the same thing. But you will not keep them here any longer.''
+
+``Harry,'' said Erasmus, hoping a personal appeal might calm him.
+``Think, boy. We do not need a war on two fronts.''
+
+That small, contemptuous smile curled Harry's mouth again. ``I agree,''
+he said. "You do not need one. Therefore, you would be well-advised to
+release Severus Snape, Peter Pettigrew, and Regulus Black into my
+custody \emph{immediately.}"
+
+Erasmus stared at him for a moment, then shook his head. \emph{He
+imagines that he can threaten the Ministry all on his own? And he
+threatens war over something as minor as this? Perhaps he is more
+unstable than I thought.}
+
+``We cannot divide the wizarding world,'' he said. "Not now. There has
+been no panic so far only because our people are reeling in shock,
+still. The Minister has been assassinated. Death Eaters are at work
+again. The Dark Mark has been seen. All these are signs of the war to
+come. We cannot---we \emph{must} not have a civil war on top of them.
+You must work with us." He touched the text of the edict he'd been
+planning to send to the \emph{Daily Prophet} in the morning. "The first
+step is in stopping use of the \emph{absorbere} gift. It is Dark magic,
+too dangerous to use."
+
+Harry's eyes half-lidded. Erasmus felt a surge of anger mixed with fear.
+\emph{He cannot turn against this. He cannot! We cannot divide our
+forces.}
+
+``Too dangerous not to use,'' Harry said softly, and he was almost
+purring. That was the rumble of a great cat, though, Erasmus thought,
+not the comforting purr of a Kneazle. "Voldemort is an \emph{absorbere.}
+Do you really think he cares what the Ministry says about use of that
+gift?"
+
+``At least you will not use it,'' Erasmus countered. ``You will not be
+like him. We must not lose all our standards in this war as we did in
+the first one.''
+
+``It seems to me that you have already lost them,'' said Harry.
+``Forcing prisoners to take Veritaserum.''
+
+"No one \emph{forced}---"
+
+``Those say otherwise, Juniper.'' Harry nodded to the red finger-marks
+on Snape's face again. "And I have had \emph{enough} of this. I will
+fight Voldemort on my own if need be, but I will not allow the Ministry
+to take anyone I love from me. I have had \emph{enough} of that from the
+Dark Lord." His eyes swooped for a moment into shadows that made Erasmus
+tense and Mad-Eye Moody grip his wand. The werewolf edged forward with
+an eager snarl. Harry didn't seem to hear it. ``Answer me clearly now,
+Erasmus Juniper. Are you my enemy or my friend?''
+
+``I am your Minister,'' said Erasmus. He could feel despair welling up,
+but the Minister was no more allowed to succumb to despair than he was
+to fear. The \emph{stupid} child. Did he not understand the division he
+would cause if he turned against the Ministry? Did he not realize
+Erasmus was the only one who could lead them in this war and stood a
+chance of winning it, but that that chance would be much reduced if
+Harry acted like a wild or Dark wizard?
+
+``Wrong answer,'' Harry said, voice delicate as the first flower after
+winter. "\emph{Sir.}"
+
+His magic rose around him, thick, solid as the limbs of a beast,
+growing, and plunged down into Tullianum. Erasmus caught glimpses of it
+moving through other visions, but the one he had the best view of was
+the snatching of Severus Snape. A howling whirlwind scooped him up and
+bore him through suddenly appearing, and as suddenly closing, tunnels in
+the stone. In moments he and Pettigrew and Black stood in the office,
+blinking---or lolling their heads, in the case of Snape, who was
+unconscious.
+
+Harry, when Erasmus looked at him again, had black, serrated wings
+coming out of his back, and his eyes were as dark as Darkness.
+
+``I would ask for your help,'' Harry said, "but that is clearly
+impossible. I would ask that you not interfere, at least, with my own
+war effort, but I see that is also impossible; you are too convinced of
+your own rectitude and unable to listen to the voices accusing you of
+hypocrisy. As long as I can, I will ignore you. Understand, Juniper, if
+you are in my way, and if you represent a serious hindrance to my
+efforts to keep others safe, I \emph{will} destroy you."
+
+It was said so calmly that, by the time Erasmus fully absorbed the
+impact of the words, Harry was already moving. He flung up his arms,
+flapped the bladed wings once, and wrapped the former Death Eaters and
+the five people who had come with him in individual whirlwinds. Then a
+ninth one took him, and whipped him around in a circle, and together
+they vanished from the Ministry, gone via some method that did not
+disturb the anti-Apparition wards.
+
+Erasmus was sure the green of the boy's eyes lingered after time,
+staring at him, and the invisible claws razed a thin line of blood down
+his cheek before departing. The storm fell unnaturally silent in the
+same moment.
+
+Erasmus lifted his hand, in that silence, and touched his cheek. Then he
+turned to Aurora. She gave him a slight nod, and Erasmus wondered if she
+were really thinking what he was. The boy had given him a bit to think
+about, including whether it had been right to force Veritaserum onto
+even suspected Death Eaters, but his disrespect for the Ministry
+outweighed any benefit he might have offered.
+
+``Well,'' he said. ``It seems he must be brought to heel.''
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+He'd felt it begin even as he fell into the grip of the intense, icy
+rage that had sustained him in the Ministry office. He'd felt
+Voldemort's grip, reaching out, snagging on the edges of his soul,
+trying to coax the rage into hatred, and the hatred into a hold that he
+could use to drag Harry to him.
+
+Harry had fought two battles, one public, one private, but he'd managed
+to steer the hatred back into fury by the time they Apparated home from
+the Ministry. It had cost him, though. He collapsed to his knees on the
+Hogsmeade road, his breath rushing in and out of his lungs so hard it
+hurt, sweat damping his jumper and making his fringe more like seaweed
+than hair.
+
+``Harry?'' Regulus's hand was on his shoulder, which Harry thought
+half-wrong. He'd just rescued Regulus, so \emph{he} was the one who
+should sit back and let himself be taken care of, instead of trying to
+comfort Harry.
+
+Then he remembered his decision on top of the Tower again. \emph{I said
+I would rely on others as well as letting them rely on me.}
+
+``I'm all right, Regulus,'' he said softly, glancing up. But Owen leaned
+over him then, and his expression was so anxious that Harry frowned.
+``What is it?''
+
+``Your scar's bleeding,'' said Owen.
+
+``Voldemort reached out to me,'' Harry admitted, rising to his feet.
+``When he felt the emotions. He'll always be trying to take me, if he
+can. If I'd hated Juniper enough, he would have made another attempt.''
+
+Owen stared at him, horrified. ``How are you going to live with that?''
+he finally demanded.
+
+Harry blinked at him. \emph{Really, what kind of question is that to
+ask?} ``The same way I lived with it just now,'' he said. ``Fight him
+off. I can't do anything else.''
+
+``You'll have to strengthen your Occlumency,'' said Snape, who
+\emph{really} had no business speaking, given that Harry's magic was the
+only thing holding him on his feet. His voice was still slurred from the
+Veritaserum, but regaining strength and sharpness. ``To close the link
+between your scar and his mind.''
+
+``I'm not sure it will work,'' Harry said honestly, moving towards his
+guardian and casting one of the spells he'd learned while studying
+medical magic, which located hidden wounds. He found a few bruises along
+Snape's ribs, and had to breathe slowly to calm the impulse to break out
+into swearing. ``This is based on a mark from Voldemort and the amount
+of hatred in a person's soul, not the connection that he and I had
+before.''
+
+``You will still try,'' Snape said, snapping his head up to stare at
+him. Harry smiled, then reached up and gently caressed his face,
+smoothing away the red finger-marks with the touch of his magic.
+
+``Are you well?'' he whispered.
+
+``Yes. I told them the truth about the attack on Hogwarts, and they had
+not had time to ask more than a few embarrassing personal questions.''
+
+From the look in Snape's eyes, Harry was not sure he believed that, but
+he was forced to accept it as truth with the Veritaserum still in his
+blood. Besides, rest was the most important thing for Snape right now.
+``All right, sir,'' he said, and nodded to Regulus, Peter, Owen, and
+Syrinx. ``Thank you for coming,'' he added, to Moody, Camellia, and
+Tonks. ``Someone is waiting to transport you back to London, Camellia?''
+
+``Yes.'' The werewolf's eyes shone fiercely, lack of moonlight or not.
+``I am only disappointed that I got to bite no one.''
+
+Harry snorted. ``It wouldn't have done any good this far from the full
+moon.''
+
+``It would have frightened them.''
+
+Harry simply nodded. He still didn't like frightening or intimidating
+other people---it was too close to what the oaths of the Alliance of Sun
+and Shadow said he was not to do---but it worked far better than
+bloodshed. It was what he had had to do to Juniper, after all.
+
+``Thank you again,'' he repeated, and Moody and Tonks gave him faint
+smiles and turned away. Harry watched them go, shaking his head
+slightly. They seemed happy to have been included, though they hadn't
+been able to fire curses, either. It was strange, how little it took to
+content some of his allies.
+
+Camellia lingered. "You have no message for the packs, \emph{vates}?"
+
+Harry hesitated, then sighed and gave in. ``I would like them to watch
+out,'' he said. ``I think Voldemort will start attacks on London wizards
+and Muggles soon. The werewolf packs are the best source of information
+I have to keep watch over them and warn me if something happens, and of
+course you're powerful in battle.''
+
+Camellia snapped her jaws together and bowed her head slightly, eyes and
+teeth agleam. "It shall be done, \emph{vates.}" She turned and loped
+off. Harry could see a shape moving a few steps down the Hogsmeade road;
+starlight revealed it as Trumpetflower, a witch and member of the pack
+who had taken his phoenix song call for Camellia and Apparated her. A
+moment later, Camellia took her arm, and they were gone.
+
+Harry guided Snape, gently floating, up to the doors of the castle,
+while examining Peter and Regulus with both magic and questions. Peter
+seemed shaken, but physically fine. Regulus studied Harry back with an
+intense, narrow-eyed gaze that Harry didn't like.
+
+``What?'' he asked finally.
+
+``There has never been any Black heir with the magical power you have,''
+Regulus murmured, ``and never any who dared stand up to the Ministry as
+effectively and thoroughly as you've done.'' His teeth, in turn, flashed
+in a smile. ``I was simply thinking how it would make my parents stir if
+they knew. A halfblood, and a legal heir and not a blood child at that,
+accomplishing what all of them could not.''
+
+Harry snorted. ``Your mother already likes me,'' he said, thinking of
+the portrait of Mrs. Black that hung in the hall of Grimmauld Place, and
+then turned to Syrinx. ``Would you go to the hospital wing and the
+Headmistress, Syrinx, please? Tell her I've fetched everyone back and am
+making sure they're settled comfortably. I'll come and speak with her if
+she wants me to, but I'd much rather wait until morning.''
+
+``I'm sure she'll let you,'' Syrinx said, touched his shoulder with her
+hand like a butterfly's motion, and then ran ahead to the castle.
+
+After that, Harry's main task was convincing Snape to stay in his
+quarters; Peter and Regulus were adult enough to go to their beds and
+begin sleeping the Veritaserum off. Harry, at last, cheated and asked
+Snape if he was tired, to which he had to give a truthful answer. Harry
+gave him a Calming Draught, laid him flat, and even fluffed the pillows,
+just to complete the outrage.
+
+All the while, his mind hummed along another track. He could not be
+entirely certain his proposal was welcome, but if it were, it would give
+him some rest and peace of mind as well as another family---perhaps.
+
+So he finished putting Snape to bed, and then wrote his letter. The
+climb to the Owlery was long, but Hedwig fluttered over to him the
+second he came through the door, settling expectantly on his shoulder
+and nipping at his ear. Harry stroked her for a long moment, bathing in
+the warmth and scent of her, before he spun his arm and launched her out
+the window into a sky now free of storm.
+
+He gazed after her for a moment. The darkness was faintly tinged with
+dawn. Draco would probably be waking from his unbreakable sleep soon,
+and would want to know what had happened while he was under the
+influence of the Dreamer's Crown.
+
+Harry only hoped it wouldn't provoke an argument, that they'd gone to
+the Ministry without Harry using his magic to snap the dream.
+
+\emph{Keep going.}
+
+He yawned, dragged a knuckle across his eyes, and then went back to the
+dungeons and his bed. He might as well snatch the hour or so of sleep he
+would have before Draco awakened and he had things to do.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+It was awful, Connor thought. Solemn and awful.
+
+He walked quietly beside Ron through the private graveyard the wizards
+of Ottery St. Catchpole had used for generations to bury their dead. It
+was a tiny plot of land, but it was theirs in ways that had nothing to
+do with money. Ron had told Connor that he didn't think it \emph{could}
+be sold.
+
+And probably not, Connor thought. There was place magic here---or at
+least he imagined so, from having heard Harry's descriptions of
+Woodhouse. It paced slowly around them, now and then forming into a
+solid dust cloud of a creature that looked rather like a camel. It
+nodded a heavy head at them, and then broke apart and went back to
+pacing the graveyard.
+
+The headstones in every direction were for the most part plain, with
+only names and dates, though here and there a poem was carved. Each had
+a cluster of small red-orange flowers growing near it, probably tended
+by the place magic. Connor paused when he caught sight of the matched
+stones that proclaimed the resting places of Fabian and Gideon Prewett,
+Molly Weasley's twin brothers. They'd been great heroes of the First
+War, and it had taken five Death Eaters to bring them down.
+
+\emph{One of whom,} Connor thought with a little sigh, \emph{was Lucius
+Malfoy.} \emph{And now his son is at Percy's funeral.}
+
+He gave a half-incredulous glance to the side. It was a miracle, he
+thought, that Molly Weasley had agreed to let Draco come. But when Harry
+had asked if he could attend the funeral and give Percy a tribute, Molly
+had told him to bring whoever he liked. And she had not done anything
+more than stare when Harry showed up with Draco on one side and Snape on
+the other.
+
+Draco was behaving himself, at least, Connor thought. He gave quiet,
+polite condolences to the elder Weasleys, nodded to Bill and Charlie,
+and kept well out of the way of the twins, Ron, and Ginny. Ron refused
+to look at him, but that was to be expected.
+
+Percy's coffin lay near the open hole in the grass, ready to be lowered.
+Only the top third was open, concealing what Ron had told Connor in
+confidence was the absolute ruin of his lower body, thanks to Indigena
+Yaxley's thorns. His family filed quietly past, putting in tokens of the
+love and affection they'd borne for Percy. A baby blanket from Mrs.
+Weasley's hand, a pair of glasses from Mr. Weasley's, a carved fish from
+Bill, a Ministry pamphlet from Charlie's. The twins put in something
+carefully wrapped in parchment, which they let no one see, and then
+lingered beside the grave, staring at Percy, for longer than anyone
+else.
+
+Connor waited, and walked forward with Ron and Ginny. Ginny also cradled
+something wrapped in parchment, which she refused to look up from. Ron
+had his old wand, the one that had snapped in second year. ``He tried to
+fix it for me,'' he said simply when he saw Connor looking.
+
+Connor nodded.
+
+He hadn't known Percy well, but he did remember the evening he'd come
+down from his room in his third year, close to tears of frustration from
+trying to work out the proper movements of Venus and Mars for Astronomy,
+and Percy had leapt at the chance to help him. Now knowing what he knew
+about that year---that Percy had been under pressure from Dumbledore to
+become a spy at the Ministry---Connor thought Percy had wanted a
+distraction more than anything else, but it didn't matter. He'd still
+worked with Connor, patiently, until Connor got it right. And Connor had
+drawn out a representation of that same equation again, and he tucked it
+under Percy's left shoulder, next to Ron's wand.
+
+Harry came forward alone, and Draco and Snape faded into the background
+with careful propriety. Harry put something that briefly caught the sun
+and flashed gold into the coffin. Connor blinked, wondering what it had
+been.
+
+Then he stepped back and lifted his voice in the phoenix song.
+
+Connor had only heard a phoenix mourn once before, the night that Harry
+had lost Fawkes and sent his sadness skirling all around the castle.
+This was different. Sterner, not quite as sad---Connor didn't think he
+would ever again hear anything quite as sad as that first requiem---and
+a salute.
+
+As the song continued, rising and falling in majestic sliding notes
+along the scales, Connor felt the urge to close his eyes.
+
+And visions of Percy rose in his mind when he did. Percy bent over a
+book in the Gryffindor common room, lower lip caught between his teeth,
+lamps gleaming on his glasses. Percy in a corridor in third year,
+telling Harry in a hushed voice the true state of affairs between him
+and Dumbledore. Percy behind a desk in Scrimgeour's office, eyes wide as
+he absorbed his new world, where Connor had never personally seen him.
+Percy closing in behind Scrimgeour, arms full of paperwork but eyes
+fierce, ready to protect his leader to the death.
+
+As he had.
+
+And then came the vision of that which Harry had seen five nights ago,
+with, mercifully, phoenix flames overriding the image of Yaxley's thorns
+piercing Percy. There was only the fire, the rising symbol of phoenix or
+firebird, the symbol of Light.
+
+Harry's song died softly back into a pool of honor, and then warbled and
+faded away. Connor opened his eyes to see him standing with his head
+bowed, shivering.
+
+\emph{How many requiems will he have to sing, before it's all done?}
+Connor thought, and shivered himself, and went forward and took his
+brother in his arms.
+
+Harry made a soft little sound, then clung to him. They walked slowly to
+the back of the graveyard as Mr. and Mrs. Weasley worked the spells to
+lower the coffin into the earth. Connor didn't look over his shoulder.
+This was a private moment for the family, the lowering, though anyone
+else they permitted might attend the other ceremonies.
+
+Draco met them near the fence, and tried to take Harry away from Connor.
+Connor subjected him to a glare and hung on. Draco raised an eyebrow,
+then nodded and leaned on the fence. Snape hovered next to him, gaze
+simultaneously on Harry and darting around looking for danger.
+
+``They're planting the stone,'' Draco said suddenly, and Connor knew he
+could turn around again if he wanted to.
+
+So he did, and saw the great puff of dust that seemed to form when the
+stone landed, touching the left and the right sides of it with flame,
+planting the red-orange flowers that endured here for reasons that
+Connor didn't know but which Ron could probably tell him. He resolved to
+ask, later.
+
+Harry gave a final, soft trill, and so Percy Weasley was buried.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 3*: Intermission: Welcome, Beloved
+Nephew}\label{chapter-3-intermission-welcome-beloved-nephew}
+
+Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter!
+
+\textbf{Intermission: Welcome, Beloved Nephew}
+
+Indigena sighed and shook herself out from the Apparition, tempted to
+bid the embrace of the earth around her welcome as she would a sister.
+She had spent six days negotiating with the vampire hive, trying to make
+them understand what her Lord wanted from them. It would not have been
+so difficult---vampires were reasonably intelligent Dark creatures and
+had worked with humans before---if they hadn't kept forgetting that she
+wasn't meant as food. And then none of them could draw sustenance from
+her, even when Indigena stood still and let them bite, because what ran
+in her veins now was more like sap than blood. Three days had been taken
+up with the queen testing her, via both drones and workers, to see what
+would happen when vampires of certain ages and sexes bit her.
+
+\emph{So tiresome}. But she had made the alliance her Lord had desired,
+and finally won permission to return home.
+
+She was not so happy to think that, in a short time, that alliance would
+swing into effect, and strike at Harry. But her personal liking for
+Harry had little to do with it. This was war. Her Lord had asked her to
+help him negotiate with the vampires. She had done so. She felt vaguely
+sorry for Harry. On the other hand, if he had done the sensible thing
+and come to join her Lord, they wouldn't be fighting. Harry was the Dark
+Lord's magical heir, and he'd been treated appallingly badly by the side
+of the Light he was supposedly fighting for. Most powerful wizards would
+see the sense in coming to the side that would let them exercise their
+magic best, because, for most, their allegiance was first to their magic
+and second to everything else.
+
+Harry had never been an ordinary powerful wizard, and Indigena knew
+that. But it was still irritating, after a long day of standing still so
+fangs could puncture her spongy flesh.
+
+``Come.''
+
+Indigena raised an eyebrow. Lucius had entered the Apparition chamber.
+His eyes were blank, but he looked like himself otherwise. Indigena
+wondered if her Lord's control over him had deepened, or if he was
+simply not very successful at fighting said control.
+
+``What is it?'' she asked, as she fell into step beside him.
+
+``There is a new arrival our Lord believes will please you,'' said
+Lucius, not meeting her eyes. Lord Voldemort had made sure none of them
+could. It was a mark of respect and honor, but it also made Indigena
+feel lonely. Not for the first time, she wished her plan hadn't required
+the killing of Rufus Scrimgeour. At least he was a reasonably
+intelligent person who had read her words with intensity and feeling.
+
+``Who?'' she asked now. She had known her Lord could pursue other Death
+Eaters, as long as they bore the Dark Mark and had hatred in their
+souls, but she was not aware of any whose presence she greatly desired.
+
+``There,'' said Lucius. They had reached the throne room, and he nodded
+ahead of him. Indigena followed his gaze, and her breath caught in her
+throat.
+
+She recognized the young man kneeling before her Lord. Of \emph{course}
+she did. How could she not? This was Feldspar Yaxley, the son of her
+sister Peridot, who had served the Dark Lord during the First War and
+then run away, refusing to even acknowledge that he had been a Death
+Eater. His honor debt had obligated Indigena to go into service and take
+the Dark Mark on her own arm when Voldemort came to her family.
+
+And now he had been called back. Of course he had. Feldspar was full of
+childish hatreds he had never shed.
+
+Indigena felt her mouth stretching in a smile as she crossed the
+distance between them in a few heartbeats. If she could not have the
+pleasure of conversing with an equal or serving a Lord she genuinely
+liked, at least she could have the pleasure of tormenting the person
+who'd been responsible for her predicament.
+
+``Ah, Indigena,'' said her Lord, the snake turning its eyes to follow
+her. She saw Feldspar stiffen at the sound of her name. ``I believe you
+owe a certain kind of debt to my newest servant.''
+
+``I do indeed,'' said Indigena, and then Feldspar turned to stare up at
+her, swallowing sickly. He had green eyes like his mother, and the same
+lack of good sense in them. They were circled by thick shadows. It
+cheered Indigena, a little, to know he had been suffering the same
+nightmares the others had. He deserved it far more than Lucius or
+Hawthorn Parkinson had. Not only was he a traitor, like them, he was
+also an idiot, and Indigena found stupidity unforgivable.
+
+Then he made it worse. He tried to smile.
+
+``Hullo, aunt,'' he chirped, as if they had just parted at teatime the
+other day. ``How have you been?''
+
+``Killing things,'' said Indigena. ``Specifically, assassinating the
+Minister.''
+
+Feldspar's chin quivered, but he tried to keep up with the game, for a
+moment. ``Ah, y-yes, I h-heard about that.'' He attempted a smile. He
+shouldn't have. It looked worse than nothing on his face. ``Was it
+fun?''
+
+``It was not,'' said Indigena, and glanced at her Lord. ``May I take him
+into another room, my Lord, and explain the rules of things to him?''
+
+Her Lord waved a hand, the snake dancing faster and faster with
+amusement. Indigena smiled and walked past Feldspar, motioning for him
+to follow. When it seemed that he might not, she shot out one of her
+thorns and snagged it through his hair. Then he had to follow closely
+and quickly, unless he wanted to stumble along in undignified misery.
+
+In the prisoner's chamber, she released him and spun, using another
+tendril to knock him into the wall. Feldspar fell back with a yelp his
+mother would be ashamed to hear, and then sat down on his arse. Indigena
+curled her lip, fighting the urge to lash out and let her thorns or her
+rose have him. That death would be too quick, and nor did she want to
+physically torture him as she had Rosier, unless she was doing it at her
+Lord's order to test some new species of plant. She would mentally
+torture and taunt him instead, by telling him the truth. That was much
+better.
+
+``Do you know,'' said Indigena softly, ``that you are indirectly
+responsible for the Minister's assassination and my Lord's Second War?''
+
+``I am n-not!'' Feldspar's face was flushed. He was good at defending
+his perspective when he believed himself in the right, Indigena thought
+clinically. She would give him that. \emph{Such a shame he could not
+think of his honor in the same way as his martyr complex.}
+
+``You are,'' Indigena goaded him. ``If you had not fled, I would never
+have been compelled to join our Lord in order to fulfill the honor debt.
+I would not have aided him in several of his battles within the last
+year and a half, and I am not ashamed to say that my presence made a
+difference many times. I would not have broken into Tullianum to free
+the Death Eaters hidden there; my Lord would have had to find someone
+else to do that, and a hard time he would have of it---''
+
+``And little good that did!'' Feldspar spat, clenching his fists. "They
+all \emph{d-died}, didn't they? On the Midsummer battlefield?"
+
+``Why, yes, they did,'' said Indigena, and smiled at him. ``So you are
+responsible for their deaths as well.''
+
+He spluttered. Indigena paid no attention. Her nephew might have had the
+sense to be proud of his---accomplishments---if he were really a Dark
+wizard. But though he had taken the Mark, it was for boyish reasons, and
+he had not fulfilled the requirements of the position of Death Eater as
+he should have. Indigena Yaxley had found Bellatrix Lestrange
+\emph{personally} disgusting, but her honor had been impeccable. She had
+gone to Azkaban for her Lord and never denied what she was. Feldspar had
+run, when he knew honor required him to give up his freedom or his life,
+and hidden in the arms of a too-indulgent mother.
+
+Indigena sighed at the thought of her sister Peridot. \emph{One sister I
+have relentless as the sea, and one that changes at every wind that
+blows. I suppose I am the golden mean. However, no one asked me if I
+wanted to be. And we should never have let Peridot shelter him from
+this.}
+
+``You are responsible for everything since then,'' Indigena repeated
+patiently. ``Our Lord's recovery of strength, and the Minister's
+death.'' She paused, studying Feldspar, wondering if what he most feared
+had changed since she saw him last. She had refused contact with him for
+years, so her own honor would not be tainted. ``Chaos,'' she whispered.
+
+``No,'' he whimpered. ``Oh, no.''
+
+``Oh yes,'' Indigena pointed out, and leaned back against the wall, one
+root tethering her there. The earth poured strength into her, held her
+upright, made her feel at home. ``I know that you wanted a quiet life,
+Feldspar, with peace all around you and nothing to bother you. And,
+thanks to your own actions, you will never have that again. Either you
+go to death among the Death Eaters or you---'' She paused, then snorted.
+"There \emph{is} no other choice, really."
+
+Her sister's son was a coward; whatever little strength or pride or
+honor he'd had had been spent in the First War, within days of joining
+their Lord. And now he knew he was going to die in this second one,
+probably all the faster for being so weak.
+
+Indigena waited patiently until he finished vomiting, then said, ``My
+Lord will not let you go. Death is your only freedom.'' She let her left
+hand rest on his head in a parody of a blessing. Her thorny rose, the
+same one that had killed Scrimgeour, strained to sink its thorns into
+him, but Indigena resisted the temptation. \emph{No, let him look full
+in the face of what he earned for himself.} ``Welcome, beloved nephew.''
+
+She spun, and strode back towards the throne room. Her Lord would have
+work for her, so this diversion could not take too long. She was his
+lieutenant now, and that meant she was in charge of negotiating with
+people other than the vampires, and writing letters to those wizards who
+might support him.
+
+She passed Hawthorn on the way, sleeping exhausted on a pile of blankets
+in a corridor. She'd fought their Lord's control again, apparently, and
+he had cast her back into the deepest toils of hatred as a punishment.
+Indigena, heart aching with pity, knelt down and smoothed her hair.
+
+Hawthorn opened an amber eye, and looked at her, and snarled weakly.
+Hatred flamed in her gaze. The stronger the loathing grew, Indigena
+knew, the more she would belong to their Lord. And with Indigena and
+Lucius near, the murder of her daughter and her betrayal and
+imprisonment in Tullianum would continually rebound on her mind.
+
+``I hate you,'' Hawthorn whispered.
+
+``Shhhh,'' Indigena whispered, petting. ``I know, sister. I know.''
+
+\emph{Honor will have its due,} she thought, meeting Hawthorn's gaze and
+thinking of all the traitors, past and present, who had come home to her
+Lord or would in the future. \emph{They may try to flee from it, but
+they cannot run forever.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 4*: The Future All
+Afire}\label{chapter-4-the-future-all-afire}
+
+Thanks for the comments on the last chapter!
+
+\textbf{Warning: Gore.}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Three: The Future All Afire}
+
+It was a good thing Draco wasn't wearing the Dreamer's Crown tonight, he
+thought. Otherwise, he wouldn't have awakened even when Harry abruptly
+began trying to claw his face off.
+
+"\emph{Harry!}" he snapped, and rolled over on top of him, pinning his
+hands to the bed. They were about the same size by now, but he was still
+heavier than Harry was. With a little effort, he managed to arrange
+things so that Harry's hands were trapped by his knees. Then he sat back
+and stared. ``What in the name of Merlin---''
+
+And then he saw Harry's scar open and red, a running wound, and his
+mouth open in a scream that let no sound pass his lips, and his heart
+lurched, and he dropped straight down, chest to chest. For a moment,
+fear threatened to overwhelm him. \emph{Voldemort's trying to possess
+Harry again, he's hurting him---}
+
+Fear wouldn't do, though. Harry needed him, and that meant he couldn't
+collapse into someone else's arms and wait for the rescue to commence.
+He needed to be the strong one, and he knew what he could do.
+
+Draco took a deep breath, then tilted Harry's head up. Harry's eyes were
+shut so tightly that Draco couldn't see a hint of either pupil or iris.
+But he didn't strictly need line-of-sight contact for this any more.
+
+He let go and bounded into Harry's mind, his possession gift spreading
+around him in a net that would hopefully be enough to counter whatever
+he found there.
+
+It wasn't, though.
+
+Visions spun and dizzied him, people dying, flames exploding, shrill
+screams ringing out, and \emph{pain}, such pain that Draco wanted to
+collapse screaming himself. But he didn't. He clung to the slender
+thread of knowledge that it was Harry seeing this, not him, and that he
+had to pull him out of it somehow, before one or both of them were lost.
+If it went on like this, it would be both; Harry would die, trapped in
+his own mind, and Draco would follow him into death.
+
+He worked furiously, diving through the shards of the vision, seeking
+the dreamer under the dream. He found traces of Harry here and there,
+recognizing them by the familiar feeling of his emotions---guilt and
+regret and self-loathing were particularly prominent, but he found some
+anger, too, and some fear---and dragged them back towards the surface.
+Halfway there, Harry joined him in a surge, recovering consciousness
+enough to help. Draco let go with a relieved gasp, and then jumped
+straight out of his head, back into his own body.
+
+He opened his eyes to meet Harry's, and stared. Those eyes looked like
+Owen had told him, in confidence, they'd looked in the Ministry: so mad
+with rage that Draco was instantly glad not to be on the opposing side.
+Reluctantly, he had to respect Minister Juniper a bit more, that he
+hadn't backed down the moment he was confronted with this.
+
+``What is it?'' Draco asked quietly.
+
+``Two-pronged attack,'' Harry said back, efficiently throwing himself
+out of bed and pulling his robes on. Argutus, who'd been curled on top
+of his trunk, thumped to the floor as the lid flew back and the clothes
+came flying to Harry, but Harry didn't answer his sleepy hiss. ``One in
+Muggle London.'' He lifted his head and stared towards the spot in the
+dungeon wall where a window would have been if they'd been aboveground.
+``One in the Forbidden Forest.''
+
+Draco jerked.
+
+``The wards are weaker against nonhuman attackers, since the Forest has
+so many nonhumans living in it and the wards have to make space for
+them,'' Harry murmured. ``And that's what he has. Vampires,'' he added,
+at Draco's confused expression.
+
+``But he must have offered them fantastic sums---'' Draco began,
+confused. Vampires were proud and individualistic creatures who couldn't
+be persuaded with anything so simple as an offer of blood. They often
+had their own standards of what was moral or beautiful or right or an
+acceptable risk, and would argue with any wizard negotiators until they
+met that price. It was no wonder the Ministry had such trouble
+controlling them; the Ministry worked by sameness, and vampires refused
+to be the same. Unless---
+
+"\emph{Shit}," Draco said, in a voice that his mother would have called
+unnecessarily loud. ``Harry, he doesn't have a---''
+
+``A hive,'' said Harry, seemingly intent on interrupting Draco's words
+as well as his thoughts. ``Yes he does, Draco.''
+
+Draco cursed again, though this time he didn't even remember what he
+said, and scrambled to pull on his own clothes.
+
+Wizards dealt with vampires individually because of their standards, and
+because of what happened when they were together in one place. Allow a
+hundred or so vampires to gather, and suddenly they started taking on
+roles that were more reminiscent of an ant colony than a group of
+humans. The females became workers, increasingly aggressive against
+anything that was not a vampire. The males became drones, likely to rape
+anything they could get their hands on as well as drain it of blood.
+
+And if enough of them stayed together for a year or more, they would
+raise up a queen, and she would want to establish a nest, and that meant
+the end of civilization for roughly a hundred miles in every direction
+from her home base.
+
+``Harry,'' Draco said abruptly, lifting his head, his own eagerness to
+deny this was real coming into play. "Do you \emph{know} these visions
+are happening? I mean, Voldemort might have sent them to distract you,
+or just hurt you." It hadn't escaped his notice that Harry was moving
+more carefully than usual. The spells and other damage the dream victims
+had taken was affecting him.
+
+``I'm going to look at the Forest,'' said Harry calmly. ``Easy enough to
+see from here. And as for London---'' He tapped his wrist, and spoke
+into the blaze of phoenix song that followed. ``Remus?''
+
+Draco scowled. His feelings towards the traitorous werewolf were not
+much more charitable than Snape's, but Harry had at least retained him
+as a contact, and right now a blurred, sleepy voice was answering him.
+
+``Harry?''
+
+``Voldemort is attacking in Muggle London,'' Harry said calmly. ``Or, at
+least, so my scar claims.''
+
+``Where?'' Lupin's voice was sharper now. Draco supposed werewolves
+would have to be good at waking up easily, so that they could run when
+wizard-led hunts came after them. He still wished that Harry could have
+called upon one of the other packs, but perhaps Hawk's pack was more
+central to London, or some such nonsense. Draco didn't know much about
+werewolf geography. Nor did he care to.
+
+``I'm not sure,'' said Harry. ``That's why I need you to pass the
+message. And, Remus---it's a vampire hive.''
+
+A low growl was the only answer. Draco gave a reluctant nod. If someone
+\emph{had} to fight vampires, werewolves were the best choice, he
+supposed. Their beasts made them immune to the charm and compulsion that
+vampires usually used on their victims; the wolf threw off that kind of
+control, being a creature of compulsion itself. And werewolves had a
+strength that matched or surpassed that of a vampire. They would hardly
+hold still for the bite.
+
+\emph{And}, said part of Draco's old education, \emph{if they die in
+battle, they won't cost the wider wizarding community as much.}
+
+Draco winced a bit and did what he could to suppress that line of
+thinking. He wasn't sure he believed them any longer, those thoughts
+about werewolves and Mudbloods and the rest, and until he was sure, they
+were embarrassing to voice.
+
+``I will inform Hawk,'' Lupin said.
+
+``Thank you, Remus,'' Harry said, and cut the communication spell. Then
+he stood and nodded to Draco. ``I'm going to the Forbidden Forest. Do
+you want to join me?''
+
+Draco's mouth dried at the thought of going among a vampire hive---this
+was what nightmares, not just bad stories, were made from---but he had
+said that he would follow Harry into battle. His possession gift might
+protect him from the compulsion of their eyes, and, if that didn't work,
+he could wield a weapon to which not even vampires were immune. He
+reached for his wand, stood, and nodded. ``I hope you aren't about to
+dash out with only the two of us,'' he said, with all the sarcasm he
+could use given the solemnity of the moment.
+
+Harry shook his head. ``I'm on my way to inform the Headmistress first,
+so that she can raise the wards. Then I'll gather those who can and want
+to fight with us.'' He was informing them even as they left the
+dungeons, Draco saw, calling through the blaze of phoenix song to see if
+they could arrive in time.
+
+Owen joined them before they were fully down the stairs into the common
+room. Draco nodded a greeting to him, but his thoughts were elsewhere.
+\emph{Before, Harry's always been frantic if there was an attack like
+this on Hogwarts grounds, eager to get out there as soon as possible. I
+wonder what's changed?}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+It took an enormous effort to hold himself in check, but Harry knew it
+had to be done. He would gain no lives back if he moved too fast. His
+muscles trembled and ached with the aftereffects of the visions, still,
+and he was beginning to suspect that Snape was right, that he
+\emph{must} shut down the link to Voldemort at any cost.
+
+But he had built Occlumency shields around his scar in the last few
+days, and Voldemort had torn through them as if they were made of
+feathers.
+
+His head was full of death, and his body was full of what it felt like
+to be cut apart and bitten and compelled to walk slowly towards an
+intruder while behind him his family watched in horror. He jumped,
+soaring above them and the impulse to hurry, hurry, \emph{hurry}, and
+instead spoke to the people he knew would want to come with him: Connor,
+Zacharias, Peter, Ron, Ginny, and others in Hogwarts who were of the
+Light and could wield the spells of the Light. He spoke to Regulus, too,
+but this was mostly a fight for Light wizards.
+
+Light purebloods could wield spells of fire and light with more
+effectiveness and power than Dark wizards could muster, their inherited
+allegiance brightening their blood. And this close to Midsummer, their
+appeals to the Light were also likely to have more power. Against
+vampires, those were the strongest weapons.
+
+Others he sent towards the fight in London, explaining briefly what was
+happening. He expected \emph{someone}, at least, to refuse.
+
+No one did.
+
+Syrinx had joined them by the time they reached the Headmistress's
+office, and Harry told McGonagall what was happening, watching her mouth
+tighten in a thin line. She would have wanted to join them on the
+battlefield, Harry knew, and they could have used her. But there were
+still children in the school, as the term ended in two days, and she had
+to stay here and protect them---and herself. She was not completely
+recovered from Snape's attack yet, Harry knew.
+
+``I understand, Harry,'' she said, when he finished. ``And the wards are
+confirming movement in the Forest, though no enormous attacks as yet. My
+guess is that Voldemort sent you conjured images, not visions of what is
+actually happening.''
+
+Harry nodded, a bit reassured. ``Then it might be a trap, but we'll be
+prepared to meet it. I think he expected me to simply rush in---''
+
+And then his vision exploded into fiery darkness again, and he went to
+one knee. He could feel death shuddering all through his limbs, the
+fangs in his neck draining and drawing his blood, the arms clamped
+around his chest with a strength he could not break no matter how he
+struggled. He caught a blurred glimpse of hooves, and knew he was
+watching the death of a centaur.
+
+\emph{Of course,} Harry thought, himself somewhere beyond the pain,
+thanks to Lily's training. \emph{That's why he's sending them to the
+Forest.} Centaurs and vampires had a long-standing argument.
+
+He managed to open his eyes, and jump over the fierce ache in his
+throat, and nod to the Headmistress. 'They're here," he said quietly.
+``They just killed the centaur called Bone.'' His voice was raspy with
+suppressing the urge to scream. ``And it's a hive.''
+
+\emph{We must pray they do not have the queen with them.}
+
+In his head, Voldemort laughed, and flung more pain. Harry struggled to
+keep his feet, impatiently. He was needed in this battle, not collapsing
+on the floor.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Connor felt determined, as he came down the steps from the sixth-year
+boys' room in Gryffindor Tower. His mind ran through every Light and
+fire spell that he could remember learning, including the ones that
+Snape had taught him in their dueling sessions together.
+
+He was \emph{waiting} for the fear, for the sensation that should have
+overtaken him the moment he knew they would be battling vampires.
+
+There was nothing like fear inside him. The closest was the deep
+conviction that the vampires should not have come near Hogwarts at
+all---sorrow, perhaps, and a bit of pity for the hive.
+
+He turned when he heard Ron stumbling along behind him; he had heard
+Harry contact him, but hadn't been sure Ron would join in, given Percy's
+death. Surely his parents wouldn't want another of their sons to risk
+his life?
+
+And then he saw Ron's flaming eyes, and remembered that he'd turned
+seventeen on the first of March and technically wasn't under his
+parents' control any more, and shut his mouth and bowed his head.
+
+``Where's Ginny?'' Ron asked as they left through the portrait together.
+``I know Harry would call her.''
+
+``Perhaps wondering what your mother would say?'' Connor shrugged. He'd
+been around Molly and Arthur Weasley enough that he'd been forced to
+admit, reluctantly, that they weren't perfect. They \emph{did} treat
+Ginny differently than the rest of their children, and though some of it
+was clearly because she was the youngest, the rest was clearly because
+she was a girl. Ginny might wonder if it was worth going into danger
+when her parents would yell at her about it afterwards, as had been the
+case when she joined Harry's rebellion in Woodhouse.
+
+``She'll be here,'' Ron muttered, and then the sound of flying footsteps
+came from behind them. Both Ginny and Hermione were hurrying to catch
+up. And behind them, somewhat to Connor's surprise, came Neville.
+
+``Neville?'' he asked gently. Ginny might not care, and he was Harry's
+brother, but Neville was still underage and under the thumb of a
+powerful witch, his grandmother, who didn't tend to let him do risky
+things.
+
+The other boy caught his breath with a gulp and a gasp, and jerked his
+head as he replied, ``I want to do this. They need me on the
+battlefield, don't they?''
+
+``We do,'' said Ron bluntly. ``Everyone we can get. It's a vampire hive,
+Connor,'' he added, catching his eye. ``Hundreds of wizards at a time
+have fought them and died. I know that Harry has his magic, but that
+might not be enough to make a difference if he goes against them alone.
+One more wand, one more body, could. And Neville's practiced with us.''
+
+Connor nodded. He had heard the audible strain in his brother's voice
+through the communication spell, and it was true that Neville was a
+powerful wizard, when he allowed the emotions that mostly gave his magic
+its strength through.
+
+``Very well,'' he muttered. ``Let's go.'' And then they were all running
+down the stairs as fast as they could, headed for the front doors where
+Harry had told them to assemble.
+
+Harry was waiting there, with Zacharias Smith and a small contingent of
+other students from Hufflepuff, and even some Ravenclaws. Connor felt a
+small stab in the heart when he realized that Padma Patil wasn't among
+them. The Patils' parents had called both her and Parvati home a few
+days after Snape's attack on McGonagall, and still hadn't let them come
+back. Luna stood among the Ravenclaws looking more lost than usual, and
+Connor stifled the urge to go to her and pat her shoulder. He'd almost
+got used to Parvati's being gone, but this was different, to be reminded
+of her absence via Padma's.
+
+But Harry was speaking now. Connor turned his attention to him, and
+frowned. Blood streaked Harry's face, the trails ending at his scar. His
+eyes were alive, passionate with fury and other emotions, and Connor
+remembered the time ten nights ago when he had been all that kept Harry
+from surrendering to those emotions and going to Voldemort. He resolved
+to stick to his brother's side and tackle him to the ground the moment
+he grew wings or started paying more attention to the burning of his
+scar than the battle.
+
+``There's a hive in the Forbidden Forest,'' Harry said. ``Drones and
+workers both. No sign of a queen yet.'' There were moans of relief from
+almost everyone present; they knew what havoc a queen could cause. The
+only one who was silent, in fact, Connor thought, was Draco, who stood
+with his hand locked on Harry's shoulder and gaze fastened on his face
+as if cursed there. ``They've killed Bone and a few other centaurs.
+They're killing every living thing they can reach. Some of them, like
+the Many hive, are fighting back, but it won't be easy. Use as many
+Light and fire spells as you can, both so that you can see and so that
+you can kill them.''
+
+"You don't want to leave them alive and negotiate with them like the
+\emph{vates} you are?" came Zacharias Smith's drawl from the side.
+
+Harry gave him a look that shut him up. Since he was joined by glares
+from Peter Pettigrew and Henrietta Bulstrode, Connor was faintly
+surprised that the arrogant prat didn't go over backwards.
+
+``Keep together,'' said Harry, not bothering to answer. "The vampires
+will try to separate us. They'll also use compulsion. \emph{Don't} meet
+their eyes. Don't listen to their voices." He lifted a hand, and a low
+wind began to blow around them, soft with music. ``I'll use this to try
+and keep you from hearing what they say, but I can't promise it will
+work, especially if we wander apart from one another.'' He raked the
+group with a quick glance, and then snapped orders to rearrange
+themselves. It was by skill level, Connor quickly saw; Zacharias was in
+front of Neville, and Ginny, who had survived the Midsummer battle but
+still knew relatively few battle spells since she was a fifth-year, went
+towards the back.
+
+Harry himself, of course, took point, and Draco was right behind him,
+and the professors who were coming. Connor noticed one obvious absence.
+``Where's Snape?'' he hissed into Harry's ear as he took the place
+beside Draco; Harry was wise enough to know that trying to send Connor
+anywhere away from him right now wouldn't work.
+
+``Too wounded to join us,'' said Harry, and then faced the enormous
+doors and spoke softly to his left wrist. ``We're ready, Headmistress.''
+
+The doors flung open, the wards fell down so they could cross from
+safety into danger, and Harry led them out.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+His head hurt like fire and thunder and fury.
+
+That was actually the worst of it, Harry thought, rather than the
+sensations of death and torture that Voldemort kept transferring to him,
+or the concern for those who followed him into battle. He was used to
+that kind of pain, and the wizards and witches who accompanied him
+outside now, young as most of them were, had freely chosen this. He
+\emph{had} to respect that choice and concentrate on leading the fight
+instead of worrying about them, or he might as well give over the title
+to \emph{vates} right there.
+
+But the pain in his head was very hard to defeat, because it combined
+physical anguish from the scar and mental anguish from where Voldemort
+was shredding his Occlumency shields and trying to snag a hook in his
+soul. Yet sitting out of the battle was hardly an option, not with
+vampires on the run.
+
+\emph{Do you think you will win this battle?} Voldemort asked him, and
+then the mad laughter started up again, so loud that Harry didn't think
+he had to worry about hearing a vampire's voice.
+
+He shook his head, forcing his concentration forward again, and felt
+Draco at his right and Connor at his left. Lifting his eyes, he saw they
+were almost to the trees. They swayed madly, though there was little
+wind among them this night, and Harry could hear the sounds of struggle
+through his ears now instead of his mind. The centaur herd had made a
+stand against them, and around them swarmed thestrals and Many cobras
+and Runespoors and other creatures of the Forest, doing what they could
+to stop the intruders to their home without being compelled or
+exsanguinated.
+
+Stepping into the darkness without the keen senses that guided the
+magical creatures was madness for a human, though. Harry held out his
+hand, and, with only a single cynical thought for what Juniper would
+think of him, a supposedly Dark wizard, using Light magic, shouted,
+"\emph{Apricus!}"
+
+Light burst overhead, golden light deadening the dark, leaping from and
+surrounding a single intense point of white fire that Harry set to hover
+above the Forest. The stars paled before it, and the waxing moon
+combined its light with it in odd ways. Harry could have done more if he
+had sent all his magic into the radiance, but he dared not do that, for
+the sake of fighting the vampires and the sake of fighting off
+Voldemort, who kept circling around his soul, trying to take him.
+
+Another burst of pain through his scar nearly sent him to the ground,
+but Harry thought he knew how to ignore that, now. The point was to
+think about what would happen if he allowed himself to collapse, and
+that was unthinkable, so he stayed on his feet. His head burnt like the
+point of light. Well, if it had to burn, it would burn.
+
+He did derive some satisfaction from seeing a worker, compelled by
+hunger, dart towards them, long dark hair streaming behind her, hands
+raised and curved into claws. She crossed through a patch of golden
+light, and with a hissing sound, her skin began to dissolve. Blackness
+spread along it such as Harry had seen trace the edge of burnt
+parchment, though her skin smelled neither like roasting flesh nor like
+paper, but like spoiled milk. She ducked back into the shadows with a
+shriek. Harry knew the shriek would bring other vampires running; it was
+how the hive communicated.
+
+He lifted his head, told himself that exultant dark triumph \emph{was}
+far enough from hatred not to give Voldemort a hold on his soul if he
+felt it, and shouted, ``Burn them! Don't meet their eyes, don't listen
+to their voices! Don't let them get a hold on you! Strike from a
+distance! Fight back to back!''
+
+Then he plunged into the Forest, Draco on one side and Connor on the
+other, and heard battle yells mingle with the music he'd set flowing.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Ron knew it wasn't vampires that had killed Percy. He was perfectly
+aware of that. If someone had sat him down and asked him about vampires,
+he would have pointed to a picture of one and admitted that that was not
+the picture of the Thorn Bitch, and the Thorn Bitch was responsible for
+Percy's death.
+
+But the vampires were the first attackers he had seen, the first
+creatures against whom he'd had a chance to raise his wand in battle,
+since Percy died. And Ron had a lot of rage traveling back and forth
+under his skin in a vortex of red.
+
+He was glad, oh he was glad, when a drone reached towards him from under
+the protective boughs of a tree. He spun, Harry and Moody's training
+firmly in mind, and set his feet, because otherwise he could trip. Root
+to the left, stones to the right, and he stood in a small hollow. He
+didn't want to be driven backwards.
+
+"\emph{Aduro!}" he barked, and his magic snatched at the fire and set it
+blazing through his veins, through his Declaration to the Light, through
+his family's tradition of serving the Light, and what came out of his
+wand was as hot as dragonfire.
+
+The drone's hair began to blaze first. Ron laughed as he watched lines
+of blackness creep down the face, and did it while avoiding the
+compelling eyes. One hand lifted to beat at the fire, and an inhuman
+shriek that made Ron's ears bleed arose, but the flames leaped neatly to
+the vampire's fingers instead, and consumed its nails like fine wine.
+Ron laughed again, feeling very nearly drunk himself.
+
+Someone slammed him from the side, bearing him a tottering step forward,
+where his foot caught the root and he fell. Rolling, trying to regain
+his balance, Ron felt an incredibly strong arm curl around his neck and
+haul him up, and then the first icy touch of fangs at his throat from a
+worker.
+
+He still had his wand, though. And he still had his rage. He'd lost his
+brother, and nothing would ever assuage that pain, but something could
+come close to making up for it.
+
+Ron hurled all his magic and all his strength behind the next spell,
+which was not one he'd trained in, but one he'd heard of and read about.
+
+"\emph{Solstitialis}!"
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco had two things to do: keep an eye on Harry, and kill vampires.
+Both of them, he thought, were simple enough.
+
+For the first, he curled an arm around Harry's shoulders and hauled him
+up when he stumbled, spelled the flowing blood from his eyes with a
+quick Headshake Jinx, stood back-to-back with him when Harry needed an
+anchor in the physical world, and in general reminded him that they
+required him, here, in the Forest, and he didn't have permission to
+vanish into the mental battle with Voldemort.
+
+For the second, he had limited options---in fact, only one that he
+absolutely knew would work. Individual vampires were highly resistant to
+most forms of Dark magic, since it was Dark Arts that set them walking
+about in the first place. That resistance increased when they came
+together in a hive. Draco knew from the first time his eyes scraped past
+a worker's and he felt the temptation to go to her that his possession
+gift wouldn't protect him from them. And he simply wasn't as skilled
+with fire or Light spells as other Light wizards, especially not now,
+near Midsummer, when the power of the wild Dark drew back and the sun
+prevailed.
+
+So he waited until he saw a vampiress coming for him, springing lightly
+from branch to branch, and aimed his wand, and braced himself for the
+pull of magic he'd need to experience, and spoke.
+
+"\emph{Avada Kedavra.}"
+
+The green light cut the flickering, flame-enhanced darkness like a
+foxfire sun. It touched the vampiress's chest, and Draco heard, as if
+from a distance, Lupin's voice reciting what they'd learned about
+vampires in third year. \emph{Powerful enough curses do not precisely
+kill the vampire, but leach the Dark magic that makes them able to
+maintain a semblance of life.}
+
+The Killing Curse faded, and the body tumbled through the branches to
+land with a splat on the ground. Draco turned away.
+
+Other members of the hive had seen what that worker had done, though,
+and were coming at them from above, now, swarming up the trees with
+immense speed and dropping on their heads. Draco cursed and ducked a
+falling body, pulling Harry with him. They landed in an untidy heap, and
+he rolled over to see a drone already scrambling up. His body was naked,
+his eyes wild, and Draco knew that if he grabbed someone, he could rape
+that person in instants.
+
+"\emph{Curis solis}!" Harry's voice shouted from beside him.
+
+The Sun Spear Spell, Draco thought, and then he saw the golden-red
+weapon flash past the corner of his eye, hurled through Harry's fingers.
+It burned a hole straight through the drone, cauterizing the flesh as it
+passed, and he fell in the middle of a shriek. Draco shuddered, stood,
+and hauled Harry up after him.
+
+And then Harry had the nerve to pull him around so Draco could see his
+eyes---at least, as much as it was possible to notice eyes in the
+flashes of light and fire and darkness, and the continual flow of blood
+from Harry's scar---and ask, ``Are you sure that you can continue to
+manage the Unforgivables?''
+
+``Damn it,'' Draco hissed, sounding, he knew, rather like a vampire
+himself in that moment. "\emph{Yes, I can.} And it's the best weapon I
+have, and I'm going to use whatever weapon works. Now, can we
+\emph{please} get on in our battle?"
+
+Harry's mouth quirked, and stayed that way as he swung a bright sword of
+fire over Draco's head, beheading a leaping worker. Draco regretted they
+were in the middle of this battle, or, more precisely, that it took
+battles like this to bring magic that powerful out of Harry; he would
+have liked to explore what that smile could lead to in a more peaceful
+situation.
+
+Then the ground shook.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry felt the moment someone cast the Solstice Summons. His breath
+caught, and a current of cold, solid air seemed to surge past him. It
+was not air, he knew, but time. The Solstice Summons reversed or sped up
+time in a certain small area around the caster, and created Midsummer in
+that space.
+
+This close to Midsummer itself, it meant---
+
+Welling sunlight struck through the trees. Harry was forced to lift his
+left hand and shield his eyes. Dying screams answered from every
+direction, overwhelming his music and the constant low mutter of calling
+vampires and the crackle of flames and Voldemort's laughter in his head.
+
+The vampires in the immediate clearing had all retreated or died by the
+time Harry could see again. They did not want to face the Light itself,
+and that was what the Solstice Summons had brought forth, if only for a
+moment.
+
+Hooves sounded in response, and Harry turned hard, to find himself
+face-to-chest with a white centaur he had never seen before. The centaur
+clashed to a stop, forelegs lashing dangerously close to Harry's face
+for a moment. He bore a spear in one hand stained with dark rivulets and
+what Harry sincerely hoped wasn't a vampire's heart still clinging to
+it.
+
+"\emph{Vates}, you have come," the centaur snorted, and then slid to one
+knee and bowed his head. Even his hair was pale, a near match for
+Draco's. ``You must hurry. They have cornered the herd.''
+
+Harry bit his tongue on the impulse to say that Voldemort hadn't shown
+him that. Half of the things that Voldemort showed him were probably
+false, anyway. He took a step towards the centaur.
+
+\emph{Do you really think so?} Voldemort's voice was in his head again,
+worse than a Dementor's, a red spike that hammered straight in through
+an ear and out again. Harry was surprised not to hear the sound of his
+head tearing open. \emph{See this, then, Harry. You could have prevented
+their deaths if you went to London instead of choosing the Forest.}
+
+And Harry saw several people lying still, the dark puncture wounds in
+their necks gaping to the air, their bodies ripped limb from limb and
+left as cold, mangled flesh, without a trace of the blood, because the
+attacking vampires would have drunk it all. Two were adult women, one
+was a teenage girl, and the other two were boys, who might have been the
+same age as the girl or younger. Werewolf howls cut the air outside, and
+snarls and sounds of battle, but for this family, who might have been
+either wizards or Muggles, it was too late.
+
+Harry knew sickness was coming, and he leaned over and vomited as best
+as he could, blind with the vision and incapable of aiming the foulness.
+He felt Draco's arm around him, pulling him upright, his voice low and
+soothing as he urged him on, and the centaur saying his title in alarm.
+
+\emph{I have to get past this. I have to. I made the choice because I
+couldn't have Apparated to Muggle London; I didn't know where the attack
+was happening, and by the time I arrived it might have been too late for
+them.}
+
+But he could have Apparated to a werewolf pack's safehouse and searched
+with them from there, the voice of his conscience answered.
+
+\emph{Of course I could have. And then more people here would have died
+than already have.}
+
+Every choice cost something.
+
+Harry blinked hard, and this time the blindness came from blood and not
+the vision that Voldemort had implanted. ``I'm all right,'' he said, and
+shook his head angrily at Draco's doubtful face. ``I'll be all right.''
+That was probably closer to the truth, but no matter; the simple truth
+was that he couldn't leave this battlefield, not now. The vampires were
+coming slowly back, creeping from in between the trees now that the
+Solstice Summons hadn't been repeated for a few minutes. Harry could
+hear them crooning of the delights to be found in their arms, whispering
+stories of dark tunnels and blood and soft slippery flesh. Merlin knew
+how many of the people who had accompanied him from inside Hogwarts were
+already dead.
+
+The sorrow and the pain and the anger built in him, and suddenly Harry
+\emph{did} think that he knew a tactic that would take out the vampires,
+and he was so angry now that the battle with Voldemort could not keep
+his magic or his mind occupied.
+
+The Dark Lord felt that and began to struggle more strongly. Harry
+closed his eyes and refused to see anything he did not want to see.
+Instead, his hand rose, and Draco clasped it.
+
+``Hold me here,'' Harry whispered.
+
+``What are you---''
+
+Harry covered his own eyes with his free hand, tracing the shapes of
+them, the contours, the lashes, making them known to his fingers. Then
+he clenched his hand and exhaled into it. He didn't know a spell that
+would mimic the effect he wanted, so he was having to lean on his magic
+and fly with it, tell it what he desired and let the surge of pure power
+through him answer, instead of shielding his mind with an incantation.
+
+He breathed, pushing magic and will through his hand, and what came out
+was light.
+
+A single ball of burning, blinding light was to hover in front of
+everyone in the Forest who had human eyes. Harry gave himself to that,
+completely. Humans, vampires, and centaurs it would cover, but not
+Runespoors and the others; their eyes were too different. He forced
+himself not to worry about that. He leaned forward and gave as much
+effort into the push as he would into rolling off a boulder that had
+fallen on Draco and crushed his legs.
+
+He felt the moment when things suddenly got easier, and light and Light
+rushed through him. He gasped slightly, opening his eyes, then flinched
+and closed them again because of the pain of the glaring white ball in
+front of him.
+
+Scream after scream after scream rang through the trees in answer, and
+Harry knew the vampires were probably retreating back into the shadows
+to avoid the balls of light. But they were made to hover in front of
+someone's eyes, and that meant they would follow anywhere their targets
+went and penetrate any barriers. The vampires could retreat underground,
+or Apparate, and still the light would follow.
+
+\emph{Killing them all}.
+
+Harry felt regret about that, the same way he did about not being in
+London for the Muggle family. Vampires, individually, were intelligent
+creatures. He could have negotiated with them if he caught them alone.
+But, caught in the endless surging drive to establish a nest and scatter
+enough blood on the ground to sustain their queen and the young she
+would bear, they would not have listened.
+
+\emph{Unless you separated them off from one another\ldots{}}
+
+The best ideas always came too late, Harry thought as he sagged to the
+ground, the outflow of magic leaving him dizzy and light-headed. He felt
+someone crouch down beside him, and then the twine of many small bodies
+around him, their scales sliding up and down his skin like pebbles.
+Harry smiled and relaxed. He had felt them before, and knew what they
+were.
+
+``What news?'' he asked, making sure to visualize a snake to himself so
+the words would come out in Parseltongue.
+
+"\emph{The vampires are running,}" said the snake who was speaking for
+the Many at the moment. By the sound of it, she was around his neck.
+Harry was vaguely amused to note that the word ``vampires'' in
+Parseltongue was ``those with sharper fangs than we have.'' "\emph{But
+we have lost many of our own, and as many dead centaurs lie on the
+ground as there are trees in the center of the Heart Grove.}"
+
+Harry sighed and rose to his feet. ``Show me. Are the vampires gone?''
+
+"\emph{Yes.}"
+
+Harry ended the spell that made the balls of light hover in front of
+human eyes, and then blinked his way slowly through his own afterimages.
+The first person he saw was Connor, who looked extremely disappointed,
+though he smiled at Harry.
+
+``What's the matter?'' Harry asked.
+
+``I could never catch a vampire,'' Connor said in frustration. ``They
+just---avoided me, like I wasn't worth battling. They went were I
+wasn't, and they caught prey that wasn't me.'' His face brightened for a
+moment. ``Did you hear the way that Ron cast the Solstice Summons?'' he
+added. ``Wasn't that wonderful?''
+
+``Very wonderful,'' Harry said with a smile he knew was tired. Voldemort
+had gone silent in his head. Harry didn't know if that came from the
+failure of his plans, or if he had simply retreated in frustration. A
+swift Occlumency exploration revealed no trace of him, but Harry wasn't
+about to trust that. He replaced what shields he could. In the morning,
+he would ask Snape for help in strengthening them again. ``Let's tend to
+the dead,'' he said, and this time the pale centaur scooped him up and
+set him on his back, Many snakes and all, instead of kneeling down.
+Draco and Connor followed at the centaur's heels.
+
+Harry did turn his head from side to side as they rode, asking for
+reports. It seemed that only a few people, Luna among them, had been
+seriously wounded; the battle had simply been too furious and too short
+for the vampires to make a good try at killing them all, and many had
+been in other parts of the Forest, chasing the magical creatures.
+Harry's mouth tightened nonetheless. He would have to make sure that he
+visited Luna and the others in the hospital wing later.
+
+His wrist chirruped, which made the Many snakes sway and hiss in
+surprise; they probably thought a phoenix was singing in the woods.
+Harry touched his left wrist, just under the curled body of one.
+``Yes?''
+
+``Harry?'' It was Remus's voice, deeply tired. ``We did find the
+attackers, but not before they'd killed. And then we only slew a few
+vampires before the rest of them vanished. It's as if they decided
+against making that part of London their nest after all.''
+
+\emph{I chose right. I chose right.} Harry could have shouted for relief
+through his blasted throat. ``The attack in the Forbidden Forest was the
+main one, Remus,'' he said. ``They would have chosen to make their nest
+here, I think. But they're gone, and luckily without killing everyone
+here. How many dead in the packs?''
+
+Remus was silent a moment.
+
+``Remus?'' Harry asked softly.
+
+``Hawk has fallen,'' Remus whispered. ``My pack is without an alpha. And
+a few werewolves from Camellia's pack, whom I know you knew. Rose.
+Trumpetflower. Evergreen.''
+
+Harry closed his eyes and let images run through his head. He hadn't
+known Hawk well or long, but the sturdy werewolf had been a good alpha
+by all accounts. Trumpetflower had been a nervous, elegant, pretty
+pureblood witch, who had nevertheless come into the Ministry with him
+last year when Harry decided to make his fight for the cause of
+werewolves public. Rose had had a mate, Bavaros, with whom she
+constantly wrestled.
+
+Evergreen had been the young, extremely wild werewolf who'd bitten a
+Wizengamot Elder on Loki's command and spent time in Tullianum for it,
+but he'd also sworn loyalty to Harry, and to Camellia when she became
+alpha in his place. And he had never done anything like that again, from
+what Harry knew. Nor would he, unless an alpha commanded it.
+
+\emph{I think he went to his death laughing.} Harry opened his eyes.
+``Please give them my condolences, Remus,'' he said quietly. ``Tell
+Camellia I'll speak to her when I can.'' Since Camellia wasn't a witch,
+he couldn't use the phoenix song spell to communicate directly with her,
+and Trumpetflower and Rose had been the only magical werewolves in the
+pack whom Harry had taught the spell to. ``I'll---do what I can as soon
+as I can.'' The thoughts of what he needed to do were coming dangerously
+near overwhelming him again, and now he had to imagine four people he
+knew, if not well, going bravely to their deaths because he had asked
+them to.
+
+\emph{Stop}, he told himself forcefully.
+
+``We'll wait, Harry,'' Remus's voice said, balanced in deep calm. ``And
+patrol London as we need to.''
+
+The spell ended. Harry shook his head, and then looked up sharply as the
+pale centaur trotted up a rise. In front of them lay the herd.
+
+Or what remained of it. There were still living centaurs picking their
+way among the dead, but the bulks and mounds of the dead were what
+commanded Harry's attention. The blood gleamed like lakes in the
+moonlight, but there was less of it than there should have been with
+gore like this, the results of vampire feeding. Too many hooved legs
+pointed straight up into the air, and here and there a centaur collected
+a head torn from a body or a spine torn from a back.
+
+Harry quelled the urge to be sick again, and slid slowly off the centaur
+who had brought him. ``What is your name?'' he asked quietly.
+
+``Moon.'' The white centaur snapped one hoof down. His eyes were a high,
+bright, pale blue, Harry saw, now that he had the time to look at them
+in the light of the \emph{Apricus} charm that still hung overhead. ``I
+will be the leader of the herd, now that Bone is gone.''
+
+Harry spent a moment looking at the devastation. Now he could make out
+the hoofprints of thestrals, and the small broken green bodies of the
+dead Many, and the bright scales of Runespoors lying still, though now
+and then a living head lunged weakly upwards into the air beside its two
+dead brothers. He tried to estimate how long this had taken. A half an
+hour? Shorter than that?
+
+There was no answer to this, Harry thought tiredly, rubbing one hand
+across his scar. No way to make up for it. Except by destroying
+Voldemort.
+
+``We stand with you.''
+
+Harry blinked, and looked up at Moon. ``What do you mean? I know that
+you considered me an ally before now.''
+
+``And now we have seen what devastation human wars may do.'' Moon
+stamped again. ``I will become the leader because I read the sun and
+moon in the way that others do the stars. The sun and the moon tell me
+that our destiny runs beside the humans' for a time. Not for long in the
+lives of a herd or the heavens, but for long enough that our fight is
+yours. You shall have our aid outside the Forest as well as in it, if
+you will accept that from us.'' He bent down until his face was only an
+inch or two away from Harry's, staring at him, waiting.
+
+Harry had to swallow several times before he could nod. ``Thank you.
+Yes. I accept.''
+
+He turned to face the battlefield again. There was not much he could do
+for the dead, any more than for the dead Muggles in London.
+
+But what he could do, he would.
+
+He walked slowly forward to begin cleaning up, his heart feeling as
+hollow and empty as his head without Voldemort.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 5*: Interlude: A Clangor of
+Voices}\label{chapter-5-interlude-a-clangor-of-voices}
+
+Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter!
+
+\textbf{Interlude: A Clangor of Voices}
+
+\emph{The Daily Prophet}
+
+\emph{June 9th, 1997}
+
+\textbf{{\emph{MINISTRY NOW ON WAR FOOTING}}}
+
+\textbf{\emph{Acting Minister Juniper says `Hunting
+He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named' is most important priority}}
+
+\emph{By: Rita Skeeter}
+
+Acting Minister Erasmus Juniper has put the Ministry, and most of
+wizarding Britain, on a war footing, and avowed his commitment to the
+struggle with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.
+
+The Acting Minister spoke at a small funeral held yesterday for Minister
+Rufus Scrimgeour, slain by Indigena Yaxley; a Dark Mark was found
+hovering over the body. The funeral was small so as not to provide a
+target for forces of the Dark, but Juniper was firm in refusing the
+suggestion that this meant his administration was afraid.
+
+``We must be cautious to win this war,'' he said. ``Never afraid. We
+must watch for opportunities to commit our forces in the most
+advantageous places. But if we let terror take over, then we are doing
+the work of the Dark for it.''
+
+In response to questions about whether he had been arguing with Harry
+{vates}, the Acting Minister was noncommittal.
+
+``It's true that we have philosophical disagreements,'' he said. "I am
+more strictly of the Light than poor Scrimgeour was, and so he was more
+accommodating to young Harry. But I have every confidence that we can
+work together. I do not have any fear that the {vates} means to embrace
+the goals of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. This is the time for Light and
+undeclared wizards to trust each other. He is our mutual animosity, not
+the old and petty struggles of past times."
+
+The Acting Minister did admit that he intended to pass and strengthen
+some new edicts as a means of preparing wizarding Britain for the coming
+crisis, and eventual martial law.
+
+``Certain Dark magic, the most destructive and debilitating kind, is
+being prohibited,'' he said. ``But that's only natural. If we do not
+look to the lessons of history, we will only enact them, again and
+again. We made mistakes in the First War---and I include the Wizengamot,
+of which I was a member---in such matters as looking away from
+mistreatment of hostages and making the Unforgivable Curses legal for
+Aurors. That will not happen again. We will not become what we fight.''
+
+The Acting Minister added that he hoped to have more definite answers on
+his negotiations with the {vates} by next week.
+
+SSSSSSSS
+
+\emph{{\textbf{Savior or Menace?}}}
+
+\emph{A} Vox Populi \emph{Special Report on the Harry Situation}
+
+\emph{June 12th, 1997}
+
+It is now six days since the assassination of Minister Rufus Scrimgeour
+at the hands of a Dark agent widely thought to be Indigena Yaxley, and
+in the time since, we have received disturbing rumors of an attack at
+Hogwarts that almost killed the Headmistress, and of former Death Eaters
+returning to their Lord. Also, in that time, Harry {vates} has made no
+public statement of his position. It is rumored that he entered the
+Ministry the night after the Minister's assassination, but what he might
+have said or done there has been kept quiet.
+
+I conducted a series of interviews with the wizards in my home village,
+a quiet, sleepy little place in southern Cornwall. We're just an
+ordinary group of seventy or so families, a good mixture of halfbloods,
+Muggleborns, and purebloods. Some of us have house elves, some don't.
+Some of us favor complete freedom for the magical creatures, some don't.
+Some have long thought of Harry as the Young Hero or the Boy-Who-Lived
+and thus the best hope for the wizarding world; some haven't. Their
+voices (left anonymous to encourage the speakers to express themselves
+with more freedom) make for an interesting medley of opinions on the
+subject.
+
+One older witch in our village, the daughter of a Muggleborn man and the
+pureblood witch who ran away from her family to marry him, was quite
+firm on the subject. ``He's always done good for us so far, and for the
+magical creatures, too. He'll do right until we turn against him, I'd
+imagine.''
+
+A young wizard who left Hogwarts three years ago, and so knew Harry as a
+student, was more skeptical. "I'd like to {think} that he'll save us
+all," he said, ``but that's a child's dream, innit? More likely we'll
+have to join in saving ourselves, and not hide behind one boy's wand. Or
+hands. I heard that he doesn't even use a wand any more.''
+
+A Granian breeder only spat when I asked him. ``Oh, yes,'' he muttered.
+``He only wants to take our livelihoods, after all, and people only die
+around him, after all. A fine choice for savior of the world. It's
+fitting fate chose him to be the savior, though. Fate's a fickle bitch.
+I remember a time---'' And he devolved into personal stories it would
+not be appropriate to repeat here.
+
+A young witch, not of age to attend Hogwarts yet, was firmly of the
+opinion that Harry would kill You-Know-Who before the week was out. Her
+mother was more reserved.
+
+"He {might,}" she said. ``All I know that is that he hasn't yet. I would
+be more impressed if he'd made an open statement about working with the
+new Ministry, that his commitments didn't collapse when the Minister
+died, and that we won't have to wait whist the Acting Minister and him
+fight it out all over again.''
+
+A small group of wizards and witches has formed in the village to write
+letters to Harry, asking him to make a Declaration. They believe he will
+need the extra power to defeat You-Know-Who, who at the moment is widely
+believed to be the most powerful wizard in the world.
+
+A similar delegation of young wizards apparently tried to sneak out of
+their homes and go to Hogwarts, where they would have offered their
+wands to Harry, but were caught by their parents.
+
+``I don't think anything about this situation is normal,'' one
+exasperated mother confided to me after hauling her son back inside by
+the ear, and effortlessly ignoring his spouted fantasies about wanting
+to fight at Harry's side. "I only know that I wish it was over with, and
+that we just knew what he was {doing}."
+
+SSSSSSSSSS
+
+\emph{The Daily Prophet}
+
+\emph{June 16th, 1997}
+
+\emph{{\textbf{VAMPIRE ATTACK!}}}
+
+\textbf{\emph{Vampire hive hits Muggle London and Forbidden Forest}}
+
+\emph{By: Rita Skeeter}
+
+The worst news of the Second War so far has been confirmed:
+He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has made common cause with a hive of vampires.
+There were attacks last night on both a Muggle home in London and the
+Forbidden Forest near Hogwarts. What place they sought for a nesting
+site seems to have been open to question; it may have been both.
+
+Many Muggles, unfortunately, either witnessed the attack in London or
+found the torn, exsanguinated bodies when wandering into the scene of
+the crime, increasing the task for the Ministry's Obliviators.
+
+``It's just one damn task after another, lately,'' confided Lethe
+Amarantha, Head of the Obliviator Office. ``We keep receiving word of
+Muggles seeing and remembering things from our world that they
+shouldn't. This may be You-Know-Who's secondary tactic: to expose our
+world to the Muggles via his attacks and so incite them to strike back
+at us just like they did three hundred years ago.''
+
+Word is that Harry {vates} and several companions turned back the
+vampire attack in the Forbidden Forest, but not before a high cost in
+magical creature (and perhaps human) lives. Someone fought the vampires
+in London as well, but Madam Amarantha said they had all vanished before
+the Obliviators arrived.
+
+``Whoever they are, we're bloody grateful to them,'' she added.
+
+Not everyone was as grateful; a few wizards living near the Muggle
+family that was killed expressed fears that they were the real targets,
+and some resentment that the {vates} chose to attend to the Forbidden
+Forest instead of coming to help save lives in London.
+
+``I know he doesn't mean it this way,'' said Flora Johnson, a halfblood
+witch who has made her home among Muggles for several decades while she
+studies the depiction of wizards and witches in their popular culture.
+``But it does make it seem as if he was choosing magical creatures'
+lives over human lives, and that's an impression that will do him no
+favors.''
+
+Comment on the matter is as yet unavailable from Harry {vates} or any
+magical creature.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 6*: Bringing Him to
+Heel}\label{chapter-6-bringing-him-to-heel}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Four: Bringing Him to Heel}
+
+``I do think that you made the right decision,'' Aurora said, trying to
+control both the impulse to snap and the blood that hammered in her
+temples. "We can't afford to regret matters now, sir. We \emph{must}
+press ahead with the course we've chosen and do right by our people."
+
+Erasmus paused thoughtfully, his hand hovering over the paperwork in
+front of him. Aurora hoped she concealed her envy as she watched him.
+She had never realized that managing the Ministry, or even helping to
+manage it, would be so bloody \emph{exhausting.} Of course, she had
+hardly envisioned coming to power after Scrimgeour's assassination,
+either; the change should have been gentler. But either way, fatigue
+already bore her down, and yet didn't seem to touch a hair on Erasmus's
+head.
+
+``If you think so,'' said Erasmus at last.
+
+``I do,'' said Aurora firmly. They'd made the decision jointly not to
+send the \emph{Daily Prophet} the edict that forbid use of the
+\emph{absorbere} gift after Harry's rather dramatic snatching back of
+his former Death Eaters. It would be too open an attack on Harry and
+Harry alone. Aurora didn't intend to let Erasmus reconsider that choice
+now. They had other things to do.
+
+Luckily, when the Acting Minister switched his attention to a new
+target, he switched \emph{all} his attention. He picked up the list of
+tactics Aurora had suggested, and what she'd gathered from their allies,
+and looked them over carefully. ``You think that these will work?''
+
+``In an ordinary time? No.'' Aurora forced her hand to fall from her
+temple and curl, relaxed, in her lap. ``Now, when Harry foolishly hasn't
+made a public statement about where exactly he stands with the Ministry?
+Yes, I do think so. He hasn't made that public statement because he
+doesn't want to lead to the impression of himself as a rebel or outlaw.
+Now, we'll force him to make the statement, one way or the other. If he
+stands against us, we're justified in taking sterner measures. If he
+stands with us, he'll have to say so, and then act in concert with us
+instead of going behind our backs.''
+
+``Hmmm,'' said Erasmus.
+
+Aurora fought to keep from rolling her eyes. The Acting Minister was
+going to suggest a drawback or exception when he made \emph{that} noise.
+He had proven to be more prickly and hesitant than Aurora had thought he
+was when she allied with him. \emph{Perhaps it's the difference between
+theory and practice.} ``Yes, sir?''
+
+"I just don't know if this is a \emph{guarantee}," said Erasmus, and
+drummed his fingers on the list of tactics. ``The boy has proven
+annoyingly unpredictable so far. What will happen if he doesn't pursue
+either course of action that you think is likeliest?''
+
+Aurora relaxed. This was a reluctance she'd planned for. ``Then you'll
+still have the financial gains from the plan,'' she said. ``No harm done
+there.''
+
+``Unless we drive the boy into open war against us because we threatened
+him,'' Erasmus mused.
+
+``I really do not think that will happen,'' said Aurora, memories of
+Harry flashing through her mind. \emph{He stood up for his rights
+against the monitoring board in the end, but he still didn't curse us,
+didn't hurt us for what we'd done.} ``He may well fight a separate war
+against You-Know-Who and refuse to trust us. He would consider us
+enemies if we got in his way. But he won't forget himself so far as to
+take revenge. He's not that kind of person, Minister. Not Dark.''
+
+That was the language one needed to speak with Erasmus, and Aurora saw
+it working now. His face firmed, and he gave one strong nod. ``I knew he
+was not,'' he said softly. ``I've known some decent undeclared wizards,
+and Potter's one of them. He won't turn to the Dark.'' His hand
+tightened on the parchment in front of him. ``He just needs a bit of a
+reminder what war is like, and what the Ministry requires in times of
+war.''
+
+Aurora smiled, her headache easing for the first time that morning.
+``Just so.''
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``Again.''
+
+Harry let out his breath slowly, and then focused on Snape's eyes. They
+were dark and burning in a way that made Harry nervous since the night
+he'd briefly fallen to Voldemort's control and tried to assassinate
+McGonagall. But Harry trusted him now. He'd been inside Snape's head
+when his guardian fought his way free of that control. This shining only
+meant fierce will.
+
+"\emph{Legilimens,}" he whispered.
+
+His will flew forward, and he swept through the outer layer of Snape's
+shields. Then Snape threw up another wall, and Harry realized he'd been
+allowed through the first one to encourage him and trap him into
+overconfidence.
+
+\emph{This is the way,} Snape told him without words, though they were
+so deep they might have shared thoughts easily. \emph{This way, and
+this, and this---}
+
+And so he went on, showing Harry Occlumency techniques less common than
+the silver pools, tactics he'd developed and used himself in his year
+spying for Dumbledore against the Dark Lord. Even with his concentration
+in tatters and the pain of his mental wounds still sometimes
+overwhelming him, he was the best Occlumens Harry had ever known. The
+shields were thin and flexible and perfectly in motion, and, best of
+all, they weren't shaped like anything in particular. Once a Legilimens
+knew the shape of his victim's mind, such as a forest or a house, he
+could often identify the defenses from the forms they took, but Snape
+had amorphous, constantly mutable walls. Harry would strike at what he
+thought was one of them and find it a shadow, or turn and find another
+curving behind him, blocking his path or protecting a memory he would
+have liked to access.
+
+He learned a great deal from Snape during these sessions, but he
+remembered that he had been confident in the first set of shields that
+he wrapped around the scar connection, too, and that Voldemort had
+largely destroyed those without effort.
+
+His will wavered, and Snape pushed him easily out of his mind. His frown
+was milder than it would have been before the war started, Harry
+thought, but still present. ``You must concentrate harder, Harry,'' he
+said quietly. ``This is your only hope of keeping him out of your
+head.''
+
+Harry lowered his eyes and nodded. He honestly didn't think the
+connection could be closed at all, but giving up would be worse than
+spending this kind of effort. At least he was learning tactics that
+would help him to defend his mind more effectively if it was ever his
+own again.
+
+It had not been for most of the last few days. Voldemort assaulted him
+with visions of hundreds of vampires brooding underground, under the
+fat, pale, instantly recognizable bulk of a queen. He sent visions of
+victims captured and tortured to death, and Harry had no idea if they
+were real or not; he only knew that the papers had reported no
+disappearances, and that his muscles still ached with the curses as if
+they were real. His body and his mind swam with potions he was using to
+keep awake and alert and to sometimes snatch a moment of real rest. He
+knew he could not continue like this, and he did not think Occlumency
+was the answer.
+
+``What do you wish to do?'' Snape asked, his hand gently stroking
+Harry's hair. His voice had none of its usual ice or sharpness.
+
+Harry blinked at him, confused, wondering if this meant something was
+wrong. Then he realized Snape was most likely acting as he did to avoid
+stressing him or backing him into a corner, the way that Harry himself
+would usually refrain from mentioning certain subjects when Snape was in
+a bad mood. He snorted, and Snape raised an eyebrow at him.
+
+``Only thinking how our roles have reversed, again,'' said Harry, and
+stretched his arms over his head, wishing the momentary feeling of
+relaxation and ease it brought him would last longer than it did.
+
+Snape murmured a spell usually used to make patients hit with
+compression curses uncurl, and Harry felt some of the stress leave his
+neck and shoulders. He nodded to Snape.
+
+``They are back to what they should have been,'' said Snape, his voice
+rough with an emotion that Harry couldn't identify, but knew his
+guardian would never have shown if his mind were normal. ``I am guarding
+and guiding and protecting you, Harry. My burden should never have been
+yours to carry.''
+
+Harry lowered his eyes. It wasn't worth getting into an argument about
+that right now. He had enough other things to think about, enough other
+things to demand his time and attention, Merlin knew.
+
+``You should rest,'' Snape said quietly. ``It's been three nights since
+you took any Dreamless Sleep potion. You can have some of it again.''
+
+Harry tensed again. He hated the way taking the potion made him feel in
+the morning, drugged and hazy, and it could be potentially fatal now, if
+he made a bad decision while under the potion's influence. He was about
+to argue when a flutter of wings announced that an owl had found them in
+the dungeons, and he turned to deal with it, giving a slight sigh. The
+post never brought good news, now.
+
+He frowned when he realized the envelope on the owl's leg carried an
+official Ministry seal. Snape murmured the relaxation spell again, but
+Harry barely heard him. He almost tore the letter open.
+
+The letter was brief and to the point, which wasn't something Harry
+could say about most of the Ministry's correspondence.
+
+\emph{June 17th, 1997}
+
+\emph{Vates:}
+
+\emph{This is to inform you that the building belonging to the
+organization known as the Alliance of Sun and Shadow is hereby claimed.
+The Ministry requires it for official use. As well, the printing presses
+used by the Alliance to produce pamphlets and the like are now in
+service to the war effort. The people who lived and worked in the
+building have been notified, and are now seeking employment and shelter
+elsewhere.}
+
+\emph{Gloria Hopewell,}
+
+\emph{Ministry War Claims Subcommittee.}
+
+Harry swore softly. The building that housed the Alliance's ``official''
+headquarters hadn't been anything spectacular---a former shop in the
+middle of Diagon Alley---but it had given people a place to go if they
+wanted to learn more about the Alliance or swear the oaths, and had
+given several of the werewolves who were left abandoned and without jobs
+after the rebellion at Woodhouse a chance to work.
+
+More than that, though, he could read the message Juniper was sending
+him. \emph{I have more important work for you than the Alliance. The
+Alliance should be absorbed into the Ministry before it can become a
+divisive force.}
+
+Or, perhaps even more simply: \emph{There's nothing you can do about
+this.}
+
+Harry closed his eyes. He had made no public announcement of his
+position of the kind they were all clamoring for because he had hoped
+against hope to avoid open conflict with the Ministry. They \emph{could}
+ignore each other. He wasn't sure he'd piss on Juniper if he were on
+fire, but he wouldn't interfere with the Minister's war effort if it
+didn't interfere with his. Cooperation was impossible; coexistence might
+not be. A lie would make him look bad when the Ministry did something he
+couldn't approve of; a hostile statement would give Voldemort a crack in
+their defenses to exploit; something neutral and in-between wouldn't
+satisfy anyone.
+
+And now, this.
+
+\emph{Juniper is trying to push me towards open conflict. Why? Doesn't
+he understand how bad this would be?}
+
+A moment more of thinking, though, and Harry was sure that he understood
+Juniper's potion on the matter. Juniper \emph{did} believe they could
+afford no division, and wanted Harry to stand with him. But he was
+determined to be in control of that---coalition; Harry could not bring
+himself to think of it as an alliance. So he had to demonstrate his
+control to Harry, and in such a way that Harry would surrender and go
+along quietly. If anything was better than open conflict, surely that
+would include surrender.
+
+Except that Harry had changed his mind, and he would not surrender
+control again, and every step that Juniper took only insured that Harry
+grew more and more determined in that resolve.
+
+``Harry!''
+
+Abruptly, he blinked and realized that Snape had been calling his name
+for the past few minutes. He passed over the letter and then began
+pacing his guardian's office, biting his lip, hard, as he thought.
+
+What was the best course of action?
+
+He didn't want to part ways openly with the Ministry, but as long as he
+didn't, Juniper would keep pushing him, and other people would spin
+horrible stories out of his silence, like the one that had emerged in
+the wake of the vampire attack---that he simply paid more attention to,
+and cared more about, magical creatures than humans. And those would
+stress him, and---
+
+Harry let out a windy, gusting sigh. \emph{I can't let that happen. I'm
+pushed and harassed enough as it is, and Voldemort won't let up on me; I
+can't make him back off except by killing him. There's a chance I can do
+it with Juniper and everyone chattering at me to say something, say
+something,} say something. \emph{So I'll do it.}
+
+``You cannot let him get away with this,'' Snape said softly, looking
+up. ``I thought he would have taken his lesson from the open opposition
+you showed to him in the Ministry, but it does not seem so.''
+
+``That gave him courage because it was private, I think,'' said Harry.
+``And I didn't hurry to publicize it, either. He must think I'll accept
+an alliance with him in lieu of everyone finding out.'' He took a deep
+breath. "And I know \emph{exactly} which way to convince him that that's
+wrong."
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco had been staring at the letter that had come for him for the last
+five minutes, trying to decide on the best course of action.
+
+\emph{June 17th, 1997}
+
+\emph{Gringotts Bank}
+
+\emph{Dear Mr. Malfoy:}
+
+\emph{I speak for the} hanarz, \emph{the leader of the southern goblins.
+You will, I think, know her, as you are the lover of the} vates.
+
+\emph{The Ministry contacted us today about seizing your vaults and
+forbidding you from accessing them. This includes not only the Malfoy
+fortune your father arranged for you to inherit, but every vault you
+might access in the future; if the} vates \emph{gave you access to the
+Black money, for example, that money would automatically become the
+property of the Ministry. They have forgotten their recent lessons in
+our independence. As there has so far been no rumor of the} vates
+\emph{and the Acting Minister definitely parting ways, however, we defer
+to your wishes.}
+
+\emph{Sincerely,}
+
+\emph{Ragsong.}
+
+Draco closed his eyes.
+
+He had, of course, wanted to seize the first quill near at hand and
+haughtily instruct the goblins never to let anyone touch anything of
+his. But that would get more people than just himself in trouble. Draco
+wasn't foolish enough to think the Ministry would listen to him. They
+would invade Gringotts for the money, and the goblins would fight, and
+that would lead to bloodshed in the streets. Or they would demand access
+to the vaults, and the goblins would refuse, and Juniper could use that
+to stir up fears among wizards about who \emph{really} controlled the
+gold in Gringotts, and unite some of Harry's enemies against him, behind
+the Acting Minister.
+
+\emph{Just exactly what we do not need right now. Voldemort's being
+explosive enough as it is.}
+
+Draco let a small, fierce smile slip across his face. For one thing, he
+had no fear that he was suddenly about to go hungry or poor; Harry would
+insure he had money enough for his needs. Harry did not value money
+except for what it could do, and as far as he was concerned, Draco could
+have as much of the Black fortune as Regulus or the Black legal
+documents would let him take. So the Ministry's threat to freeze future
+vaults was not something he needed to react against.
+
+And it might be well to seemingly accede gracefully, for now, and have
+this hidden weapon lying in wait for when the time was right. There
+might come an hour when the goblins' willingness to protect something
+because it belonged to a person who belonged to the \emph{vates} would
+be useful. Likely in the wake of bigger explosions, of course, but Draco
+was determined not to cause one that could be traced to him.
+
+And it was the Slytherin thing to do, not reacting to provocation with
+the expected hatred and open anger.
+
+He sat down and wrote calmly back, instructing the goblins to allow the
+Ministry provisional access to the Malfoy vaults for now. If they tried
+to take any money from them, as opposed to not letting Draco remove
+money, then Draco wished to hear from Ragsong at once. He would decide
+what to do, depending on if Juniper was so audacious as to try to use
+the Malfoy funds like spoils of war.
+
+He also asked, as if casually, for the letter the Ministry had sent to
+Gringotts making their demand.
+
+He liked to have more than one weapon up his sleeve.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry smiled as politely as he could through the green flames in the
+Floo connection, and inclined his head. ``Madam Whitestag,'' he said. He
+didn't \emph{think} his teeth were grinding. The pain in his head
+increased noticeably when he did that, and so far it remained at its
+even pounding, pulsing tempo. ``I wanted to speak to you about this
+letter the Acting Minister sent me. A small matter of shutting down the
+organization of the Alliance of Sun and Shadow, I think.''
+
+Aurora gave him a little smile of her own. ``I am sorry for that,
+Harry,'' she said. ``But we needed the space and the presses. Needs
+must, in a time of war.'' She glanced up from the chair she sat in.
+``Here is the Acting Minister now. Of course he would want to speak with
+you about this.''
+
+Juniper strode through the door of the office. Harry realized he was
+waiting for him to limp. He fought the temptation to close his eyes and
+bow his head. Yes, he missed Minister Scrimgeour, but he was dead now
+and beyond being hurt, since he hadn't left a ghost. Harry had to
+concentrate on the living.
+
+"\emph{Vates}," said Juniper, pulling up another chair. He bent down
+towards the fire, and let Harry have a good look at his face, stern and
+lined. Harry thought that was supposed to impress him with how busy the
+Acting Minister was and how he was taking time out of that busy day for
+this conversation. Since Harry was rather busy himself, he was not
+impressed. ``You have some questions about what we did with the small
+group of werewolves and wizards working in the building the Ministry
+claimed yesterday?''
+
+Harry shook his head. ``I did have questions. Not any more, Acting
+Minister.''
+
+Juniper raised his eyebrows. "Then you agree that the Ministry needs all
+the support it can receive in this war, Mr. Pott---\emph{vates}?" For
+the first time, he spoke the name with eagerness, and true respect.
+
+``I understand that you want my support,'' Harry said.
+
+Juniper nodded.
+
+"I understand that you were willing to shut down an organization that
+did you no harm, and might have done you some good by encouraging people
+not to panic, and to \emph{think} about their situation, because you
+wanted to get at me," Harry continued, in the same flat, almost bored
+voice. Really, he was surprised by how easy this was, once he assented
+to the idea that he and Juniper had parted ways and nothing was going to
+reconcile them.
+
+``I would not phrase it that way,'' said Juniper.
+
+"Of course \emph{you} wouldn't." Harry leaned forward. "But I don't see
+you claiming presses from the \emph{Prophet}, Acting Minister, which has
+far more of them. There were two presses only that the Alliance owned.
+And we were able to purchase the building we did in the first place
+because it had sat abandoned for so long. There are much better
+buildings in Diagon Alley that you could have acquired if you wanted
+one."
+
+``Those others are legitimate businesses,'' Juniper said.
+
+He probably meant that to sound impressive, too, or at least chiding;
+his voice had taken on the tone of a parent scolding an angry child.
+Harry smiled, slowly. The man had said almost exactly what Harry would
+have wished him to.
+
+``And the Alliance of Sun and Shadow cannot be,'' he said. ``Why is
+that, Acting Minister? Because it was associated with me? Or because the
+people who worked there were mostly werewolves?''
+
+Juniper's eyes narrowed. ``Neither,'' he said. ``I only meant that the
+people working there did not depend on the Alliance for their
+livelihood, Mr. Potter.''
+
+``And again you give me a name I dropped almost two years ago,'' Harry
+said softly. ``Not only Minister Scrimgeour, but most of my enemies, at
+least gave me the courtesy of using the only name I can lay claim to, my
+first one.''
+
+Juniper was too good a politician to run his hand through his hair, but
+Harry thought he could see traces of the impulse to do so in his eyes.
+"I am not your enemy, \emph{vates.}"
+
+``You have tried to force me to join you,'' said Harry. ``You have
+targeted people close to me unfairly, when you could have claimed money
+and possessions from many others if your concern was the quality of life
+the Ministry must maintain under martial law. Tell me, Acting Minister.
+If that does not fit the definition of enemy, what does it fit? And if
+you are intent on acting as you should, if your main moral project in
+this war is to remain separate from Voldemort, how can you excuse such
+things?''
+
+``There is no one else in your position,'' said Juniper. He remained
+still, but his eyes burned like Snape's, or like the suddenly mounting
+headache behind Harry's temples. "No one else who can so influence what
+we do, Harry. No one else whose departure from our cause can so damage
+us. We \emph{must} have you with us."
+
+``This, Acting Minister,'' said Harry, ``was the exact wrong way to go
+about it. You have never understood me, and you never will. I have
+something in common with the magical creatures I am trying to free: I
+don't like being cornered.''
+
+He flipped his wrist over, and his magic rose around him. A silvery flow
+of memories traveled from his temple to the golden bubble suddenly
+forming in the air a few feet away. The bubble budded once it contained
+the memories, once and then again, and then again, and then again. It
+was still budding when it sped out of the room. Harry had directed it to
+go to Hogsmeade. The other, smaller bubbles would follow it and
+``learn'' the right way to go about doing what Harry wanted them to do,
+before they spread around the British Isles.
+
+``What have you done?'' Juniper demanded, half-rising to his feet.
+
+``The bubbles are modified Pensieves,'' Harry said calmly, sitting back
+in his chair. "They will seek out every wizarding village of any size in
+Britain and Ireland, and display the memories of the conversation we
+just had. Anyone who wishes is welcome to capture one and put his or her
+head in, so that they can verify that these memories work like the
+memories of Pensieves. They are \emph{true}, Acting Minister, and you
+have just made some admissions that could hurt your cause very badly."
+
+Aurora actually let out a little shriek, and then clasped her hand
+across her mouth, eyes wide. Juniper shook his head and leaned forward,
+voice lowering, the way Snape's did when he was angry. Harry didn't
+think he was angry, though. He sounded more as though he were struggling
+to understand.
+
+``Why, Harry? Why would you do such a thing?''
+
+``Because,'' Harry said, rising to his feet, his headache easing a bit
+as the magic flooded away from him, ``I am tired of being pushed.''
+
+Juniper's face darkened. ``And you wish us to lose the war to your
+childlike temper?''
+
+``If you had approached me as an equal,'' Harry said, "if you had
+accepted that I am \emph{not} going to accept such measures as caging my
+father and targeting me specifically in the claiming of buildings, then
+that would never have been a concern, Acting Minister. As matters stand,
+it \emph{is} very much your concern. Good day." He shut the Floo
+connection with an easy wave of his hand, and then turned and strode out
+of the room.
+
+He hadn't told Juniper everything the bubbles would do, of course. There
+was no sense in ruining his fun. The papers coming out tomorrow, or the
+first person who sped into the Ministry with a report, would be early
+enough.
+
+The villages would also see an announcement that Harry was willing to
+take on anyone who would come to him and promise to help in the war. The
+people raging and frustrated because they could do nothing would have
+something to do. Those exasperated by the Ministry's actions would see
+that it was not the only locus of resistance to Voldemort. Those with
+nowhere else to go would have a place. Those who wanted to learn
+stronger defensive spells so that they could go back to their own homes
+and help protect them---an action Harry would highly encourage, so that
+he could be less worried about random attacks everywhere in
+Britain---could learn them.
+
+He would never be a Lord, but he could modify their tactics. Lords had
+often taken on sworn companions in the past. Harry was doing the same
+thing, but he would work with them as equals, as true companions, and
+use them for far more than protecting and amusing himself.
+
+\emph{And it will prevent this from becoming a war of Light and Dark,
+the way Juniper wants to make it. There are Light wizards like the
+Weasleys whom I hope to prevent from following the Ministry, but they
+might do it if they think that's the only place they're truly welcome.
+And I won't have undeclared wizards and Dark wizards panicked into lying
+low or changing their allegiances merely to be safe, when they could
+fight in unique ways against Voldemort.}
+
+It was not his imagination, he realized suddenly. The constant headache
+had ebbed a bit. And it had done so not because of pleasant thoughts, as
+he had believed at first, but with his release of an enormous amount of
+magic.
+
+\emph{I wonder if that happens because I'm drawing on the magic that
+flows between Voldemort and me, and this leaves him less strength to
+attack me with visions?}
+
+Harry felt something that could have been a smile and could have been a
+smirk tug at his mouth. \emph{I didn't get everything I wanted. Juniper
+is an idiot, and this would have been far easier if he would simply work
+with me, or if there was a way that I could stand in his fold and not
+betray all my principles.}
+
+\emph{But at least now everyone will know, and realize there's a viable
+alternative to the Ministry. They no longer own the field.}
+
+\emph{I am sorry that it came to this, Scrimgeour. But, if I'm right
+about the legacy you left in place, at least some of your people will
+become the core of a new, better Ministry---whether or not it's within
+the walls of the current one.}
+
+He held up his hand, and cast a floating rainbow shimmer of magic around
+himself, because he could, and it eased his headache, and he thought he
+heard a distant snarl from Voldemort. Harry laughed back. The laugh was
+half a growl.
+
+\emph{Anything I can do to discomfit the bastard is fair game.}
+
+SSSSSSSSS
+
+``That---no,'' said Aurora blankly, and then leaned back in her chair.
+
+Erasmus went on staring at the closed Floo connection. Of all the ways
+he had envisioned his conversation with Harry going, that had never been
+one of them. The boy could have acquiesced and come to their side
+quietly, or burst into noisy screams and tears, the way that most
+children of his age would have. He could have made some ridiculously
+extravagant gesture that would matter nothing to anyone but him, and be
+forgotten in a week's time. He could finally have made the public
+statement on his position that everyone wanted out of him.
+
+Instead, he had chosen a gesture that would wreak havoc with the British
+wizarding population, splitting it in half, or nearly so.
+
+Erasmus leaned back against the chair, and finally forced himself to
+confront another piece of reality he'd been ignoring.
+
+\emph{He cares more for his own freedom and independence, the way he
+looks and acts, than for the united front we must present against his
+enemies. He's accepted the division as inevitable and used it to benefit
+himself.}
+
+That said and done, Erasmus thought, snapping his eyes open, he would
+not waste his time in trying to compel the boy. He could not afford to
+waste strength in fighting him, either. He would part ways with him,
+since it was what Harry wanted, and advance the new Order he planned to
+inaugurate on Midsummer Eve.
+
+\emph{So the Light stands alone against the Dark. Well, it has ever been
+so.}
+
+Admittedly, that thought made him feel better before one of the Aurors
+came dashing in to report that Harry, had after all, made a public
+statement, and it was rather different than anyone had expected.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 7*: Interlude: The
+Offers}\label{chapter-7-interlude-the-offers}
+
+Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter!
+
+\textbf{Interlude: The Offers}
+
+\emph{June 18th, 1997}
+
+\emph{Dear} vates:
+
+My living name is unimportant. You may call me Vermillion. What you need
+to know is that I am a vampire, and I, along with several others of my
+kind, are unhappy about the actions of the hive allied with the Dark
+Lord. Their attacks are too open, and they are trying too hard to
+establish a nesting site. They will provoke the Ministry into open panic
+soon, and that will result in the hunting and burning of vampires like
+us, who have no part in these activities, as well as those mindless
+creatures who deserve it.
+
+We will come to a bargain with you. We will show you the resting place
+of the hive's queen. Below is a map of the northern coast of Scotland,
+with Apparition coordinates. We trust you know how to use them.
+
+In return, you will both come to meet us, so that you can hear of the
+differences between individual vampires and the hive, and take us among
+your allies when you have learned that we speak the truth. We expect to
+be lieutenants at the least. We are vampires, and that means cleverer,
+stronger, faster, and certainly more powerful than all but a few of your
+allies.
+
+This owl will find me. In return for our choosing the place, you may
+choose the time of our meeting and who to bring with you. Bring as many
+or as few bodyguards as you feel comfortable with. We shall not be
+insulted, for we know mortals grow uneasy in our presence.
+
+\emph{In pride,}
+
+\emph{Vermillion.}
+
+SSSSSSSSS
+
+\emph{June 18th, 1997}
+
+\emph{Dear sister:}
+
+I hope this letter finds you well. I have heard so little from you over
+the long years that I find myself ignorant of even your state of health.
+I also find myself lamenting that. Sisters should not be so estranged
+from one another.
+
+Of course, I have another member of my family to keep close and comfort
+my sad heart during the long hours. I am able to look over at any time I
+wish and see my nephew with a pale face and a rapidly beating heart, but
+alive.
+
+Understand one thing, sister. My Lord is not pleased with Feldspar. Nor
+am I, since he was the one who necessitated my service. That means that,
+though he has been called back into the Dark Lord's service, he is
+unlikely to live long. He will be sent on the most dangerous missions,
+and, well, if something happens to him, I can at least hope that he will
+die in an amusing way, as there will be a mysterious shortage of healing
+potions in his immediate area.
+
+I know that you do not wish this to happen. You love your son. That can
+be seen in the way you spoiled him. And who would not love such a child
+as he was, who {did} seem to understand Yaxley honor, who had so much
+potential?
+
+But it is what will happen, Peridot, unless you do a few things for us.
+In return, I will protect Feldspar and keep him from bleeding out his
+life on the end of another's wand or cracking his silly head open on the
+ground.
+
+First, I know that you still have access to some of the Ministry's more
+corruptible elements. You will be helping my Lord find the contacts he
+needs to climb into the Acting Minister's very pocket.
+
+Second, you will do what you can to persuade our sister Lazuli out of
+her madness of supporting Harry {vates}.
+
+Can you succeed in these? I do not know if you can. I only know that you
+should try very, very hard.
+
+It is for the sake of the family, after all.
+
+And so is the potion smeared on this letter. My Lord has recently
+acquired a Potions brewer who, while not of the same inventive skills as
+Severus Snape, is capable of following complicated instructions. The
+moment you touched this parchment, sister, the potion passed into your
+skin. My Lord can set you on fire with a thought, now, from any
+distance, and he will not hesitate to do it if you neglect your duties.
+
+To avoid this is simple, of course. Do not neglect them.
+
+With warm and sisterly regards,
+
+\emph{Indigena Yaxley.}
+
+{Vita desinit, decus permanit.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 8*: Rider on the
+Hatred}\label{chapter-8-rider-on-the-hatred}
+
+Thanks for the reviews on the Interlude!
+
+\textbf{Chapter Five: Rider on the Hatred}
+
+Minerva stood with head high and arms folded as she watched the last of
+the first-year Gryffindors Floo through the hearth in her office, on
+their way home. Those who didn't have Floo connections, mostly the
+Muggleborn students, had already been Apparated home by those of the
+professors and Harry's adult allies who could make the journey. The
+Hogwarts Express might be tradition, but it was a tradition too
+vulnerable to preserve in times of war.
+
+``Madam?''
+
+Minerva turned, a bit surprised to see Neville Longbottom behind her.
+She'd thought Augusta would have claimed him and transported him home
+already. ``Yes, Mr. Longbottom?'' she asked, and made sure to arrange
+her face in a welcoming expression. Merlin knew Neville needed all the
+encouragement he could get. One of the minor frustrations of becoming
+Headmistress and no longer having the time for her students in
+Gryffindor that she used to had been her knowledge that Neville was not
+as likely to receive that encouragement from anyone else.
+
+``Is---'' Neville paused for a moment, as if figuring out how to phrase
+the question, then asked, ``Will the school be open next year?''
+
+Minerva felt her face soften. She could remember a time when asking that
+question without stuttering would have been beyond Neville. And it was a
+good question, one that she had seen asked in the way people looked at
+her from the corners of their eyes and half-opened their mouths before
+they turned away from her again.
+
+``Yes,'' she said. ``It will be, Neville.''
+
+He blinked glassy eyes at her. ``Really? Even with the War?''
+
+``Even with the War,'' Minerva said firmly. ``Hogwarts is a sanctuary
+for those in need, Neville. I will not shut it unless it became a
+greater magnet for trouble than a shelter. And its wards make it one of
+the most powerfully-defended places in Britain. Even Voldemort would
+have trouble attacking us, given the Founders and how deep the wards
+run. Whilst the children and others are sheltering here, they might as
+well learn something.''
+
+Neville gave a faint smile, and for a moment, Minerva saw his father.
+Frank Longbottom had been taller than Neville at this age and not as
+stocky, but he'd had the same manner of considering what an adult said
+with a forthright air, as though he were grateful for the information
+but would make up his own mind about it. Minerva swallowed a sudden
+burst of pain. It had been less than five years after Frank was
+Neville's age that he and his wife had lost their minds to Bellatrix
+Lestrange's Cruciatus. \emph{May a similar fate not await their son.}
+
+``You don't think the Ministry will force you to close the school?''
+Neville asked then, and proved he had a mind of his own. Frank had been
+a bit more trusting of authority figures---understandably, since Albus
+had been the Headmaster for all his years at school.
+
+``They can try,'' said Minerva.
+
+She left unsaid that she would not let them win, but Neville picked up
+on it. His face brightened. ``Thank you for telling me, Madam,'' he said
+quietly, and then left the office.
+
+Minerva turned and shut the Floo connection. She had already received a
+letter from the Acting Minister, in fact, asking her to visit him in a
+few days' time and ``explore choices for the alternative education of
+Hogwarts students in the autumn term.''
+
+It was lucky she was no stranger to battles.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``And the beds tell me stories, and with coaxing, they will tell me
+stories that I haven't heard from them before,'' Luna finished with a
+triumphant expression.
+
+``That's good, Luna.'' Harry squeezed her hand and smiled at her. Her
+throat was healing nicely, he saw, though a swathe of bandages still
+concealed the puncture wound from sight. Madam Pomfrey had had to use
+Skele-Gro on one of her arms; the vampire who'd attacked Luna had
+grabbed her arm and swung her so hard into a tree that her bones simply
+went to powder. But, with magic and the matron's stern care to keep her
+from wandering out of bed and conversing with the walls, Luna was
+recovering. ``You don't need anything?''
+
+``The stones tell me everything that I need to know,'' said Luna
+serenely. Then her forehead wrinkled. ``Oh, but they don't tell me about
+the object that hates everything in the world.''
+
+Harry caught his breath. Luna had told him about the object before, but
+now that he knew about Horcruxes, the description of something that
+hated everything in the world meant rather more. ``What is it? Do you
+know?''
+
+Luna gave him a patient look. ``No. I just said that the stones don't
+tell me everything. I've been in the Headmistress's office whenever I
+felt it, but then it leaves. I don't know why. I thought for a time that
+it was linked to Professor Snape's presence, but I was very careful to
+pay attention to all the cauldrons and vials in Potions class, and even
+his wand. I never felt it.''
+
+Harry nodded. It was, of course, reasonable that Voldemort had endowed a
+Horcrux with the power to move about. Hogwarts was a reasonably secure
+hiding place for one because of its large size, but it would be even
+more secure if the object---whatever it was---could scuttle into a
+corner when suspected. ``Try to sense it again, Luna, if you can, and
+fetch me when you do.'' He touched her left wrist with his hand. ``You
+know the phoenix-calling spell?''
+
+``Yes, but I don't like using it,'' said Luna. ``I am not a phoenix. You
+are.''
+
+``I grant you permission to be a phoenix, for a short time,'' said Harry
+gravely. \emph{And why not? I have allies who speak a stranger tongue.}
+
+Luna's face cleared. ``Thank you,'' she said a moment later. ``I am glad
+you did that. Now perhaps I can sing about the object when I find it,
+and about Light.'' She cocked her head to the side to study him. ``I am
+Light, and my father is Light, and you do not mind that, do you?''
+
+``No,'' said Harry, letting go her hand and standing. He'd seen Draco
+enter the hospital wing, and he'd rather have the inevitable argument in
+private. ``All wizards are welcome to fight beside us, Luna, as long as
+they'll stay true and commit themselves to defense. That's why I made
+that public statement through the bubbles that I did, that anyone can
+come and swear to me.''
+
+``Oh, good,'' said Luna sleepily, leaning back on her pillows. 'That
+means that the headboard is not wrong, and I should invite my father to
+come to Hogwarts and talk to you. Since I won't go home for the summer
+anyway."
+
+Harry blinked. He had assumed Luna stayed because she was still
+recovering from her intense wounds during the battle. ``What?''
+
+But she slept.
+
+Harry shook his head and turned to meet Draco. Draco's jaw was slightly
+clenched, and he gave a perfunctory nod when Harry raised an eyebrow.
+Harry sighed and accompanied him out of the hospital wing, absently
+lifting a hand to rub at his head. He hadn't used much magic in the last
+day; given what he expected to happen tonight, he would need all he
+could gather at his disposal. That made the headache, the sudden flashes
+of death and torture, worse.
+
+``I don't think you should go,'' Draco said.
+
+``What? No sly hinting around the issue? No metaphors that could mean
+something else?'' Harry stifled the impulse to yawn. He hadn't had an
+unbroken night's sleep since Scrimgeour died. He took cat-naps when he
+could, usually about an hour in duration. Hermione had found a book in
+the library that claimed such short periods of rest were actually more
+healthy than eight or nine hours of unbroken sleep. Neither Snape nor
+Draco had been amused when Harry repeated that to them.
+
+``Of course not.'' Draco folded his arms. ``Vampires are intensely
+dangerous, Harry, and they've chosen their ground. This has all the
+earmarks of a trap. I don't care how many people you take with you, it's
+still dangerous.''
+
+``I know that,'' Harry pointed out patiently. ``But I can choose the
+time, and I plan to give them a few minutes' notice at best. And I'll
+have you with me, and Owen, Syrinx, Snape, Regulus, Peter, Henrietta,
+your mother, and Connor. Moody is meeting us there with Ignifer,
+Honoria, and Thomas. You honestly don't think that will be protection
+enough?''
+
+``I still think it's a trap,'' said Draco. "And with the time they've
+had to prepare, they could overcome all of us. Doesn't this seem a
+\emph{little} suspicious to you, Harry? The resting place of the queen
+is valuable information."
+
+``It's not the same as information on how to destroy her,'' said Harry
+calmly. ``Or offering to kill her for me, even. Then I'd be suspicious.
+But what they ask seems reasonable for people as proud and selfish as
+vampires. I have a lot of practice in dealing with that kind of person,
+after all.''
+
+Draco flushed. ``Very funny,'' he snapped, and closed his eyes to regain
+his control. When he opened them, he'd bitten his lip hard enough to
+spill a bit of blood down his chin. Harry made a mental note to tell him
+to heal that before they met Vermillion and the other vampires. ``I
+don't think you're safe, Harry, but I'll go with you and protect you
+from yourself.''
+
+Harry rolled his eyes. ``You would have been coming with me anyway,
+prat. I'm not about to put my life in more danger than it already is,
+you know.''
+
+Draco simply reached out and pulled Harry against him, seemingly wanting
+nothing more than a hug. Harry willingly gave it, smoothing his hand up
+and down Draco's spine and wishing those simple strokes could calm the
+rapid beat of his heart.
+
+``I know it's hard,'' he whispered. "For all of us, it's hard. But I'll
+stay as safe as I can, Draco. I'm making the safest decisions I can,
+with the most accurate information. We \emph{need} as many people as
+will come to our side to win this war, and with the heavy protection
+we'll have going in, the vampires should think twice about springing any
+trap."
+
+``I worry,'' Draco whispered. ``I worry about you, Harry. The toll of
+this is heaviest on you.''
+
+``That's impossible to know without interviewing everyone involved,''
+Harry pointed out gently, glad that Draco had said it anyway. He'd
+needed to smile. ``And what there is of that weight is impossible to
+change.''
+
+``So you'll keep just bearing it?''
+
+``Yes, Draco. What else is there to do?''
+
+Draco sighed, and said nothing. Harry planted a kiss on the top of his
+head and stepped away. There was something else to be done, of
+course---in this case, speaking with Moon and asking him if he'd heard
+anything of a vampire called Vermillion before this. There was
+\emph{always} something else to do.
+
+SSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco stood close to Harry in ways that no one else did, so of course he
+would see things that no one else could.
+
+Before they Apparated to the coordinates that Vermillion had given them,
+for example---coordinates already reported on by Moody as depositing
+them on a rippled brown-yellow beach with the North Sea breaking just
+beyond---Draco saw Harry's face take on an intent, listening expression,
+as though he were hearing music, and saw him glance along the ranks of
+wizards accompanying him. From that look, Draco knew, he would memorize
+the physical condition and position of each wizard or witch. He would
+know who was in the most danger if an attack came from north or south,
+east or west. He could direct the strongest wizards to fall in around
+the rest.
+
+And there was the fact that he took Draco's arm with an absent caress
+which set Draco's blood racing at a ridiculous pace, probably because he
+and Harry had spent no time in bed together since Scrimgeour's
+assassination. Harry was not, unfortunately, one of those people whose
+libido seemed encouraged by stress. Draco resolved quietly to himself to
+see what he could do to change that. For Harry's sake, of course.
+Everyone knew that sex relaxed people and left them feeling happier.
+
+And there was the fact that when the first of the vampires stepped
+forward in the darkness and the wind and came straight for Harry, Harry
+lifted his head and met his eyes without fear, but his magic humming
+around him like a bowstring.
+
+\emph{He fought them a few nights ago, but he can give this one a
+chance.} Draco kept his own eyes half-averted, so the vampire couldn't
+compel him. He supposed it was good that Harry was that kind of person.
+He couldn't be \emph{vates} otherwise.
+
+\emph{But it's why the rest of us are here to protect him. Trusting
+these blood-suckers is still taking a risk.}
+
+``Harry,'' said the vampire in a familiar voice that made Draco frown.
+\emph{He should at least have addressed him by title, if he's serious
+about being respectful. But when have vampires ever respected anyone
+without having it beaten into them?}
+
+``Vermillion,'' said Harry, without any hesitancy that Draco could hear.
+That was good. When dealing with vampires, uncertainty could cost lives.
+``I have come to see the resting place of the queen and discuss taking
+you into the alliance, as we agreed. How many of you are there?''
+
+The darkness seemed to stir, and three other vampires melted out of it
+to stand beside Vermillion. Draco clenched his fists at his sides and
+observed them narrowly. Two were male, and clad in the same nondescript
+but well-tailored wizard clothing as Vermillion. The last was a woman,
+with long black hair which hung straight as reeds on either side of her
+face. She wore a flowing gown that showed off her pale shoulders and
+long, white hands.
+
+Draco knew those hands could grab him by the throat and break his neck
+in seconds. There might be some Mudbloods who thought vampires were
+dashing and romantic, and Granger probably thought they were
+misunderstood and needed to be freed of prejudices just as house elves
+did, but Draco had grown up with stories of vampires and how they
+hunted. He let his wand fall into his hand, and waited. If one of them
+made a move to hurt Harry, he was sure he could summon enough hatred to
+use the Killing Curse.
+
+More shadows moved, but those were Moody, the Pemberley women, and
+Rhangnara, stepping close to the vampires' backs. By the way that
+Vermillion sniffed, he was aware of them, but did not deign to turn and
+face them.
+
+``My companions are Adonis, Tammuz, and Psyche,'' said Vermillion.
+``They have agreed to follow me and let me be their spokesman, Harry.
+But we will need guarantees from you before you see the queen.''
+
+\emph{Don't let them get away with this, Harry,} Draco told him without
+sound, and was sure Snape was sending him the same silent message.
+\emph{They have to respect you, or they'll manipulate, corrupt, and
+destroy you as soon as they can, and think nothing of it. Vampires
+believe that anyone weaker than they are deserves whatever they get.}
+
+``No,'' said Harry.
+
+Vermillion gave a single, sharp hiss, which reminded Draco far too much
+of the hisses the hive in the Forbidden Forest had given. "You
+\emph{dare}?" he asked. ``We approach you as an equal, while you are
+still mortal, and you would refuse a request?'' His posture changed,
+though how, Draco could not have said, as he didn't move. Small muscle
+shifts and perhaps an angling of his face transformed him into a savage
+predator, though, no longer relaxed, but ready to spring at the
+slightest motion. ``Have a care. We need not show you the queen at all,
+and then the first you will see of her is when she comes to make your
+Hogwarts her nest, seasoned with the blood of wizard children.''
+
+Draco fought to keep from vomiting at the thought. Vampires were so
+protective of their queens because the queens could bear living young,
+while otherwise vampires increased their numbers only through biting
+humans. But, to have a nesting site where the live births were possible,
+the ground needed to be prepared with the blood of hundreds of dead. It
+was some of the foulest magic that existed, beyond Dark and into filth.
+The spirits of the wizards---and other creatures---who died at the
+nesting site would become fodder for the hive, incarnated into the new
+vampires whether they would or no.
+
+Harry didn't move. Instead, his magic shifted to mimic what Vermillion
+had done, suddenly soaring around him to make him more threatening.
+Draco looked at him, since he couldn't look at Vermillion or one of the
+other vampires without risking the compulsion, and swallowed. Harry
+stood perfectly still, the wind lifting one dark curl, but his eyes
+actually cast their own light, cutting the darkness with a faint, eerie
+green glow like---well, not much like anything else, really, Draco
+thought, but maybe panther's eyes set on fire.
+
+Harry didn't say a word, either. He went on gazing at the vampires,
+asking without words if they wanted to challenge his power, fang against
+magic both Dark and Light.
+
+Vermillion moved a step closer. Draco's wand snapped up, along with
+half-a-dozen others, and he was pleased to hear someone murmur a
+time-delayed charm, setting Merlin knew what kind of nasty trap for the
+vampires if they dared to strike. Behind the vampiress, Psyche, Ignifer
+Pemberley called fire. It blazed in her hands, a small, intense point of
+light, and dripped glowing beads of flame on the sand.
+
+None of that made the vampires flinch. Draco watched how closely they
+all oriented on Harry, and was sure it was the sense of that magic that
+made Vermillion slowly lower his head and draw his lips over his fangs.
+
+``The queen first,'' he said.
+
+No apologies, of course. Draco thought it was probably against some kind
+of ancient and obscure vampire code to apologize. Instead, Vermillion
+turned and hissed into the night, at the ocean.
+
+A shimmer that was not light came into being over the waves. Draco, his
+eyes aching as he tried to follow the stinging curve of it---it hurt to
+look at---thought it might be the visible sign of the blood-heat a
+vampire could follow, and which would lead them straight to any but
+dying prey. The color, if this anti-light had a color at all, would have
+been dark red or purple, slowly tracing out an enormous bulk that seemed
+to float beneath the surface of the water. Draco shuddered at the
+thought of a queen so massive she could not support her weight on land.
+
+A slight tremor ran through the beach.
+
+Draco had little time to think about it before hands shot up out of a
+pit in the sand and grabbed his ankles.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry threw himself sideways, and the hands that shot out of the
+concealed pit in the sand missed him. He landed badly, though,
+half-twisting one ankle, and he couldn't avoid the crawling female
+vampire who threw herself out of a shallow trench and at him. One look
+at her glazed eyes told him this was a worker, however independent
+Vermillion and his friends were.
+
+\emph{He betrayed us.}
+
+\emph{Or perhaps he's of the hive.}
+
+Harry set his magic loose, in a shimmer of fire that danced over his
+limbs and curled along above his skin. In moments, it was on the
+worker's flesh, clinging fiercely, and filling the night with dancing
+shadows. Harry saw Vermillion leap back as the shrieking vampiress let
+Harry go and rolled towards him, her thin, high, death keens filling the
+air.
+
+Harry snapped a quick glance along the beach. The vampires had been
+completely covered, both, Harry guessed, for protection from the sun and
+because of course they didn't need to breathe. No one else had escaped,
+and most of them were struggling without success against the superior
+strength of the vampires. The drone that held Connor simply clutched him
+stiffly, as if waiting for something, but the others were dipping their
+heads and pressing their fangs against yielding necks. Adonis, Tammuz,
+and Psyche had backed off, probably to avoid any chance of getting hit
+by Light magic that the captive wizards might manage to cast. Vermillion
+stood still with his arms folded, his eyes looking with equal and cool
+disinterest on the fighting humans and on the ashes that were all that
+remained of the worker who had attacked Harry.
+
+For one moment, as he locked eyes with the vampire, all Harry felt was
+deep, pure, blackest hatred.
+
+And in that instant, Voldemort struck his mind like a comet.
+
+Harry shouted, but the cry was one mainly of rage, and not pain. This
+was not like the visions Voldemort had shown him, urging him to drop the
+pretense of having caution or morals and attack. This was much more like
+the emotion he'd felt the night of Scrimgeour's assassination, a
+whirlwind drowning him, pulling him along, calling up all the anger that
+he'd ever felt for not being able to protect those he loved and turning
+it against him as a blade.
+
+Voldemort knew what he was about this time, and had chosen his weapon
+well. No matter where Harry looked, whether he had his eyes open or
+shut, he saw a vision of someone he loved in danger.
+
+Open, and there was Draco, head dangling limply as the worker fed
+greedily from his throat, her own throat pulsing in steady swallows.
+
+Shut, and there was Sirius, the last, fey smile on his face before he
+lifted his wand for the curse that would doom him.
+
+Open, and there was Connor, trying to do something, trying to break
+free, but unable to perform any spell without his wand.
+
+Shut, and there was Sylarana, flinging herself on the basilisk, her bite
+sending it into convulsions, her slender golden body becoming less than
+a smear on the floor of the Chamber of Secrets.
+
+Open, and there was Snape, his face already ashen pale, carved with the
+lines of so much pain he should never have had to endure.
+
+Shut, and there was Scrimgeour, dying of a poison Harry might have been
+able to reverse if he hadn't been so distracted by Snape's possession,
+if he could have Apparated to the Minister's side.
+
+Harry's grief became rage became hatred at the Dark Lord who had caused
+and was causing all these losses, and that hatred closed slow iron jaws
+around his conscience and his soul. He had to fight his way free, but he
+could only do that while he was being calm, and how he could be calm
+when people he loved were dying or being drained right in front of him?
+
+He opened his eyes, and was in time to see Honoria drop limply to the
+sand.
+
+Harry screamed.
+
+His magic lashed about him, casting a film of ice across the beach that
+made Vermillion step away from him as if dancing, but that did nothing
+for the division in his skull. If anything, it made it worse. He could
+hear Voldemort laughing now, whispering to him.
+
+\emph{Yes. Why not, Harry? You could come to me, and kill me, and end it
+now. You know of the Horcruxes, but there are ways to bypass them, ways
+to slay me and make me stop causing pain to those you love. Isn't that
+what you were trained to do? Why should they be taking the brunt of a
+war that is aimed mainly at you? You are the one I hate, Harry, the one
+I want to hurt. If you came to me and yielded yourself, then I would
+stop hunting them. If you came to me and} gave \emph{yourself, then I
+would spare anyone that you wanted me to spare, since my heir would have
+to have some say in the world we made. Is there not some temptation in
+that vision? Do you not hate yourself for wanting to listen to me, and
+believe that I mean what I say?}
+
+And yes, as much as he knew it wasn't true, Harry wanted to believe it,
+and he hated Voldemort for that, too, and the hatred piled on top of the
+hatred, and he was gasping, choking, drowning, his mind counting the
+number of pale faces he saw when he opened his eyes, his self-loathing
+tearing him apart with claws sharper than any hatred Voldemort could
+have mustered, his scar burning and burning and burning as his vision
+dimmed.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Connor pulled and struggled and kept his hand reaching frantically. He
+did not look up from the hold of the drone's arms at anyone else,
+because he knew he would lose his concentration if he could see them,
+and he was having a hard enough time keeping to his goal without that.
+
+His goal was sane, and simple.
+
+\emph{Reach his wand.}
+
+His wand was in his robe pocket, from which he'd started to slide it
+when the sand shook beneath them. But it had fallen back inside when the
+drone grabbed him. It was still partially sticking out, though, and
+Connor's hand had been trapped by the vampire's arm just slightly above
+the pocket. If he could reach it, if he could pull it out, then he could
+do something.
+
+The vampire paid no attention to him whatsoever, even when Connor's
+fingers slipped past his elbow a quarter of an inch. Connor restrained
+the curses he wanted to utter, because that would only waste breath,
+already a precious commodity in the drone's embrace, and wriggled his
+hand again. Sweat was easing its passage a bit, but not enough. If this
+had been bare flesh to bare flesh, instead of bare flesh against the
+moldering cloth the vampire wore, it would have been easier.
+
+And any moment the vampire could notice him, and trap his hand more
+firmly, and he would lose all his priceless progress.
+
+Connor gritted his teeth and forbade himself to think about that. It was
+the memory of the lessons in compulsion with Sirius---or, rather,
+Voldemort in Sirius's body---that let him do so. Voldemort had taught
+him that, to compel someone else, you had to want that person's body to
+move or her mind to change more than anything else in the world. And,
+right now, Connor wanted his hand to move.
+
+Surge, surge, surge. Connor heard the impact of a body with the sand.
+And still he didn't think about it, and still he concentrated, reaching,
+straining, dying to touch the end of his wand, making holly and phoenix
+feather the only thing that existed for him.
+
+And then his fingers brushed it.
+
+Strength and power flooded Connor, as much triumph as magic, and he
+bellowed the spell he'd known he would use if his miracle succeeded, the
+one Peter had taught him at Lux Aeterna last summer, the one he had a
+particular fondness for because it was of the Light \emph{and} could be
+used to defend.
+
+"\emph{Aurora ades dum!}"
+
+Dawn blossomed in the mouth of the vampire above him, and the drone
+shrieked and threw him away, the reflexes in the midst of burning strong
+enough, it seemed, to overcome even a queen's command. Connor rolled,
+and it was Moody's training that rang through his head now, telling him
+how to fall, and never, never to let his wand go out of sight. His body
+could take care of the fall, even if he hit his head, but one of his
+enemies would take care of his wand unless he claimed it.
+
+There it was, arcing over his head and nearly vanishing behind him.
+Connor grabbed it, even as he fell heavily on his arse and shoulder.
+
+More shrieks were arising now, and curses, probably from the individual
+vampires they had come to meet. Connor scrambled up, half-shielding his
+eyes against the intense light, and saw members of the hive writhing as
+the sunshine took them, withering like moths. Others were surging up
+from behind the shadows, though, and making their way towards the people
+who lay too still on the beach---Snape among them---or staggered, dizzy,
+trying to recover from blood loss but as yet too shocked to do so. Even
+Ignifer Pemberley, whose hands drizzled fire, simply stood with her arms
+hanging at her side, breath slow and head continually shaking.
+
+Connor smiled. He had the impression that it wasn't a very nice smile.
+
+One of the drone creeping forward, belly to the ground, tried to catch
+his eye and roll him with compulsion, but Connor snorted and threw it
+off. He was a compeller, and that made him immune. Besides, he had the
+best idea for a spell ever. He didn't think he could manage the Solstice
+Summons Ron had used last time, but he didn't need to. This spell
+actually functioned better in the middle of the night.
+
+"\emph{Sol concubia nocte!}" he yelled.
+
+And the sun came.
+
+It was a version of the \emph{Apricus} charm Harry had used above the
+Forbidden Forest, essentially, but it drew its power from the night
+around it, and weakened during the day---the Midnight Sun Charm. The sky
+above them went white, and then golden, and then red-orange, and Connor
+lifted his head to see lines of fire streaking down the night, eating
+the darkness as they came.
+
+Those lines followed fated, destined paths to the vampires of the hive,
+and simply wiped them from existence when they struck. Connor smiled as
+he watched smear after smear of Dark magic vanish without a trace,
+becoming flares of dazzling radiance instead.
+
+Sometimes, it was very, very good to be a Light wizard.
+
+He spun, hearing movement behind him, and saw the vampire Vermillion
+holding his hands up, speaking without respect but with a certain cold
+dignity. "The \emph{vates}," he said. ``He is under attack by the Dark
+Lord.''
+
+Connor spun the other direction, the one he'd last seen Harry in. Yes,
+Harry lay in the midst of a puddle of ice that endured even the heat of
+the Midnight Sun Charm, and his eyes were wide and unseeing, as they
+certainly should not have been given what was happening right in front
+of him.
+
+Connor knew the spell to use for that, too.
+
+Pointing his wand straight at Harry, he whispered, "\emph{Memoriola
+amoris.}"
+
+SSSSSSSSSS
+
+In and out, and all he could see was the death and the destruction that
+Voldemort had dealt, or that Harry had dealt, or that they would deliver
+together. The world had become hatred, and where it had originated, in
+his mind or in his training or in the Dark Lord's thoughts, did not
+matter anymore. They were a pair of twinned dark birds, flying towards
+some unknown destination under a black sun.
+
+And then Connor's spell hit, and Harry's head was filled with memories
+of his brother.
+
+He lay on the grass of their lawn in sunshine and watched as Connor
+struggled to finish a book that Harry would have torn through by now.
+There was joy and pleasure and pride in the memory, in knowing that his
+brother was so different from himself, and for the right reasons. When
+Connor finally tossed the book aside, and rolled over with a frown that
+became a grin when he saw Harry watching, Harry felt the love spike
+through his chest and beat against his mind with wings of flame.
+
+Voldemort recoiled. Love was not an emotion he understood, even though
+he had used it before to manipulate people. He knew it existed, but it
+was like a human's understanding that the ways of a vampire hive
+existed; it did not mean he could think of it from the inside.
+
+Connor held up a frog he'd caught in the pond at Godric's Hollow, and
+showed it to Harry. Unfortunately, he didn't hold it tight enough, and
+it leaped out of his hands with a croak and a plop that sent it straight
+back into the pond. Connor stamped his foot, and most of the water flew
+out of the pond and then settled back with a resounding crash, to splash
+the frog in turn. It had been Connor's first show of accidental magic.
+Harry had smiled at his brother's slack jaw and wide-open eyes, in the
+minute before Connor had turned and run back to the house, shrieking for
+Lily.
+
+Voldemort scraped his claws along the bits of training Harry still had
+with his mother's name on them, but another memory stepped into his way.
+
+It was only two years ago, and Connor and Harry had come to Lux Aeterna
+to spend the Easter holidays with James. Connor was telling their father
+off; if he hurt Harry again, then Connor would hurt him, badly. It was
+the product of ten months' thinking, the struggle Connor had gone
+through since the previous May to make himself see things from Harry's
+perspective and not be jealous of the title and the power that the
+Boy-Who-Lived name conferred on him.
+
+Voldemort had never had anyone who would fight for him that way. Even
+Bellatrix's loyalty, the closest he had ever known to true love, had
+come to him because of his magic, and for no other reason.
+
+Harry tore himself free, and could feel his body again, his arms and
+legs and his torso, though all of them were chilled and shivering from
+the ice around him. He opened his eyes, and saw the night blazing with
+the light of the Midnight Sun Charm, the vampires being wiped from
+existence one by one, the bodies or the limping of those he'd brought
+with him.
+
+His brother's face.
+
+Harry lashed out with his magic, barely pausing to distinguish the
+spells from one another, just knowing what he wanted done. Lash and lash
+and lash, and Snape and Honoria and the others were sent to Hogwarts's
+hospital wing, Apparated forcibly there. Lash and lash and lash, and the
+night filled with light, blazing, eliminating the last of the hive
+vampires who were pressing forward on the beach. They turned and
+stumbled, racing for the waves of the North Sea.
+
+A few of them made it. Not many. Harry's magic took the form of hounds
+of fire, coursing on their trails, closing golden jaws on their heels
+and worrying at their robes, and where one tooth touched, their bodies
+went up in flames.
+
+He grabbed his brother, held him close, and swung around to meet
+Vermillion's eyes. Shadows surrounded him and the three vampires who had
+come with him, rearing up to eat the light whenever it came close. His
+face was cool and unsmiling, but he inclined his head in a nod, a tiny
+nod, when he saw Harry looking at him.
+
+``It was a trap, then,'' Harry said.
+
+``For both of you,'' said Vermillion calmly. ``We arranged to have the
+hive here so that Voldemort might incite your hatred and try to take
+you. But we made a promise to reveal the location of the queen to you,
+and we will.'' He nodded to the waves. "She is there, \emph{vates}. In
+the sea. If you call powerful allies to your side, you might manage to
+kill her."
+
+He turned back to Harry. ``And we wished to see if you could defeat
+Voldemort when he invaded your mind. You have done so. The Dark Lord has
+not impressed us, and we will not ally with him.'' For a moment, his
+gaze slid sideways to Connor, and a faint smile lifted his lips. ``His
+instructions to the hive to spare your brother, that he might have the
+pleasure of tormenting him later, were his downfall.''
+
+``I do not wish to make an alliance with you,'' Harry said flatly.
+
+Vermillion laughed, briefly showing his fangs. "It is not your choice,
+\emph{vates}. We will fight at your side, even if you will not fight at
+ours." He casually held up a hand, and shadow flared around him and the
+other three, gathering them up and whirling them away in what looked
+like one of the black whirlwinds Harry had called to set Peter, Regulus,
+and Snape free at the Ministry.
+
+Harry closed his eyes and shook his head. \emph{I think Vermillion would
+get along well with Evan Rosier.}
+
+He held Connor close against himself and whispered, ``Thank you. You
+saved my life. All our lives.''
+
+Connor's smile and eyes were both bright in the darkness. ``Just
+repaying the debt owed---how many hundreds of times over, Harry?'' he
+muttered, nuzzling his head into his brother's shoulder. ``Let's go.''
+
+Harry nodded, closed his eyes, and Apparated.
+
+In his head, Voldemort had fallen silent.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 9*: Indelible
+Signs}\label{chapter-9-indelible-signs}
+
+Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter!\textbf{\\
+}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Six: Indelible Signs}
+
+Draco's eyes weren't listening to him. He had commanded the room to stop
+being fuzzy when he opened them, but still his vision had a blurred,
+drifting white mist in front of it, and he couldn't move without black
+spots springing up to cloud the white.
+
+``Draco.''
+
+That voice, at least, he knew, even though when he tried to whip towards
+it his head fell heavily back against the pillow. Harry sat up in the
+chair at the edge of the bed and gave him a weary smile. Reaching out,
+he squeezed Draco's hand. ``You'll be all right,'' he murmured. ``Madam
+Pomfrey's had a new stock of Blood-Replenishing Potions since---well,
+since I tried to free the thestrals, actually. It's one of the things
+Snape busied himself brewing. She had them on hand when I Apparated you
+back after the hive vampires bit you.''
+
+``That's what happened, then,'' Draco murmured. He really only
+remembered a cold body gripping him, and then a surge of heat in his
+neck. He raised his hand to touch the side of his throat, but Harry
+gripped his hand and shook his head.
+
+``Madam Pomfrey says that you aren't to touch that,'' he said.
+
+Draco snorted. ``And you always do what Madam Pomfrey says?''
+
+``In this case, yes.'' Harry's voice had become iron suddenly, hard as a
+vampire's grip, and Draco could make out the worry in his eyes. ``Draco,
+every one of us was bitten except for Connor and me, and Snape and
+Honoria so badly that they're going to be weak for days.'' For a moment,
+his eyes darkened, and Draco opened his mouth to ask what was wrong, but
+Harry shook his head and moved briskly on, the moment vanishing. ``I
+could have lost all of you last night.''
+
+``It was a trap, wasn't it?'' Draco didn't really look forward to saying
+that he'd told Harry so, but if it had been a trap then, well, he'd told
+Harry so.
+
+``Of a sort,'' Harry said. ``Apparently, Vermillion and his friends were
+looking for the powerful wizard who'd protect them best against the
+Ministry, and they wanted to test us against each other and see who
+emerged victorious. They did help Voldemort set up the trap, but they
+warned me about the resting place of the queen, they took no part in the
+battle, and they told Connor what had happened when Voldemort attacked
+me through his hatred of him again.''
+
+Draco sat up this time, and damn the way his vision seemed to swirl and
+Harry clucked like an anxious chicken, anyway. ``He tried to get at you
+again?'' he demanded, clutching Harry's arm.
+
+Harry gave him a bemused glance. ``Of course he did, Draco. He's going
+to do that until I either devise a way to get him out of my head, or
+give in and go hunting him.''
+
+Draco shook his head. Harry didn't understand. \emph{If he's allowed to
+worry about us when vampires nearly kill us, then we're allowed to worry
+about him when this madman tries to take over his mind.} ``Harry, this
+can't continue. You understand that, don't you? More important than any
+other priority is making sure that Voldemort leaves your head so that
+you can concentrate on the war without having to mentally battle him.''
+
+Harry spread one hand, never taking his eyes from Draco. The silver
+dog's-head emblem in the center of his palm, a reminder of his encounter
+with Lady Death, winked and flashed as it caught the light. ``And how
+would you suggest I do that, Draco? Occlumency doesn't work. Potions
+don't work. I--- ah!''
+
+He closed his eyes and bowed his head as his scar briefly glittered and
+seemed to open. Draco didn't think it looked like a well of blood so
+much as a chasm opening onto a flow of magma. Harry took several deep,
+quick, huffing breaths, as if he were wounded in the side.
+
+Then he lifted his head, and shook it grimly. ``Deaths,'' he whispered.
+``An initiation for new Death Eaters, or at least he wants me to think
+that's what's happening.''
+
+``This only proves my point,'' said Draco, and tightened his grip on
+Harry's wrists to the point where Harry would have to listen to him.
+``You need some way to guard your mind from him. First and foremost.''
+He licked his lips, and ignored the way a net seemed to swing across the
+corners of his eyes, waiting to claim him. ``Will you let me into your
+head, Harry? Let me possess you?''
+
+Harry stiffened. ``I don't want you that close to his Legilimency,
+Draco,'' he said.
+
+``It's my choice to risk that.''
+
+"\emph{No}."
+
+Draco cocked an eyebrow. ``If you don't want me invading your head,
+Harry, I can understand that. But if you're frightened because of what
+happened last night, and you don't want to expose me to the risk, then
+you'll need to get over that.'' He picked up Harry's right hand and
+turned it over so that he could kiss the spot where the blood beat. ``We
+fight beside you in this war. Taking risks is my choice.''
+
+Harry closed his eyes. Then he gave a shallow nod.
+
+Draco moved out of his head; his fragile state of consciousness actually
+made it easier, as his mind was eager to seek a body that wouldn't shake
+every time he made a hasty movement. He sank deep into the familiar
+confines of Harry's mind, and looked around, trying to see what form
+Voldemort's constant Legilimency took here.
+
+He could see it almost at once. It really did look like a tunnel, a hole
+carving through the foliage of Harry's emotions, leading into an
+indefinable, misty distance. Red seamed it, and black, the colors of
+Dark compulsion magic. Draco could sense the slice of Voldemort's
+dominating will, lying along the surface of the tunnel, forming its roof
+and one of its walls.
+
+But the other wall and the floor were Harry's to control. Draco saw that
+at once. If Harry turned around and pushed back at Voldemort, he could
+take over at least half the tunnel and read himself back into the
+confines of the Dark Lord's thoughts. Voldemort would probably shut down
+the connection then, Draco thought. He wouldn't want to risk Harry
+incapacitating him in the same way he had incapacitated Harry, or even
+reading his thoughts and knowing his plans.
+
+But, of course, it wasn't a surprise that Harry had never done that. His
+Legilimency had always been poorer than his Occlumency. Legilimency
+relied on a dominating will, the urge to possess and control. The Dark
+Lord could outmatch him at it any day.
+
+\emph{Except that now,} Draco thought sadly as his eyes blinked open,
+\emph{he will have to learn better than that.}
+
+He held Harry's hands tight, so he couldn't pull them away, as he
+explained what he'd discovered and what Harry would have to do. Sure
+enough, Harry tried to pull free and think about that alone. Draco
+gripped and hauled, and Harry let out a little grunt as he found himself
+half-sprawled on the bed.
+
+``It has to be done,'' Draco whispered into his ear. ``And because you
+summon the will once doesn't mean that you'll suddenly become an evil
+and dominating Lord, Harry. Yes, it's one step on a slippery road, but
+you don't have to ride that road all the way to the bottom. You can
+control yourself. I think all of us trust you enough for that. Even
+Snape manages to control himself when it comes to reading minds, and
+he's a much bitterer man than you'll ever be.''
+
+``I just---'' Harry swallowed. ``It's one thing to strike back at an
+enemy because he's just killed someone else, Draco. But I've never
+planned in cold blood to make a slave of someone else.''
+
+Draco could say nothing. Because Harry hated it, because his
+\emph{vates} nature rebelled against it with his all his might, did not
+change the necessity of it. He stroked Harry's hair.
+
+"Do you think this one action will make me fall from the \emph{vates}
+path?" Harry asked softly. "It could be enough, Draco. If I use
+compulsion \emph{once} against someone else, I tumble off."
+
+Draco blinked. ``But that's ridiculous,'' he said. "Or you would have
+fallen off the first time you used a Body-Bind on someone else after you
+became \emph{vates}."
+
+``It means mental compulsion,'' Harry murmured. ``Forcing the changing
+of someone's mind and actions, the way that Connor can do, and
+Voldemort---the way that Dumbledore could, and Sirius.'' He swallowed.
+``And inflicting my will on someone else might be close enough to
+count.''
+
+``So you'd rather live with the headaches and visions that Voldemort
+inflicts on you?'' Draco asked incredulously. He thought that was what
+Harry was saying, but he couldn't possibly be actually \emph{saying} it.
+
+``Yes,'' Harry snapped, and twisted away from him. "If it's that, the
+choice between enduring some pain or losing my \emph{vates} path, then
+I'll accept the pain, and even give Voldemort the means to enter my head
+himself."
+
+``You're delusional,'' Draco hissed, and reached out to capture Harry's
+wrist. This time, Harry spun neatly, one of the motions he'd had trained
+into him from childhood, and avoided the touch without seeming to.
+
+``I'll speak with you later,'' he said, and inclined his head to Draco
+as if they were little more than acquaintances, and left the hospital
+wing.
+
+Draco punched the pillow behind him.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry hesitated for a long moment in front of the door to Snape's
+quarters. Madam Pomfrey had let him leave the hospital wing when he
+absolutely refused to lie still or stop criticizing the quality of the
+Blood-Replenishing Potions she'd chosen for him, and return to his own
+bed. Regulus, who had suffered only a small loss of blood, was taking
+care of him for right now. Harry wasn't sure it was the best course to
+ask Regulus to leave so that he could have a private talk with Snape.
+
+But he had to. Snape had very nearly died; the low amount of blood in
+his veins could have drained out at any moment before Harry moved him to
+the hospital wing, and then it had only been a diagnostic spell Madam
+Pomfrey had performed which let her know that he and Honoria were the
+ones she needed to treat first.
+
+Harry sighed, and rapped on the one portion of the door which contained
+no wards.
+
+He heard shuffling, and then Regulus opened it, his face creasing in a
+warm, welcoming smile. ``Come in, Harry,'' he said, stepping out of the
+way. ``He's been asking for you, but he stopped when I let him know that
+you were still in the hospital wing, alive and well and watching the
+others.''
+
+``Thanks, Regulus,'' said Harry, entering. He stopped for a long moment
+and closed his eyes, preparing himself to endure both the coming
+confrontation and the sudden spike of pain in his skull. When it faded,
+he opened his eyes, and started. Regulus had come up and put his arm
+around his shoulders. So deep had Harry been in his own mind that he
+hadn't heard him moving.
+
+``This was as hard on you as on any of us,'' Regulus whispered. ``You
+don't need to pretend it wasn't, Harry.''
+
+Harry tossed his head uneasily and stepped away from the touch. He still
+didn't react well to embraces unless he had some time to prepare for
+them. ``I need to speak to Snape in private, Regulus,'' he said.
+``Please. I have something to say that---well, he won't like to hear
+it.''
+
+``If you have come about what I suspect you have come about,'' Snape's
+voice said through the open door between sitting room and bedroom,
+``then you are right, I will not enjoy it.''
+
+Harry closed one hand into a fist for a moment, then looked at Regulus.
+Regulus opened his mouth, looking thoughtful, but Snape cut them both
+off. ``Let him come in, Harry. Perhaps, with two voices rather than one,
+we can convince you of the ridiculousness of this idea soon enough.''
+
+\emph{He doesn't even know what I was going to propose,} Harry thought,
+mutinous, but followed Regulus into the bedroom. Snape was sitting up in
+bed, which Madam Pomfrey would have wailed to see, though well-supported
+by pillows. His eyes focused on Harry's the moment he passed the door,
+and a bolt of Legilimency went home like an arrow.
+
+Harry gasped and staggered, one hand rising to touch his scar. Snape's
+face softened. ``My apologies,'' he said. ``I did not realize the chaos
+that lingered inside your head.'' Then he gave Harry a long, hard stare.
+``All the more reason for you to be asleep, instead of sitting awake by
+all our beds, and for you to realize that I will not stop my
+participation in this battle.''
+
+Rattled, Harry began his speech less gracefully than he'd intended.
+"I---sir, you've lost so much to this war. You suffered under
+Voldemort's control for months, and I never noticed. And now your mind's
+been hurt, and you've nearly died \emph{again}. Why should you have to
+sacrifice so much, personally, to this war when you've done so much to
+make up for your old mistakes? You've long since proved what kind of man
+you are: more than the Dark Mark on your arm. More than any possible
+`redemption' Dumbledore might have tried to inflict on you. You don't
+have to keep doing this out of a misplaced sense of guilt."
+
+Snape was silent for long moments. Then he said, ``Regulus, leave us.''
+
+``Severus---''
+
+"Do \emph{not} call me that!" That was the voice Harry knew from
+classes, from scoldings, from the man he'd confronted on top of the
+Astronomy Tower fifteen days ago. ``Leave now, Regulus. I assure you, I
+won't hurt the boy, but we do have something to discuss.''
+
+Harry could feel Regulus lock eyes with Snape in a silent staring
+contest over his head. Then he sighed, and said, perhaps a bit
+petulantly, "\emph{Fine}," and shut the door of the bedroom behind him
+on his way out.
+
+Silence stayed in the room with them, and grew thicker and thicker.
+Harry locked his eyes on his clenched hands and waited.
+
+``Harry,'' Snape said quietly. ``I know that you don't think I've only
+stayed in the battle because I feel guilty for my past. You were in my
+mind on the Tower. You know how strong a part of this is my---'' He
+paused, then forced the word from his lips as if he were spitting out
+poison. "\emph{Love} for you. Why did you approach me with that? Did you
+honestly think I would ever give up fighting at your side?"
+
+``If I could insult you enough, yes,'' said Harry evenly.
+
+``And you would not try to do this with anyone else?'' Snape had a tone
+in the back of his voice that Harry couldn't quite make out. It might
+have been a cousin of amusement, but if so, Harry didn't want to hear
+the full-bodied thing. ``That is insulting in its own way, Harry. Am I
+so fragile that I cannot bear the blows of war?'' He moved, and Harry
+glanced up to see him pushing back his left sleeve, revealing the Dark
+Mark. "Do you \emph{honestly} believe that?"
+
+``No,'' said Harry.
+
+``Then you would not have tried this tactic on anyone else?''
+
+``No, because it wouldn't have worked on them,'' Harry snapped.
+
+Snape's eyebrows lifted. ``Explain that if you would, Harry.''
+
+Harry rose and paced back and forth, restless, wondering if he could
+actually speak his mind without sounding stupid. Then he realized what
+he was thinking---as if Snape, like an enemy, would take his words and
+twist them, or use them as weapons to inflict wounds on him. Someone
+listening to his thoughts might well have thought he didn't trust Snape
+at all.
+
+\emph{But I do. Trust him, I mean. It's just---this is so important, and
+his situation is so different from anyone else's, and I know that he's
+not going to back off now, and I still prefer to hide some things rather
+than speak about them.}
+
+``Harry? I am waiting.''
+
+``You've lost so much,'' Harry whispered, talking, but stubbornly
+refusing to actually look at him. "More than anyone else, sir, across a
+longer span of years. I thought---when I saw you nearly die, I realized
+that. And I thought it was possible that if I could hit you with the
+right mixture of smothering concern and condescension, you'd withdraw
+from the war. I know that you'd never be completely safe, because
+Voldemort would still target you for what you are to me, but you could
+avoid going directly into battle and having things like this happen to
+you. It wasn't that I thought guilt was propelling you into this. It was
+that I thought you'd be angry enough at my \emph{seeming} to think that
+guilt was propelling you into this---"
+
+``You've quite proven that you belong in Slytherin House already,
+Harry,'' Snape said. ``I don't need this sort of demonstration.''
+
+Harry said nothing.
+
+``Harry. Come here.''
+
+He thought about remaining on the other side of the room to spite Snape,
+and then perhaps Snape would be angry enough at him to accomplish
+Harry's original goal, but he was no longer sure that would work. And
+Snape did not ask again, but his eyes didn't waver from Harry's face,
+either.
+
+Harry slowly crossed the room, and was beyond surprised when Snape's
+left arm curled around him in an awkward embrace and tugged him forward.
+He struggled for exactly as long as it took Snape to begin speaking.
+
+``I made a vow to myself, Harry, to make my choice again and again from
+day to day, to insure that I did not simply wake up each morning and
+continue in the rut of an old allegiance,'' Snape whispered into his
+ear. ``And that is what I am doing. If I ever decided to withdraw from
+the war, I would tell you. In the meantime, love and determination keep
+me here. It is not only pain.''
+
+"You almost died \emph{again}, sir," Harry whispered, and felt the tears
+he hadn't been able to shed so far well up against his lids. They were
+tears of fury and frustration, born of the temptation to scream that
+Voldemort should just \emph{stop} and it wasn't \emph{fair.} Harry
+swallowed them back again. Of course Voldemort wouldn't stop---another
+excess of fury in his scar reminded him of that---and of course it
+wasn't fair. ``You've paid so much, so many prices. How can I ask that
+of anyone? How can I ask that your pain should increase, even?''
+
+``You can ask it,'' said Snape calmly. ``You can ask anything that you
+like, Harry. I am always free to refuse if I don't like the price. And
+you are free to do what you think should be done, for my good and the
+good of the war effort.'' He cupped his hand beneath Harry's chin and
+lifted his face, forcing Harry to meet his eyes. ``That is why I am not
+angry at what you did. You manipulated me to stop the increase of my
+pain, and to spare yourself pain. But nothing will separate me from the
+war effort but my own choice---not love of you, not anger at you, not
+weariness.''
+
+``No one should have to bear what you have,'' Harry said softly.
+
+``I could say the same thing of you.'' Snape's eyes glittered for a
+moment. ``And were school in session, I might give you a detention for
+not realizing that. But it does not matter, Harry. What really, truly
+matters is that you realize that your manipulation does not work on me.
+I have known hard choices too long and too deeply to allow my emotions
+to lead me by the nose any more.''
+
+Harry closed his eyes, drew a deep breath, and nodded.
+
+Snape's hand tightened on his shoulder for a moment, then let him go.
+``And now,'' he said, ``you can make up for your attempt to manipulate
+me.''
+
+Harry blinked. ``You said you weren't angry.''
+
+``Yes, but that doesn't mean that you were right to do it,'' said Snape
+remorselessly. ``So you'll take some Dreamless Sleep so that you can
+rest, Harry, and be ready for the step that you've told me you're going
+to take tomorrow. The effects of the potion will wear off long before
+you need to make a speech, so don't use that as an argument. And you
+need the sleep more than you need the freedom from the haze, right now.
+Do not argue with me,'' he added, as Harry opened his mouth. "Or I
+\emph{will} call Regulus back in and repeat everything that you said to
+him."
+
+Harry sighed. He would get a scolding from Regulus as he had,
+unexpectedly, not received one from Snape, and he didn't think that he
+could bear that right now. ``I'll take the potion, sir.''
+
+``Good.'' Snape's arm curled around him again, and dragged Harry back to
+rest against his shoulder. For a moment, just a moment, Harry closed his
+eyes and let himself take pleasure, comfort, even rest in the strength
+of that hold, and not think about the fragility of the heart that beat
+beneath it.
+
+SSSSSSSS
+
+``Harry.''
+
+Draco knew from the tension in Harry's shoulders that his partner had
+heard him. He didn't look around, though, only turned and studied
+himself critically in the mirror that hung on the wall of their bedroom.
+Harry had conjured it, and he would surely banish it again the instant
+he was done with it, Draco knew.
+
+The robes he wore resembled the ones he'd worn more than a year ago to
+Draco's confirmation festival as a magical heir. They were dark green,
+and glittered with silver symbols on the bottom that melted and dashed
+and dodged and darted in and out of each other, snakes becoming runes
+becoming small ovals fringed with lines like eyelashes. Draco knew that
+some of the symbols proclaimed Harry as the heir of the Black line, and
+another, a circle with thirteen points of which five were connected,
+said that he was in a joining ritual of which five rituals had been
+completed.
+
+``I suppose that will have to do,'' Harry murmured, and the mirror
+vanished.
+
+``Harry, I wanted to talk to you,'' said Draco, and took a firm step
+forward.
+
+``I have to go outside the school now,'' Harry said, lifting his head.
+``You know that I have to, Draco. When I ordered the golden bubbles to
+travel from wizarding village to wizarding village, I also ordered them
+to say that I would accept the help of anyone who wanted to give it at
+Hogwarts, on Midsummer afternoon. That means that I have to wear these
+robes, and make a certain speech, and accept an oath from anyone who
+wants to give it.''
+
+``And hate every minute of it,'' Draco muttered.
+
+Harry's shoulders shifted. ``I know that I need help to fight him,
+Draco. I don't hate that.''
+
+``No. Just the other things, the things that anyone else would take
+pleasure in.'' Draco stepped forward and clasped Harry's face with his
+hands, holding him when he would have withdrawn. "And I wanted to say
+that I \emph{do} understand why you hate them, Harry, and why you don't
+want to use Legilimency on Voldemort. I never thought you should do it
+simply because I said so."
+
+Harry blinked, and a shadow that had been in his eyes since their
+argument in the hospital wing yesterday vanished. Harry gave a single,
+shallow nod, gaze locked on Draco's. ``Then why?''
+
+``Because I would rather see you alive and healthy and doing something
+you hate than dead or broken mentally,'' said Draco, and pulled Harry
+against him. He tried desperately to ignore the scent of Harry's hair
+and the softness of his neck. He wanted to kiss and lick and suck, throw
+Harry down on the bed and do all the things they hadn't had the time to
+do lately---he was determined not to let their partnership become a
+casualty of the war. But they really didn't have time now, any more than
+they had at another hour of the day. Harry had to make a formal
+presentation, and he had to look the part. He'd dressed up in the robes
+even though he hated them, because it was what people would expect, and
+it added to the symbolic force of the role he played. Draco couldn't
+ruin that for him. "And I don't think that using Legilimency on
+Voldemort would count as forsaking your vows to be \emph{vates}, not
+when he's already tortured or killed or otherwise stepped on the free
+wills of so many other people."
+
+Harry stirred in Draco's arms, but didn't make an attempt to shrug off
+the hold, for which Draco was grateful. "I \emph{hate} this," he said
+softly, with a passionate loathing in his voice that made Draco shiver,
+and feel grateful it would never be directed at him. ``Being in control.
+I can put up with rituals and dances and special robes and all the rest
+of it when I know that I'm an equal among equals. But this---'' He
+plucked at the sleeve of his robe as if it were made of spiderwebs. "I
+don't \emph{want} this, not when it says that I stand above other
+people, and have the right to command them."
+
+``You hate giving orders,'' Draco murmured.
+
+``Yes. I've barely reconciled myself to it inside battle situations, and
+now---'' Harry's hands tugged at the sleeve of his robe again. ``Now I'm
+saying that I have the right to give them. The robes claim that right.''
+
+``But you put them on anyway.''
+
+Harry met his eyes, his own wide and desolate. ``I know what has to be
+done,'' he muttered. ``I know that there are many people who will follow
+me if I show that I'm willing to tell them what to do some of the time.
+They can't gain the strength and the confidence to make their own
+decisions without knowing what other people are also doing, and so I
+need to coordinate those decisions. They can't act in isolation. And
+they can gain strength and courage knowing I'm behind them, even if I'm
+not physically present at every battle.'' He folded his arms. "They're
+used to the way Lords act, whether or not I call myself by that name. So
+acting that way some of the time is the easiest way to win this war.
+
+``I'll do it. But I hate it.''
+
+Draco smiled and kissed the back of Harry's neck, letting Harry feel the
+smile against his skin. ``Harry,'' he said quietly.
+
+``What?''
+
+``The very fact that you hate it means that you'll watch your own
+behavior more vigilantly, and you have a very slim chance of becoming
+what Voldemort is, or Dumbledore was.'' Draco stepped back and met his
+gaze again. "You're right. This will calm and inspire people, and it's
+easier than arguing with every single person who wants to ally with you.
+It doesn't \emph{hurt} them. Or do you think that Connor's status, when
+he was the Boy-Who-Lived, would have hurt someone who wanted to follow
+him?"
+
+Harry's mouth, opening to voice a protest, shut with a snap. Draco
+nodded and tugged at his hair. ``It's not the behavior that worries you,
+then, so much as the person doing it. And we've discussed before, Harry,
+how silly it is to think that you're the exception to all rules and can
+somehow cause people pain through a behavior that wouldn't cause pain if
+anyone else did it. So do relax.''
+
+``Thank you, Draco,'' Harry said, and turned, and pulled him into one
+fierce kiss before he exited their bedroom with a determined stride.
+
+Draco blinked and touched his flushed cheek, then shrugged. It wouldn't
+do for Harry to arrive at the ceremony completely mussed, but he
+supposed it wasn't such a problem for Harry's lover. His major part
+today was to stand behind Harry, and if he grinned like an idiot while
+he did it, that was acceptable.
+
+SSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry's mind was busy with past Midsummers as he strode towards the ring
+of people waiting near the Forbidden Forest.
+
+A year ago, the ground had been littered with corpses. Today, the sun
+stormed across the sky as if to deny that any such thing had ever
+happened, and the people slowly turning to face Harry were all alive.
+
+Two years ago, it had been dark in the graveyard and blood-red with the
+loss of his hand. Today a left hand swung on the end of his wrist again,
+even if it \emph{was} the one marked with the silver emblem of Lady
+Death.
+
+And today he had something to do that would have horrified him more,
+ahead of time, than either of those things. He could face pain, and
+loss, and death. He could face a battle where he had planned every
+movement and knew that some casualties would occur on his side, but that
+those of the Death Eaters were likely to be far greater.
+
+He was not so sure he could face a ceremony that led him so far towards
+becoming something he hated.
+
+Ancient Lords and Ladies had not all gathered their companions in
+silence and secrecy, the way that Voldemort had done with the Death
+Eaters and Dumbledore had done with the Order of the Phoenix. Some of
+them had sent out public calls, especially if they were of the Light,
+and told anyone who wanted to follow them in no uncertain terms what
+would be expected of them and why they wanted companions. Harry had
+followed that tradition with his golden bubbles, and that would be what
+had pulled some of the people here now to him: the following of
+tradition, the comforting familiarity. Harry could not expect them to
+jump headlong at the idea of serving someone who did \emph{everything}
+differently.
+
+But then, how far could he walk along this road before his similarities
+to a Lord \emph{became} Lordship? Draco and Snape might have faith in
+him to avoid that fate forever, but Harry had swung on the abyss above
+his hatred of Voldemort. He knew things about himself that he never
+wanted to share with them. He had learned the first of them in the
+Chamber of Secrets when Sylarana died, that he was capable of wishing
+death on his brother and his parents, and now---
+
+But there was no other way.
+
+\emph{Or there is, and you didn't think hard enough to find it.}
+
+That would always be the specter haunting the back of his mind, in
+battle as well as out of it, Harry thought. He forced himself, now, to
+concentrate on the people in front of him, and give a small smile. If he
+could walk the thin line between love and hatred, knowing Voldemort
+could snatch him at any moment, surely he could walk a similarly thin
+line between formal ceremony and actual domination.
+
+He spread his hands and called an ivory platform from the ground,
+letting it rise beneath him and lift him up. That was another part of a
+Calling ceremony like this: Lords and Ladies used their magic as a
+demonstration of their strength and why they were worthy to lead willing
+recruits. Harry actually didn't mind this part, since it eased the
+pounding pain in his head.
+
+``Thank you for coming,'' he said, turning the air sideways so that it
+would bear his voice better than any other sound. "I wish you to know
+exactly what I am, and what I am offering. The only formal name I will
+claim, for now, is Harry. I belong to no family save that which I choose
+to honor. The man who sired me and the woman who bore me have no claim
+on my loyalty, and though my father's line was Light pureblood, I have
+no loyalty to the Light purebloods above all else. I am \emph{not} of
+that heritage.
+
+"I call myself \emph{vates}. That means walking the path of freedom,
+offering freedom to magical creatures as the most bound of us all, but
+also to wizards and witches who join me. It also means voluntary
+limitation, because at some points one's actions begin to intrude on the
+freedom of others. For me, it means not claiming every honor I could,
+not commanding or compelling others, not taking advantage of
+opportunities that would harm others, and not benefiting from the
+service of enslaved species such as house elves. What one chooses not to
+do is just as important as what one chooses to do.
+
+``I call myself legal heir of the Black line, with the permission of its
+blood and legal descendant, Regulus Black.'' His eyes sought out
+Regulus's where he stood in the front of the crowd, and Regulus sent him
+a warm smile. "That gives me access to the fortunes of a Dark pureblood
+heritage. I acknowledge this tie and claim it mine.
+
+``I call myself the Boy-Who-Lived, the war leader of an effort against
+Voldemort.'' Many still flinched at that name, but not as many as he had
+expected. Harry wondered if it had anything to do with the set masks of
+many faces, showing those, like the Weasleys, who had lost family
+members to Voldemort and had resolved to be angry rather than afraid.
+``I say that I will fight him until he is dead or I die. I ask others to
+follow me in that fight. If you agree, I will arrange local networks of
+defense, including arranging teaching of defensive magic and Dark Arts
+for those who want it. Or you may remain with me, if that is your
+decision, and go to battles all around Britain. Whether you defend a
+beloved home or defend the principles on which this war effort stands,
+you are welcome.''
+
+He paced slowly back and forth on the platform, meeting pair after pair
+of eyes, and holding them until they fell or the person nodded back to
+him. All the Weasleys were there---or all the remaining Weasleys, at
+least---and Augusta Longbottom, Neville's grandmother, standing with her
+hand on his shoulder. Luna leaned against her father. Dionysus
+Hornblower stood in the background, taking numerous photos. Priscilla
+Burke, Thomas's wife, and his children were there as well, and Thomas
+waved madly to Harry before turning to scribble down something on the
+scroll he held. Owen and Syrinx stood in front of the platform, chins
+high with exultant pride. It was something, Harry supposed, to be able
+to say that they had followed and honored all these principles Harry was
+talking about long before this meeting.
+
+``How you choose to commit is up to you,'' Harry continued calmly. ``I
+will brand those who wish it with the lightning bolt.'' He had never
+tasted words so foul, but he made himself say it. \emph{I will always
+hate this, but they need it.} "I will match those who ask with dueling
+teachers. I will be grateful to accept those with specialized skills
+into specialized positions. But I ask for a \emph{commitment.} If, after
+hearing me say this, you no longer wish to join the fight against
+Voldemort, I ask you to leave now."
+
+A few people Apparated away from the crowd, but not many. Harry nodded.
+``Then who will be the first to come forward?'' he asked.
+
+To his surprise, it was Augusta Longbottom. Neville walked beside her,
+but Harry was sure it was the old witch's decision to come to him. Her
+eyes never wavered from his face, and there was a deep resolve in her
+expression that reminded Harry of Laura Gloryflower.
+
+"\emph{Vates}," she said. The hideous purple vulture on her hat bobbed
+as she gave him a slow nod. ``I must ask if you are serious about the
+announcement you made a short time ago, that you would fight for the
+rights of those witches and wizards who are half-human but have had to
+hide their heritage.''
+
+Harry blinked. ``Yes, madam. I am.''
+
+Augusta nodded once more, then whispered, "\emph{Finite Incantatem.}"
+
+A glamour charm so old and deep that Harry hadn't sensed it ripped off
+her in strips and dropped away. He blinked again when he saw her eyes
+alter color to a deep green, and her face push outward into a cat-like
+muzzle. Gray dapples appeared as well, lying like shadows along her
+skin, rosettes that passed under her clothing. She turned, and Harry saw
+the weight of a golden, similarly spotted tail swaying behind her.
+
+Amid exclamations of shock, the clearest sound, to Harry, was Neville's
+voice whispering, ``Grandmother?''
+
+Augusta smiled fiercely down at him and stroked his hair. ``I am still
+myself, Neville. And still a Longbottom.'' She looked up at Harry. ``My
+parents went on a honeymoon to South America soon after they were
+married,'' she said calmly. ``They chose a bad time to visit the
+Peruvian Vipertooth reserve, though---just after some of them broke
+free. During the dragons' stampede, my parents were separated. My father
+found his wife, or a woman he thought was his wife, and stayed with her
+a few days. Then she vanished, and the next morning he found his wife
+wandering lost in the jungle.''
+
+Harry cocked his head. ``Werejaguar?'' Given the signs on Augusta's skin
+and the tale she told, that was the only explanation he could think of.
+
+Augusta nodded. ``Werejaguars,'' she explained, to Neville's staring
+face, ``are sentient jaguars who can take the form of humans when they
+wish. They once lived in close contact with both wizards and Muggles,
+before the Spanish conquest, and were worshipped as gods. And they are
+very, very good at glamour charms, illusions, and shadow magic---as they
+should be, when they can hide in plain sunlight. My mother took on the
+form of my father's wife for a time, because she wished to, and then
+changed back to her own form and bore me. Two years later, I showed up
+on my father's doorstep in England.'' She shook her head slightly. ``I
+don't remember much of the two years my mother kept me, but my father
+claimed me and bound me magically as heir to the Longbottom line. And
+all my life, I have learned to hide what I am.'' She nodded to Harry.
+"You could change that. I wish to see it changed. My heritage does not
+give me as much trouble as some others have, but I am of the Light. I
+detest subterfuge and deception, and I have lived a lie. Now that I know
+you will fight for half-humans like me, \emph{vates}, I am prepared to
+swear." She drew her wand. "\emph{Votum ignigena!}"
+
+Gold spread from her palm, a welling line that reminded Harry for an
+eerie moment of his own scar, and the way it looked when it first opened
+and began to bleed. It did not resemble fire, though the incantation
+called it that. This was the warm color of lamplight, or of the wings of
+the gryphon Harry had seen last Midwinter when the Light answered
+Fawkes's sacrifice. Augusta Longbottom knelt, with difficulty, and then
+looked up at Harry.
+
+``I would give the Fire Oath,'' she said. "It Transfigures some of my
+blood to fire, and passes my promise to you. I swear to follow you, to
+be loyal, to struggle against Voldemort in such ways as I can without
+injuring my honor. Should I break my promise, then the rest of my blood
+ignites, and that is the end of me. Do you accept this promise,
+\emph{vates}?"
+
+Harry would have said no even a year ago, he knew. And now he could not.
+He had to rely on others, as he'd told himself on the Astronomy Tower.
+He had to let other people fight beside him if they willed it, and in
+the ways they desired. He'd had that brought home to him again after
+Snape's speech about how it would be his own choice, and only that, that
+would make him leave the war effort.
+
+``I accept,'' he breathed.
+
+The yellow line of light lashed like a whip across Augusta's palms, and
+then down her right arm. Harry found himself smiling faintly. \emph{Of
+course. A Dark Lord marks the left forearm, but Light Lords more often
+marked the right.}
+
+When the light went out, Augusta bore a faint, round burn in the center
+of each palm, and a burn shaped like a lightning bolt on her right
+forearm. She nodded to Harry and stood slowly, creakily. ``I think my
+grandson has something to say to you,'' she said, and then put a hand on
+Neville's shoulder and pushed him forward.
+
+Neville stumbled a bit---Harry thought he was still taken by surprise
+that Augusta carried werejaguar blood in her veins---but he lifted his
+head proudly when he saw Harry looking at him.
+
+``I want to help, Harry,'' he said. ``I know I'm not always the best
+wizard, but I'm good in Herbology, and I've been learning the proper
+spells from you and Moody, and---I want to help.'' He ended by chewing
+his lip, as if he wondered whether he should have said something more
+specific.
+
+Harry smiled and nodded. ``You can, Neville. I know that you were
+working on plants that could counter Indigena Yaxley's vines. I'm
+putting you in charge of that. Develop as many plants as you can that
+you think could help defend people, either from an attack or from her
+specific weapons like her poisons and her thorns.''
+
+Neville's face brightened. ``Thank you, Harry!''
+
+Harry gently steered him back to his grandmother, and then, as the
+Longbottoms moved off, he stood in silence again, waiting for the next
+claimant. He didn't need to wait long, though.
+
+A cloaked woman in the front row moved forward, and lowered her hood the
+moment she was in front of Harry. Harry blinked. He would not have
+expected Lazuli Yaxley here; he had thought it would be too Light for
+her, or, at the very least, too public.
+
+Of course, she walked the paths of Light as well as Dark. Harry supposed
+that could lead to a double allegiance. And she might always have meant
+to make her alliance with Harry public.
+
+``My lady,'' he said. ``What form of commitment will you make to me?''
+
+``One based on the future,'' Lazuli answered. Her eyes were colder than
+those of anyone Harry had ever met, but he knew the reason. Every single
+day was a battle for her, against pain and for the consequences of her
+choice: the half-human daughter, Jacinth, she'd borne to some completely
+inhuman thing she met in the paths. ``I wish to fight beside you. My
+sister Indigena knows of magic I will never possess. But it is her will
+that makes her dangerous. If she were all ambition and dreams and no
+determination, she would never have changed the world. I wish to change
+it back, Harry, to act as her counterbalance.'' She made his first name
+sound as formal as any title, and when she dropped into a kneeling
+posture, she did it without a trace of actual submissiveness. ``Do I
+have your permission to join you?''
+
+``Of course,'' Harry said. ``And what mark will you take?''
+
+``The snake.''
+
+Harry frowned. The snake had been a symbol of several Dark Lords,
+sometimes by itself and sometimes as part of a Mark like the one
+Voldemort used. ``I use a lightning bolt, my lady, even when I take a
+sworn companion, and that is the most extreme form of marking I give.''
+
+``I realize this,'' said Lazuli. ``But you have no one else in your
+train, I believe, Harry, who is doing this to oppose a member of her
+family. Those of your allies who have experienced a split in their
+blood---'' her eyes tracked towards Draco, who stood beside him, and
+Millicent, on the right side of the platform ``---have done so through
+no fault of their own. I wish the snake as an ouroboros, the snake that
+feeds on its own tail and so comes back to its own beginning, to show
+that what one member of my family begins, another must finish.''
+
+Harry hesitated again, but he had said that he would do this, even as he
+hated it. Lazuli was hardly trying to make him like this, only do it.
+
+``Hold out your left arm,'' he whispered.
+
+She did, and he winced at the chewed look of it revealed as her sleeve
+fell back. But she had chosen this. Harry placed his hand in the center
+of the thickest part of her arm and closed his eyes, trying to picture a
+serpent eating its own tail that would be appropriate for this very
+dangerous and very strong-willed woman.
+
+The mark that materialized in his mind was not, perhaps, the most
+appropriate---once again he felt that he could have thought of something
+better, if only he'd \emph{thought}---but his magic seized it and guided
+it into Lazuli's flesh before Harry could decide on a different one. He
+lifted his hand, and Lazuli looked without expression at the gray-black
+snake eating its tail on her arm. The scales were the color of her
+daughter's, and the serpent's yellow eyes resembled Jacinth's, as well.
+
+``I'm---'' Harry began.
+
+``You remember the color of her scales,'' said Lazuli, and there was
+something in her voice that made Harry shut his mouth with a harsh
+click.
+
+Never taking her eyes off the serpent, Lazuli stood and retreated. Harry
+shook his head, and then had to smile at the Weasleys, who were coming
+forward as a body. He had the feeling that he'd just been offered a
+declaration of loyalty deeper and richer than many he would know, but
+Lazuli had used no words for it beyond the ones she'd already spoken,
+and so he didn't know its exact nature.
+
+``We wish to help you, Harry,'' Mr. Weasley said, drawing his attention.
+His face was pale and drained, but he looked less tired than he had at
+Percy's funeral. Harry found himself remembering that this man had
+always been nice to Connor, to the point of sheltering him during that
+horrible summer between fourth and fifth years when their parents' trial
+was beginning. ``We're always Light wizards, we've never followed a Dark
+leader, but we've decided that you're Light enough for us.''
+
+``Even though such a burden should never have fallen on a child so
+young,'' Mrs. Weasley said, and then sniffled and patted at her cheeks
+with a handkerchief.
+
+Harry nodded to them, and then glanced at the two Weasleys he knew the
+least, the two eldest sons. He'd met Bill only once, on his visit to the
+Burrow just after his parents had been arrested, and Charlie not at all.
+Bill's face was grim, as though he carried the shadow of Percy's death
+in his heart, and Charlie had a frightening intensity about his eyes.
+
+"\emph{We} want to become sworn companions," said Bill.
+
+Harry blinked. ``But---'' he said intelligently, and stopped.
+
+``What about our jobs?'' Charlie had a soft voice, or perhaps he was
+only making it soft so that he wouldn't break into a shout. Harry gave
+him a cautious nod. Charlie snorted, and lowered his voice a bit. ``I
+suppose you know that I'm a Dragon-Keeper in Romania, Harry?'' Harry
+nodded again, and Charlie's smile turned predatory. "Do you have
+\emph{any} idea what it means to me, that you've shown yourself willing
+to fight for the rights of magical creatures, and try to preserve the
+freedom of dragons instead of binding or killing them?"
+
+``And I work with goblins,'' Bill added, turning his head so that the
+fang-shaped earring swung. ``It's the same for me, Harry. You're one of
+the few wizards I've met who treats them like real people. And they're
+perfectly willing to spare me for a while, so that I can help you.''
+
+Harry licked dry lips. ``All right. You'll need to kneel and bare your
+left forearms, and we'll need something that cuts.''
+
+Bill casually pulled a knife from his belt. Harry felt Draco tense
+behind him, but Bill drew the blade across his own arm, and Draco
+relaxed, perhaps, just a fraction. Harry would have smirked at him if
+the occasion hadn't been so solemn.
+
+``I pledge my loyalty,'' Bill said, his voice calm and clear as he
+passed the knife to Charlie. ``I pledge my constancy, and my faith. I
+pledge my knowledge of goblins and the breaking of curses to help you if
+possible. I pledge to put your safety above my own, and to guard you
+with my life.''
+
+Charlie made the same oath, only substituting dragons for goblins,
+before Harry could object. He supposed that there wasn't much he could
+say that wouldn't disregard the solemnity of their oath anyway. He
+hesitated a moment, then gave his answer.
+
+``I pledge back to you my loyalty, my constancy, and my faith. I will
+call on your knowledge and your magical strength to help me in my
+battles, but never ask of you more than you can give. While I live, you
+shall never lack for my strength if you need it.''
+
+The blood welling from the cuts on Bill's and Charlie's cuts sizzled,
+and the lightning bolt scars sprang into relief. The scar on Harry's
+forehead gave a harsh, high throb, but Harry ignored Voldemort as best
+he could. Just because the mark had originally been the sign of his
+having survived the Killing Curse didn't mean Harry couldn't transform
+the sign and make it his own.
+
+Fred and George were the next to approach, both their faces cast in an
+iron mold. ``Harry, you'll have---''
+
+``Any of our products you need. Some of them are---''
+
+``Better in battle than as jokes. I'll not deny that we---''
+
+``Invented them with that in mind. And after poor Perce---''
+
+``We only ask for battle,'' they finished, and then stood looking
+expectantly at him.
+
+``Thank you both,'' Harry murmured, which seemed to be all they were
+waiting for. He turned to Ron and Ginny, curious as to what they wanted.
+Ron was an adult now, but Ginny wasn't. Their parents might argue for
+them both to make the same commitment of defense the elder Weasleys were
+making, but nothing more.
+
+Ron met his gaze and held it, in a way that Harry couldn't look away
+from. ``I want to fight,'' he said. ``Take me with you into battle.''
+
+Harry eyed him for a moment, and then stifled a shudder. Ron's magic
+boiled around him like a leashed cat, dangerously near to developing a
+life of its own. It would if it were confined much longer. It was best
+to let him work off that dangerous energy in battle, and it wasn't as
+though they would have a shortage of them in this war.
+
+``I'll do it,'' he said. ``Do you want to stay at Hogwarts for the
+summer holidays?''
+
+Mrs. Weasley offered a little sob, but Ron didn't even glance at his
+parents. ``Yes,'' he said. ``Just in case a battle happens and I would
+miss it otherwise.''
+
+Harry nodded, then glanced at Ginny.
+
+``I can't fight beside you all the time yet, for---obvious reasons.''
+Ginny glared at her mother, who pretended not to notice. ``But I want to
+help train people. I've been reading up on the theory behind Defense
+Against the Dark Arts, and I know a lot of the spells that Moody and you
+showed us in the dueling club by name and incantation and wand movement,
+even if I can't perform them all. I can at least show people what to do.
+You said that you needed dueling teachers, to teach local wizards and
+witches how to protect themselves. I want to do that.''
+
+Harry felt his face relax into a smile. He had been wondering where he
+would find teachers, since most of the people around him---Moody
+included---wanted to fight with him instead of stay behind and instruct.
+Ginny's youth would actually help him in this case, since Mr. and Mrs.
+Weasley didn't want her fighting yet. ``Thank you, Ginny. I accept that
+offer. Would you like to stay at Hogwarts as well?''
+
+``Ginny will be staying at the Burrow,'' Mr. Weasley cut in.
+
+Harry winced. \emph{I don't like this, either, and I don't have to.} He
+faced Mr. Weasley directly. ``That will make it hard for her to travel
+around and teach others as she needs to,'' he said quietly. ``Hogwarts
+is heavily-warded; she'll be safe here. And it's a central location
+where people can learn and then take the knowledge back home. I know
+that you can defend the Burrow, Mr. Weasley, and Ginny too, but not
+everyone is that lucky.''
+
+Mrs. Weasley bowed her head. ``I don't want her to go,'' she whispered.
+``Ginny's so young still.''
+
+``Not so young, Mum,'' said Ginny, and her voice was gentler than Harry
+would have believed it could be. It reminded him of the way he used to
+talk to Lily. "And if you forbid me to do it, I'll do it anyway, like I
+ran away to Woodhouse and fought the vampires in the Forest a few nights
+ago. I \emph{need} to do this, and I'll be good at it, and Harry can use
+the help."
+
+``Ginny,'' Mr. Weasley said, drawing her attention. ``Do you really want
+to do this?''
+
+Ginny lifted her chin and nodded. Her father watched her for a moment
+more, then sighed and drew his wife into his arms. ``We have to let her
+go, Molly,'' he whispered. ``And just because she's not seventeen yet
+doesn't---mean anything. It didn't mean anything when we were growing
+up, either, you remember. Children younger than Ginny were becoming
+Death Eaters, and casting the Killing Curse. At least she's chosen the
+right side.''
+
+Mrs. Weasley began to cry. Ginny touched her mother on the back, then
+faced Harry. ``I'll be staying at Hogwarts.''
+
+Harry nodded to her, then faced the rest. Other people he didn't know,
+or had only heard of by reputation, were coming forward now, Dark
+families and Light, some of them half-human, some of them people who had
+given up their house elves, some of them people who had written him
+letters earnestly pledging support.
+
+He collected oaths from some of them, but not nearly as many as he had
+feared. Many of them were interested in becoming better duelists so that
+they stood some chance of defending their families or home villages from
+a Death Eater attack. Others, often older witches and wizards who had
+attended Hogwarts years ago, wanted to teach, and to talk with Harry
+about what spells would be most useful. Others volunteered their
+services as liaisons between Harry and the wizarding villages, able to
+cast the phoenix-song communication spell already and quickly and neatly
+summarize a dangerous situation and the strengths and weaknesses of the
+people they knew.
+
+Halfway through the afternoon, Harry had to blink and realize that he
+had the beginnings of a defensive structure growing up around him,
+something like an army but not nearly as hateful, and that so far the
+oaths he accepted and the orders he issued didn't seem to have hurt
+anyone. His biggest personal danger was a sore throat from all the
+talking he was doing.
+
+\emph{Perhaps---perhaps---}
+
+\emph{Perhaps I'm still distinguishable from a Lord after all.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 10*: The Order of the
+Firebird}\label{chapter-10-the-order-of-the-firebird}
+
+Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter!
+
+\textbf{Chapter Seven: The Order of the Firebird}
+
+``I know it's not the same,'' Connor whispered as he launched the paper
+boat into the water, and then wondered who he was talking to---sun, or
+sand, or sky, or sea. ``But I wanted to celebrate this anyway.''
+
+He stepped back as the boat glided away, bobbing and then tumbling on
+the swells. The sand beneath his feet rasped softly---the sand of the
+beach where James had brought him and Harry twice on Midsummer to
+continue a ritual that the Potters had completed since the beginning of
+time, essentially. Connor hadn't returned last year, though that was
+mostly because of the battle. And today he hadn't sent the boat off at
+dawn, as the ritual strictly called for. But that didn't matter as much
+as completing the ritual on the same day, he thought, even if it was
+almost noon now, and the sun was high enough to cast multiple trails of
+dazzling light across the water, not just one.
+
+``We came from the east,'' he said, and shook his head when the words
+seemed to clank, falling around him like limp chains. \emph{Who came?
+James doesn't have the magic to be considered part of the family line
+anymore, and Harry isn't a Potter.}
+
+Of course, that didn't mean the Potters were gone. There was still him.
+
+Connor frowned. \emph{I don't think I care for the sensation of being
+the sole support of a bloodline. It's lonely.}
+
+He kept his eyes on his boat, watching the tiny parchment sail flutter
+bravely as it crested one wave, and then another. It probably sank
+eventually, but not before it vanished. Connor smiled. He could live
+with the vision of the ship passing unharmed into the future, even if it
+sank a short time later.
+
+Turning, he waded out of the shallow water and back onto the beach.
+Peter, who had brought him, nodded and smiled at him. ``Are you ready to
+practice Apparating?'' he asked.
+
+``Ready or not, I need to be,'' Connor said. ``Thanks for bringing me
+here.''
+
+``Of course,'' said Peter, his eyes softening. ``I would have done it
+anyway, Connor, you realize, whether or not this was Midsummer, once you
+told me that you wanted to practice.''
+
+Connor didn't say that he'd been waiting for Peter to recover somewhat
+from the effects of the vampire bites before he suggested Apparition
+practice, or that he actually preferred this day, since it gave him
+something to do while Harry was busy gathering his army. He had briefly
+considered participating in the ceremony, but it would have made him
+feel too strange to swear an oath to his own twin, even if he \emph{was}
+the last Potter and thus the last representative of an important Light
+pureblood family. He wanted to do something else, and learning to
+Apparate would ultimately benefit both Harry and the war they were
+trying to fight.
+
+``Thanks,'' he told Peter again. ``What's the first step?''
+
+``You need concentration,'' said Peter. ``It's impossible to Apparate to
+a place that you can't imagine, whether that's because someone's
+described it to you or you know it. Look at that place up the beach, for
+example, next to that piece of driftwood.'' He waved his wand, and a
+white log glittered and caught the light of a \emph{Lumos} charm. ``Do
+you think you can know it from this distance?''
+
+``I suppose,'' Connor said doubtfully, squinting. His eyes weren't bad,
+especially given that he had to chase a Snitch around in all sorts of
+weather, but he had never before tried to fix a nondescript location so
+firmly in his mind. He could more easily have Apparated to a place like
+Gryffindor Tower. He tried, now, to memorize the particular way the
+driftwood bent and the small shadow it cast on the sand, while being
+sure that it was a losing battle.
+
+``Good, then,'' Peter whispered, his voice soft, lulling. Connor felt
+himself slip almost into a trance as Peter's hand gripped his shoulder
+and guided him around. ``Now, face the driftwood. All you want is to get
+there. There's a distance between you and it, one that shouldn't be
+there. Do you see the distance?''
+
+``Yes.'' Connor eyed the stretch of sand unenthusiastically. It really
+shouldn't be there, should it? He should possess the magic to cross it
+and land next to the log if he wanted without using his feet. It wasn't
+worth the time it would take to cross it using his feet.
+
+``Good,'' Peter murmured. ``Now. Can you feel your magic boiling up,
+answering the call of your will?''
+
+``Yes,'' Connor whispered again. The stretch of sand grew more hateful
+as he glared at it. Why \emph{was} it there? Why couldn't he have
+already been at the driftwood? It really shouldn't exist.
+
+``Good,'' Peter said a third time. ``Now, can you make the leap to the
+driftwood? It ought to be a simple thing, given how much you want it,
+and how short the distance is.''
+
+Connor snorted. ``Of course it should be.''
+
+He called on his magic, and the driftwood seemed to shine as he summoned
+it closer. He saw it tremble, and realized with a frown that that wasn't
+right. He didn't want to pull the driftwood off whatever invisible
+support in the sand it rested on. A moment later, though, he understood.
+
+He relaxed the pull of his magic, and instead of thinking that he wanted
+the driftwood to come to him, he went to the driftwood.
+
+The world around him turned to black, dizzying nothingness, squeezing
+and rolling him up as if in a tube. But Connor had known this before,
+and he didn't panic. If this was the best way to eliminate that
+unnatural distance between himself and the driftwood, then he would use
+it.
+
+He came out with a sharp stagger next to the bend of the driftwood. But
+the projecting limbs didn't hurt him, because he'd carefully planned
+where he should alight. The distance made sense when he was on the patch
+of sand in its shadow, and could catch himself on one of the branches
+with his right hand.
+
+"Well \emph{done}, Connor!"
+
+Connor blinked and glanced up, to see Peter applauding from a good
+distance down the beach, looking as small from this angle as the
+driftwood log had from his position a few minutes ago. Hesitantly, he
+lifted a hand and waved back, still recovering from the shock of
+suddenly having everything be as it should, with him next to the log and
+the distance crossed.
+
+And then it really hit him. He'd \emph{Apparated}. And he hadn't
+Splinched himself, either, as a careful look down at his body showed.
+Connor threw back his head and laughed in exultation.
+
+Peter came up to him a few moments later, looking somewhere between smug
+and pleased. ``That's the best technique to use, I think,'' he murmured,
+his hand resting on Connor's shoulder. ``Others tell you to be aware of
+your body at all times, so that you don't leave a piece behind or send
+one ahead when you leap, but that only adds an extra layer of anxiety to
+the process that I don't think anyone really needs. It's much better to
+concentrate on the place, and make irritation one of the forces of magic
+that answers your needs.''
+
+``It is,'' Connor agreed, though he knew he might only be saying that
+because the method was the one that had worked for him. But so what? He
+was allowed to like it because it worked. He gave Peter a hug he could
+no more have resisted giving than he could have resisted anger at the
+driftwood when he realized it wasn't where it was supposed to be. ``Can
+we try to make it faster this time?''
+
+``Of course,'' said Peter, and squeezed him in turn, and then stepped
+away to direct Connor's attention to the place at the edge of the beach
+where they'd stood a few moments before his Apparition.
+
+\emph{My first successful Apparition. The first of many more.}
+
+Grinning like a fool, Connor forced himself to attend closely to what
+Peter was saying.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+\emph{This is a most unusual invitation.}
+
+Indigena tapped the folded parchment against her wrist, keeping her face
+calm as she considered the house in front of her. Of course she'd
+visited it before, but she hadn't come here since her mother died. She
+had had Thornhall as her rightful inheritance, and, more importantly,
+the gardens and greenhouses that surrounded Thornhall. She had no reason
+to come to Briar-Rise.
+
+Yet here she was again, and here the house was, quiet and resting, wound
+with spells to defeat Muggles that included ones to make them fall
+asleep when they came in sight of it. It was denser and darker than
+Thornhall, built of a black stone that Indigena had never seen
+elsewhere, but with the individual blocks faceted and made to hook into
+each other like pieces of an intricate puzzle. The windows were enormous
+black portals, without shutters or curtains, but with spells to insure
+that someone standing outside couldn't use them to spy on those inside.
+Black canes of briars framed the windows and acted as decorations on the
+walls and roof of the house, but Indigena could feel no empathy for
+them. They were purely magical, artificial, not the living plants that
+she'd devoted so much time to caring for in Thornhall.
+
+And yet her sister had issued her an invitation to visit it.
+
+Indigena began to walk. It was Midsummer Day, which meant a very great
+deal of sun, and the leaves and petals curled under her skin rejoiced in
+it even if she didn't. The tendrils in her hair writhed high, licking at
+the light, quivering now and then in joy that had Indigena reluctantly
+smiling as she pressed her hand flat against Briar-Rise's door.
+
+For a moment, the door sparked, and the symbol of the Yaxley family
+appeared: a black thorn tree against a rising full moon, with the family
+motto floating below in dark letters. \emph{Vita desinit, decus
+permanit.}
+
+Then the symbol died, and the door swung open with a faint click.
+Indigena saw no house elf on the other side, or human. Of course not.
+Her sister had let her house elves go when she allied herself with
+Harry.
+
+She felt her way forward, through corridors in which wards guided her,
+creating a narrow aisle in the midst of the magic down which she could
+pass. Indigena shook her head. Lazuli was trying mightily to convince
+Indigena that she was powerful and didn't fear her sister. That only
+filled Indigena with sadness and irritation. \emph{I have honor to
+compel me to serve my Lord. What has sent her to Harry's side? Worry
+over the future of her daughter, not something so high as honor.}
+
+She ended up at last in the biggest room of the house, a library like a
+pit, with multiple hearths facing each other in which magical fires
+blazed, one red, one blue, and one green. The room was octagonal, or
+possibly shaped like a heptagon; the presence of bookshelves all along
+the walls kept Indigena from getting an accurate count of their numbers.
+The walls curled with briars like a forest, but once again they were
+carved and painted, and the black of the stones was overwhelming.
+Indigena sniffed. The place could have done with living plants, if only
+to cheer up the color scheme a bit.
+
+Lazuli stood in front of a window, gazing out. She had her back to
+Indigena, but Indigena would have known her sister in a crowd of a
+hundred similar women. No one else had that stiffness to the neck, the
+curve that permanent pride created. When she turned around and met her
+eyes, Indigena was ready for the coldness that lingered there, the
+utterly inflexible lines of her face.
+
+``Sister,'' said Lazuli.
+
+``Lazuli,'' Indigena returned, because she didn't feel like giving the
+intimate title to a woman who opposed her. ``I don't suppose you would
+care to explain this?'' She held up the invitation.
+
+``Sit down,'' said Lazuli, and moved towards one of the three blue
+chairs arranged in a triangle in the center of the room. Indigena lifted
+her eyebrows, but did as commanded. \emph{We are to have one more
+visitor. Dare I think that Lazuli would have the courage to invite our
+third sister?}
+
+But of course she could think that. Lazuli had had the courage to go
+alone into the paths between Dark and Light and do something utterly
+mad, sleep with something utterly nonhuman. Summoning Peridot to a
+meeting like this was something she could plan in her sleep, next to
+that.
+
+Just after Indigena had taken her seat, Peridot entered the room.
+Indigena nodded, perforce, keeping her thorns from climbing from the
+sheaths on her back.
+
+But it was a near thing. She did not like her sister for the way Peridot
+had raised her son, but the dislike could not rest in simple contempt.
+She was forced to be uneasily conscious of what her sister had achieved
+magically.
+
+Peridot wore a simple gown, which seemed black at first but was revealed
+as dark red when the light of the fires fell on it. It barely concealed
+her breasts, and the sleeves twined up into her long dark hair in
+impossible ribbons. She took her seat in a way that made the gown flap
+and then freeze, plunging in long folds into the earth. Indigena
+smelled---not because she wanted to, but because she couldn't escape
+it---the deep, musky scent around Peridot, the scent of sex and lust and
+reproductive magic. Indigena knew a variation of that enchantment
+herself, the incredible power that sent green things striving back to
+the surface of the earth in spring after their long winter sleep, but it
+was never as demanding as the magic Peridot wielded, and never as
+heated.
+
+\emph{Low magic. Lust magic.}
+
+But most low magic and lust magic was a passing fancy for the witches or
+wizards who were interested in it, and they went on to more powerful
+spells later. Not so Peridot, who had made it her life's work, and who
+had used her network of former lovers in the Ministry to establish her
+political connections. What she did was worthy of scorn, but it
+\emph{worked}, and Indigena was uneasily aware of her sister when they
+met, in every sense. That she had become pregnant only once in all her
+liaisons was astounding, but Indigena supposed Peridot must know the
+secrets of preventing life as well as engendering it, and of course she
+might have climbed mostly into the beds of women since Feldspar was
+born.
+
+Indigena did not know. She did not wish to know anything about the
+activities of her pariah sister, whether they were held at night or
+during the day.
+
+``Welcome, sister,'' said Lazuli, of course sounding no different than
+she had when she welcomed Indigena. She turned to face both of them and
+shook her left sleeve back. Indigena's eyes narrowed when she saw the
+snake on the chewed flesh, the serpent eating its tail, curling forward
+and back.
+
+``What is that?'' she asked quietly.
+
+``My ouroboros,'' Lazuli said, voice as flat and emotionless as though
+she had always borne the tattoo. ``Given to me by Harry at my request,
+that I might repair the wrong of my family.''
+
+Indigena stared. Not only had Peridot failed to persuade Lazuli to
+abandon Harry's side, she had failed so spectacularly that Lazuli had,
+in essence, sworn an oath of vengeance against Indigena. She would cut
+the diseased graft---in her eyes, in Harry's---from the Yaxley family
+tree. She would actually fight, not just protect her daughter or give
+Harry political advice.
+
+``Why?'' she asked quietly.
+
+``The answer to that lies in Peridot.'' Lazuli turned her head to face
+the pariah, in such a smooth, snake-like movement that she didn't
+disturb her robe, and the circling serpent remained visible.
+
+Reluctantly, Indigena looked at Peridot, whose eyes were currently
+closed. They opened, and they were green, flecked with gold, like the
+stone from which she took her name. And there was a beauty about her,
+lithe and fierce as a snake's, that made Indigena want to---
+
+``Stop it!'' she hissed, and heard the cloth on her seat tear as the
+thorns surged from her back.
+
+Peridot laughed, and the sound was too deep, damn her, too husky.
+``Something wrong, sister?'' she asked. ``But of course it would be.
+That particular spell only works on people who haven't let someone crawl
+between their legs in far too long. You should watch that. I can only
+imagine how all that humid heat you carry will rot you if you don't use
+it.''
+
+``What did you want?'' Indigena said, and made the tendrils in her hair
+lie flat.
+
+``Why, sister,'' said Peridot, with a tilt of her head, ``only to repay
+you for infecting me with a potion that can light me on fire with a
+thought, and for taking my son from me when you had no right to do so.''
+
+``You know why I did it,'' said Indigena, and forced herself to relax.
+Lazuli had made no move to attack her yet, and she was the one Indigena
+worried most about, despite Peridot's disgusting lack of inhibitions.
+``He was the one responsible for my enslavement. And he can still die,
+easily. Or he could survive this war. I meant every word of my bargain
+in that letter, sister. I will defend him like a nephew if you fulfill
+that part of your bargain. Or I would have,'' she added, with a glance
+at Lazuli, ``since it seems you could not fulfill it.''
+
+Peridot snorted. ``Of course I didn't. I went to Lazuli the moment I
+received the letter and told her about it.''
+
+Indigena stared at her. The sister who had raised her son to be a coward
+should not have done that. ``You know the threat of the potion is
+real,'' she said. ``You know that you could die at any moment my Lord
+wills.''
+
+``Yes, but its reality is not the important thing.'' Peridot shook her
+head, and the dark scent of sex filled the room. Indigena forced herself
+to keep her eyes on her sister's face, because looking anywhere else on
+her body was just too disgusting at this point. "I am tired of you
+threatening me, Indigena. You have never thought I had any courage,
+because I chose to spoil the one child I ever bore, and because I
+\emph{did} think there were more important things than your
+interpretation of Yaxley honor. My honor is different."
+
+``Your honor is nonexistent,'' Indigena muttered.
+
+``I did tell you that she had the most charmingly childlike beliefs,''
+Peridot remarked to Lazuli, who was watching them both with calm,
+narrowed eyes. ``She still mixes up chastity with honor.'' She turned
+back to Indigena. "All of my lovers have experienced pleasure, Indigena,
+and none of them ever regretted going to bed with me. And my son never
+regretted being born my son. He may have, now. That means that \emph{of
+course} I am going to act against you."
+
+``Even though my Lord could destroy you?'' Indigena asked.
+
+Peridot rolled her eyes. ``He can try,'' she said. ``I have some magic
+that may yet teach him a thing or two. Even potions are not unbeatable,
+for someone who has spent as much time in the dark as I have. And if I
+die, then I die pursuing my vision of honor and courage.'' She locked
+gazes with Indigena. ``Did you honestly not think that I was a Yaxley,
+too? That you could compel me?''
+
+Indigena tightened the grip of her hands on her knees. She had suggested
+the Meleager's Fire potion for Peridot because it \emph{should} have
+compelled her to do what the Dark Lord wanted. She was a coward. She had
+to be. She worked in such a lowly branch of magic, and she had raised
+her son that way, and---and Indigena despised her, and who would want to
+die of flames from inside her own blood?
+
+``You have underestimated us both, sister,'' Lazuli said in an empty
+voice. ``And now you have paid the price. We asked you here to tell you
+this. You have two sisters working against you now.'' She turned her
+left arm over again to show off the ouroboros, not reacting when a chunk
+of flesh vanished from near her elbow. ``If you have any questions to
+ask of us, you may ask them. Otherwise, you should leave now, because
+you are no longer welcome in Briar-Rise.''
+
+Indigena looked from sister to sister. She had lost, she would not keep
+them from participating in the war, and she still did not understand how
+she had lost. Lazuli's most important priority had always been the
+protection of her daughter. Participating in the war meant she might
+lose her life, and thus leave Jacinth undefended. How had Harry
+convinced her?
+
+And Peridot! Lust magic was low magic, no matter what she thought. She
+should have given in the moment Indigena threatened her, more interested
+in surviving and fucking than joining one side of the war or another.
+
+\emph{I suppose I am not the only one who has honor, and a failure as a
+mother does not make her a failure as a Yaxley.}
+
+Indigena rose and left the room without a word. She had learned a bitter
+lesson, and learned it too late. There was nothing \emph{to} say.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``You are ready?'' Peregrine asked, head tilted back to stare up at him
+as they walked towards the meadow where the contest would be held. She
+was tiny, a black woman hardly above five feet, but that didn't matter.
+She radiated more than the usual wild aura of a werewolf, but a sense of
+tightly controlled and restrained power. She was alpha, and no movement
+of hers let one forget it.
+
+Remus nodded, and then looked ahead of them. They were descending a
+small slope, into the center of a boiling mass of werewolves. Not only
+Hawk's pack, but Peregrine's and Camellia's, as their nearest neighbors,
+had come to see who would win this fight for alpha. It was one of a very
+few times when the dead alpha had left no indication as to who he
+preferred to take over. Hawk had not expected to die, much less to end
+in the arms of a vampire.
+
+Remus had been beta male for all intents and purposes---one of the
+werewolves in the pack who had lived with the curse longest, and
+specially invited into the pack by Hawk himself. But that made no
+difference when Hawk hadn't chosen him to follow him, and there was a
+challenger. Remus would have to fight her.
+
+He thought he was ready. He had spent the last few days preparing
+himself for this challenge, and he had sought that preparation in the
+blending of his wizard and werewolf mindsets. As a beta, he hadn't had
+to lead. He could follow Hawk as he had followed Loki at one time, and
+Dumbledore before that, and James and Sirius at a time before that.
+
+But now the pack needed a leader, and Remus knew he was the best
+candidate. Many other members of the pack were either content with their
+place in the hierarchy or, like Blackbird, his challenger, simply didn't
+understand what being an alpha now would mean. They were thinking of the
+power and the privileges first, and secondarily of the safety of the
+pack. Sometimes, as when the packs were simply surviving in London and
+had no larger part to play in the world, that worked.
+
+It wouldn't work now. They had to consider what their actions would mean
+in the larger world of wizards and werewolves. Blackbird had been a
+Muggle until she was bitten six years ago, and then she had voyaged from
+pack to pack around Europe, only ending up in Hawk's a few months prior.
+She thought she understood challenges, and perhaps she did, but she had
+no idea of pack tradition or of how the magical world really saw them.
+
+\emph{We need someone who has experience of both worlds, and can subdue
+his own pride to follow another's orders, like Harry's, when necessary.}
+
+The very traits that would have made him unsuited to lead a pack in
+peacetime made him perfect now.
+
+They reached the bottom of the meadow, and the others came forward to
+greet them, rubbing against Remus with carefully neutral gestures, but
+nipping gently at Peregrine's jaw and nose to show submission, or
+rolling on their backs and baring their bellies and throats. Peregrine
+responded calmly and confidently to such gestures, secure in her power.
+Remus watched her with a trace of envy.
+
+\emph{I am not there yet.}
+
+But the challenge would help. Already Remus could feel the currents of
+the packmind shifting and changing, as Hawk's pack prepared to accept
+the winner of this fight as their leader. It was \emph{right}, and
+someone who rebelled and insisted on not following the leader because of
+personal dislike would cost the pack. What they were together was more
+important than any single individual, even as every single member made
+them what they were, like notes in a symphony.
+
+The moon was rising. Remus could feel it coming, the slow tide of his
+blood as it surged towards the walls of his veins.
+
+They had all taken Wolfsbane before the contest, of course, though it
+had never been traditional in such challenges. The participants had to
+be equal in as many ways as possible, though; a werewolf with a broken
+leg would insure that the other had his or her leg weighted down, either
+with physical obstacles or pain spells. So, since Remus insisted on
+taking Wolfsbane, Blackbird had also taken it, and so had the others so
+that they could retain their minds and better judge the contest.
+
+Remus and Peregrine separated to take their places. She loped to the
+northern side of the circle, and sat down facing Camellia, who sat on
+the south. Remus himself was in the west, with the other members of the
+pack carefully falling away and letting him have all the room he needed.
+Blackbird had won the privilege of being on the east, nearest the rising
+full moon.
+
+Remus locked his eyes with hers, and felt the growl rising in his throat
+as something almost foreign to himself. The important thing was making
+Blackbird back down. Of course, she didn't, a thin, wiry young woman
+with long dark hair, already naked as the contest demanded, skin bared
+to the first touch of moonlight. She was strong, and had a naturally
+dominant personality. That second thing was what really made her believe
+she would win, Remus knew. She \emph{liked} to command people, and she
+believed that was all a pack leader needed.
+
+He would have smiled if he could have worked his face into some
+expression other than a snarl. She had been a werewolf for six years,
+and Remus for more than thirty. Yes, personality mattered, but so did
+perception. And if she had seen nothing more than desire to command in
+the alphas she studied, something was wrong with her perceptions.
+
+And then the moon was there.
+
+Remus tossed back his head, and felt the bone-deep shudder begin as his
+skeleton rearranged itself. The most exquisitely painful part of this
+was the elongation of his face, the muzzle thrusting itself forward at
+the same moment his spine bowed. Remus sometimes thought he could have
+borne the change even before the invention of Wolfsbane as long as he
+could have remained a human-headed wolf.
+
+Not to say that the forcing out of the tail didn't hurt, or the
+flattening and opening of his hands into paws, or the sudden crook of
+his legs. But they didn't hurt in the same way, and once the alteration
+of his face passed, Remus knew the worst was done.
+
+Besides, the moments when he opened his eyes as Moony under the full
+moon were the only ones when the wolf in his head fell silent, as long
+as he was dosed with Wolfsbane. The transformation contented it as it
+was never contented while he was human, whispering endless tales of
+blood and obsession. But the potion insured that it could not fulfill
+its desire for blood now.
+
+Remus studied Blackbird, who had become a bitch so large and black, with
+such a thin gray stripe on her muzzle, that he was momentarily reminded
+of Fenrir. But she was not Fenrir. Remus knew \emph{he} was dead. He
+parted his jaws and panted, eyes locking with Blackbird's and never
+moving, his own growl and her answering sound becoming the whole world.
+
+The whole world until Peregrine howled to begin the challenge, at least.
+
+Blackbird sprang forward first, but Remus was only a moment behind. They
+swung past each other, and Remus felt the dash of fangs at his shoulder,
+followed by her weight, trying to bowl him over and end the contest
+quickly.
+
+\emph{So crude.} Not even six years in a werewolf's body could teach
+what had become instinct for Remus, though Blackbird was of course
+incredibly graceful compared to the young pups turned a month or so ago.
+She was still trying to use her strength the way a human wrestler would
+have used it.
+
+But the world that ran on four legs was different. Remus was not as
+quick or strong as Blackbird, but he was clever, and he knew the wolf's
+body. He braced his feet and met her jaws with jaws of his own, grabbing
+onto her face, clamping onto the sensitive nose.
+
+Blackbird yelped, and thus wasted her breath. \emph{Idiot,} Remus
+thought, still closing his jaws. \emph{She is not what the pack needs,
+not if she cannot anticipate something this simple.}
+
+She did drag herself free after a moment, using main force, but bearing
+long, ragged runnels of wounds all down her face. A howl rang from
+Camellia's side of the circle this time, marking first blood, and Remus
+felt the pack tremble with excitement. Wolfsbane held them where they
+were, though.
+
+He didn't give Blackbird time to recover, but drove straight ahead,
+hitting her legs and tripping her into a tumble. Blackbird barked and
+tried to take him along, the front half of her body jerking like a fish
+or a rope. Remus kicked off the ground with his hind legs and leaped up
+and out, avoiding the trap. When he landed, it was with a skid, but he
+had humiliated Blackbird successfully and avoided taking any bruises of
+his own.
+
+She flipped over and came up into a leap. Remus reared to meet her.
+
+For a moment, they stood on their hind legs, locked jaw to jaw and snarl
+to snarl, shoving and pushing. Blackbird's greater strength was always
+going to tell, and Remus could feel himself slowly going over backwards.
+
+He waited until the moment when Blackbird's confidence would be
+greatest, the moment before he would have fallen and been irretrievably
+caught under her in a losing position, with her jaws on his throat. Then
+he yanked himself away and \emph{ducked}, practically swimming under her
+belly, lifting his head now and then to snap at all that vulnerable soft
+fur.
+
+Blackbird half-limped and half-stamped, trying to get him out from under
+her groin, her yelps high and shrill. Remus added indignity to insult by
+snatching her tail in his jaws as he came out, bracing his feet again,
+and shaking so hard that she went sprawling face-first on the earth.
+
+Blackbird tried to roll over and stand, but Remus raked his teeth
+through the fur on her tail, ripping off chunks and shredding it to
+little more than a fluffy strip of flesh. Then he jumped away, scraping
+one paw through the grass to celebrate his triumph. He couldn't have
+played that trick on an ordinary wolf. Occasionally a werewolf's longer
+legs, which gave them more speed, were not an advantage.
+
+But she recovered fast, and was up, and springing at him. And that might
+even have made a difference if Remus was stupid enough to allow himself
+to be cornered, which he wasn't.
+
+He leaped and turned and spun, making Blackbird fall more than once, and
+angering her immensely. He could practically feel her thoughts, because
+she wasn't a subtle or a deep thinker, and they all shone in her amber
+eyes anyway. She thought that, since she was faster, she ought to have
+been able to catch up with him.
+
+But just because she had more speed in a run on open ground didn't mean
+she could anticipate all his moves. And as Remus humiliated her more and
+more thoroughly, including one point at which she crossed her paws in
+front of herself and tripped, he knew she grew more and more frustrated.
+
+Finally she uttered an ear-splitting roar and hit him, trying to knock
+him over.
+
+Remus had been waiting for that. He molded himself to her chest, locked
+his jaws on her left shoulder, and held on. When they fell, she on top
+of him, she snapped frantically, trying to find a place to bite, but
+Remus was in an excellent position to both worry at her shoulder and
+kick with his hind paws, coming nearer and nearer to ripping open her
+gut.
+
+Instinct made Blackbird try to let go of him. Remus wouldn't allow that.
+He didn't want to kill her---they could use a wolf of her strength and
+speed in the war---but he also couldn't take the chance that she would
+consider herself less than thoroughly beaten and renew the challenge at
+a later date. So he gave her a taste of what death by his teeth and his
+nails was like, and clung even when she tried to back off.
+
+Finally, her yelps had a sound of distinct terror, and her stumbling had
+taken her into a little hollow. It was easy for Remus to lower his
+paws---he'd been letting her carry most of his weight, which only
+exhausted her further---and lock them on the higher ground. Meanwhile,
+his jaws surged from her shoulder to her face, never letting go of at
+least one hold in her fur on the way. A moment later, he was squeezing
+the breath from her nostrils again, his fangs falling easily into the
+grooves he'd carved earlier.
+
+Blackbird whimpered, and Remus saw desperation in her eyes. She whined
+into his mouth then, and Remus, knowing he would pay for this if he'd
+misjudged her, let her go.
+
+He hadn't misjudged her. Even Blackbird could admit defeat when it
+actually happened to her, it seemed. She whined some more, sucked in
+air, and then crouched in front of him, lipping at his chin like a puppy
+seeking to make a parent regurgitate meat. When Remus flipped his ears
+forward and snarled, she rolled eagerly on her back, and Remus lowered
+his head and clamped his jaws into place on her throat, holding her in
+signal of submission given and accepted, and a challenge won.
+
+Howls rang from Camellia's and Peregrine's throats, to be joined a
+moment later by the cries of all the pack, and then they were leaping
+around Remus, nudging him, slamming him with their shoulders, wagging
+their tails furiously, meeting his eyes for only a moment before
+averting their heads.
+
+Remus accepted it all, and felt the packmind reorient around him, a
+blaze of redrawn ley lines that accepted him as their keystone. He could
+do this, he reminded himself, because he had to, and because he was not
+alone. He had other pack leaders around him, and Harry to follow if
+times became too hard.
+
+He tore free of the press at last, and lifted his head to call. Their
+voices blended with his, an endless eerie chorus to announce the latest
+addition to the long lineage of pack leaders.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Erasmus shivered as he appeared from Apparition. He could hear
+werewolves howling somewhere near, and it was not a comfortable sound.
+\emph{That is Dark magic that should never have been cast. Why did
+whoever invented the curse spread it? Some things, wizards were not
+meant to learn.}
+
+He turned, and found Aurora already beside him, with Cupressus Apollonis
+at the other shoulder. More and more Light wizards and witches appeared
+as he watched, or undeclared ones, like Aurora, who had decided to stand
+with them tonight. He lifted his wand and cast the Dawn's Light Charm.
+Warmer and richer radiance than was possible with \emph{Lumos} slid over
+them, echoing the very last gleams of sunset in the sky, on this evening
+of longest light and shortest night.
+
+He felt the magic taking hold around him, a breath of sky and sun, and
+turned to see the stones appearing. They were near the monument that
+Muggles called Stonehenge, and Erasmus could feel the place magic if he
+concentrated, a blend of wizardly and druidic power endlessly renewed
+and sent back into the soil and the stones each year.
+
+But these were the other stones, the ones that Muggles could not see,
+and which never appeared any more except at Midsummer, and except in
+answer to the needs of Light wizards. It was appropriate that they would
+come now, Erasmus thought, when he intended to found a new Order in the
+ancient tradition.
+
+Diamond lines of light were rising from the grass, rippling like
+reflections on water. They snapped firm in moments, and filled with
+gold, as if someone had slipped phoenix feathers into them. And now they
+were visible: four circles consisting of pairs of upright stones with
+lintels laid across them, and from each hung a lazily swaying pendulum
+of light. A flickering, dancing glow like a will-o'-the-wisp called them
+from the center.
+
+Erasmus glanced once around his companions, forty-four of them in all.
+The number would do. They had agreed to come here and begin the Order,
+and that meant more to him than a greater number of unwilling volunteers
+would have.
+
+``We have forty-five,'' he said, and lifted his wand, so that the Dawn's
+Light Charm could more fully reveal the shining bulk of the stones. "We
+are here, in the Shining Place, where once Christopher the White asked
+for help to combat the Dark Lady Genevieve, who brought the Dementors
+into the world. We are here, in the Circles of Light, where once British
+wizards made their stand against the Midwinter Warlocks. We are here, in
+the Changing Ring, where the Firestar Lord who immorally blended Dark
+and Light magic met his end at the hands of Helen Potter. We are here,
+and \emph{we serve the Light.}"
+
+The chorus came back to him, a ragged flutter of voices from forty-four
+throats. Erasmus smiled slightly. The one who had spoken most strongly
+and confidently was Cupressus Apollonis. That was not a surprise, since
+he was the one of all his allies most committed to Light. The only
+disagreement he and Erasmus had had since Apollonis threw his weight
+behind their alliance was in whether they should leave Harry alone.
+Erasmus had at last made the point that they should ignore his defiance
+for now, that fighting Voldemort was more important. Apollonis had
+looked at him for a long time with wild eyes before inclining his head
+in agreement.
+
+Erasmus walked inward now, passing the first ring of stones. The glow in
+the center became clearer and clearer, and he saw Aurora shiver. She was
+undeclared, so the place affected her more. Erasmus mostly felt
+contented, embraced, loved. The Light was here, singing in every breeze,
+the wings of its great gryphon rising and falling in the corner of every
+eye. And now the pendulums in the second ring of stones were swaying
+faster and faster, grasping Erasmus's words and drawing them forth from
+his throat. Everything was as it should be, he thought, or would be,
+once their new Order was established.
+
+"We have forty-five. We are as the old ones were, the bright ones, the
+wizards who risked everything to bring back the Light when it was
+banished from Britain for fifty years. We are as the old ones were, the
+wise ones, who saved so many treasures from the sack of Rome. We are as
+the old ones were, the powerful ones, who made sure that Muggles and
+wizards separated so that both our worlds could survive. We are here,
+and \emph{we serve the Light.}"
+
+The response was stronger this time, and Erasmus felt a growing heat on
+his face and neck, softer than any fire. He lifted his wand. It drew a
+triangle of light in the air on its own, pointing to his heart, and to
+Aurora's, and to Cupressus Apollonis's. Since they were the most
+powerful wizards there, the Light would draw on their strength for the
+coming ritual.
+
+Summer had been invited into the circles with them, and paced beside
+them like a great cat as they crossed to the third ring of stones. Here,
+Erasmus could hear the clash of bells as the pendulums swung against
+each other, and together they made a wall of bladed light among the
+stones the moment the last of their forty-five were through. Again, he
+paused to study them, and was gratified to see hope and belief beginning
+to creep into many faces. Even Elizabeth Dawnborn, who had agreed to
+participate in this ritual because of the Light and not because of him,
+was clasping her hands now, her eyes shining with faith and love.
+
+``We are forty-five,'' Erasmus whispered this time, letting his voice
+build. "We are the ones who value righteousness above our own lives. We
+are the ones who would voluntarily limit ourselves that others might
+live and do as they would, respecting free will. We are the ones who
+would bow our heads to the will of order, of patterns, knowing that
+human life needs patterns in order to exist. We are here, and \emph{we
+serve the Light.}"
+
+All the pendulums chimed at once when the response came back from his
+people, and Erasmus shivered as the music ran up and down his spine. For
+a moment, he thought he saw a curled wing, a curved neck, in the edge of
+the gold that shone around him, that spilled into and split the night,
+and he shivered again.
+
+They walked inward to the fourth ring. Now only a few trunks of stone
+hid the darting golden treasure in the center of the circle.
+
+``We are forty-five!'' Erasmus found himself bellowing, his voice
+ringing out like a trumpet cry, though he hadn't meant it to. The power
+of the ritual was building itself up, wringing out its human vessels.
+"We are the ones who work together, disdaining the solitude of the Dark.
+We are the ones who love truth, who value honesty, who disdain
+subterfuge. We are the ones who live more for peace than war, and do not
+think war glorious. We are here, and \emph{we serve the Light!}"
+
+He could not have asked for a more intimidating clangor than the voices
+of those around him raised this time. It might have made even Voldemort
+back away in fear, at least if he knew what was good for him. The stones
+hummed as if they were wineglasses tapped with a finger, and Erasmus
+caught his breath as the golden glow in the center of the circle at last
+turned and swept towards them.
+
+As he had hoped, it had taken the form of a firebird, longer-legged than
+the phoenix, brighter, with eyes like hope. The firebird hovered in
+front of them for a moment, and then began to dance.
+
+Its dance was the beginning of spring, the laughter of children, the
+tiny emotions of the human psyche that had room to flourish when not
+crushed by the overwhelming Dark. Erasmus bowed his head, and felt his
+heart thrumming in his ears, and tears on his cheeks like the touch of
+butterfly wings.
+
+He knelt, pressed down by a great warm hand. The others followed, and
+all of them held their wands out in front of them, because this was what
+was supposed to happen.
+
+The firebird danced past them, the touch of its long, graceful legs
+setting a tiny, smoldering, brilliant light on the end of every wand.
+And Erasmus felt its blessing breathed into his ears and his eyes, as
+the Light accepted and approved what they were to do.
+
+\emph{We are the Order of the Firebird. We are the pure ones, the
+fighters who cling to the ancient traditions. We shall not do what is
+expedient, but what is right, and purge ourselves of tainted beliefs and
+believers. Not for us the close company of Dark wizards that Harry
+favors, or the dangerous connection to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. This is
+the path that runs up into the Light.}
+
+\emph{We are the Order of the Firebird, and we shall fight.}
+
+And all the world was light.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 11*: Intermission:
+Testing}\label{chapter-11-intermission-testing}
+
+The lines quoted here are from Swinburne's ``The Garden of Proserpine.''
+
+\textbf{Intermission: Testing}
+
+It felt rather like hurling himself against the equivalent of steel
+coils armed with blades, but why shouldn't he do it? It wasn't as though
+he had anything else to do. Waking or sleeping, eating or standing
+motionless, carrying out some order of the Dark Lord or looking blankly
+at the wall of the earth burrow, his body moved and existed without him.
+The corner of his mind that still belonged to him, though, was aware and
+\emph{bored}. He might as well test the boundaries of the Dark Lord's
+control and see what happened.
+
+Lucius had never been aware of how much he detested slavery before this.
+He tried spells on the wall in front of him, because in this small,
+blank corner of his mind he did clutch an imagining of his wand. He
+tried to summon love for Narcissa and Draco, because that seemed to be
+the key to evading the hatred. He tried to imagine the walls parting in
+front of him and spilling him back into his body, which he felt the
+sensations from as distant tingles. He highly suspected he was doomed to
+lose this contest if he forgot what his body felt like.
+
+He realized somewhere in the second week that he could not imagine
+bowing to the Dark Lord now, could barely conceptualize his younger
+self's decision to take the Mark and bow down to a powerful wizard. What
+\emph{had} he been thinking? Was the promise of distant power and
+riches, the rewards of ambition, really enough to make up for torture
+and the humbling of his pride? Had he really needed the Dark Lord to
+prop him up in the Ministry and in life because he hadn't trusted his
+own capacities?
+
+When he fully understood the current of his thoughts, he swore,
+profusely.
+
+Harry had finally converted him.
+
+His body was currently listening to his Lord's estimation of Harry's
+allies, based on what he'd glimpsed through Harry's mind during the
+latest hive vampire attack. His true self coiled along the boundaries of
+the walls, looking carefully at the blades that guarded them. One was
+rusted, he found---a representation of the Dark Lord's overconfidence or
+inattention, perhaps.
+
+He tugged at it, and no one was more surprised than Lucius when it came
+away, crumbling, in his hand.
+
+That left a breach in the walls. Lucius strode forward, determined to
+get through it. He knew he would face a terrible struggle when once he
+was back in control of his body, but it \emph{had} to happen. He could
+not stay here. This was no life, shut behind walls and having this
+horrible empathy for house elves that would destroy his resolve and
+change him into a weak Light wizard if he could not escape.
+
+The Dark Lord scooped him up as he stepped into the breach.
+
+Lucius couldn't breathe. The pain that flooded his body and his mind now
+was like what he imagined a stroke to be. Agony danced in his blood and
+crowned his head. His body made a rasping noise and subsided to its
+knees. No one made a noise or blink of surprise except Indigena Yaxley.
+The rest of them were not independent actors, and could do nothing but
+what the Dark Lord commanded.
+
+Moments later, he was back behind the dark walls, the breach repaired
+and the sword restored to shining sharpness. Lucius snarled and began to
+prowl again, determined to find a way through.
+
+``Ah, Lucius,'' murmured the Dark Lord, and the eyes of his snake shone
+brilliant red as his own blinded ones now no longer could. "I have the
+\emph{perfect} task for you, my silver serpent."
+
+And his damnable, traitorous body that made him sympathize with house
+elves bowed its head and crawled a little further to lick the Dark
+Lord's boots, murmuring, ``I live to serve, my Lord.''
+
+\emph{Such humility is unbecoming of a Malfoy,} Lucius thought
+furiously, and moved to another place in the barriers to begin his
+search again.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Hawthorn knew she could wake.
+
+She had to wake. She had asserted command of herself when she was turned
+into a werewolf. She had not let Fenrir Greyback's bite corrupt and
+destroy her life, even though it had been intended to do so.
+
+\emph{But you could only do that with the help of Wolfsbane.}
+
+Likewise, she would not let her hatred for Lucius and Indigena and the
+Aurors who had beaten her and mistreated her in the cell in Tullianum
+cripple her forever. She would fight her way free and flee back to
+Harry's side.
+
+\emph{If you can do that without outside help. Do you really think you
+can?}
+
+Her mouth was wide in a helpless, gasping breath---or at least it felt
+that way. She swam in a sea of hatred, black crushing loathing that
+pressed her towards the bottom of her mind. She had to make it to the
+surface, but she could not stop looking at Indigena and seeing Pansy
+dying in a frenzy of vines, or glancing towards Lucius and seeing the
+man who had coolly penned a letter condemning her to worse than death.
+She had tried to see them otherwise, to see Yaxley as an enemy who
+should be quickly killed and Lucius as a fellow prisoner, but she could
+not.
+
+\emph{You cannot do this.}
+
+Her Lord had rather quickly realized, from the oath scar on her left arm
+cutting the Dark Mark, that he could not use her directly against Harry
+or his brother, but that did not matter. The oath of loyalty Hawthorn
+had sworn, and which would bleed her dry if she violated it, only
+protected Harry's \emph{blood} family. She could still go after and bite
+Professor Snape, or Draco Malfoy, or anyone else among Harry's friends
+and allies and loved ones who did not have that connection of direct
+relation to him.
+
+\emph{You cannot win free.}
+
+She tried and tried to surface, and every time, another dark breaker
+knocked her back to the bottom of the ocean.
+
+\emph{Why should you strive, when you lose all the time?}
+
+Hawthorn tried to remember what Harry had taught her about the
+storm-colored nature of the world, that every storm passed, that the
+future might be greener than the past and might be grayer, but must be
+borne. It was hard, though. Every path she could see from here only
+looked black, and led her deeper into the darkness. Should control of
+her body ever return to her, would she ever be able to do anything but
+kill herself for the shame of what she had done while enslaved?
+
+``Hawthorn.''
+
+Her head snapped up, and her wolf snarled in eagerness. One presence in
+her head approved fully of what the Dark Lord commanded her to do, and
+that made her struggle ever so much harder.
+
+``I have a task for you as well,'' her Lord said softly, and the snake
+around his waist danced and danced and danced.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+His days were an endless round. Sometimes he brewed potions that his
+Lord told him to make, and sometimes he worked on inventing an
+improvement to the Black Plague spores, and sometimes he went in the
+dead of night and fetched those who were least likely to be missed, the
+children of Mudblood families who did not even know they were magical
+yet. His Lord was gathering them against the day when he had repaired
+the hole in his magical core and could feed on them for their magic.
+
+Adalrico's life, then, was not so different from the life he had led
+years ago, except that he had not often fetched victims then. Each use
+of the \emph{absorbere} gift had weakened his Lord, and left him
+prostrate for days. Since his resurrection with Harry's blood and flesh,
+though, the ability had changed and strengthened.
+
+He looked down at his hands, stirring the black liquid that would become
+the silver Imperius potion in a cauldron, and wondered.
+
+He had told Harry that he had once lived life as in a poisoned garden.
+He had felt like that when he tortured Alba Starrise, and suggested
+having the man who raped her take the form of her own son. He had felt
+like that when he descended on a Muggle village and himself raped one of
+the women who fought to defend a Mudblood child, giving her tainted womb
+a gift of pureblood seed it did not deserve. He felt like that now.
+
+He was bent, flawed. There was a wound within his soul that made him
+vulnerable to such persuasion, that made him less than human when he
+contemplated what harm he could do to his fellow humans.
+
+It made it very hard to fight the hold of the Dark Lord's hatred on him.
+Adalrico was quietly, frighteningly, deadly certain, in one part of
+himself, that this was all he deserved. He belonged in the poisoned
+garden, as a dangerous beast did in chains, and now that it had embraced
+him again, he did not think he could find the strength to fight it.
+
+``Adalrico.''
+
+He looked up, and then was not sure whether that was his choice or
+Voldemort's. The Dark Lord hovered in the doorway, borne up by the
+current of magic running through Indigena Yaxley's Dark Mark.
+
+``You will bring the potion to a safe stopping place and then come to
+me,'' his Lord's voice instructed. ``I have a task for you.''
+
+And his head bowed, because what was he but a killer, a tool of his
+hatred, a puppet pulled here because of the darkness inside himself? He
+committed such evil, and that only proved that he was worthy but to
+commit such evil.
+
+He turned back to his brewing as the Dark Lord moved away. It was
+perhaps five minutes later when he became aware of someone else watching
+him. He looked up.
+
+Evan Rosier leaned against the doorway of the potions lab, the packed
+earth of the burrow, and stared at him. It took Adalrico a moment to
+make out the words he was whispering.
+
+\emph{"Then star nor sun shall waken,}
+
+\emph{Nor any change of light:}
+
+\emph{Nor sound of waters shaken,}
+
+\emph{Nor any sound or sight:}
+
+\emph{Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,}
+
+\emph{Nor days nor things diurnal;}
+
+\emph{Only the sleep eternal}
+
+\emph{In an eternal night."}
+
+``Go away, Evan,'' Adalrico said indifferently, because his Lord would
+grant him permission for that much. ``I have things to do.''
+
+``All of us do,'' Rosier said softly. ``All of us are playing the great
+game, and it does not end until we are dead. But some of us find the
+eternal night sooner than others.'' He gave Adalrico half a bow, and
+went on his way.
+
+Adalrico turned back to the potion.
+
+\emph{Only the sleep eternal, in an eternal night.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 12*: A Blizzard of Bad
+News}\label{chapter-12-a-blizzard-of-bad-news}
+
+Man, this is an ugly chapter. \textbf{Warning for gore.}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Eight: A Blizzard of Bad News}
+
+Harry paced in a circle, studying the way that Ginny was aiming her wand
+at the far wall of the dueling room. So far, he hadn't seen anything to
+criticize from her. As she'd said, she didn't have the raw power to
+perform every spell, but she'd studied the wand movements and
+incantations until she had them down pat. The wizards and witches in the
+room, many of them from villages far away from Hogwarts and older than
+she was, should have nothing to complain about.
+
+"This is the way that you perform \emph{Ardesco}," said Ginny, and
+started to turn to the wizard-shaped figure propped against the wall.
+
+``That's a Dark Arts spell,'' said an older witch suddenly. She'd worn
+makeup for the first session of the dueling practice, but sweat had
+caked it and sent it dripping in unfortunate globs down her cheeks. At
+least she'd had the sense to remove it, Harry thought. Other people had
+to be scolded into realizing that flowing robes or long hair or other
+ornaments were obvious targets in battle. ``How do you know it?''
+
+``Because I taught it to her,'' said Harry. ``And any Dark Arts spell
+that can be used in defense is fair game in these sessions.''
+
+The witch hushed, cowed, but Ginny shot him an annoyed look. Harry hid a
+smile, seeing it. She couldn't really teach and make them trust her if
+he was there and undermining her authority, or making her seem like
+nothing more than a prop for him, her knowledge relying on his own.
+
+``And I trust her to teach it to you,'' said Harry, walking to the door
+of the classroom. ``Please tell me when you're finished here, Ginny.
+Bill and Charlie suggested that you had even more knowledge of hiding
+places around Ottery St. Catchpole than they did.''
+
+Ginny nodded, her back gone stiff with pride again, and Harry heard her
+clearly intone, "\emph{Ardesco!}" just before he pulled the door shut
+behind him.
+
+Charlie and Syrinx were waiting in the hallway. They'd been trading
+shifts guarding him with Bill and Owen, so that all four of them could
+get used to working together in different combinations. Harry nodded to
+them and started towards the next room, mind already running over the
+plans for establishing the network of safehouses that he'd started
+setting up.
+
+Charlie saved his life. He was on the last stair when Voldemort hit him.
+If he'd been alone, he would have fallen from the angle he was perched
+at and cracked his head open. As it was, Harry felt himself black out
+for a moment, and when he came to, around the excruciating, splitting
+pain in his brow, he was aware that Charlie was the one who held him and
+whispered, ``Harry?''
+
+``Attack,'' Harry tried to say, but his jaw clenched shut and he almost
+bit his tongue off. This wasn't a strike at him through his hatred. This
+was Voldemort purely and simply exploiting the scar connection to cause
+him pain. He felt his body begin to jerk, and then the visions swept in,
+one after the other, a blizzard of bad news seeming to travel down the
+red hot wires Voldemort had clamped to his brain.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Honoria stretched her arms to the sky. She enjoyed being the liaison
+with the Maenad Press and Dionysus Hornblower, but she still loved the
+open sky, too, and in the hot rooms where the \emph{Vox Populi} was
+produced, she had precious little chance to feel it.
+
+She wandered down the small alley behind the press, keeping her senses
+alert, but not overly worried about an attack. Wards sparked and danced
+around her, and it was almost time for her to Apparate home, anyway.
+Honoria had agreed that she shouldn't use her gull Animagus form to fly
+anymore, since almost everyone among Harry's allies---and former
+allies---knew about it thanks to several spectacular stunts last year.
+
+Distant children's shouts came to her; they might have been wizard or
+Muggle. Honoria paused, wondering if she should go and see what they
+were shouting about. Then she could clearly make out the sound of
+Exploding Snap cards, and relaxed. \emph{One couldn't be paranoid all
+the time,} she reminded herself. \emph{That was more Ignifer's province.
+And I won't let this damn war change me that much.}
+
+She did want to make a stop before she went home, after all. She'd visit
+the Weasley brothers' joke shop, and choose a prank to pull on Ignifer.
+Her beloved had been far too serious lately, acting as if crumbs in the
+bed would mean that the Death Eaters had won. She needed something to
+cheer her up.
+
+\emph{And then,} Honoria thought, as she turned in the direction of
+Diagon Alley, \emph{a round of good, athletic sex.}
+
+A footstep fell softly behind her, too softly for anyone with legitimate
+business. Honoria lifted her head, feeling the cords in her neck
+stretch, and listened. She was still within the Press's wards. Once
+outside them, she'd Apparate.
+
+And then she felt the sheer power exerted, cutting through the press's
+wards as if they were nothing. She turned, her own wand already whipping
+up and out, the words of a cutting hex poised on her lips.
+
+Lucius Malfoy got there first. "\emph{Abrumpo mebratim!}"
+
+The spell that came at Honoria was one she hadn't seen before, a gout of
+yellow light as sharp as an arrow. She leaped back, still trying to get
+out through the edge of the wards, to Apparate, and dodged the curse.
+But it bounced off the side of the alley and came back at her, too
+sudden to run from, too quick to avoid, leaving her nowhere to run---
+
+And then she \emph{couldn't} run.
+
+The spell took her left leg, severing it cleanly from her body, and
+cauterizing the wound as it went. \emph{Nice of the spell's creator,}
+Honoria thought dazedly, catching herself against the wall. \emph{Now I
+won't bleed to death. I must remember to learn who invented this and
+thank him.}
+
+The curse wasn't done, either. It had cornered off another wall and was
+coming back at her. Honoria's mind, meanwhile, had finally picked up the
+meaning of the Latin incantation used for the curse. \emph{I sever limb
+by limb.}
+
+It wouldn't stop until it had cut off all her arms and legs.
+
+She forced her will down and above the intense, immense pain, into the
+small form of the gull. Then she was hovering, her body's weight shifted
+to her wings, and she darted away from the curse far faster than a
+clumsy human could have managed it. She strove upward, out of the narrow
+confines of the alley, trying to ignore the fact that her unchanged
+human leg was lying below.
+
+The yellow light of the curse turned and flew into the open sky after
+her. Now, without stones to bounce off, it simply pursued a
+straight-line course. Honoria sucked in a breath of deep pain, and knew
+that she would have to try something she'd never tried before as a gull:
+Apparition.
+
+The pain gave her a goad, or she might not have done it even then. She
+pictured the bedroom that she shared with Ignifer, the gleaming white
+wood headboard, the brilliant sheets on the bed---red and gold, and that
+was her idea, to use Gryffindor colors that were also the colors of
+flame---and then threw herself forward. Perhaps she changed back to
+human as she began the spell. She didn't know. She only knew that she
+wanted to be home more than she wanted anything else in the world.
+
+And then she bounced on the sheets, gasping, exquisitely aware of the
+fact that she had only one leg and was human again, but aware, also,
+that the curse had not followed her across the distance. She rolled over
+and sat up.
+
+Ignifer came through the door at a dead run. She stopped when she saw
+Honoria, for just a moment, and then came forward and wrapped her in an
+embrace that left Honoria hardly able to breathe, murmuring over and
+over again that they'd get help, that this wasn't the end of everything,
+that she'd take her to St. Mungo's---
+
+Honoria blinked, and blinked, and it was only then, with the guarantee
+of not losing her life in the next ten seconds, that she was able to
+cry.
+
+SSSSSSSSSS
+
+"\emph{Thomas!}"
+
+Priscilla rolled her eyes. She'd been knocking on the door of his
+library for the last ten minutes, and sometimes calling his name, and
+still she hadn't managed to stir his attention from whatever scroll had
+it this time. Now, she used an unlocking spell to force the door.
+
+Thomas looked up and grinned at her from the middle of a table strewn
+with parchment. At once, he pushed one of them towards her. Priscilla
+gave it a patient glance. It looked like a map.
+
+``I think this is a way to find repositories of Voldemort's soul,'' he
+told her. ``The Horcruxes are immortal in and of themselves, unable to
+be destroyed as long as the spells surrounding them aren't broken. And
+this map can locate immortal objects in Britain.'' He ran one finger
+reverently over the corner of it. ``Granted, it's several decades old,
+but some of the Horcruxes are several decades old.''
+
+``Wouldn't someone have found them already, if it was that simple?''
+Priscilla could see a great many red circles on the map, ones that made
+her skeptical. There were research wizards like Thomas who would have
+given everything to find the objects simply so they could study them,
+and others who would seek them out and sell them to collectors. Even if
+the Horcruxes had been shown on the map, Priscilla was of the opinion
+that they were long gone already.
+
+``Oh.'' Thomas frowned, the endearing expression that had made Priscilla
+fall in love with him. ``I suppose so. Yes.'' He looked at the map
+mournfully. ``Why do people have to render such treasures useless? I
+would study them and put them back again, so that future generations
+could come and see them.''
+
+Priscilla kissed him on the cheek. ``I know you would, dear. Now, come
+to dinner.'' It was good that she'd developed the automatic habit of
+casting warming charms on the food, she thought. Sometimes, it took far
+more than ten minutes to gain Thomas's attention, even if she opened the
+door.
+
+``All right,'' he said agreeably now, and started folding the map up.
+
+Priscilla felt the quiver in the wards at the same time he did. Someone
+was testing them. Priscilla frowned and drew her wand, her heartbeat
+quickening. She had known this day might come from the time that Thomas
+allied with Harry. At least their wards were among the best that Thomas
+could design, and she had a spell that would let her know in an instant
+where every single one of their children was. She cast it now, and
+sighed in relief. All gathered in the kitchen, trying not to pick bits
+of warm food off the plates, and none near the front garden, where the
+intruder was.
+
+``What should we do?'' Thomas had risen to his feet, but looked to her
+for instructions. That was as it should be, Priscilla thought. She had
+been the Auror. She was more skilled at defense than he was, and more
+present in the world, though right now his eyes were as sharp and clear
+as even she could wish.
+
+``The wards aren't breached yet,'' she said calmly. ``Go to the kitchen
+and take the children through the Portkeys we've prepared to---''
+
+And then something sucked hard, unnaturally, on the wards, and they were
+simply \emph{gone}. At the same moment, Priscilla heard the sharp
+\emph{crack} of Apparition, and knew that someone was inside the house.
+
+In the kitchen, where her children were.
+
+Priscilla did not think; she acted. She seized Thomas's arm and
+Apparated down to the kitchen, her body shaking with cold sweat as she
+landed, her mind seeking out obstacles---table, chairs, cupboards---she
+could put between her children and the intruder.
+
+Hawthorn Parkinson was just lifting her wand to cast a curse of some
+kind at Charis, their youngest daughter. Priscilla yelled,
+"\emph{Expelliarmus!}"
+
+Hawthorn's wand very nearly tugged free, but the other witch spun and
+kept a grip on it, shielding it with her body so it couldn't go flying
+away. Priscilla swallowed at the sight of her eyes. They wavered back
+and forth between cold and determined, and hot and tormented. This was a
+torture for her as much as it was for them, sending her after their
+family.
+
+But Priscilla, much as she knew what it would cost Harry, was determined
+to kill the woman if she had to. ``Thomas, the stones!'' she shouted,
+knowing he would understand by that that she meant the pebbles they'd
+made into emergency Portkeys to Hogwarts, and then moved forward, wand
+lifted.
+
+Hawthorn tried a Cutting Curse. Priscilla countered with the Shield
+Charm. She heard soft pops behind her, the sound of Portkeys activating,
+at least two, and knew it meant two of her children were gone to safety.
+
+"\emph{Caedes maxima!}" Hawthorn cried. The Slaughter Curse was aimed to
+go past Priscilla, to hit Rose or perhaps Melissa. She knew they would
+still be there. The children had been drilled to let the youngest go
+first with the Portkeys, so Charis and Albert would already have fled.
+
+Priscilla flung herself in the way.
+
+The Slaughter Curse made all the blood in one's body try to explode out
+through the veins. Priscilla rode the rushing tide of red, hearing pops
+behind her, one and then two. She heard Thomas, too, screaming her name,
+his voice high and furious, and saw the curtain of red-purple that
+dashed past her, soaking the wall.
+
+She managed to whisper the Killing Curse, and though it cast only a
+faint green light, Hawthorn still had to move out of the way, because
+there was no block for the Killing Curse. That won Priscilla's family a
+moment, and it was an important one. She heard the pop of the final
+Portkey, and then Thomas's voice cut off. He'd gone with Robert, then.
+
+She smiled, and closed her eyes, so that her last sight was not
+Hawthorn's desolate face, or the wall covered in her own life's blood.
+
+SSSSSSSS
+
+He did not want to do this. He could at least hold that thought in the
+dead of night to comfort himself, when no one else would come to do it,
+and the thoughts of what his family had been was haunting to him,
+because he knew they would turn away from him.
+
+He strode towards the house in front of him, which was asleep and
+drowsing in the shadows of early morning. A path stretched out from it,
+white and sculptured in the form of scales. The wards shimmered above
+it, glittering curtains of light that would expand into full-fledged
+walls if someone threatened them. Already, Adalrico could feel them
+stirring and opening one eye, trying to judge how much this one, walking
+wizard who had Apparated in a mile away was a threat.
+
+Adalrico knelt and placed a chunk of gray stone on the path. The wards
+began to flow outward to investigate it, wrapping around the stone like
+a gauzy butterfly's wing.
+
+The moment they touched it, they were gone, sucked into the stone and
+torn apart.
+
+Adalrico shivered a bit. His Lord had seen the memory of the gray stone
+that did the same to wards in his mind, from when the Unspeakables had
+brought a chunk of their Stone to Woodhouse during Harry's rebellion. He
+had ordered Adalrico to invent a magical object that would do the same
+thing. Adalrico had been able to do it in theory, but the larger spells
+that would secure that capacity in stone were beyond him, and would have
+made it only a pretty idea.
+
+With several Death Eaters and the Dark Lord drawing on their magic
+through their Marks, however, very few powerful spells were impossible.
+Hawthorn and Lucius had gone armed with the stones to their targets. The
+final strike that his Lord had planned for today would also use it, but
+it would not be the main weapon in that killer's arsenal.
+
+Adalrico picked up the stone, fixed his gaze forward, and strode on.
+With every step, he reminded himself he did not want to be here, doing
+this. But since this body continued striding forward anyway, oblivious
+to what his mind wanted, the mantra did no good. And, in a way, the fact
+that he was here gave him a black satisfaction. It answered the question
+he had always been unsure of: Had he really changed? Had he really
+escaped his Lord's fold? And now he could say conclusively that he had
+not.
+
+He opened the door.
+
+The house was still and silent. The wards might have cast alarms as
+they'd gone off, Adalrico thought, but it was unlikely they'd alerted
+anyone. For one thing, the inhabitants of this house were probably still
+asleep, and only one of them was in any condition to do anything about
+the sudden end of the wards. For another, he'd brought the most powerful
+stone with him. Those hidden behind the wards in other targets could
+feel the breach before it happened, if they were sensitive. This one had
+simply and suddenly destroyed them, and it could take some time to
+notice the absence of what had always been there.
+
+He moved forward quietly, shutting the door behind him. The house had
+many windows, Light rained in every corner that Adalrico looked,
+contrasting with the family's Dark reputation. Of course, given recent
+events, perhaps the grieving widow had wanted light.
+
+He moved through the kitchen, a drawing room with Floo connection, and
+then hovered in front of the bedroom, the door of which was ajar.
+Carefully, he pushed it back, and nodded when he saw his targets lying
+motionless on the bed. Medusa Rosier-Henlin slept the sleep of an
+exhausted new mother, with her hair spread all around her and her babe
+curled on her breast. Adalrico could destroy them both. He lifted his
+wand, raging in one part of his mind, but utterly unable to stop it.
+
+"\emph{Diffindo!}"
+
+He staggered, nearly going to one knee, as the curse cut him all down
+his side, rendering the skin over his ribs ragged. He turned to see one
+of the Rosier-Henlin twins casting another curse at him. This one, at
+least, he could dodge, all the while scolding himself for his stupidity
+in simply \emph{assuming} the house was empty. His Lord knew that one
+twin was sworn to Harry as a protector and never left his side, but that
+didn't mean the other one couldn't leave.
+
+"\emph{Expelliarmus! Accio} stone!"
+
+Adalrico's wand soared out of his hand, and so did the gray stone that
+had sucked up the wards. He howled and grabbed more for the latter than
+his wand. If it went into his enemies' possession, then they could learn
+something of what his Lord had intended to remain a mighty secret and
+weapon.
+
+The boy darted past him, though, moving lithely, and grabbed his mother
+around the waist, holding her close. The baby awakened, beginning to
+cry. Medusa Rosier-Henlin snatched her wand from the bedside table and
+aimed it at Adalrico.
+
+He could not have moved if he tried. The cry of the child was summoning
+memories back to him, so strongly that they assaulted the walls of
+hatred that his Lord had woven to keep his conscience at bay. He was
+remembering his own daughter, born just two years ago, and the way she
+had cried when \emph{she} was born, and the reason that his wife and
+daughter had both survived that day with magic intact. It had been
+Harry, and here he was attacking a child far younger than his daughter,
+under Harry's protection---
+
+He cried out as the swirl of color in front of him announced a Portkey,
+but not because his prey was escaping. He was on his knees, love
+struggling with hatred in his soul, trying to ignore the impulse to
+either lunge forward and interrupt the escape or stand and go back to
+his Lord.
+
+It didn't matter, though. Just when he might have won free, the image of
+Pharos Starrise flashed in front of his vision, and his hand ached with
+remembered pain. The boy, the \emph{whelp}, had dared to send him to the
+Unspeakables, had not let the grudge between the Bulstrode and Starrise
+families rest, had committed himself to doing what he could to insure
+honor was violated---
+
+And hatred shook, and settled back into his soul. Adalrico stood and
+calmly Apparated back to tell his Lord what had happened, though, of a
+certainty, he already knew.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Millicent jerked her head up. The wards had fallen, and that meant
+Blackstone was no longer safe.
+
+\emph{It's a good thing that I already moved Mother and Marian
+elsewhere,} she thought, and stood, drawing her wand. There were still
+valuable \emph{things} at Blackstone, including their house elves and
+the library of magical books she'd been looking through, but no valuable
+people.
+
+Other than herself, and she had remained here, searching through the
+Bulstrode treasures, tempting fate, both because not everything needed
+to be transported into exile and because she knew her father might come
+back.
+
+If she faced Adalrico in battle, it was her duty to execute him.
+
+She strode rapidly through the house to the front garden, her mind
+already shoving personal sentiments into a small closet and locking the
+door. This was her duty. One could not escape the oldest codes, not if
+one also benefited from them, and the Bulstrode family did. Sometimes
+those codes of honor had saved lives, or allowed a prisoner a chance to
+duel when he should have been killed immediately. But they were not
+allowed to simply claim the privileges from them. One had to pay the
+price.
+
+And one price said that the family head was supposed to execute a
+traitor.
+
+Millicent opened Blackstone's front door, and made her way towards the
+gate. The garden was soft with summer, and the roses her mother loved.
+Millicent felt a distant regret for that. It was entirely possible that
+the duel today would destroy the garden, and the house elves would not
+put it back together again if she was dead; they would go to her mother
+and Marian instead, and await their commands.
+
+A man waited at the end of the path, beyond the gates. Millicent slowed
+on seeing him. This was not her father, but in some ways, including the
+half-wild gleam of his black eyes, he resembled him.
+
+``Millicent Bulstrode,'' said the man, with a bow and a smile that was
+not a sneer or a smirk. ``I am so happy to meet you at last. As the
+saying goes, `Faint heart never won fair lady.'\,''
+
+From that alone, Millicent thought she knew who he was.
+
+``You are Evan Rosier,'' she said, and brought her wand up.
+
+Rosier sighed and took a step forward. ``Is the mere revelation of my
+identity enough to put an end to my courtship?''
+
+Millicent didn't bother to answer, because Rosier was mad, and one
+didn't answer madness; one destroyed it. She used a Severing Curse
+first, because she knew that he had used them on his enemies in the
+past, and he Apparated out of the way, appearing again just a little to
+the left of where he had been. He reached out and stroked a rose,
+avoiding the thorns, his eyes on her wide and amused.
+
+``I would give you a flower,'' he said. "But I think a girl like you
+would prefer stone. \emph{Cautes!}"
+
+Millicent dipped her head and rolled forward as the boulder crashed
+behind her, doing a full somersault. Rosier was already chanting another
+curse, one that would put a burning in her blood from the sound of it.
+Millicent knew that she couldn't dodge the curse, which struck inside
+one's shields, and so she gave him something else to think about
+instead.
+
+She was her father's magical heir. She could wield the gifts of the
+Bulstrode line when she chose. And now she chose, reaching deep into the
+crystalline spaces around and inside her and drawing up the flame that
+usually slept beneath the surface. This was not something to be done
+lightly, both because it was traditionally a secret and because it
+removed so much strength from the caster. But \emph{she} was going to do
+it, and she did, drawing out and flinging the Bulstrode blackfire at
+Rosier just as he hit the climax of his curse.
+
+His wand hand turned to stone, effectively disrupting the flow of magic
+from his body, and thus the spell. Rosier considered it for a moment,
+turning the living part of the limb back and forth to admire the smooth
+black rock. Millicent scrambled up, ready to try another Severing Curse.
+
+``You have given me a gift,'' said Rosier, and it was hard to
+concentrate on the spell when he was speaking. ``I shall have your
+father reverse it before I leave, of course, but that doesn't matter.
+You tried your hardest, and you gave me a gift of stone to answer the
+gift of stone I gave you.'' He gave her an appallingly genuine smile.
+``I wish that you were available for me to freely wed instead of kill,
+my lady. I think that we could have a chance together.''
+
+Millicent spat the curse in answer. Again he Apparated out of the way,
+and when he appeared, said simply, "\emph{Caeco}," in a disinterested
+tone.
+
+Millicent's sight went black. She knew the battle was lost, and whether
+Rosier burned the whole of the house, as he'd probably come for, or just
+lit the garden on fire and danced in the ruins, she could not remain
+there. Her life was more valuable than any books or treasures. That was
+especially true now, when she had only her little sister for an heir and
+no child of her own.
+
+She focused on the Hogsmeade road and Apparated, but not before Rosier's
+voice came after her, soft and reverent.
+
+``I have the best luck with Bulstrode women.''
+
+SSSSSSSSSS
+
+It seemed like a long time before Harry could open his eyes. He was
+lying in a hospital bed; he knew that from the feeling of the sheets
+around him. And there was an enormous, crushing pain in his chest, which
+confused him. He knew that Voldemort had assaulted him with visions, but
+he should feel either all the pain of the curses he'd seen cast or none
+at all, and the only spell this agony could possibly have come from was
+the Slaughter Curse that had taken Priscilla.
+
+\emph{Taken her. She was dead. And Millicent blind, and Honoria wounded,
+and Medusa and Eos and Michael barely escaped---}
+
+He tried to lunge upward, only to run into an invisible iron bar just
+above the bed that rather effectively sent him sprawling back down.
+Harry blinked, and blinked again, and then held out his hand and
+murmured, "\emph{Accio} glasses."
+
+When they zipped over to him, he slipped them on, and his eyes narrowed
+as he saw the faint mark of a ward directly over his chest. \emph{Well.
+What one can't go through, one can slip under.}
+
+He started to move, and his vision grayed. This was annoying. Harry
+leaned on his pillows and tried to recover his breath, and wondered why
+in the world the crushing pain in his chest had just got worse.
+
+``Someday, you'll wake up wounded and have the sense not to move,''
+Draco's voice said from the side. ``But I think that day will be long in
+coming.''
+
+Harry turned towards him. ``I have to know how they are,'' he said
+insistently. ``And if the effects of the Slaughter Curse are still
+lingering, I know that Madam Pomfrey can cure them. It's not as though I
+received the blast of the full thing. I want to know how Millicent
+and---''
+
+``All here,'' said Draco, pressing him back down. "Except for Honoria,
+who's in St. Mungo's. But Rhangnara and his children, the Rosier-Henlin
+woman and her children, and Millicent all made it. They're tired,
+they're grieving, but they're alive, and Regulus managed to reverse
+Millicent's blindness. The one who came closest to death was you.
+\emph{Lie still, Harry."}
+
+Grumbling, Harry dropped back onto the pillows, and was even more
+annoyed when his vision swayed again, making it hard for him to see
+Draco when he sat down in the chair beside the bed. ``What did I get hit
+with?'' he asked. ``Is this some combined effect of the visions? Or---''
+
+``It is not, Harry,'' said Madam Pomfrey's voice from off to the side.
+``The truth is that you fought the visions so hard, trying to throw off
+what You-Know-Who was doing, that your heart almost burst. It produced
+symptoms similar to a heart attack.'' She was in front of his bed then,
+waving her wand and murmuring several diagnostic spells under her
+breath. She seemed satisfied when each produced a stream of white light
+that tied together into a knot over Harry's bed, but fixed him with a
+piercing eye when he tried to sit up again. "You've strained your heart,
+and you are going to \emph{rest} if I have to keep you dosed with
+Dreamless Sleep."
+
+Harry wanted to say that he couldn't have any Dreamless Sleep, he'd had
+some just a few days ago, but he lowered his eyes and nodded. He heard
+Madam Pomfrey bustle away, and then Draco took his hand.
+
+``The Headmistress has made them welcome,'' Draco said. ``She said
+they're welcome to stay here for as long as they like, and so is anyone
+else who flees to Hogwarts. The wards here are strong. We'll be able to
+keep anyone who attacks out, even if they have stones like the one
+Michael brought in. And now that we have it, we can study it. Rhangnara
+thinks he can create a variation on the stone soon that might keep wards
+from being drained.''
+
+Harry closed his eyes and nodded again. He was pondering whether he
+should tell Draco about the laughing words that Voldemort had planted in
+his head as he watched vision after vision happen, attack after attack
+occur that he could have prevented, had he not been locked helpless in
+the pain from his scar.
+
+\emph{I will take from you everything that you have loved.}
+
+Honoria and Thomas's family hadn't been targeted because they were his
+allies. Medusa Rosier-Henlin and Eos, the child he had named, whose
+godfather he was, hadn't earned Adalrico's attention because they were
+vulnerable. Millicent hadn't even been assigned to Evan Rosier because
+Voldemort thought sending Adalrico against his family was stupid.
+
+It had happened because Harry cared for them, and that was all.
+
+That sense of things had come through while Harry fought helplessly,
+stridently, to take back control of his mind. This was not the war it
+had been. Voldemort cared about immortality and taking over the
+wizarding and Muggle worlds and making his enemies pay for what they'd
+done to him, but they were secondary goals now. What \emph{really}
+mattered was torturing Harry until he made a stupid mistake, or gave in
+to the hatred and came to Voldemort's side, or died.
+
+\emph{And if what Madam Pomfrey says about my heart is true, that last
+almost happened today.}
+
+Draco cupped his chin and tilted his head up, and Harry went, opening
+his eyes slowly. Grief was beginning to hit him, and weariness, along
+with the general urgency. This time, the reason he had trouble seeing
+Draco was because he looked through a haze of tears.
+
+``The first priority,'' Draco said calmly, ``is keeping Voldemort out of
+your head. We had a talk about that, Harry, and you ignored me.''
+
+"The \emph{vates} path is strict," Harry whispered. "\emph{I} might not
+think that using Legilimency on Voldemort counts as violating someone's
+free will, \emph{you} might not think that, but it could count by the
+definition of the path."
+
+Draco's grip tightened until Harry winced, and then fell down and back.
+"Then you can't be \emph{vates} anyway," he said. ``It would need
+someone who didn't have a mad Dark Lord after his blood. I know that it
+matters to you, Harry, but you can't fulfill your ambitions if you're
+dead, can you?''
+
+Harry sighed. His own death from heart failure didn't seem real to him,
+still, but that was probably because he had the other deaths and wounds
+in his head, and he \emph{knew} they had happened, while he had managed
+to live through his. ``No.''
+
+``You can't,'' Draco said, sounding satisfied. ``So. As soon as you're
+recovered, you'll take the offensive against Voldemort inside your
+mind.''
+
+When Harry hesitated, his fingers came back and tightened again. ``I
+want a promise, Harry.''
+
+``I do promise,'' Harry said.
+
+``Good.'' Draco's lips brushed his forehead this time. "Snape will be by
+to see you later, I think, and he's more than willing to help you with
+the Legilimency. For now---well, Madam Pomfrey granted me permission to
+do this. \emph{Consopio}."
+
+The sleeping charm took over before Harry could protest any more, and
+sank him down into darkness, and destroyed his plans for safehouses and
+sanctuaries. Drowsily, he felt that this was not fair, but then he
+remembered it also kept him from thinking about possibly falling off the
+\emph{vates} path and the attacks he'd failed to prevent today, and he
+welcomed it.
+
+The last thing he thought he heard was high, cold laughter, and
+Voldemort's voice repeating the hateful words.
+
+\emph{I will take from you everything that you have loved.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 13*: Dancer In His
+Mind}\label{chapter-13-dancer-in-his-mind}
+
+Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter!
+
+This chapter might be a bit confusing; it's deliberately non-linear,
+following Harry's thoughts more faithfully than a strict chronological
+structure.
+
+\textbf{Chapter Nine: Dancer In His Mind}
+
+``How will we know when to wake you?'' Draco's voice was steady, but his
+eyes glittered with a mixture of frustration and anger that almost
+masked the worry. Harry stifled the temptation to tell him that he
+wasn't such an icicle to someone who knew him well. This was serious,
+and Draco had never appreciated mixing jokes with matters of life and
+death.
+
+``Connor can tell you better than I can,'' said Harry gently.
+``Remember, he'll be awake, even though he's carrying the visions. If he
+shouts for you or Snape to wake me up, then you'll know.''
+
+``And if he doesn't sense it?'' Draco glared at Connor, who crouched on
+the hospital wing's hearth, talking to Parvati through the Floo. Her
+parents wouldn't let her return to Hogwarts or visit Connor anywhere
+else, but they would permit an occasional conversation. From the tone he
+could hear in Parvati's voice, Harry wondered how much longer she would
+put up with that. ``He might not, you know. It's not as if he's
+experienced in magics of the mind.''
+
+``Draco, he has compulsion,'' Harry pointed out.
+
+Draco had the grace to look abashed. For approximately two seconds. ``I
+don't like this,'' he snarled under his breath, leaning towards Harry.
+``We should have created another bond between us. That way, I could have
+been the one to take the damn potion and carry the damn visions.''
+
+``We don't know if another bond would have satisfied the potion,'' Harry
+said calmly. ``We know that the connection of blood and birth Connor and
+I have does.'' He left unsaid that he didn't trust Draco not to reveal
+his presence, and thus the plan, through indiscreetly cheering Harry on.
+Draco had done very well the one time he'd had to possess Voldemort,
+after the Midsummer battle, but he was still not very good at
+self-control without a defined plan like that. ``This will work.''
+
+Draco let out a windy sigh and dropped his forehead onto Harry's
+shoulder. Slightly surprised, Harry raised a hand to touch his shoulder
+in return, and found it shaking as if he were a leaf caught in a high
+wind.
+
+\emph{He's afraid for me. Of course, that's most of it. I keep
+forgetting, somehow, that I matter that much to other people.}
+
+Harry leaned over and kissed the back of Draco's neck, feeling a rush of
+pleasure and wonder. He had once believed not only that no one would
+ever care for him this way, but that it was right no one did so. So many
+things had changed, and this wasn't the greatest, but it might be the
+one with the most personal implications for the two of them.
+
+``I'll be well,'' he whispered into Draco's ear. ``And if I'm not, then
+you can kick and punch Connor all you like, and I wouldn't even try to
+interfere.''
+
+Draco laughed, but the laughter was too thick at the back of his throat,
+as though tears were fighting to rise. "Of course you wouldn't try to
+interfere, because my kicking and punching him would mean that you were
+\emph{dead}, you prat."
+
+``Yes, but I won't come back as a ghost and protect him, either.'' Harry
+ran his hand through Draco's hair, forcing himself to think of nothing
+for a moment but the way it felt as it slipped through his fingers. He
+wouldn't have been able to do that a few months ago, either, since he
+was using his left hand. An emotion he hadn't felt before was bubbling
+to the surface of his mind, and Harry sat there patiently, waiting for
+it to rise so that he could see and judge it.
+
+The bubble burst. Harry gasped as he felt a hungry pulse of wonder
+travel through him. He wanted to stay alive. He wanted to know more
+about how it felt to touch Draco like this, more about what would happen
+tomorrow, more about what might occur when he no longer had the threat
+of Voldemort hanging over his life like Damocles's sword. It was the
+first time he could remember being \emph{emotionally} excited that he
+had a future, instead of curious about what he could use the extended
+time for.
+
+He tapped the back of Draco's neck, and when he lifted his head, Harry
+caught his lips in a kiss as hungry as the wonder. Draco made a muffled
+noise, but Harry didn't think it was one of protest, the way that his
+teeth and tongue and lips closed in a moment later. Harry let himself be
+borne backward, so that Draco could take control of the kiss. He was
+more interested in simply feeling.
+
+``Harry!''
+
+And that was Connor, and by the clink of glass as he set a vial back
+down, he'd just taken the Switching Potion. Harry could already feel the
+odd tugging in the middle of his forehead that would be Connor bearing
+the visions and pain that Voldemort sent at him, hopefully for long
+enough that Harry could shut the scar connection. Reluctantly, he pulled
+back from Draco and pushed at his shoulders.
+
+Draco pulled away as slowly, nipping at his mouth several times. ``We'll
+continue this when you come back,'' he whispered into Harry's ear.
+
+Harry, still a bit overwhelmed, could only nod. Then he lay down on the
+hospital bed, and watched Draco take his place beside him with an air of
+determination. He had been concentrating so fiercely on that that he was
+a bit shocked to look over and see Parvati sitting down near Connor's
+bed.
+
+She caught his eye and tossed his head. ``My parents let me come through
+for this evening,'' she said. ``Since Connor was doing something so
+vital to the ending of the war, and all.''
+
+The spark in her gaze made Harry feel a bit sorry for her parents and
+their probable attempts, come morning, to get Parvati back through the
+Floo connection. He saw Connor close his eyes, and then Draco squeezed
+his hand, and then the door of the hospital wing opened and Snape came
+through, bearing several healing potions in his hands that Harry hoped
+they were not going to need.
+
+He closed his eyes and nudged forward into the scar connection. Any
+moment now, Voldemort would sense him and attack him with visions, but
+the visions would hit Connor instead, leaving Harry's mind clear.
+
+And it was all thanks to the potion they'd found.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry stared down at the book in front of him for a moment. He could
+feel the compulsion boiling along the edges of the black cover, waiting
+to spring like an unfolding set of spines and stick in the flesh and
+mind of anyone who opened it. He should know. Draco had been a victim of
+the damn book for two months of their fourth year.
+
+But he needed a potion that could insure his mind was clear while he
+fought Voldemort and tried to eliminate the scar tunnel, and if there
+was any book that could tell him of such a potion, it was this one.
+
+Reluctantly, he opened \emph{Medicamenta Meatus Verus}, Melissa Prince's
+Potions book, and let the pages turn past his fingers. The compulsion
+unfolded just enough to hook to the major desire in his mind: to keep
+the visions at bay. It tried to curl deeper than that, to compel him to
+brew the potion and do nothing else until the brewing was done, but
+Harry fought it back. He thought he heard a sulky snarl, as if the book
+were a child not used to being denied what it wanted.
+
+The pages stopped turning. He looked down, and blinked.
+
+\emph{Switching Potion.}
+
+The ingredients were simple enough, even common; Snape surely had
+comfrey in his stores, and two identical chips of red stones, and
+hippogriff feathers. It was the conditions, which were listed under the
+potion, where Harry found the reason that this was not more widely used.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+\emph{Ready?}
+
+Harry heard and did not hear that question with his ears. When he
+glanced to the side, a misty representation of Connor hovered there, his
+grin wide enough to swallow a whole pickle. Harry shook his head
+slightly. In truth, this bond between them always existed, and this
+shade of Connor always had a presence in his head, but most of the time
+Harry wasn't paying attention to it.
+
+\emph{Yes,} he answered. \emph{I want you to tell Draco and Snape, or
+Madam Pomfrey, at any moment the pain gets too much for you.}
+
+Connor snorted, and Harry had the feeling that that wouldn't be
+happening. He sighed. He appreciated that Connor wanted to make up for
+the years that he'd neglected Harry by protecting him now, but sometimes
+it simply went too far, with Connor acting as though he were personally
+responsible for every blow inflicted by their parents, Dumbledore,
+Voldemort, and Sirius during those years.
+
+He could only trust his brother, though. Connor had agreed to take the
+Switching Potion and do this for him, and Harry could hardly turn away
+from the plan now because he was afraid that Connor might strain his
+heart out of Gryffindor nobility.
+
+He plunged into the tunnel ahead of him.
+
+Almost at once, he felt Voldemort's Legilimency stir. He wasn't a very
+good Occlumens, at least not compared to someone like Snape, so his
+outer defenses consisted of offensive projections instead. The moment
+Harry triggered them, they were supposed to latch into his mental probe,
+drag him to a halt, and cause him pain until the Dark Lord could attend
+to them and see what was happening.
+
+This time, though, the first probe slid straight through him as if he
+were a ghost, and traveled along the bond the Switching Potion had
+opened into Connor instead. Harry heard his brother gasp, and paused,
+looking back.
+
+\emph{If I feel you do that again, I'll tell Draco}, Connor snapped.
+
+Harry blinked, and reminded himself that the longer he delayed, the more
+agony his brother would suffer. He darted forward, and the tunnel opened
+in front of him. As Draco had said, only half the tunnel was
+Voldemort's, and the traps that kept lunging at him were complemented by
+layered defenses that resembled Harry's own magic. He began to draw on
+them, pushing a fog of Occlumency ahead of him like a cloud bank.
+
+He felt Voldemort's anger, the rage building like a storm, and permitted
+himself a moment of intense satisfaction that might show on his misty
+face as a smirk.
+
+\emph{Let's see what you do now, Tom.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+"But what \emph{good} is it, then?" Draco drummed his fingers on the
+table. "If it 's supposed to switch dreams or pains or something else
+embedded in one person's mind or body to the mind or body of another,
+what \emph{good} is it if you can't \emph{choose} the target?"
+
+``You're thinking about it the wrong way,'' Harry murmured, smiling at
+him over \emph{Medicamenta Meatus Verus.} The book bounced, sulky even
+now that it hadn't been able to take control of him and compel him to
+finish the potion before he did anything else. Harry stilled it with one
+hand, and looked again at the recipe. \emph{Three hippogriff feathers,
+shredded into three parts each.} He picked up a knife and began to strip
+them off, making sure that each third got an equal portion of the plumes
+on the feathers. ``Whoever invented the potion didn't want to target
+someone else---for example, they didn't want to make their enemies
+suffer the pain of their own wounds. That's obvious from the fact that
+the `target,' as you put it, has to drink the potion willingly. It was
+originally invented to enable the husbands of fragile wives to share
+their labor pains, so that the births of their children didn't kill
+them.''
+
+``But it's even more restricted than that, you said.'' Draco craned
+around upside down to get a look at the book. Harry floated a wooden
+spoon up and tapped him on the back of the head. Draco jerked away,
+glaring at him.
+
+``Stay back, please,'' Harry told him. ``This book took you once. It'll
+do it again if you don't watch out.'' He floated the hippogriff feathers
+into the cauldron and picked up the first chip of red stone,
+concentrating intensely to impart it with some of his own magical
+essence. When he felt the stone warm beneath his hand, he cast it into
+the potion, and watched in satisfaction as a cloud of scarlet steam
+drifted up and the potion thickened, sudden waves of bright liquid
+sloshing against the sides of the cauldron. ``Yes, it's restricted. The
+person who takes the potion and the person switching the pain, or the
+dreams, or whatever it is, out of themselves have to be related in at
+least two ways. One of them is a blood bond. So the potion would work
+between a husband and wife who happened to be first cousins, but not
+between unrelated spouses or just two cousins. Of course, when so many
+pureblood families were intermarrying so closely, that really wasn't a
+problem most of the time.''
+
+``We have the bond of the joining ritual,'' Draco said stubbornly. ``And
+I know that the Malfoys and the Potters intermarried seven or eight
+generations ago.''
+
+Harry shook his head, eyes locked on the bubbling surface of the potion.
+When the bubbles leaped above the rim, then he needed to add the second
+red stone. Right now, he cradled it in his hand, thinking of Connor and
+concentrating on the bonds that he shared with his twin. ``The bond of
+blood has to be closer than that. The book said that the Light Lady
+Calypso McGonagall, when she was married to her husband Thomas
+Mackenzie, tried to share the labor pains of their first child with him.
+They were fourth cousins, and they thought that was close enough. But it
+wasn't.''
+
+``And---''
+
+``And the Switching Potion is fatal in one of three ways,'' Harry said
+softly. The bubble crested the rim, and he cast Connor's red stone in.
+The liquid thickened yet again, this time settling back into place
+languidly. The bubbles detached themselves from the surface and drifted
+above it, glimmering. Harry reached out and popped the largest, letting
+the liquid fall on his hand, mingle with the salt of his skin, and then
+tumble back into the potion. "One is if the target drinks another potion
+within five minutes of drinking this one. Another is if the target
+drinks more than half the potion. It has to be \emph{exactly} half in
+order to work. And the third way is if the blood bond between the
+drinker and the original bearer of the pain or the dreams isn't close
+enough. It wasn't close enough for Calypso and Thomas. He died
+screaming, and their child died, and she would have followed him if her
+magic hadn't been powerful enough to keep her from death."
+
+``So that's why she joined with Achernar Black later and adopted a
+magical heir,'' Draco muttered.
+
+Harry nodded, and then leaned in and blew on the cauldron. Besides the
+salt of his body, it needed his breath. The liquid gave a shrill whistle
+back, and changed color to a silver mass that reminded Harry
+unfortunately of Snape's Imperius potion. He shook his head quickly, to
+clear it of the memories. ``She couldn't stand the thought of another
+husband and another child after that, but she fell in love with Achernar
+when the Seer told her that Achernar's soul wasn't completely lost to
+darkness, and then she adopted the magical child to have an heir.''
+
+Draco was silent for a moment. Then he said, ``There are magical ways of
+forging blood bonds, Harry.''
+
+``But I don't need to, when Connor and I have the double bond of blood
+and being born at the same time,'' Harry said softly, and pulled a hair
+from his head, watching the cauldron intently. There should be a
+maelstrom forming in the center---yes, there it was. He tossed the hair
+nearly into the middle of it, and the maelstrom molded over, the whole
+of the potion becoming one smooth dome. ``So he'll take half the Potion,
+and bear the visions for me while I attack Voldemort to close the scar
+connection, and then I'll take half the Potion when I'm done and accept
+the visions back.''
+
+``Why not leave them with him, if he's so willing to bear them?'' Draco
+muttered.
+
+Harry rolled his eyes and glared at him over his shoulder while he
+dipped a single finger in the potion, again letting it taste of his skin
+and sweat. "I am \emph{not} going to answer that."
+
+``He could do this at least some of the time,'' Draco persisted. ``And
+he's willing to do so. I talked with him about it.''
+
+``You---'' Harry cut off what he wanted to say. Draco would see nothing
+wrong with asking if Connor could carry the visions beyond the term that
+Harry spent attacking Voldemort, because he did not care about Connor
+the way that Harry did. So long as the people Draco loved weren't
+suffering, he did not give a good damn about the rest of the world.
+Harry had always known that, but sometimes he forgot, and then it was
+brought home to him in this dramatic way.
+
+``Never mind,'' he said. "We \emph{are} switching back when this is
+done, Draco, and that's final."
+
+Draco folded his arms and looked as sulky as the potions book.
+
+SSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry came in under the cloudbank, which had Voldemort furiously lashing
+and stinging, trying to see through the ``smoke'' and strike at him.
+Harry ignored the impulse to confront him straight on. That was probably
+some of the Gryffindor bleeding through, since at the moment he shared
+Connor's emotions as well.
+
+Then he felt the first tidal wave of anxiety, and knew that Voldemort
+was attacking in earnest, trying to make him suffer. Connor was
+suffering, instead, and while Harry couldn't feel the physical sensation
+of pain, which they'd exchanged, he could feel the fear. He held his
+breath and pushed forward again, refusing to let it panic him, doing his
+best to understand the multi-layered structure of the tunnel around him.
+
+Then the fear stiffened like blades at his back, and Harry smiled
+grimly. Connor was doing what he did best: fighting back against the
+fear, asserting his courage and the stubbornness of his House. Harry was
+glad. He knew Connor had agreed to take on the pain of his own free
+will, but still, he did not like sharing it.
+
+He studied the tunnel again, and narrowed his eyes when he realized just
+how many layers coiled under each other. If he wasn't mistaken, there
+were fifteen layers, with an incomplete sixteenth growing underneath
+that, a transparent red sheath that suddenly ran out on the side of the
+tunnel that Voldemort controlled, turning the rest of them a paler shade
+of scarlet.
+
+\emph{And why not? There's probably one layer for each year. Fifteen
+years we've been connected, with the sixteenth not quite complete.}
+
+Harry could sense even more than the number of years in that compacted
+tunnel, though, and he reached out carefully, seeking through and beyond
+it under the cover of his cloud, trying to see if what he felt was true.
+Yes, it was. The scar connection interconnected with two other tunnels,
+one flowing straight between him and Voldemort, the other floating off
+into space and going---somewhere. Harry could not quite be certain of
+where.
+
+\emph{The Unspeakables' Stone said something about a third,} he
+remembered. \emph{A third person missing from the equation between me
+and Voldemort? There was a place in my aura for a third, it said. A
+guest.}
+
+Harry gnawed his lip, not sure what to make of that, and then shook his
+head. He understood the construction of the scar connection now; its
+deepest link was with the straight tunnel between him and Voldemort,
+along which their shared magic flowed and the evil bird had come. That
+meant he should be able to call up his own Legilimency and close the
+tunnel off, or at least seal it with a plug like a plug of stone.
+Voldemort would have to exert much more serious effort to get through
+that than he would through Harry's Occlumency.
+
+And Harry understood why, given the conversation he'd had with Snape the
+day before.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``Sit down, Harry.''
+
+Harry did, never moving his eyes from Snape's face. He suspected he knew
+what the conversation would be about, though it was hard to concentrate
+on. He'd just come from Priscilla's funeral, where Thomas had burned an
+effigy of her body and cast the ashes to the four winds, while their
+children softly sang a mourning song he'd found in an Egyptian book
+behind him. Thomas had a lost expression on his face, as if the
+ceremonies of the funeral should have brought his wife back to him, and
+he could not understand why they hadn't. He \emph{had} tried to return
+to their house for his wife's body, but the Death Eaters had taken it.
+Harry had put a hand on Thomas's shoulder and felt the old wizard
+half-curl into him, as if seeking comfort. Luckily, if there was one
+thing Harry was experienced in doing, it was offering comfort.
+
+Before that, he'd been with Honoria in St. Mungo's, listening to the
+outlook for her leg. The Healers were confident that they could give her
+a new one, less confident that she would walk on it before a year was
+out. Ignifer had listened fuming, with bits of fire leaping from her
+fingers and nearly setting the blankets alight several times. Honoria
+squeezed her hand lightly and smiled at Harry. ``Not only do I have a
+lover willing to be a pair of hands and feet for me,'' she'd told him,
+``but I have one willing to light a fire, and perhaps cook for me. If I
+had any house elves, I would set them free immediately.''
+
+Ignifer had not thought that was funny, and in the ensuing argument,
+Harry had had time to look at the cleanly cut space where Honoria's left
+leg had been and reflect that, if all went well, the war would be over
+before she walked again.
+
+So, understandably, even though he knew Snape was going to talk to him
+about Legilimency and Occlumency, his mind was not in the same territory
+as those two branches of magic.
+
+Snape brought him back as soon as possible.
+
+``Draco informs me that you have refused a reasonable solution to your
+problems with Voldemort by refusing to use Legilimency.''
+
+Harry jerked his head up, and scowled. ``Draco is too presumptuous
+sometimes,'' he said. "I have decided to use it. I didn't use it until
+now because I didn't know if dominating use of Legilimency like that
+would cost me the \emph{vates} path." And there was another reason, too,
+a reason that he wouldn't tell anyone about, because they would chuckle
+and scoff and say he was overreacting. So that secret lay in the back of
+Harry's mind, and was his to keep.
+
+He knew he would have to face it if he used Legilimency, though.
+
+``A path that would demand such strict standards of you is not one worth
+following,'' Snape said. ``I would have thought that you would know that
+already.''
+
+Harry growled softly in the back of his throat. ``This isn't like my
+training,'' he said. "I chose to be \emph{vates}. It has to be that way.
+Treat it like a duty, and it doesn't work, either."
+
+Snape leaned forward. ``You should have learned this truth about me from
+the thestral incident,'' he said. "It seems you did not. In the contest
+between the welfare of magical creatures and your life, Harry, I choose
+your life. If what you do endangers your life and not your status as
+\emph{vates}, then I would ask you to stop. And if that path endangers
+you or makes you unhappy, then I would advise you not to follow it."
+
+Harry growled again. ``And if I wish to follow it anyway?''
+
+``Then I would consider it my duty to inquire into the matter more
+closely.'' Snape was far too calm for this discussion, Harry thought.
+``And stop you, if I thought you were not looking out for your own
+safety. Meanwhile, Legilimency will guard your safety. Thus it is of
+more importance.''
+
+\emph{If I didn't have a guardian who valued me for myself, instead of
+for what I could accomplish, my life would be very different,} Harry
+reflected. \emph{Poorer, yes, but easier sometimes.} ``I am going to use
+it,'' he said.
+
+``Good.'' Snape sat up briskly. ``The Dark Lord will find it harder to
+combat than your Occlumency.''
+
+``I don't understand why,'' Harry said, coming to the heart of a
+frustration he couldn't express to Draco. "The Dark Lord is a master
+Legilimens. Doesn't that mean he should get through a block like this
+\emph{more} easily?"
+
+Snape shook his head. ``It has to do with the nature of the branches of
+the magic,'' he said. ``Occlumency is defensive, and ultimately more
+passive. It guards its boundaries and does not attempt to pass beyond
+them.''
+
+``I knew there was a reason I liked it so much. It's just like me.''
+
+Snape gave him a pained glance, and continued. ``Legilimency is more
+offensive, and active, and alert. It not only guards its boundaries, if
+it is used this way, but patrols them, and looks beyond them for
+threats, and attacks the threats as they manifest. You may think of it
+as a sentry, while Occlumency is more like a snare. Thus the Dark Lord,
+Legilimens or not, will have a hard time passing a barrier made of your
+active and reaching will.''
+
+\emph{Reaching} at least sounded better than \emph{dominating.} Harry
+nodded. ``I am going to search for a potion that will enable Connor to
+carry some of the visions while I attack,'' he said quietly. ``Is there
+anything else that you would advise me to do?''
+
+"You must \emph{want} to defeat him," Snape said, enunciating every word
+carefully. ``If you do not, Harry, then you will not put up enough of a
+fight. Do you understand? You must want to win.''
+
+\emph{To dominate him}.
+
+The words sent a slick shudder of revulsion up Harry's spine, but he was
+determined. He nodded, his eyes never looking away from Snape's.
+
+``I promise.''
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Now, Harry let his breath out, and tried to calm the rapid beat of his
+heart. He had to do this deliberately, even though he wanted to hurry
+through it when he felt Connor's determination increase, and stop his
+brother from suffering. \emph{He chose to participate in this,} Harry
+reminded himself. \emph{He knew what he would bear. He's not an innocent
+victim that you have to hurry to spare, but an individual fighter whose
+sacrifice you must honor. Use the time he's buying you.}
+
+He pushed his will forward, scraping it like a hook through the layers
+of the scar connection. He was picking them up like fallen leaves from a
+forest floor, stirring them, rearranging them. Voldemort, not
+understanding why his attacks didn't make Harry falter, and baffled by
+the Occlumency cloud under which Harry sheltered, kept striking in the
+wrong direction.
+
+Harry paused, swallowing nervously. In the next moment, he must
+\emph{rise}, and exert his will to overpower and control another person.
+
+He was afraid of the secret he could feel churning in the back of his
+mind, like the stir of a hidden beast in oily, dark water.
+
+He took one more moment to remember how Connor had agreed to bear the
+pain of the visions for him, and to remind himself that his brother
+didn't consider him an evil creature for using Legilimency like this.
+
+SSSSSSSSS
+
+``Of course I will, Harry.''
+
+Harry frowned slightly. ``Connor, you don't understand yet. I'm asking
+you to---''
+
+``To use this Switching Potion, and to make sure that you don't have
+visions of pain and death and blood while you're attacking Voldemort.''
+Connor reached across the library table and latched his hand onto
+Harry's arm. ``I understand perfectly, Harry. You have to have your mind
+clear while you do this, and I'm the one who has the perfect connection
+to you, according to the Potion. So I'm doing this.''
+
+``But the pain---''
+
+``I know the pain,'' Connor said quietly. "I saw the way your face
+twisted in pain when you were in the hospital wing fighting off the
+visions so hard you \emph{almost burst your heart,} Harry." He managed,
+as did most of the people around Harry, to make this sound as if it were
+bigger than it was. Harry wondered that, after he'd come so close to
+death so many times, the people who loved him were still affected by
+each one as if it were the first time. ``I know that it will hurt. But I
+want to do this, Harry.''
+
+``Why?'' Harry asked.
+
+Connor looked at him as if he were mad. ``Because you're my brother, and
+I love you,'' he said, speaking as if to a very slow child.
+
+Harry had shaken his head and lunged across the table to hug Connor,
+because there were no words he could offer that were adequate next to
+that.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Now, in the scar connection between his mind and Voldemort's, Harry
+closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
+
+\emph{I can do this.}
+
+And out he lashed, driving his Legilimency as a hook that tore up the
+tunnel, destroying the sides of it that he controlled, using the
+material of the connection itself as the material of the plug.
+
+Voldemort sensed him at once, of course, and attacked with pain again.
+This time, he could see it slide past Harry's charging form and into the
+bond that connected him to Connor. Harry knew it wouldn't take him long
+to try another tactic, probably clamping down on the magic that flowed
+between them, so that Harry didn't have as much strength available to
+use his Legilimency.
+
+Harry wasn't about to let that happen. He pushed forward, and when the
+attack would have faltered, he dropped pure will behind it, the same
+will that had made him shatter the egg-shaped stone in first year and
+rescue Draco, the same will that had led him to plan the Midsummer
+battle, the same will that had driven him to free the thestral. This
+time, the only difference was that he was commanding someone else. And
+if he didn't let himself think about the full implications of that, he
+could avoid being sick.
+
+\emph{Back.}
+
+The plug of Legilimency rolled up behind him, demanding obedience, a
+snarling force at Harry's shoulder that tore into the vulnerable parts
+of Voldemort's mind. Harry went with it, and saw memories and thoughts
+sleeting past him like autumn leaves that Voldemort certainly didn't
+intend for him to see.
+
+He made out one, gleaming and white, that was different from the rest,
+and grasped it, tugging it with him. Inside the jaws of the Legilimency
+probe, he had time to study it without Voldemort knowing he studied it.
+
+The white bulk was the vampire hive queen, as Harry had thought it might
+be. And she hovered above a map of Hogsmeade.
+
+Harry swallowed. \emph{That's where Voldemort intends to send her, then.
+And soon. I will have to find help to face her.} Not even a Lord-level
+wizard could face a hive queen alone. It had once been the most common
+way for Lords and Ladies to die.
+
+He ripped into Voldemort's mind after that, deliberately vicious, using
+the thought of innocents dead in Hogsmeade and Hogwarts to propel his
+anger. He commanded Voldemort to back off, to lie down, to stop sending
+visions to him. Those commands would not all last, but while Voldemort
+reeled and fought for the will to obey, the scar connection was tearing
+itself up, hopefully beyond repair, behind him.
+
+Harry was watching all the while, because his mind was divided into
+quarters. One part led the attack. Another examined the occasional
+captured thought within the Legilimency, hoping to find useful
+information. A third reached back to the tunnel and Connor, checking the
+progress of destruction in one and fear in the other. And a fourth
+hovered, keeping an eye out.
+
+He felt it when his secret tried to rise, when the Legilimency probe
+shifted its nature.
+
+Suddenly it was less about making sure that his enemy could not hurt him
+or others, and more about taking revenge. Suddenly he found himself
+half-enjoying the power of command he had over Voldemort, even liking
+the picture of someone who had hurt him so much cowering at his feet,
+and he knew the enjoyment would grow if he waited.
+
+Harry rolled, snapping the Legilimency probe back towards the tunnel and
+his own mind, and leaving Voldemort to repair the ravages Harry had just
+created as best he could. It would not be so easy next time, Harry knew,
+if there were a next time. Voldemort was poor at Occlumency, and that
+meant he'd left large regions of his mind undefended, relying on offense
+instead. Besides, he'd never thought Harry would do something like this.
+Now he knew, and Harry expected him to repair the holes in his defenses.
+
+He could feel Voldemort's wary respect following him, mingled in with
+the rage and the hatred, and a certain excitement. He would think that
+there was more chance of luring Harry to his side, now that he had seen
+that dark power of domination that flourished in him.
+
+The chance was no greater than it had ever been, Harry thought, as he
+examined the tatters of the scar tunnel and nodded in satisfaction.
+Voldemort would not be using \emph{that} to access his mind again unless
+he somehow mastered enough Occlumency to disguise the Legilimency's
+claws. And Harry was more likely to feel the claws before he could do
+that.
+
+It seemed so easy. He could have done this before, if he'd wanted to.
+
+Harry hadn't wanted to, because of that easiness.
+
+He knew he needed to return to his body, to full consciousness, and to
+Connor, but he spared a moment to look into the part of his mind that
+contained his secret. He felt the dark part surge forward at the
+attention, whining, eager, wanting to rise from its pool and control
+everything it could.
+
+Hermione had given him some Muggle quote a few days ago, something about
+looking into the abyss and having it look back into you. Harry could
+have told her he didn't need to look into abysses. He had his own
+personal one in his head.
+
+He stared into the darkness, and the darkness stared back. This was the
+part of him that other people didn't want to believe existed, Harry
+thought, clinically. This was the part of him that usually manifested
+only as Dark rage, and only when he was pushed beyond endurance. Other
+people thought those were only flashes of temper, and they were always
+telling Harry not to worry about them. They didn't understand that the
+darkness that produced them was not a flash, it was there all the time,
+and it was the part that fed on stories of Lords and Ladies and
+whispered that Harry could be like them if he wanted. It would be so
+easy. It would mean that he could accomplish so much more, and so much
+faster, than he could with the persuasion and bargaining and dancing
+that were his usual tactics.
+
+He could use compulsion to make wizards feel what it was like to be a
+house elf, and that would convince them as nothing else could. He could
+``persuade'' people with nightmares, with dreams that intensified their
+emotions such as Falco had used, with private threats that would make
+them nod in fervent agreement with his principles and think it was all
+their own doing. He could trick people into oaths tighter than any he
+had taken. He could surpass his boundaries, sometimes, just a bit, and
+that would see all magical creatures freed in a few years. And didn't
+they deserve it, really, when they'd been chained for centuries, and
+wizards had been greedy and arrogant enough to bind them in the first
+place? And didn't he deserve to see some of his enemies writhing in pain
+for what they'd done to him?
+
+Harry breathed in and out, carefully, his eyes on the darkness. He knew
+it was here. He couldn't get rid of it, because that would involve
+destroying some essential parts of himself, or, at best, returning to
+the training that had estranged him from so much else that was good, and
+convinced him that he didn't deserve pleasure along with revenge. He
+couldn't suppress it, because that would result in the box or the ice
+again, and an eventual breakdown. He couldn't let it out, because in
+even a few moments of freedom it would hurt so much, and undo so much
+that he'd tried to do.
+
+He just had to live with it, and keep it in its pool. It wasn't so
+different from what other people had to do. Everyone had the potential
+to do immense harm, if let free. Harry just had more power than most to
+make his damage lasting, even permanent.
+
+The darkness whined at him. Harry shook his head, and turned, striding
+rapidly back into his own mind, and his own body, and then a pair of
+blinking eyes, as he sat up---for just a moment, before Draco's exultant
+kiss knocked him back into the pillow.
+
+``How are you feeling, Harry?'' Snape asked quietly, when Draco let him
+up again. His eyes were guarded, dark, but the tension in his face eased
+as Harry nodded and told him about the process of destroying the scar
+connection, without mentioning the darkness. All of them were so
+convinced that the darkness didn't exist, and they would try to convince
+him of that, too, if he let them. Harry couldn't afford to forget that
+it existed. So he let them think what they wanted to think, while he
+knew the reality, and the darkness slept and was his.
+
+He glanced across to Connor, relaxing when he saw that his brother had
+his eyes open and that they were sane. Parvati was gripping his hand,
+but Connor looked at Harry first, and gave a little nod.
+
+``We were both right,'' he said. ``You were right that it hurt. And I
+was right that I could bear it because I love you.''
+
+He closed his eyes and fainted then, and Madam Pomfrey came bustling
+forward to give him the pain potions.
+
+Harry, meanwhile, picked up the half-vial of Switching Potion that was
+left and swallowed it before Draco or Snape could object. It was right
+that things go back where they belonged, whether that was the capacity
+for visions of blood and pain returning to his mind, or the darkness
+sliding back into the abyss.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 14*: Intermission: The Bad
+Seed}\label{chapter-14-intermission-the-bad-seed}
+
+\textbf{Intermission: The Bad Seed}
+
+Indigena sighed, and gently touched the flower on the end of her right
+wrist, which wept cold, soft dew, to her Lord's forehead again. There
+was little else that anyone could do for him. He had been speaking to
+them as normal an hour ago when his face had begun to twitch, and then
+his hands, and then he'd collapsed. Indigena supposed it had something
+to do with an attack by Harry. She'd been close enough to hear him
+snarl, "\emph{Legilimens!}" and could think of no one else he would need
+to use the spell against. The captive Death Eaters were all firmly
+chained, without the need to repeat it.
+
+``What do you wish me to do?''
+
+Indigena glanced up at Lucius Malfoy. \emph{Would that he had been this
+compliant all his life. My Lord's return to power might have been
+achieved more easily.} ``For now, stand guard,'' she replied. ``If
+someone approaches the burrow without permission, then let me know at
+once.''
+
+``Lieutenant.'' Malfoy bowed to her and mounted the packed dirt stairs
+that led to the light of the upper world. Watching closely, Indigena saw
+one leg jerk out of alignment, as though he were struggling to walk in a
+different direction than the one she'd chosen for him. But it settled
+again, and he climbed the steps without looking back. Indigena let out a
+small breath. At least she was in no immediate danger of being left
+alone with five Death Eaters who were no longer under her Lord's strict
+bridling. Adalrico was brewing, Hawthorn was asleep, Lucius was on guard
+duty, and she would order Feldspar on his mission to the Ministry in a
+moment. The other Death Eaters were away on missions of their own,
+mostly trying to get another vampire hive to join Voldemort's ranks.
+
+``Lieutenant.''
+
+And the fifth Death Eater she had to be wary of, Evan Rosier, was edging
+closer to the Dark Lord's bed. Indigena gave him a patient glance. He
+still moved as though there were something wrong with his arm, though
+Adalrico had reversed the blackfire his own daughter had cast. Indigena
+thought he did it purely for pleasures, or perhaps to remind her of the
+injury. She'd laughed for an hour when he returned with that limb
+dragging behind him. It would be like Evan to assume that therefore his
+keeping an arm at an odd angle would bother her.
+
+``What do you wish, Rosier?'' she asked.
+
+Evan paused reflectively. Indigena waited, not in the least afraid. Her
+Lord had imparted a vision of Evan's mind to her through a Pensieve,
+when she'd expressed concern, yet again, that he might break free and
+attack them. He'd had months to study its labyrinthine ways while they
+controlled and manipulated Evan, their bad seed, and Severus Snape,
+their healthy test plant, from last July until this June. Now he knew
+the weakness that had let Evan break free, and it was the only one of
+its kind. Even \emph{that} freedom had needed a push, from Harry and his
+\emph{vates} powers. He was their tame dog with a muzzle on this time,
+going where he was told to, expressing his madness in carefully chosen
+ways.
+
+Indigena still regretted, somewhat, that they'd not been able to snare
+Snape. He was a skilled Potions maker, with a native cleverness that
+Adalrico could imitate, once he knew the steps of brewing a potion, but
+not equal. And they had worked on him so long. Her Lord had been taking
+information from his mind about Woodhouse and Harry's knowledge of the
+Horcruxes, and passing it to Evan so that he might lure Connor Potter
+out of hiding, long before he had attempted full possession. And it had
+been Harry's fault, again, that Snape had become a wild seed.
+
+\emph{Harry is annoying,} Indigena decided.
+
+``Lieutenant.''
+
+One advantage of a conversation with Evan, Indigena thought, was that
+one could think about anything one wanted until he actually made a mad
+pronouncement. He let minutes slip by between his sentences, sometimes,
+and then they often didn't connect with one another. His mind wandered
+in wild, tangled ways, and Indigena sometimes felt the same pleasure in
+following those paths that she did when threading someone else's garden.
+
+``Evan,'' she repeated, and started to stand. She should go to Feldspar
+and order him on his mission. He probably would not be killed. He was
+only supposed to establish contact, intrigue his target, and then come
+back. Of course, that target had guards around her. Indigena would not
+be surprised if her nephew died. She rather hoped he lived, but only so
+she could continue to make him feel badly about what he had done, and
+how helpless he was, and how all of this was his own fault.
+
+``I have a secret,'' Evan said, trotting to catch up with her.
+
+``Do you.'' Indigena scanned the burrows around her for a moment. Ah,
+there Feldspar was, brooding in a corner. He couldn't even the use the
+time productively as the other captive Death Eaters did, sleeping or
+practicing spells. That was the kind of spoiled child her sister had
+raised him as.
+
+``It's a large secret,'' said Evan solemnly.
+
+\emph{This is the child-like side of him.} ``I'm sure it is,'' Indigena
+told him, and started to turn towards Feldspar.
+
+``You can see it, if you like,'' Evan said, and then moved his hand out
+from behind his back. Indigena had a tendril at the ready. He was
+probably going to draw his wand and cast a spell at her, but she could
+fend him off. The thorns on her back simply moved too fast for any
+ordinary human to counter, as Percy Weasley had learned to his sorrow.
+
+But he didn't hold his wand in that hand. He held one of her Lord's
+Horcruxes, Helga Hufflepuff's cup.
+
+Indigena only stared for a moment, too paralyzed to do anything, and his
+wand, which he held in the other hand, flicked, sending one of those
+damn internal spells he was known for through her defenses. "\emph{Bruma
+interna!}"
+
+Inward winter, that curse meant, and it worked well enough. Indigena
+felt her tendrils slowly wither, curling close, as the torpor of cold
+seized her and convinced her plants it was winter and they should sleep.
+She dropped to one knee, struggling, but her mind had turned as sluggish
+as the sap in her veins and the leaves that shivered under her skin. She
+could observe, but not think or feel.
+
+Evan held up the cup, solemnly. ``I felt the wards on it fail when Harry
+attacked our Lord,'' he said. ``I know he will restore the spells as
+soon as he wakes, but for right now they are down. And you don't have a
+mental link with the captives as the Dark Lord does, so you can't call
+the others to stop me.''
+
+He smiled at her, the smile that told Indigena, from a distance that
+prevented the revelation hitting her full force, that Evan Rosier was
+not quite as mad as they had all thought he was, and therefore not quite
+as restrained. ``I know that you would ask what I am going to do with it
+if you were yourself, and so I will oblige you with an answer. I am
+going to cause trouble.'' His smile widened.
+
+Then he Apparated out, and with him went the Horcrux.
+
+Indigena knelt where she was, trying to recover, desperately seeking the
+warm air around her and reminding herself it was June, not December.
+
+And through her body at the deepest levels, down at the soil, ran a
+whisper of premonition. \emph{This is not good.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 15*: Safehouses}\label{chapter-15-safehouses}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Ten: Safehouses}
+
+``Harry! Wait.''
+
+Draco considered it unfair that someone just out of bed after spending
+most of a day fighting Voldemort in his mind could outwalk him. Harry
+heard his call, though, and turned around, smiling at him. Draco hated
+how absent the smile was. Harry's eyes were half-glazed, his thoughts
+obviously swirling around the list of names and houses that he clutched
+in one hand.
+
+``I thought about what you said to me this morning,'' Draco said, when
+he'd recovered his breath enough to stop panting. Malfoys did \emph{not}
+pant. ``And I agree that I'm unlikely to live in the Manor in the near
+future. Its biggest value to me at present is storing the treasures my
+family's accumulated, so that the Ministry would have a harder time
+touching them than my Gringotts account.''
+
+Harry's jaw actually fell. Draco didn't know whether to feel proud of
+that or not. He \emph{had} wanted to surprise Harry, but he wasn't sure
+if the nature of the surprise was the best that it could have been.
+
+``You'd---you'd actually let Malfoy Manor be used as a safehouse,
+Draco?'' It seemed that Harry was having trouble breathing.
+
+``Yes,'' Draco said softly, and put a hand on Harry's shoulder, stroking
+a bit. Even that felt incredibly good. They really hadn't had enough
+time for each other lately, and it was driving him mad. ``You said you
+needed strongly-warded magical houses, ideally ones that you wouldn't
+have to cast an Unplottable Charm on because they'd already have it, and
+that you'd want to have them extensive enough for as many refugees as
+possible to live there in comfort.''
+
+Harry shook his head. ``I was only explaining the specifics of the
+safehouses we needed because you asked, Draco. I don't expect you to
+give up your ancestral home to become one.''
+
+Draco's surprise steadied. So Harry really was gratified. He wasn't
+thinking that Draco was so selfish that there was no way this offer
+could be sincere. ``I'm willing to,'' he said softly. ``Of course, I'll
+need to move my treasures into one room and ward them off, and I need to
+change the wards on the outer shell of the Manor, which only permit
+family members or invited guests, so that other people can actually
+enter it. But I'm willing to do that, Harry.''
+
+He bit his lip to keep the earnest tone in his voice as he finished, and
+the earnest look on his face. Harry was looking at him as if he'd made
+the sun rise, or his dreams of Voldemort stop.
+
+``Thank you,'' he said. ``I---that relieves a large part of my mind
+about where we could send---'' He stopped and shook his head. ``Thank
+you,'' he repeated, and his eyes shone in a way Draco hadn't seen since
+the beginning of June. ``I appreciate what it cost you to offer this.''
+He leaned in and gently kissed Draco on the cheek.
+
+\emph{Not as much as you might think,} Draco thought, his eyes fastened
+hungrily on Harry's face as he drew back again. \emph{I want you less
+stressed, Harry, and not only for my own reasons. Anything that relieves
+that stress is a good thing. And it's true that I'm not going to use the
+Manor in the near future, unless you move there, because I'm never going
+to be far from your side.}
+
+Harry went on looking at him for a moment more, then abruptly jumped and
+glanced down at his wrist. Draco saw a yellow line there, tugging at his
+hand. ``Bloody time spells,'' Harry murmured. ``I've got to meet with
+the Rosier-Henlin family and ask if they would prefer to stay here or go
+to one of the safehouses. And then I need to speak with Regulus about
+which Black house would be the most suitable.'' He threw Draco an
+apologetic glance. ``I'll speak with you later. And thank you again,
+Draco!'' he called, as he broke into a trot up the hallway.
+
+Draco stayed where he was for a moment, soaking up the remnants of that
+smile. Then he turned determinedly in the direction of Gryffindor Tower,
+where Connor was staying. He'd made a promise to himself, and he'd
+continue as he'd begun.
+
+He needed advice about changing the wards on Malfoy Manor, and he knew
+the wards on the Potters' ancestral home of Lux Aeterna were closer to
+the ones he'd want. So he would speak to Connor and receive as much
+advice as he could towards constructing new wards for the Manor. Apart
+from having the intended practical effects, that would show Harry that
+Draco could work with his brother, and remove a potential source of
+stress for the future.
+
+Draco knew better than to ask for sex when Harry was like this. Harry
+would do it, but out of duty, and his mind would be elsewhere attending
+to a million other duties at the same time. Draco preferred to relax him
+as much as possible before he asked, and put him into the kind of mood
+where Harry would be inclined to look favorably on him anyway.
+
+Meanwhile, it had the effect of binding him more closely to his future
+brother-in-law and actually improving the war effort. Everyone gained,
+from what Draco could see.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry knocked gently on the door in front of him. ``Mrs.
+Rosier-Henlin?'' he called, because he knew that they weren't close
+enough for him to call her ``Medusa.''
+
+The door opened, and Harry blinked a bit when he realized Michael was
+standing there. But he nodded and asked quietly, ``Are they awake? I can
+leave and come back again if they're asleep.''
+
+``Eos is asleep,'' Michael murmured, and moved out of the way. All the
+while, his gaze was intent and burning on the side of Harry's face.
+Harry pretended to ignore it. They'd had their troubles, with Michael
+thinking he would make a better partner for Draco than Harry would, but
+those had fallen quiet several months ago. ``But Mother is awake. You've
+come to speak to her about the safehouses?''
+
+Harry nodded, distracted from speaking by the sight of the room in front
+of him.
+
+He didn't think he'd ever seen so many warding spells. They cut the air
+like the glitter of swords, and most of them focused on the cot where
+Medusa's four-month-old daughter, Eos, lay sleeping. Medusa herself sat
+beside the cot, her head lifted, her wand in her lap, and her face
+haggard.
+
+Harry tensed, then let his breath out slowly. Yes, their involvement in
+the war had cost the Rosier-Henlin family, but he hadn't forced them to
+become involved. Given that Charles had joined him after Voldemort's
+return, it had been a calculated risk from the beginning. He would not
+start feeling guilty over it, not now, when there were more productive
+emotions he could be feeling.
+
+Medusa seemed to realize he was there, then. She sat up, and her
+knuckles turned white on the wand. ``What do you want?'' she whispered.
+
+``To keep you and Eos and your sons safe,'' Harry answered, and drew the
+list of safehouses out of his pocket. ``I wanted to know if you would
+prefer to stay at Hogwarts or go to a safehouse. I've had ten
+volunteered.'' \emph{Eleven now,} he thought, given that Draco had
+volunteered Malfoy Manor, but he preferred not to count on that one yet.
+He still didn't quite understand why Draco had done it, and it was
+possible he would change his mind later, or Narcissa would make him
+change his mind. ``All of them have powerful wards.''
+
+``Not as strong as Hogwarts?'' Medusa whispered.
+
+Harry shook his head. ``No. On the other hand, they're also less central
+to the war, and Voldemort is less likely to attack them than he is to
+attack Hogwarts, given that I'm here and he wants me.''
+
+``But if an attack happens on a safehouse, we're likelier to die.''
+
+``It's a possibility.'' Harry watched her, heart aching, and wished
+there was something more he could do. The failure of the wards on her
+home seemed to have inspired Medusa with a paranoid distrust of all
+defensive spells, unless they were outlandishly strong. Harry thought he
+could have talked her out of it with a month of silence and quiet and
+phoenix song.
+
+They didn't have a month. They had, perhaps, a few hours, if he snatched
+them around all the other tasks he had to accomplish. And so far, Medusa
+had given no sign that she wanted that kind of help from him.
+
+Harry forced himself to remain silent while Medusa thought. ``An attack
+on Hogwarts is a sure thing?'' she whispered at last.
+
+``Eventually, yes, if I remain here.'' And Harry had no plans to move in
+the near future. Here were Snape's potions labs, Madam Pomfrey's
+hospital wing, McGonagall's strong and backing presence, the Founders'
+wards, and enough room to shelter many of his friends and allies.
+\emph{And a Horcrux, too, though damned if I can find it yet.} ``The
+safehouses may fall victim to an attack more easily, but an attack at
+any single one of them is less certain than an attack on Hogwarts.''
+
+``If we moved from sanctuary to sanctuary---'' Medusa began, and then
+shook her head. ``No, no, that's not possible. The Dark Lord could
+attack us while we moved, and I do not think Eos would survive.'' Her
+hand drifted out and caressed her daughter's forehead.
+
+``There's no need to make up your mind immediately,'' Harry said
+quietly, and placed the list of safehouses on the table near the bed,
+the one place in the room not extensively warded. ``I simply wanted to
+see if you already had. Do think over it, ma'am. I only want to make you
+comfortable and safe.''
+
+``You can't do that,'' Medusa whispered, and bent over her babe again.
+
+Harry sighed, though he made sure to keep it silent. What wearied him
+more than anything else was the sight of someone else's despair. And,
+lately, it was also the burden that hung heaviest around the neck of his
+commitment to keeping his darkness at bay. He saw Medusa like this, and
+the vengeful impulse went clawing and rearing up in him.
+
+Save, of course, that the one who had done this to Medusa was
+Millicent's father, once an ally and friend, and that Harry still had
+hopes to win him free if he could.
+
+He started to turn away, only to find Michael standing behind him.
+``I'll walk you out,'' said Michael, in tones that said he meant to say
+something else and Harry had no choice in the hearing.
+
+Harry frowned. He nodded, though. Michael was over his infatuation with
+Draco; he had made no move that could be attributed to that in months.
+So perhaps he wanted to give Harry advice on how to approach his mother
+in the future, or share his concerns about the safety of his family.
+Merlin knew that everyone could use a sympathetic ear and a shoulder to
+support them, Harry thought, his mind presenting him such a strong image
+of Snape that he lost track of his movements until he found himself in
+the hallway with Michael, the door of Medusa's room shut behind them.
+
+Michael led him a few steps down the corridor without speaking. Harry
+followed right behind. Michael turned back around again, gave a deep
+breath, and started.
+
+``I want you to readmit me as a sworn companion.''
+
+Harry shook his head and stepped past him, intent on finding Regulus. He
+moved back and forth between Grimmauld Place and Hogwarts so often these
+days, talking with Snape and Peter, that Harry wasn't entirely sure of
+where he'd be at the moment, but he'd look in Snape's rooms first.
+
+Michael snatched his arm and spun him around. Harry blinked once, then
+blamed himself for being caught flat-footed. He would have to maintain
+his alertness in case Death Eaters broke into the school or a traitor
+turned up.
+
+\emph{That's another thing to speak about with McGonagall---escape
+tunnels for when Voldemort does attack. I don't want everyone trapped
+the way they were last Midsummer.}
+
+``You owe me an explanation,'' Michael hissed.
+
+``No, I don't,'' Harry said, a bit irritated at being forced to speak on
+a subject he'd considered finished. ``You didn't make a good sworn
+companion. Your family needs you right now, since Owen isn't there often
+enough. And I don't trust your motives for asking to retake the oath.''
+
+Michael's jaw actually fell open. Then he shook his head and spoke in an
+oddly wistful voice. ``What will convince you I've changed? That I
+don't---that is, I've accepted that I can't have Draco as my own partner
+and that he's not in love with me, and that I only want to help you at
+the forefront of the war?''
+
+``To be with your twin?'' Harry guessed. He knew there were points in
+his life where Connor following an oath like Owen's would have been
+impossible for him to live with, unless he took the same oath. He
+watched narrow-eyed as Michael gave an eager nod. \emph{I don't think
+he's lying, but there may still be other motives mixed in with his love
+for his brother, ones he's not even aware of.}
+
+The temptation to use Legilimency to read Michael's mind and see if that
+was true struck him suddenly, so strongly he almost pushed his will
+forward before restraining himself. Harry clenched one hand into a fist.
+He knew the mental battle had been necessary to restrain Voldemort, but
+it had given an unnecessary push to the part of himself that enjoyed
+dominating and controlling. He would have to watch, to make sure he did
+not start thinking that was moral.
+
+``I'll have to speak with Bill, Charlie, and Syrinx as well as Owen,''
+he told Michael. ``If they don't think they can work with you, then I
+won't let you swear the oath again. And Draco will at least be
+consulted.'' He wasn't sure he should let Draco's opinion rule the day,
+since Syrinx was the one assigned to stand at his shoulder, but he
+deserved some warning about what might happen. ``And I expect some
+commitment to your duty this time, and not just a commitment to pulling
+Draco's pants off.''
+
+Michael flushed, and nodded. ``I'll remember, Harry.''
+
+``Good.'' Harry eyed him, then started towards the dungeons. This time,
+Michael didn't call him back, but Harry looked over his shoulder to see
+him standing with his arms wrapped around himself, as if he were cold.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``I don't think you can.''
+
+Draco frowned. This wasn't the reaction he'd expected to his noble quest
+of working with Connor and learning what kinds of wards would make
+Malfoy Manor more hospitable to guests. ``What?''
+
+``I said, I don't think you can.'' Connor was leaning on one of the
+hideous red-and-gold beds in the Gryffindor sixth-year boys' room,
+staring patiently at Draco. Weasley's bed was the only other one
+currently occupied, since Longbottom, Thomas, and Finnigan were at home
+with their families. Draco supposed he was glad that Weasley wasn't here
+at the moment to witness the argument; thank Merlin for small mercies.
+"Lux Aeterna's wards depend on intent. They welcome people whom their
+owner likes, and keep out those he dislikes. And it depends on
+\emph{unconscious} motivation, as well as conscious motives. They
+sometimes offer nasty surprises, such as when it turned out that my
+ancestor didn't trust his wife and the wards prevented her from
+entering, even though she'd committed no crime. I'm fairly welcoming, so
+the wards should keep out only my enemies. But if you try to put the
+same kind of wards around Malfoy Manor\ldots{}" Connor shook his head.
+``Malfoy, how many people do you hate and despise? Anyone who's not a
+pureblood. Anyone who's a Light wizard. Anyone you think might be
+possible competition for Harry. What would happen if Calibrid Opalline
+wanted to shelter there, or a Muggleborn family? Would you actually let
+them do it?''
+
+Draco lifted his head. ``I could learn to lower my prejudices.''
+
+``No, you can't.''
+
+``Yes, I can.''
+
+``No, I don't think you can.'' Connor leaned forward and tapped him hard
+on the chest. ``Living with Harry should have lowered those prejudices
+if anything could. I expected either you'd change your mind to please
+him---''
+
+"I most certainly \emph{would not}," Draco said, outraged that anyone
+could think such a thing of him.
+
+``Yes,'' Connor said, without remorse or backing down. ``You would.''
+Then he paused, and his voice softened. ``Or, at any rate, I thought
+that about you, once. I don't think it now. You're stronger than that.''
+
+Draco glared at him.
+
+``But that just makes it worse in this case.'' Connor shook his head,
+eyes fastened to Draco's. ``Don't you see? The very strength of those
+prejudices could bounce someone off the wards while she's being chased
+by Death Eaters, and that wouldn't do. I don't think you should use
+these wards on Malfoy Manor, Draco. Much better to go with ones that
+would defend your home and the people who shelter there, but don't link
+to either blood or belief. You're---pardon me, but given this war,
+you're a misfit in both of those.''
+
+That hurt more than Draco had expected. ``Just because my father has
+betrayed Harry doesn't mean I will,'' he said, making sure to sculpt his
+response as quiet dignity. ``For one thing, I have no Dark Mark.''
+
+``But a lot of people will think of you as Lucius Malfoy's son, and
+therefore as part of the opposition,'' said Connor. ``Untrustworthy, at
+best. And if you remain as prejudiced against Muggleborns and Light
+wizards as you are, you won't earn a good reputation for yourself,
+either. They're part of the war effort. And since Voldemort wants to
+exterminate Muggleborns, this war is largely about them. People will
+judge you on what you say about them, whether you want them to or not.''
+
+Draco gritted his teeth. ``I won't change my mind just because it would
+make things easier.''
+
+``Sometimes I feel more Slytherin than the Slytherins,'' said Connor,
+rolling his eyes. "No one's asking you to change your beliefs, unless
+you actually will use wards based on intention. \emph{Lie}, you great
+git."
+
+"\emph{You're} encouraging lying?"
+
+``I'm a Gryffindor,'' said Connor. ``I follow the rules---except when it
+comes to enemies, or when the rule is a stupid rule. I'm not Hermione,
+and I'm not even Ron, who has a whole Light pureblood tradition to live
+up to. Being halfblood makes you exempt from things like that. I'm
+saying lie, pretend you're making a great sacrifice by opening your home
+up to people you scorn, and you'll win a better reputation. After the
+war, you can go back to being a bastard, if you want.''
+
+``I shouldn't have to change even that much of my behavior,'' Draco
+pointed out. ``Harry doesn't care.''
+
+``But Harry's allies will. And should. And you're the one who's supposed
+to be his major political and personal support.'' Connor sat up, staring
+into his eyes. "I love my brother, Draco. I'll do what I can to make
+sure he wins this war. Sometimes that's fighting in battles, and
+sometimes that's bearing Voldemort's visions for him, and sometimes
+that's making sure the people in his life who \emph{should} know things
+like this already don't do stupid or silly things and tangle up our war
+effort. So, choose. Hopefully you'll choose to lie, and this is one less
+thing I'll have to worry about. If you don't, then I'll deal with you
+later."
+
+Draco raised an eyebrow. This close, staring into his eyes and talking
+in that soft voice, Connor Potter was somewhere near impressive.
+
+``Harry will know the truth.''
+
+``Yes, but others won't, and it's those others you're trying to
+impress,'' Connor said impatiently. ``You won't have to spend the rest
+of your life with them, just a few months.'' He paused, then added
+something entirely unfair. ``And it was the Malfoy pride that got your
+father dragged off, wasn't it, Draco?''
+
+Draco ground his teeth together, then nodded stiffly. ``Fine. A lie in
+public, and no wards based on intention.''
+
+``Good.'' Connor hopped off the bed. ``I know that Thomas Rhangnara is
+researching those stones that destroyed the wards around the Maenad
+Press and the other places the Death Eaters attacked. Let's see what
+wards he would recommend that you use.''
+
+Draco followed, trying to convince himself that he hadn't made a bad
+bargain, and that pride could come after the war. Really, he did know
+the answer to that, of course. He'd made the decision himself already,
+when he knew he would do what was needed to help Harry, regardless of
+personal cost.
+
+He just wished it hadn't been Connor Potter who pointed it out to him.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Regulus hadn't been in Snape's rooms. Harry finally used the phoenix
+song to call on him, and Regulus told him he was in Silver-Mirror. But
+he didn't mention who else was with him, which was why Harry was more
+than surprised to walk into a room with three Blacks.
+
+\emph{Or four, if you count me.}
+
+Harry pushed the thought away. He had never been comfortable with
+thinking of himself as Regulus's \emph{actual} son rather than legal
+heir, and he would not start now. There were glories in the bloodline he
+could never hope to match, and beliefs associated with it he would
+rather not carry. He gave quick nods, now, to Regulus, and to Narcissa,
+and to the formidable woman rising quietly to her feet from a chair next
+to the fire. She was Andromeda Black Tonks, he knew, though he'd met her
+only a few times.
+
+``Ma'am,'' he acknowledged.
+
+Andromeda studied him coolly. Harry thought her more reserved even than
+Narcissa. Of course, that could be because he'd known Narcissa far
+longer, and impressed her on his first trip to Malfoy Manor enough that
+she'd dropped the reserve. Harry stood in front of her eyes and awaited
+judgment.
+
+Abruptly, Andromeda sank into a curtsey. Harry noted the position of her
+hands on her robes, and the degree to which she bowed her head, and felt
+himself flush as red as a Weasley's hair. This was the sign of
+submission she would probably use to a Lord, assuming she would ever
+choose to follow one.
+
+``Harry,'' she said, standing. ``It is my hope that someday you will
+adopt the Black name and become even more than Regulus's legal heir.''
+
+Harry eyed her cautiously.
+
+``But, for now,'' she continued, sitting back in her chair, ``I am
+willing to help you as matters stand.''
+
+``Good,'' said Harry, wondering if he should be relieved. He knew that
+Andromeda had contacts in France who had proved useful during the
+rebellion at Woodhouse, and even since, selling them Wolfsbane
+ingredients at reduced prices. But he also knew she and Narcissa had
+spent most of the last seventeen years in a constant argument, which was
+one reason Andromeda hadn't joined them at Woodhouse. He hoped their
+presence in the same room without shouting at each other meant a
+reconciliation of sorts was in the air. He turned to Regulus. ``I've
+come to discuss which Black house should become a sanctuary---''
+
+``We've already discussed that,'' said Regulus, with a wave of his hand
+at his cousins. Harry was startled to see that some of the dark circles
+under his eyes had faded, and he looked more cheerful than he had for a
+month, since the attacks at the beginning of June. ``Cobley-by-the-Sea
+is the only choice. Wayhouse might accept them and change its mind at
+any moment, there are too many treasures here, and the portrait of my
+mother refuses to come off the wall in Grimmauld Place. Her shrieking
+would rather disconcert people who are coming there for peace and
+safety, I think.''
+
+Harry inclined his head, relieved the decision had been made so quickly.
+``Then I'll be at Hogwarts---''
+
+``Not yet,'' said Andromeda. Narcissa shot her sister a quick glance,
+but Harry couldn't tell what it was for. The cool, commanding tone she'd
+used, perhaps. Andromeda didn't appear to notice. Her eyes were locked
+on Harry. ``There is another task appropriate to your station.''
+
+Harry did not like the sound of that, but he refused to let any
+discomfort show in his face, voice, or posture. This was the very oldest
+set of rituals he'd been trained to, maintaining composure in front of
+Dark purebloods, and he returned to it as easily as breathing. ``What
+station?''
+
+``The effective leader of wizarding Britain at the moment, since Acting
+Minister Juniper continues to issue edicts and prepare for war by
+alienating those he cannot afford to alienate,'' said Andromeda calmly.
+Harry half-nodded; he'd seen the latest ridiculous announcement in the
+\emph{Daily Prophet}, that Juniper was now seizing the accounts of some
+wealthy Dark wizards or those with tarnished reputations, such as
+arrests in their backgrounds. The Ministry claimed to need the money for
+the war effort, but it was only making them enemies. ``It is appropriate
+that the leader of Britain ask for help from other wizarding
+communities.''
+
+Harry stared at her. Other than for very small and specific matters,
+like the Wolfsbane, that had not even occurred to him.
+
+He found his tongue a moment later. ``You're suggesting I write to the
+Ministry of France---''
+
+``And Spain, and Portugal, and Austria, and any other country in Europe
+with a wizarding community and no immediate conflict draining their
+resources.'' Andromeda gave a serene nod. ``Yes. Let them know how
+matters with your war effort stand. Outline the danger Voldemort poses.
+At the very least, they might send Aurors to you. You are creating
+battle-trained wizards, but that will take time. You need more people
+who know defensive spells already and can take up the work of
+protection, of assembling forces, of working in groups and giving
+commands, of dividing resources.''
+
+"I don't have the \emph{right} to ask that," said Harry, a bit aghast.
+He was thinking of what Juniper would do if he received a similar letter
+from a sixteen-year-old wizard in France or Germany or Belgium. Laughing
+and tearing up the letter would be the least of it. He might strike back
+for the insult.
+
+``Yes, you do,'' said Andromeda, her eyelids lifting a bit, making her
+dark eyes look much wider. ``Or do you think the leaders of France,
+Spain, Finland, and the others so stupid that they do not know what will
+happen should Voldemort win here and cross the Channel? I promise you,
+he will never content himself with the British Isles, and they know
+that. This is their war, too.''
+
+Harry half-shook his head. His thoughts were reminding him of history,
+though, of the fact that many different wizarding communities had joined
+together to fight Grindelwald. He was the last Dark Lord, as Jing-Xi had
+told him, who had tried to extend his control beyond the boundaries of
+one country. And since Voldemort would want the same thing, the course
+Andromeda suggested was unsurprising, really, and probably their best
+chance.
+
+It was hard to let go of the image of the war as being about Voldemort's
+Horcruxes and the prophecy, though. He would need help to defeat him,
+but he had been sure it was help he would find in Britain.
+
+\emph{With Juniper as Acting Minister? With opinion shifting about me
+every time Hornblower publishes a new issue? With so many wizards who
+are still unsure about me because of Dumbledore and my parents and all
+the rest, or because they personally lost family to Death Eaters, or
+because they hate the Malfoys?}
+
+Perhaps he was being foolish to imagine that he would succeed without
+international help. As he had told himself on the Astronomy Tower, his
+greatest weakness was that he was fighting a defensive war while
+Voldemort was fighting an offensive one. And that was not likely to
+change; he could hardly abandon innocents to Voldemort's spells, even if
+they had not asked specifically for his help.
+
+He looked Andromeda in the eye. ``And you're sure they won't be insulted
+by the fact that I'm so young, and hold no official position, and yet
+I'm asking them for aid?''
+
+``I can promise you,'' said Andromeda, a cold smile sliding across her
+mouth this time. ``Besides, Harry, you forget. You are very nearly of
+age. Twenty-nine days, now. And the war is likely to continue much
+longer than that.''
+
+Harry nodded. ``Very well. I don't know any of the languages involved.
+Will translation spells help?''
+
+``I shall help you,'' Andromeda said, standing. ``I know French. For the
+rest, yes, you can use translation spells, or you may use Latin, which
+is still accepted as a diplomatic language. I believe that your ally
+Ignifer Pemberley speaks it as her native tongue.''
+
+``Thank you,'' Harry murmured, and then turned to Narcissa, who had been
+abnormally quiet. ``Did you know that Draco is considering making Malfoy
+Manor into a safehouse?'' he asked.
+
+Narcissa sat up abruptly. "He is \emph{what}?"
+
+Harry nodded a bit. He had been sure there were some sacrifices Narcissa
+would not countenance making for the war, which meant he wasn't going to
+accept Draco's offer of the Manor just yet, not until he knew it
+wouldn't change overnight. ``He said that he'd have to change the wards
+and lock his treasures away, but he is considering it.''
+
+``I am going to speak to him.'' Narcissa crossed the room quickly and
+vanished in the direction of one of the fireplaces. Harry stifled a
+chuckle. She could have used the phoenix song spell, but he had the
+feeling that she wanted to be face-to-face with her son when they talked
+about this.
+
+``We shall want to emphasize the danger from Voldemort, of course,''
+Andromeda said, her hand closing firmly on Harry's arm. "As well as the
+fact that you are \emph{vates}, and your larger task is helping wizards
+deal with bound magical creatures, not fighting one Dark Lord. If you
+are ever to negotiate the release of karkadanns, or sea serpents, or
+that monstrous thing that the Spanish wizards have got chained up in
+Altamira and have no name for, then you must survive this war."
+
+Harry looked half-helplessly over his shoulder, hoping that Regulus
+might come with him and help to deflect Andromeda's attention. Regulus
+smiled at him, the smile of someone who had been with two Black sisters
+for a few hours and was happy for his escape.
+
+Then he closed his eyes and went to sleep.
+
+Harry sighed, and let Andromeda sweep him into the main hall of
+Silver-Mirror, where a mound of parchment and quills awaited.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``And we are agreed?''
+
+Erasmus looked carefully around the room. It had taken days of
+arguments, long persuasive speeches, reading of historical test cases,
+and debate about the moral rights of prisoners and others, before they
+could arrive at this point. But, finally, it had been done. And though
+some of his allies still looked doubtful, none of them could raise good
+arguments any longer.
+
+Even Aurora looked tired. Erasmus was not surprised, though. She had
+been one of those to argue hardest against this new edict, certain it
+would turn more wizards against them than it would win. But Erasmus had
+pointed out that the edict bound everyone, including the Ministry---he
+would not sink to the level he had when he captured Snape, Pettigrew,
+and Black, using Veritaserum without permission---and so could not be
+considered unfair. And she had entwined her destiny with his. She was in
+too deep to abandon him now.
+
+Slowly, one by one, heads nodded. Members of the Wizengamot Erasmus felt
+he could trust, and all those sworn to the Order of the Firebird, were
+gathered in this private meeting hall. Erasmus wondered if someone would
+one day make a list of their names, if Hogwarts school-children would
+recite them, or if they would drown in history and be as forgotten as
+poor Rufus someday.
+
+Drowning would be a fate that he could welcome, he thought, as long as
+the changes they made endured.
+
+Harry had been right about one thing. Erasmus and his government could
+not do morally questionable things and then pretend that they were
+different from their opponents. In fact, they could not continue many of
+the regular practices of the Ministry and call themselves different from
+Death Eaters.
+
+The time was ripe for a revolution. Harry had proven that. He was moving
+in the wrong direction, though, trying to fling the net so wide that it
+would include many morally questionable elements in the Ministry's
+circle of protection. Erasmus had set his standards, and it would not
+happen with his ring. This new law was the first step in a bold new
+direction, one that would act as a winnowing fire and purge the Ministry
+and the British wizarding community of the laxities that had allowed
+He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named to arise in the first place.
+
+\emph{Not even Rufus could stop bribery and corruption in the Ministry.
+But then, perhaps he had grown used to such things, complacent in his
+office. And he was slipping in any case, following the road of good
+intentions towards a dark bottom. The Ritual of Cincinnatus proved that,
+and so did his close friendship with Harry and his giving in to his
+demands. We must prove we stand strong, and that we will not allow
+things other people may have taken for granted. We are not Rufus's
+Ministry, and we are not the Order of the Phoenix. We are the Order of
+the Firebird, the older and higher Light. We do what is right, not what
+is convenient.}
+
+He met Cupressus Apollonis's eyes across the table, and saw that the
+Irish wizard was smiling, faintly. He had asked many questions during
+the process of drafting the law, harsh, piercing, uncomfortable
+questions. Erasmus was indebted to him. Otherwise, his definition of
+Light might have remained soft, and that was not needed. During this
+time of war, they needed a definition that would meet
+He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named like a bared blade.
+
+``It is decided, then,'' he said aloud. ``Tomorrow we declare martial
+law, and tomorrow we make Dark Arts illegal in the British Isles.''
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 16*: Like Shards of Ringing
+Glass}\label{chapter-16-like-shards-of-ringing-glass}
+
+Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter!
+
+\textbf{Chapter Eleven: Like Shards of Ringing Glass}
+
+``Because you cannot.''
+
+His mother was beautiful, forbidding, severe as an ice sculpture, but
+Draco could be forbidding, too, when he chose. He curled his lip and
+faced his mother with a lifted head and a carefully still body. He had
+seen Lucius use the same posture, sometimes, when Narcissa had chosen to
+argue something he would absolutely not give way on.
+
+``I'm fulfilling the pride of my name in my own way,'' he said curtly.
+"And I think I would know if I were sinking into the shadow that you
+suggest, Mother, doing things solely for the sake of Harry's approval
+and love. I am \emph{not}. I haven't since third year, when I realized
+that his magic could be an unconscious compulsion on me. Since then,
+I've been careful to judge my actions."
+
+``As you were during fourth year, when you were so careful as to summon
+Julia,'' his mother murmured.
+
+Draco flushed, but forced himself to shrug. ``So it was a bit further on
+in time than third year.'' He sat down in the chair in front of the
+fire. His mother had called on him through the Floo in the hospital
+wing, and \emph{she} was the one in the undignified position, kneeling
+so that her head showed through the flames. There was no reason that he
+should make himself look undignified by pacing the way he had, when
+there was a perfectly good seat available. "But I am not asking Harry to
+accept Malfoy Manor as a safehouse out of some misplaced wish to make up
+for Father's actions \emph{or} because I wanted to see the expression
+Harry would look at me with when I did. I am doing it because I want to,
+because we need this, and because if we can change the blood wards, then
+the Manor will be perfect for refugees."
+
+``You are sacrificing your own pride,'' said Narcissa, the accusation
+she had begun the conversation with.
+
+``Some of it could stand to be sacrificed,'' said Draco, and glared at
+her some more. When that didn't seem effective, he tried, ``It's a much
+lesser sacrifice than blood and lives, all told.''
+
+``Even Muggle lives?''
+
+``I don't know if Muggles will come to live in the Manor, unless they're
+the families of Mudbloods,'' Draco began, baffled. \emph{Why would she
+be worried about that at all---}
+
+And then he understood. He actually was surprised he hadn't understood
+in the first place. He stopped himself with a swallow and a gulp, and
+looked at Narcissa's perfectly sculptured, mask-like face.
+
+``This isn't about a loss of pride for the Malfoy family,'' he said
+softly, ``or even about the way that you think I'm giving up too much to
+be with Harry, just because I want him. You're prejudiced against
+Muggles, aren't you, Mother? You don't want to think of them touching
+the same chairs that you did, walking between our portraits, looking at
+our furniture.''
+
+A faint tinge of color graced Narcissa's cheeks, after which she shook
+her head. ``You misunderstand me, Draco.''
+
+``Really?'' Draco didn't think he did. ``Then explain it to me,
+please.''
+
+``I already have.'' Narcissa laid one hand in the fire, so that Draco
+could see it hovering beside her head. ``You are making a mockery of
+yourself if you do this, Draco. Harry would not demand so much of you,
+and that means that you should not give so much up. You should retain
+the Manor to become the graceful home for your future that it will be
+after the war.''
+
+Draco studied her thoughtfully. ``Harry said that Regulus was allowing
+one of the Black houses to become a refuge. And Harry did the same thing
+before the rebellion started, sheltering that werewolf pack he suddenly
+acquired in Cobley-by-the-Sea and Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. Do you
+think they disgraced the honor of the Black name? Somehow polluted the
+houses so that someone like you or Regulus or Aunt Bellatrix could never
+live there again?''
+
+He'd used the comparison to Bellatrix on purpose, partly to make his
+mother wake up and \emph{think}, and partly because he knew that Aunt
+Andromeda would have no objection to being in a house where Muggles and
+Mudbloods had walked. He privately suspected that, rather than simply
+incompatible personalities, was the source of her long quarrel with
+Narcissa.
+
+``That is different,'' said Narcissa stiffly. ``After Sirius, no heir
+could possibly disgrace the line more, and they stand to gain in
+recovered glory with Harry. For the Malfoys, however---Draco, your
+father's name is becoming a taunt and worse in the newspapers. Do not do
+this, and degrade it further.''
+
+``I think it would recover it, not degrade it further,'' Draco said
+quietly. ``Since, after all, it would show that at least some Malfoys
+are on this side of the war, and willing to make amends.''
+
+``You will be giving up part of a world they can never understand, to be
+pawed by them,'' said Narcissa fervently. ``I do not mind fighting
+beside them. I do not mind planning with them, or acknowledging that
+they make fine allies to Harry. But you must have some place to go where
+you may escape their---their prejudices, Draco.'' Draco had to fight to
+keep from laughing aloud. ``Some place where the atmosphere is of magic,
+and the untainted blood shines.''
+
+``And yet, if the Grand Unified Theory is correct, then Grandfather
+Abraxas was a halfblood, and the Manor accepted him anyway,'' Draco
+said. It was the first time he had ever even hinted that he might
+believe that. The problem was that he had to. He'd looked through the
+documents Rhangnara had assembled in support of that, and they stared
+him in the face with evidence that wouldn't go away. Draco supposed he
+would feel a certain smugness, once he got over the shock. He was more
+pureblooded than his own father, since the contamination was a
+comfortable distance from him.
+
+``Draco,'' said Narcissa quietly. "I \emph{am} worried about you. You
+need not say such things, need not repeat such things, for Harry to love
+you."
+
+Draco rose restlessly to his feet again, aware that it was an admission
+of weakness, and yet unable to stop himself from making it. ``Why does
+everyone think I would be so weak as to change my mind merely because
+Harry wants me to?'' he asked. ``You, his brother, Harry himself,
+sometimes. I am my own person. I make up my own mind. And giving up the
+Manor to act as a safehouse is my choice.''
+
+``You cannot know that for certain, Draco.''
+
+Draco stared at her. ``And now you sound like Harry did when he feared
+using unconscious compulsion on me,'' he said flatly. ``It sounds just
+as silly now as it did then, Mother, in case you were wondering.''
+
+``I would ask that you keep the Manor in silence and solitude,'' said
+Narcissa, ``a refuge that you and I can retreat to when the world
+becomes too much, a sign that not everything about the Malfoys shall
+change because Lucius defected.''
+
+``The reasons I'm changing its status are more complicated than you
+think they are,'' Draco said calmly, ``just as Lucius didn't properly
+defect to the Dark Lord, and it's more complicated than that.''
+
+``Draco---''
+
+For the first time ever, Draco spelled a Floo connection through which
+his mother was speaking shut. Then he sat down in the chair and took
+several deep breaths, closing and opening his eyes now and again.
+
+\emph{I know what I'm doing. What I'm doing is what I want to do. And if
+it turns out I'm making the decision more because I want Harry to love
+me than for any other reason\ldots{}it's not as though that would
+matter. Harry doesn't love someone because of what that person can do
+for him.}
+
+Draco stood up and left the hospital wing, intent on having a rest, and
+then a good back-rub from Harry if he could find him.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry wondered, afterwards, if he knew something was wrong even before
+the owl deposited the \emph{Daily Prophet} in front of him. He dropped a
+Knut into its pouch, and it hooted and took off. Was there a suspicious
+softness in the hoot? Did it linger a moment, looking as if it were
+sorry for the news it delivered?
+
+The problem was that he couldn't be sure. The moment his eyes fell on
+the headline, it seemed like he always should have known this would
+happen, and his reactions before the fact became near-impossible to
+distinguish from ones after the fact.
+
+\emph{{\textbf{DARK ARTS BANNED! BY ORDER OF THE MINISTRY}}}
+
+\emph{\textbf{Acting Minister calls the decision `a step in the right
+direction'}}
+
+\emph{By: Rita Skeeter}
+
+Harry heard gasps all up and down the table, and guessed that most of
+the professors and the students who had stayed at Hogwarts had seen the
+headline by now. He didn't glance up, though, but drove straight into
+reading the article. His heartbeat sounded in his ears like the ocean
+heard through a seashell. There was the faint, elemental hope that he
+might somehow have mistaken the sense of the headline, and if he could
+read the article, and the truth, everything would be set straight.
+
+That didn't appear to be the case.
+
+\emph{In a surprise announcement early this morning, Acting Minister
+Erasmus Juniper, flanked by some members of the Wizengamot and the
+newly-organized Order of the Firebird, said that Dark Arts have been
+banned in Great Britain.}
+
+\emph{``This news is long in coming,'' he said. "Of course, some Light
+wizards have wanted to take this step for years, but the prominence of
+Dark wizards in British social life prevented them. Now, though, we're
+fighting a war against an enemy who wantonly uses Dark magic for his own
+purposes. I don't think anyone sane could argue that} now \emph{is a
+time for us to ignore this issue.}"
+
+\emph{The Acting Minister clarified, in response to questions from the
+press, what he meant by ``Dark Arts.''}
+
+"\emph{We drew on the old definitions of Dark when we composed this
+law," he said. "Thus, magic that creates compulsion, that is savage and
+wild, and that promotes subterfuge, in the very broadest distinctions,
+is banned. This includes pain curses, the compulsion gift, and most
+glamours and illusions that are used for a harmful purpose instead of an
+aesthetic or educational one.}"
+
+\emph{Juniper denied that the definition is too broad and that the law
+will snare more innocents than criminals or Death Eaters.}
+
+"\emph{That's simply not the case," he said. "Most people don't use Dark
+Arts in their day-to-day lives. And of course defensive magic like the
+Shield Charm and most Transfiguration goes untouched. We're trying to
+encourage our people to fight a just war, a Light war. We wouldn't take
+weapons out of their hands. But the Dark Arts are more like swords than
+shields. They're designed to strike, to hurt, to cause pain. That's why
+Death Eaters use them. No ordinary, innocent citizen of wizarding
+Britain has a reason to use them.}"
+
+\emph{The Acting Minister acknowledged that the new law will face heavy
+opposition.}
+
+"\emph{I don't expect everyone to welcome the news with open arms," he
+said. "Things are changing at last, in the Ministry and in our world,
+and most people are afraid of change. But this is a great wind, a
+roaring fire that will burn out all the careless impurities and lazy
+ways of doing things that we've allowed to creep into our ordinary
+lives. Everyone will follow it eventually, but I don't deny that
+following it at first will take great courage, conviction, and
+commitment to the vision of a Britain free from evil.}"
+
+\emph{He promised to follow this law with a program to clean up bribery
+and other kinds of corruption in the Ministry.}
+
+\emph{``We've allowed ourselves to become lax,'' he said. "All sorts of
+perfectly good prohibitions have lapsed, and our children grow up
+thinking that amoral and even immoral actions are perfectly fine,
+because they see their elders doing them. I hold to a vision of a
+sterner, brighter world.}"
+
+Harry laid the paper down and put his hand over his eyes, fingers
+rubbing gently at his brow.
+
+\emph{I can't believe he would be this stupid.}
+
+Except that, on one level, he could. Juniper had already said he was
+determined to fight this war without losing any moral ground. That would
+involve turning away from many actions that some leaders would condone
+because of expediency, but which Juniper would consider wrong. He was
+being consistent with his principles, no matter what the cost. It was
+noble, it was honorable---
+
+\emph{It's consistent with a titanic stupidity at this point in time.}
+
+"He can't \emph{do} that," said Hermione, sounding upset. Harry looked
+up in time to see her fling her paper down and stare at if it were a
+Horklump trying to crawl up her leg. ``He can't, can he?''
+
+``He's Minister,'' said Zacharias, who sat next to her, his mouth a thin
+line. "Well. \emph{Acting} Minister." He turned the front page over.
+``And if you look at the second page, you'll see that he's declared
+martial law. Ministers can do whatever they like in times of martial
+law, with only minimal input from the Wizengamot.''
+
+``But that's not fair,'' Hermione whispered. Harry could see why it was
+hitting her so hard, even though he couldn't imagine her using Dark Arts
+outside of battle. Hermione liked things to be right, proper, fair, and
+even if the authorities didn't always agree with her definitions of
+those things, she trusted them not to go too far outside the boundaries.
+This had shaken her faith.
+
+``In this case, yes, it's unfair,'' Harry said, and froze for a moment
+as every eye along the table snapped to him. Then he let out his breath
+and went on. \emph{Prat. Of course they're going to pay attention to you
+when something like this happens. Like it or not, you're in an important
+position here, and it's only going to get worse when and if those
+Ministers answer the letters Andromeda had you write.} ``But that's the
+way Juniper thinks. He can't allow anything to impede the progress of
+his morals, even if it impedes the progress of his war. You read it.''
+He tapped the article again. ``He knows that not everyone will support
+this, and he doesn't care. He wouldn't think that the support of those
+people who object was worth having.''
+
+His mind was finally stepping past the shock of the announcement, and
+into the consequences of it. The very thought made him ill.
+
+\emph{Merlin. Wizards are going to protest this, and turn against the
+Ministry when they were trusting it to stay strong and defend them from
+the Death Eaters. The panic that Juniper managed to stave off in the
+wake of Scrimgeour's assassination is going to spread now, because
+people won't know if their favorite defensive spells are classified as
+Dark Arts or not---except by asking, which somehow I can't see many of
+them doing. The feeling of vulnerability to Voldemort will increase
+exponentially. I can see many people going into hiding or fleeing the
+country rather than risk getting killed by Death Eaters or arrested and
+put into Tullianum. Martial law means they won't even have the dignity
+of a trial, unless they're prominent Light purebloods, maybe.}
+
+\emph{And the people who do support Juniper will be put on the
+defensive, trying to justify his choice. The Light will be on the
+defensive. Merlin knows how the newspapers will stir things.} Harry let
+out a gusty sigh. \emph{I think I just got piled with a lot of
+responsibility I didn't ask for.}
+
+``Harry.''
+
+He looked up. McGonagall was standing, her lips pursed in a thin line
+and her eyes holding a steely glint.
+
+``Come with me to my office, please.''
+
+Harry nodded, and stood. He was startled when Draco immediately stood
+with him, and then Owen. Owen's face was grave, and he was giving
+McGonagall a look that suggested he suspected the Headmistress of
+designs to kill and eat Harry. Draco's expression wasn't much better.
+
+\emph{What the fuck, they know she's a friend}---
+
+And then Harry understood it, and wanted to groan. \emph{And she's a
+Light witch. They don't know her as well or trust her as much as I do,
+and they think she might turn against me because I've used Dark Arts in
+the past. This will set Light and Dark wizards against each other to an
+unprecedented extent, too, because it will make some people cling to
+their allegiances and think they have to prove they're Dark or Light.}
+Wonderful.
+
+``You may bring your companions,'' said McGonagall, exactly as if she
+hadn't noticed Owen's tense shoulders or Draco's eyes, and then swept
+out of the Great Hall. Harry sighed and followed, taking the
+\emph{Prophet} with him. He didn't much regret the untouched breakfast.
+He wasn't hungry.
+
+When they'd crossed through the halls and up the moving staircase to
+McGonagall's office---a journey made in absolute, and, to Harry, eerie
+silence---she sat down and stared at him sternly. ``I wish you to
+know,'' she said. "that Hogwarts will remain open, and a refuge to any
+student and his or her family. It does not matter if the family is
+Declared Dark, or if the student uses Dark Arts, so long as they do not
+plan to hurt, kill, or torture anyone else residing here. That is the
+only absolute law \emph{I} intend to impose. Those who sow dissension in
+Hogwarts, of any kind, will have the wind for a companion."
+
+``Even if they use Light spells to hurt others?'' Owen demanded.
+
+``Even if they do that,'' said McGonagall.
+
+Owen relaxed, slowly. Draco didn't. ``You know what's coming,'' he told
+McGonagall, in a flat, calm voice Harry had never heard from him before.
+``You know what it's going to make Harry, as an undeclared Lord-level
+wizard who welcomes both the Dark and the Light and is Voldemort's main
+foe.'' His hand stroked Harry's shoulder, then rose and traveled through
+his hair with that possessive little tug he used so often. Harry
+wriggled, trying to get it out---this was an intimate gesture he didn't
+like Draco displaying in front of other people---but Draco didn't
+notice. ``Will you stand in his way and make his life more difficult? Or
+will you do what you can to spare him the torrent that's falling?''
+
+``I will support him,'' said McGonagall, and though her eyes glinted
+again, she didn't speak of the inappropriateness of a student calling
+her out on her intentions towards another student. Harry bit his lip.
+The announcement hadn't sent the Headmistress screaming towards her
+allegiance, then, and eager to prove that she was part of the Light.
+
+``You do know what it could cost you?'' he asked softly. ``The Board of
+Governors might not approve of the decision to keep Hogwarts open, let
+alone all the support that you intend to give me.''
+
+``They can go hang, then,'' said McGonagall, and Harry had to blink to
+make sure he'd got the full sense of her words, so utterly calm were
+they. ``They can say what they like, make what laws they like. It in no
+way diminishes my support of my students, Dark and undeclared as well as
+Light. The Ministry has made a mistake if they sought to divide me from
+them.''
+
+Harry bowed his head, a bit overwhelmed. He remembered McGonagall as
+scrupulously fair, even a little \emph{un}fair towards her own House
+sometimes, in her eagerness to show that she did not favor Gryffindors.
+``Thank you,'' he murmured. ``But if it ever costs you more to support
+me than Hogwarts can bear, Headmistress, I'll urge you to think about
+moving away.''
+
+``The principles you represent are the principles I support, Harry,''
+McGonagall said. ``I cannot see that changing. One does not often have
+intentions that melt and run like water at my time of life.''
+
+Harry let out a little breath. ``Thank you, Madam.'' He turned to Draco
+and Owen, and grimaced. ``Come with me, would you? I have letters to
+write, and I think I could stand to have company to make sure I don't
+start burning them before I finish.''
+
+Both nodded, and followed him, Draco nearly as grim and silent as Owen
+was. For some reason, that reminded Harry he hadn't yet mentioned
+Michael's request to take the lightning bolt brand again.
+
+\emph{Nor will I, not right now.} The next few days, Harry could see,
+were going to be frantically busy, and mention of Michael would only
+divide him and Draco. At the moment, he needed Draco's support to an
+extent that depressed and frightened him, but which he couldn't deny.
+
+\emph{I cannot afford an argument right now.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``It will be all right.''
+
+"You \emph{say} that, but you can't know that," Hermione pointed out,
+even as she buried her head against Zacharias's chest.
+
+``I can know that.'' Zacharias stroked his fingers through her hair,
+watching as her curls sprang back into place. He wondered if she had the
+slightest idea how much that simple and silly thing affected him, and
+decided not to tell her. It would only lead to an impression of her
+power over him, and she had enough of that already. ``And do you know
+why?''
+
+Hermione shook her head, not looking up. That alone told Zacharias how
+much she was shaken. Of course, unlike many other people stupid enough
+to assume it was something to do with a flaw in Hermione's character, he
+knew why. She'd always tried to be a dutiful person, always tried to
+follow the rules, and now she found herself declared a rebel through no
+fault of her own, since she'd used Dark Arts in the past to defend
+herself and others and would go on using them. Suddenly she was on the
+opposite side from the one she'd been following all her life.
+
+``Because I'm Light.'' Zacharias bowed his head and touched his lips to
+Hermione's hair. He felt old, and strong, and far wiser than most people
+would attribute to his age. "And Light isn't what that doddering old
+fool thinks it is. We're proud, but we can see the end of our pride and
+work with other people. That's an ideal of Light that Juniper's
+forgotten, you know---cooperation and communication with others. He
+thinks he's so intelligent, cutting the Light off from the Dark,
+assuming that they can have nothing in common. But he's wrong. The first
+Ministry was Light because we \emph{cared} about reaching out to people
+who weren't like us. We knew we couldn't purge Dark wizards from the
+British wizarding population, so we didn't try. We included them
+instead, and built something with them that would keep them from their
+worst excesses, because then they would be destroying something that
+mattered to them, too." He smiled, and knew she could feel the movement
+of his lips against her skin. ``And, of course, once we had them next to
+us, we could sneakily reeducate them and show them how much better the
+Light was than their puny Dark.''
+
+Hermione's laugh was watery, but real. She lifted her head and pulled
+him down into a profound kiss. ``Thank you,'' she said, when their lips
+managed to part.
+
+Zacharias didn't have to ask for what. He was intelligent enough to know
+what she would have said.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Connor wanted to kick things.
+
+Instead, though, he took himself up to his room in Gryffindor Tower, sat
+down on his bed, folded his hands over his eyes, and counted to two
+hundred. Then to four hundred, because he had visions of torturing
+Erasmus Juniper with a Tickling Hex until he cried. Then six hundred,
+and finally the visions went away, and finally he could sit up and think
+about what he was going to do, in ways that didn't involve Tickling
+Hexes.
+
+One thing was clear to him, one that he knew Harry was probably thinking
+of but might forget in the midst of all the other things he had to do.
+
+\emph{Light will fall behind if we can't come up with a way to represent
+it. Harry's undeclared. He's Light in his morals---more than he is
+Dark---but most people wouldn't see that because of his refusal to
+Declare. And a lot of his allies who are Light aren't close enough to
+him to serve as real representatives of our allegiance. The Opallines
+might work, since they're so respected, but they can't fight except in
+self-defense.}
+
+\emph{There's only one Light person who really backs him enough, and is
+close enough to him in most people's eyes, to make a difference.}
+
+\emph{Me.}
+
+Connor gave a single sharp nod, and sat up a little more. He knew he was
+having to be an adult, and most of the time, he resented that. He would
+have \emph{liked} to stay a child in the way that Dean and Seamus still
+were, at least for a little longer---the way that Harry and Lily had
+tried to keep him for the first eleven years of his life.
+
+But now he had to be an adult, the spokes-wizard for Light and the
+single most prominent person to convince Dark wizards that not all Light
+wizards were insane and to convince people of his own allegiance that
+they could have a home with Harry, and he was looking forward to it.
+
+He felt, as he had not since he first Declared, the presence of the
+Light like a burning sun in his heart. He closed his eyes and touched a
+fist to his chest, savoring the warmth.
+
+Connor had Declared because he believed in and loved what the Light
+stood for. Especially, he believed in the necessity for not always
+getting his own way and having to voluntarily limit his impact on some
+beings in order to let them have free will. That lesson had been beaten
+into him with a stick by the events of third year. He'd seen what
+happened when he tried to get his own way with Harry all the time.
+
+\emph{No more.}
+
+He knew one thing he could do, and so he went to do it---writing a
+letter to the \emph{Vox Populi} that he would ask them to print with his
+name on it. He would speak in the most general terms, as a Light wizard
+to other Light wizards, so that he wouldn't bind Harry to promises he
+couldn't keep. But he would do this thing, to show Juniper that he was
+opposed immediately and fervently and by people who believed in the same
+things he did.
+
+\emph{Although Tickling Hexes would still be more satisfying.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Snape was amused.
+
+He knew he could not show it. No one would understand. He had to sit in
+silence after everyone else had departed the Great Hall, except for
+Flitwick and Hagrid, and eat his meal, and try to keep his laughter from
+appearing on his face.
+
+He had wondered yesterday, when Harry told him about the letters Madam
+Tonks had had him write, whether it was possible that Harry truly could
+take the leadership of wizarding Britain from the Acting Minister. So
+long as he remained in power, it might be a beautiful dream, and
+certainly some Ministries would listen to Harry because of his magic and
+the prophecy, but Snape doubted the depth of their commitment.
+
+Now, Juniper had carefully removed any possible crown he might have worn
+and all but laid it at Harry's feet.
+
+\emph{The fool. Has he not studied any trends in wizarding communities
+in Europe for the last five hundred years?}
+
+There was no country entirely without Dark wizards, though in some they
+were more prominent than others. In some cases, they controlled the
+Ministries; in some cases, they competed for the power with Light
+wizards, as equals; in other cases, they had formed solid voting blocks
+or actual political parties and insured they kept their voices heard.
+Even Britain had been more like that fifty years ago. What had truly
+changed things for them was Dumbledore's defeat of Grindelwald, which
+had lifted him into a position of power as a Light Lord and increased
+the antipathy of Light wizards towards Dark ones. The discovery of Dark
+wizards sworn to Grindelwald's Lightning Guard among prominent members
+of the Wizengamot did not help. And then Voldemort's First War had
+exacerbated things, making people come to equate Dark magic with evil
+and believe that wizards of that allegiance could not be trusted.
+
+The insane dominance of the Light in Britain was a recent historical
+development, not a natural thing.
+
+\emph{Oh, tides are changing,} Snape thought, lifting the paper and
+staring at the photograph of the Acting Minister, whose hair blew in the
+wind around a calm, regal face. \emph{Not in the way that you
+anticipated, Juniper, but the tides are changing at last.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry sat back and considered the first stack of letters with a weary
+eye. He was sending them to the governments that Andromeda had already
+had him contact (and how strange did that sound, to say that he was
+writing to Ministries around the world as if he had a right to do so?)
+He'd used the translation spells on them, since he thought a Minister
+would appreciate receiving a letter in his native language more than in
+Latin. Owen, who knew German and Russian, was checking those letters for
+him. Harry wondered if they had time to check the others.
+
+\emph{Probably not.} It was important that the letters go out as soon as
+possible. There might be a version of panic in the wider wizarding
+community if Juniper's news was uncomplemented by some sort of remark
+from Harry---or, at the very best, scorn, and belief that no one in the
+Isles knew what to do. Harry wanted to show them that he was, partially,
+in control of what had happened, or willing to assume control.
+
+He grimaced over the foul slickness those words left in his mind, then
+turned sharply as he caught sight of a movement under the library
+tables. The next moment, Argutus had flowed up and was coiled around
+Harry's arms and throat, hissing urgently.
+
+"\emph{Something is happening in my scales. Look, look, look!}"
+
+Harry frowned and picked up a segment of the Omen snake's body, twisting
+it until he could see the milky scales and the reflections they bore.
+The gray-black shapes moving in swift flight through them were
+familiar---the magical constructs of owls that delivered the \emph{Vox
+Populi}---but the place they approached was not. At last Harry saw a
+glimpse of red, and of graffiti, and realized with a start that they
+were gliding through the dirty alley outside the Ministry's main
+entrance and settling into the disused telephone box that would become a
+lift.
+
+``What in the world is Hornblower doing?'' he murmured.
+
+The lift descended as he watched in mystified silence, and opened up
+again once it reached the Ministry's Atrium. The owls spread their
+wings, moving fast. Harry expected them to divide once they started
+towards the offices of the various people who read the \emph{Populi},
+but they didn't. Instead, they traveled in one concentrated, feathery
+mass towards the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, or at least the
+upper level, where the Minister's office was located.
+
+Perhaps because Harry was interested in it, the scene sharpened, until
+he could see the inside of the Minister's office completely. Harry saw
+Juniper look up from his desk, and had to stifle a growl of frustration.
+\emph{Idiotic old man. He has to make my life as hard as he can, and I
+swear he enjoys it---}
+
+He certainly did not enjoy what happened next, however.
+
+Every single owl banked past the desk and the Acting Minister, and
+lifted its tail. A mass of white bird-shit dropped out of each with a
+plop Harry could almost hear, sometimes landing on the paperwork,
+sometimes on the Acting Minister's hair and ears.
+
+After that first moment, Juniper began a mad scramble to save his
+parchments, but it was a losing battle. Every time he managed to gather
+one sheaf of paper to him, an owl would shit on his head, which caused
+him to lift an arm, which enabled the next to dart in and do the same
+thing over a fledgling law or edict. By the time the owls all swirled
+together and dissipated into the air, there wasn't an inch of the Acting
+Minister's desk and robes that wasn't white, gray, green, brown, or some
+mixture of both.
+
+The vision faded. Harry began to laugh. Argutus lifted his head and
+touched his tongue anxiously to Harry's cheek. "\emph{It was not a bad
+vision, then?"}
+
+``No. A very good one.'' Harry stroked the Omen snake's head. ``You've
+brought me some excellent news, just what I needed to cheer me up.'' He
+supposed, in hindsight, that it wasn't so unexpected. Hornblower was a
+professional rebel. He changed sides constantly, but he would always be
+with the one he perceived as the underdog of the moment, unfairly
+represented. The Ministry had passed a law that he would see as
+targeting Dark wizards. It wasn't a surprise that he'd decided to make
+an example of them in his own inimitable way.
+
+"\emph{Good}," said Argutus sleepily, and dropped his head to Harry's
+shoulder. "\emph{Everyone smelled far too serious.}"
+
+Harry stroked him one more time, then turned to Draco. ``You can provide
+me with a list of Dark families who aren't among my allies right now,
+can't you?'' he asked.
+
+``Of course,'' said Draco, with a little bow. ``If you tell me what
+cheered you up so much that you laughed that hard.''
+
+Harry told him. By the end, Draco had snickered hard enough to twist his
+face, and even Owen, glancing up from the letter to the Minister of
+Germany, was smiling.
+
+``I'll tell the Dark families they'll have sanctuary,'' Harry murmured.
+He felt more relaxed now, and not solely because of Argutus's vision,
+though that had helped a great deal. He was getting used to the idea
+that Britain had a bad Acting Minister right now, and he would have to
+fight Voldemort with his allies instead of beside Juniper. Really, it
+was no more than he had suspected after Juniper abducted Snape, Peter,
+and Regulus. ``In return for support from those who feel competent to
+fight.''
+
+\emph{I am not going to let this edict tear Britain apart. We have to
+fight, and fight we shall.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Owen Rosier-Henlin thought he was ready.
+
+Of course, there would be obvious difficulties in being sworn companion
+to a Lord-level wizard who had just made himself the sole viable source
+of opposition to a Dark Lord in the British Isles. There would be many
+more people trying to kill him, for example. There would be people
+asking him for things that Harry simply couldn't give, like absolute
+safety, and which he would drive himself mad trying to provide. There
+would be more times when Owen would need to be suddenly on the
+defensive, and less time to spend with his own family.
+
+Owen found he did not care.
+
+This was what he had had in mind when he asked to become a sworn
+companion, actually: this kind of intense uncertainty and danger. Other
+than the Midsummer battle, there had been few times like that for him in
+Harry's service. Harry had managed the rebellion from a distance, and
+during the jailbreak in the Ministry, other people had helped him more
+than Owen had.
+
+Now things had changed again. And while Owen could not be as solid an
+emotional support for Harry---his Lord, essentially, though he kept that
+thought carefully in the privacy of his mind---as Draco or Snape or his
+brother could, he could offer a slight emotional distance and a clear
+head where the rest of them might be caught up in arguing about Harry's
+safety. And he had special knowledge of Durmstrang and connections he
+had forged with other European wizarding families during his years
+there, since Durmstrang had served several countries. That would be
+important as this war became international, he knew.
+
+Harry might not yet have the scope of vision to see what he would
+become, though his commitment to it could not be denied.
+
+That was all right. Owen would be his Lord's strong right hand and
+advisor as necessary.
+
+He was excited.
+
+SSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry sighed. It had been a full day, and his hand hurt from writing all
+those letters. But he knew he couldn't sleep yet, even if he went to
+their bedroom with Draco and lay down in his arms. He was simply too
+high-strung, both from what he'd done and from calling on his allies
+with the phoenix song spell to hear what they had to say about the
+general state of things elsewhere in the British Isles.
+
+Ignifer had told him that the news had hit St. Mungo's like a Kneazle
+hitting a flock of pigeons. Most of the Healers were worrying over
+whether certain specialized spells would be declared Dark Arts, and what
+they would do if that should happen. She intended to move Honoria to
+Hogwarts as soon as possible, since now she was convinced the Healers
+could do nothing more for her partner.
+
+Neville had told Harry that his grandmother was furious, and had spent
+most of the day Flooing back and forth from her allies' houses, swearing
+that the Acting Minister would not be the only image of Light that the
+wider world took away from this conflict. She had also sent a Howler to
+Juniper to give him a piece of her mind, and a piece of Augusta
+Longbottom's mind, as Harry could imagine from meeting her, was a
+formidable piece indeed.
+
+He'd contacted Skeeter, but the reporter was hidden somewhere in her
+beetle Animagus form and couldn't talk. Harry fully understood, and
+expected an informative article at some point tomorrow.
+
+The Opallines were fiercely delighted, because Paton had finally given
+Calibrid permission to reveal their presence to Muggles on the Isle of
+Man itself. He didn't think that the Ministry's laws were worth obeying
+any more, and that apparently now included the International Statute of
+Secrecy. Harry had spent a few minutes arguing with Calibrid, but
+couldn't talk her out of it.
+
+Remus reported no vampire activity in London, but some suspicious
+movement near flats owned by wizards in the wider area. He thought
+Voldemort was trying to recruit more Death Eaters. Harry had to accept
+that that wasn't unlikely. He wondered how many people would actually
+join him, though.
+
+The Weasley twins had told Harry somberly that the battle lines appeared
+to have been drawn straight down the middle of Diagon Alley. Five Light
+wizard-Dark wizard duels had happened already, one right in front of
+their shop, with Aurors coming to drag away any participants who had
+used Dark Arts.
+
+And there were more reports, so many that Harry had finally had to admit
+that he needed help to coordinate all the different aspects of this
+situation and create working maps and strategies. He dearly wished for
+Adalrico on his side again, and not just for the obvious reasons. The
+man had been good with general strategy, though not magically powerful
+enough to lead many attacks himself.
+
+All of this had left him far too keyed up to sleep, and so he was on top
+of the Astronomy Tower again, pacing back and forth. Owen and Draco had
+come with him, while Bill and Charlie guarded the steps below.
+
+Harry could understand why his sworn companions were willing to skip
+sleep to be with him, but he couldn't understand Draco's presence. He'd
+even gently encouraged him to go get some rest, since he knew how grumpy
+Draco got when he didn't sleep enough. That had only won him a flat
+look, though, so at last Harry gave in and allowed Draco to watch him
+while he paced.
+
+The sound of wings above him startled him, and he stared into the sky.
+Owen was already on his feet, wand out, and Bill and Charlie charged up
+the stairs. Harry glanced at Charlie, who had paused next to him.
+``Dragons?'' he asked.
+
+``The sound's too small, except for a Peruvian Vipertooth,'' said
+Charlie, shaking his head. ``And the permission battle you'd have to go
+through to get one of those into the country---''
+
+Abruptly, the clouds overhead parted, and Harry's mouth fell open as he
+watched a wave of glittering horses dip into sight, laboring along on
+wide, feathered wings. Each bore a rider. At first, Harry thought they
+were Granians, so fast did they move, and he prepared his magic; enemies
+of his had ridden the gray flying horses before. When they caught and
+flashed the starlight back, though, he saw they were made of metal, and
+he knew who they must have come from.
+
+\emph{Gloryflower.}
+
+The flock halted a distance from the Tower and wheeled around it, close
+enough to let Harry see that they were made of silver, with manes and
+tails of what looked like braided pearls. The leader flew steadily
+towards him. Harry ignored his companions' raised wands, and lifted his
+hand.
+
+``Hello, Mrs. Gloryflower,'' he said.
+
+``Do call me Laura, Harry.'' Laura Gloryflower pulled her horse up to
+land on the battlement of the Tower, by means of a pair of leather reins
+that stuck out from the ends of a golden bridle molded to the head. The
+horse tossed its neck and snorted. Harry eyed it admiringly. Its eyes
+were sapphires, and it was even more lifelike than the golden horses and
+the unicorns Laura had sent into the battle last year. ``This is a
+series of artificial animals we've just perfected, and we're going to
+fight beside you.'' She gave him a small, strong smile. ``Since, after
+all, the Acting Minister does make it seem as if the Light wizards
+should turn their backs on you.''
+
+Harry stretched out a hand and gently touched the winged horse under the
+chin. It sniffed at him, and he felt a huff of cold air from its
+nostrils. It was the magic that powered the horse, but it felt
+convincingly like breath. ``Thank you,'' he said. ``Would you be adverse
+to putting on a---bit of a show for me tomorrow morning?''
+
+Laura's smile widened like sunrise across her face. ``Tell us.''
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``No,'' Indigena said aloud.
+
+She examined the paper for a moment, then cast a spell on it that would
+reveal any glamours anyone had added. Surely some mischievous child in
+this small wizarding village where she came, heavily disguised, to fetch
+food and learn the news had charmed the papers to look as if the Acting
+Minister had really banned Dark Arts.
+
+There was no glamour. The papers stayed the same.
+
+Indigena hissed between her teeth and shook her head sadly. Her Lord
+would welcome the news, of course, and it was an addition to the chaos
+growing throughout the Isles. It might even add to their recruitment
+efforts. Some wizards had a commitment to practicing the Dark Arts that
+went beyond occasional use of some dodgy defensive magic or charms and
+made it a lifestyle. There were even a few members of her own family
+Indigena thought might join them over this.
+
+But it was a shame that Harry had to deal with this kind of thing.
+
+\emph{It is also a shame that he would not accept my Lord's offer,}
+Indigena thought, as she tucked the paper under her arm and prepared to
+Apparate. \emph{Then he could be in a place where he would not have to
+deal with such stupidity daily. And he would certainly not be compelled
+to consider himself a part of that world, and the people who did this
+equals, and treat with them as such.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``Sir? You should see this.''
+
+Erasmus sighed and followed the somber young Auror who had come in to
+give him the message. After the debacle of yesterday, when more than
+fifty magical owls had deposited feces on his desk, he did not like to
+imagine what other ``spectacle'' he needed to watch, but it was better
+to deal with it.
+
+\emph{And you expected opposition,} he reminded to himself as he halted
+in front of one of the enchanted windows of the Ministry. \emph{Perhaps
+not quite so deep or quite so immediate, but you knew that most wizards
+in Britain were not up to the standards that you are promoting.}
+
+He looked out the window. It gave onto a perfectly presentable scene of
+Muggle London in the morning, the Thames running slug-silver between its
+banks, Muggle carriages passing back and forth over it and beside it.
+
+And above them all drifted a series of what he at first took for clouds,
+but realized a moment later was a string of silver flying horses.
+
+Erasmus stared, his heart in his throat. It was an amazing display of
+the beauty and the power of the Light. The horses had been made to flash
+and give back the sunlight multiplied---not because they had to, or
+because it was a requirement of their flight, but solely because their
+makers loved the sun and had wanted it that way. They tumbled around
+each other, wings spread wide, and danced like courting swans. Sometimes
+a pair flew so close together that their sides scraped, and their wings
+overlapped each other like blankets. Silver bells attached to their
+tails rang and called across the miles, creating a music that lifted
+Erasmus's heart even as it infuriated him. Once, such displays had been
+common over Britain---once, when Light wizards had been stronger and
+nobler of heart than they were now.
+
+And they were riding in full sight of Muggles.
+
+``Send the Obliviators to stand along their route,'' he told the young
+Auror, without taking his eyes from the horses. \emph{Gloryflower work.
+I would know it anywhere.} "And track them from their end to the
+beginning. I want to make sure every Muggle who sees them doesn't
+remember them. And cast a widespread \emph{Fumo}, too. We can make the
+Muggles think they're clouds."
+
+``Sir.''
+
+As her footsteps hastened away, Erasmus leaned forward and stared at the
+horses until his eyes ached. A rich, deep sadness had taken hold of him,
+and soothed away even the headache that it would be to make sure that
+Muggles remembered nothing of this, or at best a series of tumbling
+early morning clouds. At least the Gloryflowers had ventured out before
+many of London's residents were awake, while dawn still streaked the
+sky.
+
+He was sad that he could not have the Gloryflowers as allies. So
+beautiful, and they had chosen the wrong side.
+
+\emph{But this is what I am fighting to preserve: their right to have
+magic like this, even if they turn against me for it. In the end, they
+shall owe their survival to me. And I like the thought of leaving a
+legacy so fair in the world.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 17*: A War of Lords and
+Ladies}\label{chapter-17-a-war-of-lords-and-ladies}
+
+Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter!
+
+\textbf{Chapter Twelve: A War of Lords and Ladies}
+
+Harry bit his lip as he saw the owls flying towards him the next
+morning. There were at least twenty of them, and he had no way of
+telling if the letters they bore were answers to the ones he had sent,
+offers of alliance, or perhaps traps containing Portkeys, like the ones
+holding the wooden Snitch and broom that Rosier had sent to lure Connor
+away. The thought of sorting through them all with spells before he'd
+even eaten his breakfast wearied him. Of course, that could have to do
+with the fact that he'd again been awake late the night before, writing
+yet more letters and making firecalls.
+
+\emph{At least I know the Howlers from the rest,} he thought, and
+concentrated on the red, smoking envelopes. Picturing what he wanted, he
+clapped his hands sharply. The owls who carried the Howlers abruptly
+pitched off course, hooting in shock as a pair of iron jaws appeared
+near their legs and ate the parchment and envelopes without touching
+their feet. That done, the jaws vanished. The owls wheeled around in
+confusion for a few more moments, then turned and headed tamely back out
+the windows of the Great Hall.
+
+Someone laughed across from him. Harry looked up at Snape for the moment
+before a storm of owls came between them, trying to figure out ways to
+land as close to him as possible.
+
+``What?'' he asked, as he floated the first letter off the biggest
+owl---no owl at all, actually, but a gyrfalcon. He knew that would be
+from one of the Light families, probably Griffinsnest. It had once been
+tradition to use the huge, proud birds in place of owls, but as fewer
+people now knew how to tame them, most families didn't keep them any
+longer.
+
+``A year ago, you would not have done that.'' Snape sipped at his water,
+the only liquid he seemed to drink in the mornings, his dark eyes
+fastened on Harry. ``You would have thought it your duty to listen to
+the Howlers and figure out what objections the people sending them could
+possibly have against you.''
+
+``I'm tired,'' Harry muttered, dodging the implied criticism, and
+collected the rest of the letters with a scrape of his magic. The owls
+then all hooted in chorus, seeming to think that if he had taken their
+letters all at once, he should pay them all at once. Harry sighed,
+rolled his eyes, and Summoned some of the Knuts he had lying on his
+bedroom table to give owls who came into the Slytherin common room. When
+the glittering coins settled into their pouches, the owls took off and
+shot towards the windows again. In a moment, only feathers settling with
+a slow swirl into the marmalade, and the strong smell of dust, revealed
+they had ever been there.
+
+``Is every morning going to be like this?'' Draco asked from beside him.
+He sounded disgruntled. Harry glanced at him with some sympathy, but not
+much. Draco had insisted on staying up with him again last night. He
+\emph{knew} that his temper and his control over his emotions suffered
+when he did that.
+
+``Until I stop writing to people and can teach them the phoenix song
+spell, yes, I think so,'' said Harry calmly, and began feeling his way
+through his post, a Shield Charm up in front of him to deflect any hexes
+from people who were feeling too subtle to send Howlers.
+
+There was one on the letter the gyrfalcon had carried, which was indeed
+from Griffinsnest, and scolded him for not making a public announcement
+that he intended to follow the Minister's edict and refrain from using
+Dark Arts. There were a few others like that, too, mostly from pureblood
+families or prominent Muggleborns and halfbloods proudly denying that
+they would ever ally with him. But a few others asked for safety in one
+of the sanctuaries, and others offered their skills to help in the
+war---including a Healer, whose letter Harry carefully put aside---and
+Tybalt Starrise had written, saying his brother's trial was almost
+settled and he'd be able to pay attention to other things soon.
+
+There was also one that didn't---well, it puzzled him, and yet it
+didn't. Harry knew exactly who it came from; his signature was bold at
+the bottom of the letter. But it seemed like he shouldn't be writing to
+Harry, and especially that he shouldn't ask the question he should in
+the letter. He was supposed to be too confident for that.
+
+\emph{July 5th, 1997}
+
+\emph{Harry:}
+
+\emph{Do you think the Light will be triumphant?}
+
+\emph{Cupressus Apollonis.}
+
+Harry cast a detection charm on the parchment, to tell him if someone
+else had concealed his handwriting with what could look like
+Apollonis's. The detection charm came back blank, and clean. Of course,
+Harry had only the faintest memory of what Cupressus's handwriting
+looked like, so it could still be someone else using this as a fake
+name.
+
+There was someone sitting at the table who should know exactly what
+Cupressus's handwriting looked like, though.
+
+``Ignifer?'' he called, and floated the letter towards her when she
+looked up from a low-voiced conversation with Honoria.
+
+Ignifer's eyebrows lifted as she read the letter, and her body grew
+still and tense. Then she gave Harry a single nod. ``That's his hand,''
+she said. She turned back to Honoria as if she wanted to forget the
+parchment, and probably by extension her father, existed.
+
+Perplexed, Harry drew the letter back and stared at it, then cast
+several other detection spells, this time ones that would reveal the
+presence of Tracking Charms or other devices on the letter. Perhaps it
+was meant to spy for Cupressus, who had counted on shock persuading
+Harry to keep instead of shred it.
+
+In the end, it hung there in the air, an innocent letter, and Harry had
+to accept that it was nothing more than parchment and ink.
+
+That did not mean he was going to write back. Any statement could be
+taken and reported to the newspapers, his words twisted to make it seem
+he was against the Light. He had not said that, and he never would. He
+welcomed Light wizards if they did not try to dominate others.
+
+\emph{Rather like Cupressus dominated his daughter. He does not deserve
+an answer.}
+
+Harry ripped his hands apart. The letter shredded into a tiny flurry of
+paper snowflakes, which tried to settle in his cornflakes. Harry set
+them on fire instead, and then reached for the rest of the post.
+
+Draco knocked him on the back of the head. Harry jumped and glared at
+him indignantly, wondering if this was another side-effect of Draco's
+short temper this morning.
+
+``Eat your breakfast,'' Draco muttered. ``You'll have time to deal with
+the post later. It's not as though it's going anywhere. And you'll have
+time to use your magic later, too.'' He turned back to his own food.
+
+Harry stared at him a moment, noting the pink tinge to his cheeks. He
+knew his use of magic sometimes aroused Draco, but he'd never thought it
+would happen at the breakfast table. Draco must be feeling rather hard
+up.
+
+\emph{Maybe I can do something about that later.} Harry frowned at the
+mountain of post again as he picked up his spoon. \emph{If I ever have
+any free time.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``No safehouse is more secure than another, at this point,'' Harry said,
+trying his best to keep his temper. He understood that Snape's questions
+were meant to help him, really he did, but having five of them asked in
+a row that were only slightly reworded variations of the same thing
+wasn't helpful. "We don't know what part of England Voldemort plans to
+attack next. If he keeps to the same pattern, the attacks will be
+widely-scattered, and the only thing that joins them will be that
+they're against people important to me. We don't know where his lair is,
+so if one safehouse is closer to it than another is, we won't
+\emph{know} that. We can only guess. And to say that a safehouse in
+Ireland is more dangerous than the others is ridiculous. All of them
+will have powerful wards that Thomas is making immune to those
+ward-draining stones, guards trained in defensive magic, and a set of
+Portkeys designed to take the inhabitants to safety immediately in the
+event of a raid."
+
+Snape drew back from the map of the safehouses spread on the table in
+his office and gave Harry a slow smile. Harry blinked. ``What?'' he
+snapped, rattled.
+
+``I wanted to make sure that you knew these things,'' Snape said. He
+really was infuriatingly calm. ``I did not know if you did.'' He stood
+and moved across the room to the fireplace, leaving Harry to stare at
+his back. ``Tea?''
+
+``Not brewed by a house elf, thank you.'' Harry rubbed his face with his
+left hand, feeling the cool of the silver emblem in the center against
+his skin, and told himself that he loved Snape, he really did, and
+killing him would be counterproductive.
+
+``You realize that you may need to give that up soon,'' Snape remarked,
+even as he Summoned a teacup out of a cupboard on the wall and cast a
+Cleaning Charm on it, leaving Harry to choose what he wanted to
+Transfigure into the tea. Harry was glad for the Cleaning Charm, at
+least; Merlin knew what Potions ingredients the cup had once held. ``The
+food that comes in by owl is too vulnerable to attack, and the money
+that you've paid to keep the shop owners quiet about where and to whom
+they send the food may not be enough to stand against the temptation of
+greater money. Or torture, for that matter.''
+
+``I'll do what I have to,'' said Harry, concentrating on the vial of
+water he'd scooped up from the desk. Snape gave him a mild glare, as it
+would have gone into a potion, but Harry ignored him. It was easy to
+acquire water, after all, and easy to Transfigure it into tea.
+``Conjuring or Transfiguration will work if bringing food in by owl
+won't.''
+
+``You are stubborn,'' Snape said quietly. He gave his order to the house
+elf's voice that came through the flames and stood. ``There may come a
+day when you can't fight this war or be safe without giving up some of
+your principles.''
+
+``It's already come,'' said Harry, and floated his own teacup towards
+himself, taking a sip. It wasn't as good as tea actually brewed and not
+conjured, but it would do. ``The day I had to use Legilimency against
+Voldemort.''
+
+Snape opened his mouth, looking irritated, but Harry jerked his head up
+before he could say anything. Someone powerful had come through
+Hogwarts's wards, which should have been impossible, given the way
+McGonagall had tightened them. Harry's first thought was that Voldemort
+had come with a ward-eating stone and some way to drain the magic into
+himself without instantly losing it again.
+
+A moment later, though, he recognized the feel of the magic, and
+relaxed. It was Jing-Xi, the Chinese Light Lady who had taught him about
+the etiquette of Lords and Ladies in better days. Harry would have to
+refuse a lesson if she had come about that, and hope it was not another
+responsibility that she'd want to lay at his feet. But he could visit
+her.
+
+``Excuse me, sir,'' he said, and slipped out of the room, bearing his
+teacup with him, because he could. It didn't take him long to find the
+room that Jing-Xi had entered, the one she usually arrived in; the magic
+led him like a beacon. He laid his hand on the door, knocked once, and
+heard her bid him enter.
+
+When he came in, she stood by the window, her long black hair waving
+ceaselessly about her in the enchantment that made it look like seaweed
+moving underwater. Colored ripples of light danced around her, eddying,
+and the window had transformed into a slowly worked series of amber
+roses. As Harry watched, yet another edge of the stone became amber.
+
+Jing-Xi turned towards him with a faint smile. ``Harry,'' she said. ``I
+need your permission to invite a friend of mine into Britain.''
+
+That pulled Harry up short, and he frowned as he tried to work out who
+this friend was, why Jing-Xi would want to invite him, and why she would
+need his permission. Luckily, the lessons she'd spent some time drilling
+into him came back.
+
+``This friend is a Lord?'' he asked warily. It was courtesy for wizards
+and witches that powerful to ask permission before they entered a
+wizarding community that housed another Lord or Lady.
+
+``Lady,'' Jing-Xi corrected him. ``I told you about her once before.
+Kanerva Stormgale, the Dark Lady of Finland---though she was not born
+there, that was simply where she ended up, so the terminology `Lady of
+Finland' is sometimes argued over. Regardless, she is currently awaiting
+my permission, and your invitation, to appear.''
+
+``You also mentioned she was mad,'' Harry said. ``And that I'd faced her
+power before, or part of it, when the Dark attacked at Midwinter.''
+
+Jing-Xi nodded, looking at him as if she didn't see why that would
+matter.
+
+``I want some assurance that she won't simply attack me or mine the
+moment she appears,'' Harry clarified.
+
+"I cannot \emph{entirely} promise that," Jing-Xi admitted. ``But she
+wants to help you, Harry, because I do. Events have been moving so fast
+in Britain that I do not think you can face them alone. And I have heard
+rumors of a vampire hive queen. You cannot defeat her alone, either.''
+
+``And an insane ally is worse than no ally.'' Harry folded his arms and
+met her stare for stare. ``I understand that you're trying to help,
+Jing-Xi, but it seems to me that that's forbidden both by the Lords'
+Pact and by common sense.''
+
+``For the Pact, I intend to speak to the others, and try to convince
+them that this situation is different,'' said Jing-Xi. She flung back
+her head, and Harry saw a resonant determination in her eyes he hadn't
+encountered before. ``As for Kanerva---meet her, Harry. I promise that
+if she is a threat to Britain, I will face her myself. I do not truly
+think she will be. She is my friend, and she has never yet turned
+against that.''
+
+Harry reluctantly weighed the help that two Ladies, one Light and one
+Dark, might provide against the vampire hive queen and maybe even
+against Voldemort himself, versus the danger of an all-powerful Evan
+Rosier. Then he sighed. Kanerva could not be as mad as Rosier, or she
+would not have waited for permission to come to Britain. At the very
+least, she must be sane enough to obey the protocols of the Pact. The
+other Lords and Ladies would probably have destroyed her otherwise.
+
+``I give her permission, then,'' he said.
+
+Jing-Xi lifted one hand and gave a shrill whistle which quickly rose
+beyond Harry's hearing. He winced and clapped his hands to his ears; it
+felt as if the notes were still ringing in the center of his eardrums,
+and he hoped they wouldn't make him bleed before Jing-Xi was done.
+
+The air in the room began to move, turning like a ponderous wheel around
+the center where Harry stood. Then it built quickly to a roaring
+hurricane, and Harry had to slam strength into his muscles with his
+magic to keep from being blown off his feet. He heard a howl, which
+seemed to descend from the same high pitch into which Jing-Xi's whistle
+had risen and then attain a depth that shook Hogwarts and his bones.
+
+When he could see again, a woman stood next to him, close enough that
+Harry had to fight not to back off. She leaned forward even more and
+stared at him. Her skin was the dead-bone color of the Grey Lady, the
+Ravenclaw ghost, and her hair was black and---trailed away from her head
+into nothingness. In fact, Harry saw, she appeared to be missing several
+edges of her body, including the tips of her fingers and boots and the
+hem of her robe, where they blurred and simply vanished into the air. He
+supposed that someone apparently able to travel by the wind would have a
+natural union with the medium the wind traveled through.
+
+Her eyes were blue, and quite the coldest and quietest eyes he had ever
+seen in his life. They stared, and stared, and stared. Harry looked back
+until his eyes watered. Kanerva never blinked.
+
+``No need for a staring contest,'' Jing-Xi said softly, in a voice Harry
+thought was amused, though he couldn't look away from Kanerva to be
+sure. That would be a show of weakness. "This is the Dark Lady
+Stormgale. And Kanerva, you've heard me speak of Harry, the
+\emph{vates}, the undeclared."
+
+``He should Declare,'' said Kanerva, her voice cold and sharp, like
+snapping ice in winter. ``He would be Dark, and perhaps he would hasten
+the destruction of the world.''
+
+Harry decided immediately that he probably wasn't going to like her, and
+not only because she refused to get out of his personal space. He cast
+Jing-Xi a glance now, and she gave him another subtle nod of
+reassurance.
+
+``I use Light and Dark magic equally, as a matter of fact,'' he told
+Kanerva. ``I'm not sure why you say I would be Dark, Lady.''
+
+She remained silent for a moment, only cocking her head to the side,
+like an owl. Then Harry felt the oddest sensation, as if a wind had
+begun by ruffling his hair and had passed inside his skull on its
+journey.
+
+``You have darkness inside you,'' she said, and her voice had warmed and
+grown friendlier. ``You're afraid of it, but you don't need to be. When
+one goes to the Dark, then one ceases to care about such petty matters
+as the terror of others. I have never been afraid since I Declared.''
+She ran her hands down her sides boastfully.
+
+\emph{She saw into my head.} Harry was worried for a moment, since he
+was sure she hadn't performed Legilimency or got through his Occlumency
+barriers, but a thick wind swirled across his sight like a swathe of
+darkness, and he thought he knew how she'd done it. \emph{Sent a wind
+into my mind, to see that dark place. I always thought Legilimency felt
+like a wind. I suppose she's an expert at her own kind of mind-reading,
+and approached it from the other side, as a wind that works like a
+thought.}
+
+``It's true that I have some darkness,'' said Harry, careful to keep his
+voice steady. ``But I prefer not to let it out.''
+
+Kanerva blinked for the first time. ``Why?'' she asked.
+
+``He's the balance, Kanerva, I told you,'' Jing-Xi intervened. For the
+first time, the Dark Lady turned her head to look at her friend, and
+Harry had the time to study her magic. She was less strong than Jing-Xi,
+which at least lent some credence to the fact that Jing-Xi could force
+her back and out of Britain if something happened. She was slightly
+stronger than he was himself, Harry thought, though her power was in
+constant, cold motion, and it was hard to be sure. "That's why I think
+the Pact might actually agree to let us help him. There has \emph{never}
+been a situation like this before, with someone of Lord-level power who
+simply refuses to Declare, and who has managed to hold off on using
+compulsion for such a long time."
+
+``But he could use compulsion, and it wouldn't destroy him,'' said
+Kanerva.
+
+``I don't want to,'' Harry said.
+
+Kanerva leaned near again, so close that Harry could feel her breath on
+his cheeks, cold like a Gloryflower horse's. She stared into his eyes
+some more, then tilted her head either way and breathed across his ears.
+The wind that blew back to her probably carried some messages about the
+state of his earlobes, or from the scent of his skin, that Harry
+couldn't even imagine.
+
+``You don't want to,'' she said. ``The will of someone so powerful and
+Dark must be respected. But I do not understand it. I will remain here.
+Perhaps I will understand.'' She turned to Jing-Xi, her winds pacing
+restlessly around her, forming what looked like a visible hurricane
+again, with her in the eye. ``You wish me to call upon the others,
+Jing-Xi?''
+
+Jing-Xi nodded. ``It's time,'' she said quietly. ``We've ignored the
+situation in Britain long enough. Too many things are different. Harry
+is the only Lord-level wizard who's come into his powers this young, the
+only one who's the heir of another of us, and certainly the only one
+who's killed two of his own kind in rapid succession. The others are
+calling you Lord-slayer,'' she added over her shoulder to Harry. ``And
+now we know that Voldemort will not remain in Britain for long, so the
+Pact cannot remain a policy of strict non-interference. Sooner or later
+he will cross into your territory, Kanerva, or into Monika's, and we
+would have the war the others are so anxious to avoid. If we can
+concentrate on Britain now and contain the threat, we can avoid that.''
+
+``I am not making my winds bear all that,'' said Kanerva, and raised her
+arms above her head. ``I will summon them. It will be enough.''
+
+``What is she doing?'' Harry whispered, as he watched the winds fountain
+around Kanerva's head, taking on the forms of scraps of cloth. He had
+never seen magic like this, but then, he had never made the intensive
+study of magic of the air that Kanerva seemed to have done. ``Will she
+actually pull the others here?''
+
+Jing-Xi shook her head. ``She will---watch,'' she breathed suddenly, and
+Harry looked up to see a whirlwind dancing to one side of the room. It
+paused, then crackled out like a lightning bolt.
+
+Harry found that he could follow its path with his eyes, long after it
+should have passed out beyond the walls of Hogwarts, long after it
+should even have left the British Isles. It seemed to draw his sight
+along with it, and it sped over the Channel, over the Pyrenees, over
+tall and glistening mountains he knew must be the Alps, and then struck
+and landed on what looked like the most heavily warded farmhouse Harry
+had ever seen, in the middle of a thick forest of grim trees. Near the
+house grazed what looked like ordinary sheep, at least until they looked
+up, and Harry shuddered slightly to realize they had multiple heads and
+tentacles in a glistening collar around their necks. On the slope in
+front of the house lay a dark thing with no visible head or legs,
+laboring to birth something else, and beside it sat a woman who looked
+up as if hearing a distant call. Harry could feel the power crackling
+around her even from this distance and through Kanerva's wind, strong,
+musky-smelling magic that he knew must be oriented towards breeding and
+reproduction. The wind framed her face as a picture in the air, and then
+blew on, reaching towards others.
+
+``The Dark Lady Monika, of Austria,'' Jing-Xi whispered. ``She is the
+one after Voldemort whom you must be most wary of. I told you about her
+once. She breeds creatures together for her specialty in magic, and she
+researches webs, and she does not like the way your very existence melts
+them.''
+
+Harry shuddered slightly, and, his mind full of Monika, missed the next
+few Lords and Ladies Kanerva summoned, though he knew her winds were
+traveling east across Europe and Asia, calling them. When he looked up
+again, a man with a confusing flicker of glamours around him, now a
+brown face and now a black one and now the head of a unicorn, was
+staring inquiringly into the air.
+
+``That's Brewer, as the English translation of his name would be, the
+Light Lord of South Africa,'' Jing-Xi continued in the same soft voice.
+``The greatest Potions Master in the world. He won't let anyone see what
+he really looks like, or tell anyone his real name.'' She snorted. ``I
+think he is a white man who is ashamed of his race's legacy in that
+country.''
+
+Harry nodded, watching as Brewer's face was framed in the air, and
+Kanerva's magic traveled on, calling and recruiting, now a Light Lady,
+now a Dark Lord. For a moment, he caught a glimpse of bright coral and
+racing waters, and then they vanished. He raised an eyebrow at Jing-Xi.
+
+``There are two brother Lords in Australia, one Light and one Dark, who
+only care about fighting each other,'' said Jing-Xi, a faint smile on
+her face. ``They never come to the meetings of the Pact, and so long as
+they confine their disputes within their own country, the rest of the
+Pact does not care. Their magic turns Kanerva's winds away whenever she
+attempts to summon them.'' She tapped her fingers thoughtfully against
+her arm. ``Even though there are thirty-two of us in the world,
+therefore, there will be only twenty-nine of us here, including you. The
+brother Lords never pay attention, and Voldemort is of course not
+invited.''
+
+Harry watched as the wind sped away across the Pacific, now and then
+touching on islands, and then blazed into a flash of rich, deep
+sunlight, and immense trees of a kind Harry had never seen before. Their
+bark was like slightly cool blood. Sitting under one of them was a black
+woman with hair so dark it sheened blue, apparently meditating. She
+opened her eyes and nodded to the call of Kanerva's wind, though, and
+rose calmly to her feet when the storm passed on over her.
+
+``One of my dearest friends.'' Jing-Xi had a hand extended towards the
+wind-window, and for a moment the black woman put her hand up to touch
+it, and suddenly Harry was looking straight into her eyes, not merely a
+flat image of them. He could feel the magic around her, too, the same as
+any ordinary witch's on the surface, but sinking so deep underneath that
+any enemy would find himself bounced from row after row of shields.
+``Harry, meet Pamela Seaborn, Light Lady of the United States.''
+
+``A pleasure to meet you, my Lady,'' said Harry, and gave the little
+half-bow that Jing-Xi had taught him, hoping it was correct. It was
+mostly used only when meeting on neutral ground, not suddenly through a
+wind-window.
+
+Lady Seaborn smiled slowly, examining him with eyes that Harry was sure
+saw more than just the surface of his face. \emph{For all I know, since
+Kanerva uses wind, she might use the water molecules in the air to learn
+more about me,} Harry thought, staring back.
+
+``He'll do, I suppose,'' she said. ``I see why you wanted to teach him,
+Jing-Xi. He would require a teacher with much patience.''
+
+Harry wasn't sure if he should be insulted or not, but before he could
+respond, a hiss from the side made him swing around. Kanerva's storm had
+sprouted yet another window, and into this one strode a woman clad in
+writhing serpents. She was tall, taller than Jing-Xi, and her dusky face
+was implacable---a warrior's, Harry thought, or at least someone who had
+seen much fighting in her life. She hissed back to the serpents, more
+slowly than Harry would have expected someone with the speaking gift to
+do, telling them to be quiet.
+
+``You are a Parselmouth?'' Harry asked in the same language, trying to
+fight down his wonder. He had thought he, Voldemort, and Lucius the only
+living Parselmouths in the world. The Lady glanced up at him as the
+window firmed and tugged them both nearer across the immense distance,
+the way that Lady Seaborn's window had.
+
+``I do not use that word,'' she answered him. ``I sink my mind into the
+minds of animals instead, and learn the language as I would any other.''
+She glanced past him at Jing-Xi, and her face softened as she greeted
+the other woman in a swift, springing language that Harry didn't know.
+Jing-Xi came past Harry to clasp her hand in turn, and then smiled at
+Harry.
+
+``And I need to present, in turn, Coatlicue, the Light Lady of Mexico,''
+she said. She added something in that other language to Coatlicue, who
+raised an eyebrow and gave a short answer. Jing-Xi flicked her fingers.
+``That is a translation charm,'' she said to Harry. ``Coatlicue prefers
+to speak Nahuatl, the language of her ancestors, but of course there is
+no reason that the two of you should not understand each other.''
+
+Harry studied the Lady more closely. ``You are Aztec?'' he asked.
+
+``Yes,'' said Coatlicue. ``Not all of our people died when the Spaniards
+came. We took what we could and fled into hiding. We were among the
+earliest magical peoples in the world to separate ourselves from the
+Muggles.'' For a moment, her lips tightened. ``And we do not like the
+notion of emerging without proper precautions.'' She stroked one of the
+serpents wound around her, an enormous rattlesnake from the shape of its
+tail, and frowned at Harry. He felt himself flush.
+
+Kanerva's wind had sped around the world, Harry saw as he glanced up at
+the moving image again, and now it flashed in across Dover and down
+towards Scotland. The moment it hit a representation of the room and
+them, things turned dizzily around. Harry lost sight of the hearth and
+the window and the walls and the other ordinary furniture of the room.
+Now they appeared to float in starry space, with the windows through
+which the other Lords and Ladies looked the only portals onto normal
+pictures of sunlight and darkness and earth. Harry noticed that each
+window-border had a symbol carved the length of it; Coatlicue's was a
+mass of serpents, for example. He wondered what his own looked like.
+Glancing down, he couldn't see it, since he, Kanerva, and Jing-Xi
+appeared, to him, to stand on a plug of stone in between the others.
+
+``Explain why you have summoned the Pact, Jing-Xi,'' said Monika, coming
+to the edge of her window. Her hands were covered with some thick dark
+liquid Harry would almost hope was blood, since most of the other things
+it could be were fouler. ``The situation in Britain is that of British
+Lords to handle, until Voldemort crosses the Channel.'' Her eyes came to
+Harry. He thought they were wider and darker than Bellatrix Lestrange's,
+but hers were coolly sane, and therefore far more terrifying. A dark
+shroud of magic rose behind her, shutting out the sunlight. ``I see no
+reason this situation is different than any other.''
+
+``It is,'' said Lady Seaborn, leaning against the border of her window,
+which had the red trees on it. Harry thought they were probably
+redwoods. ``And you know why, Monika.'' She had a mocking tone in her
+voice. Harry wondered if the translation charm would send that through,
+too. ``All the things Jing-Xi's been babbling at us for the past
+months.'' Here was a smile that Harry thought was probably teasing,
+given that Jing-Xi had introduced her as a friend. "Young Lord, no
+Declaration, \emph{vates}, in need of training, Lord-slayer, and now
+with an Acting Minister who won't be any help to him to boot."
+
+``So?'' Monika had a shrug that she could make frightening. ``What does
+that matter? We have seen worse situations in other countries before, in
+terms of the human suffering of them---'' she sneered those words as if
+they offended her "---and have not helped. The Pact is for
+non-interference until a \emph{Lord} crosses boundaries. Not because we
+feel sorry for the children and the ducklings and the saplings."
+
+``There is one thing I am curious about,'' Brewer murmured. Even his
+voice changed from moment to moment, Harry realized. \emph{He must a
+master of glamours as well as potions.} "Why did young Harry here slay
+Lord Parkinson and Lord Dumbledore \emph{before} Lord Riddle? Why do
+that, when that is his worst enemy?"
+
+Harry could feel the pressure of gazes on him, from brown eyes and blue
+and gray and some that were no human colors, from light faces and dark.
+He put up his head proudly. ``Voldemort has made Horcruxes,'' he said.
+``Six of them altogether. Two have been destroyed, but four are either
+behind Unassailable Curses so powerful that I cannot get through them at
+the moment, or hidden. To destroy each one, someone who loves me or
+wishes to destroy the Horcrux must die.''
+
+There was a long silence. Then a Dark Lord whose name Harry hadn't heard
+said, "No one makes more than \emph{one} Horcrux. You would become too
+corrupt."
+
+``What do you think he's like now?'' Harry asked, raising his eyebrows.
+
+``And do you have a Horcrux, Alexandre?'' Brewer added.
+
+``As if I would tell you,'' the Dark Lord said, with a sneer of old and
+practiced contempt. Just as there were friendships in the circle of
+Lords and Ladies, Harry supposed, there might also be old rivalries.
+
+``I love the concept of those Unassailable Curses,'' said Monika
+dreamily. ``I should have thought to use them on my webs before this.''
+
+Harry frowned at her, utterly unable to help himself.
+
+``You see why this situation in different,'' Jing-Xi broke in. ``I wish
+to help Harry, and so does Kanerva. Yes, it means interfering in another
+wizarding community that is not our own, but I have been helping to
+train Harry, and Kanerva has always been a wanderer at heart. And we
+have his permission. What say you, Lords and Ladies of the Pact? Is this
+situation different enough to warrant interference?''
+
+``I wish an answer of my own before I give one,'' Coatlicue said,
+leaning forward. "What is your stance on wizard-Muggle separations,
+\emph{vates}?" Harry had the feeling that she'd barely stopped herself
+from calling him a Lord.
+
+Harry met her eyes and answered honestly. ``I have allies who are
+splitting the barrier, such as werewolf packs who are biting those
+Muggles who ask and a Light Old Blood family who is trying to spread
+knowledge of magic across Europe, though they know the Obliviators and
+the various security precautions in place will make the revelation a
+slow one. I know very little about the Muggle world. On the one hand, I
+would like to see those barriers down as I would like to see most
+barriers down; they encourage prejudice in British wizards, and Merlin
+knows I have enough to deal with regarding that. On the other hand, I
+don't know what the Muggles' reaction will be, for the most part. But
+Voldemort is intent on attacking Muggles. I will have to deal with at
+least the British government's reaction to that.''
+
+Coatlicue narrowed her eyes at him in silence, while the serpents slid
+up and down and curled around her neck. Then she glanced around at the
+windows. ``My Lords, my Ladies,'' she said. "I propose a compromise. Let
+Lady Jing-Xi and Lady Stormgale remain in Britain and help the
+\emph{vates} with defenses against Lord Riddle's attacks and perhaps the
+destruction of the Horcruxes, should he manage to find them. They
+\emph{cannot} help in the war otherwise, and they may not aid in his
+\emph{vates} work or whatever revelations he makes to Muggles. Is this
+acceptable?"
+
+``Of course not,'' said Monika. ``The Pact has always been against such
+interference. Why should we make an exception merely because of
+Horcruxes? Or merely for defensive magic?''
+
+``Why should we allow someone else to hide behind the principles of the
+Pact merely to make life difficult for another of us?'' Lady Seaborn
+remarked, as if into the air. Then she turned around and gave Monika a
+heavy smile. "Oh, of course, it is different when one's a Dark Lady and
+worried about all of one's precious webs being undone by the
+\emph{vates.}"
+
+``There are few of my children breeding yet in California,'' Monika said
+softly. ``They could come there.''
+
+``There are few redwoods in Austria, either,'' said Lady Seaborn. Her
+hair stirred like ocean waves. ``That does not mean they could not cross
+the ocean.''
+
+``We can settle this, I think,'' said Brewer solemnly.
+
+``He always does that,'' Jing-Xi whispered to Harry. "He \emph{hates}
+conflict."
+
+Brewer's shoulders tensed as if he had heard her, but he didn't look
+towards her. ``We can settle this,'' he repeated. ``I think She Who
+Wears a Skirt of Serpents has made the best compromise, balancing
+between the uniqueness of this situation and the principles we have
+always believed in. I will support it. What say the rest of you?''
+
+A few other Light Lords and Light Ladies nodded immediate agreement. The
+Dark Lord Alexandre snorted. Harry wondered if he knew how to make any
+other sound. He was as haughty as Lucius Malfoy, from the look of his
+face. ``And so the Light runs in a pack,'' he said.
+
+``Supporting something just because of your allegiance should not
+happen,'' Coatlicue said firmly. ``You know that, Alexandre. This is
+supposed to be about something larger than all of us. Like it or not,
+ours is the power that enfolds the world, and we must mark what we do.''
+She glanced keenly at Harry. ``You will do your best to find the
+Horcruxes and destroy Voldemort?''
+
+``With three prophecies running around me, I should think so,'' Harry
+muttered.
+
+Coatlicue gave him a small smile. ``I know that prophecies are not
+toys,'' she said, and her eyes shone for a moment with what Harry
+thought was the shadow of grief. Then she glanced back at the other
+Lords and Ladies. ``My compromise is the best,'' she said. ``As the Lord
+Brewer suggests, it will preserve our own neutrality while doing its
+best to exempt us from future war.''
+
+A few of the others made soft noises of agreement then. Jing-Xi stepped
+forward. ``I will make one more appeal for free reign to fight at
+Harry's side,'' she said. ``Offensively as well as defensively. I
+believe he is worth it.''
+
+Harry gave her a sidelong look. He hadn't expected such support, and he
+wondered what had made Jing-Xi give it.
+
+``You can't have that,'' said Coatlicue. "I love you, Jing-Xi, but I
+won't start setting dangerous precedents that could affect my own people
+negatively, and endorsing our young \emph{vates} completely would do
+that."
+
+Jing-Xi bowed her head. ``Then I accept this compromise.''
+
+Most of the other Lords and Ladies went along with it, then, until the
+only one left was Monika, standing with her arms stubbornly folded and a
+monumental glare locked on Harry.
+
+``He is the Lord-slayer,'' she said. ``Are we going to allow him to pick
+us off until none of us are left?''
+
+"I don't \emph{want} power," said Harry, willing his voice to carry the
+truth. He wasn't sure how well it would work across that immense
+distance, through a translation charm, and without Veritaserum, but he
+would try his best. He sent magic flowing into his words, making them
+hew to simple clarity. ``I've never wanted it. I would have been happier
+not being Lord-level, and that I am is an accident. I've only killed two
+Dark Lords, and will slay a third, because of intertwined prophecies.
+That's all.''
+
+Monika stared at him for a moment longer, then sniffed and waved a hand,
+which sent a large dollop of birthing fluid flying away from it. "Very
+well, then. I agree to this ridiculous compromise. Simply remember,
+\emph{vates}, that I have bred my creatures, and consider them my
+children. I do not intend to let them go free." She turned away from the
+window.
+
+Kanerva's winds began to dissipate, releasing the faces of the Lords and
+Ladies one by one. Alexandre gave Harry a final sneer, and he thought
+Brewer murmured a blessing. Lady Seaborn leaned over her windowsill and
+clasped his hand almost hard enough to crush it, pairing the clasp with
+a fierce smile.
+
+``You will have to visit me someday when all this is done,'' she said.
+``I have been trying to awaken my redwoods from the ancient webs a Dark
+Lord put on them a century ago. They can speak and be sentient and even
+defend their territory if the web is broken. I look forward to seeing
+you closer at hand.''
+
+Coatlicue gave him a farewell in Parseltongue, eyes shaded. "Remember
+that a serpent hatching eggs in one part of the world can send poison
+falling on another, \emph{vates}."
+
+``I will,'' said Harry, and watched as the wind unbraided, and left them
+standing once more in the room at Hogwarts. He shook his head, let his
+breath out, and faced Kanerva and Jing-Xi.
+
+``You will both help me?'' he asked. ``In those strictures?''
+
+``They didn't define defensive and offensive as well as they should
+have,'' said Kanerva, who looked as if Christmas had appeared months
+ahead of time. ``We can help you and slip the boundaries, and argue with
+them if they complain.''
+
+``They know Kanerva regularly violates standards,'' said Jing-Xi,
+widening her eyes slightly. ``But they will not suspect me of it.'' She
+smiled at him then. ``So long as we are careful, we can aid you, Harry.
+No open defiance, of course, and sometimes we must both go home to tend
+to matters in our own countries. But you will have our help.''
+
+Harry smiled in spite of himself. A little of the crushing pressure on
+his shoulders had relented.
+
+\emph{If nothing else, we might have enough strength between us to face
+the hive queen. Maybe.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 18*: Friends and
+Freedom}\label{chapter-18-friends-and-freedom}
+
+Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter!
+
+Warning: There is mild slash in the last scene here, easily skippable if
+you don't want to read it.
+
+Thank you to the many readers who submitted suggestions for French,
+Spanish, and Portuguese names for use in this chapter.
+
+\textbf{Chapter Thirteen: Friends and Freedom}
+
+Harry hadn't known it was possible for Hagrid's face to brighten up
+quite this much, but apparently he'd underestimated how much the news
+would mean to him.
+
+``You're goin' to free the hippogriffs, Harry?'' he said, while waving
+around a hand that caused Harry to duck. Owen made a sharp movement
+behind him, as if he had to remind himself Hagrid was a friend. "That's
+\emph{great} news! What made yeh decide on now to free `em, if yeh don't
+mind me askin'?"
+
+``Partly because they're one of the few species in the Forbidden Forest
+I haven't freed,'' said Harry. ``If the hive queen attacks through the
+Forest, or Voldemort, for that matter---'' Hagrid tried valiantly to
+control his flinch.``---the others could flee if worst came to worst,
+but the hippogriffs' web would restrain them from going far.'' He
+hesitated, then gave a little shrug. ``And because I did hope they might
+agree to help in the war. As scouts, mostly. I wouldn't let wizards ride
+them unless they chose to have riders.''
+
+``They'll be chuffed to help, Harry, chuffed!'' Hagrid's eyes shone.
+``\,`Course, they're proud as anythin', but they'll agree to a contract
+of sorts, a promise or a bargain. And as long as no one violates that
+bargain, they won't, either.'' He gave Harry a searching stare, a bit of
+worry returning to his face. ``But yeh'll tell---yeh'll tell others not
+to hurt 'em, o'course?''
+
+Owen snorted. Harry concealed his own reaction to that---it would be
+more likely hippogriffs who hurt wizards than the other way around---and
+nodded. ``Of course I will, Hagrid.''
+
+``Then come on.'' Hagrid grabbed a lantern from the wall and led them
+out of the hut, towards the darkening Forest.
+
+Harry took a deep breath of cool air and tried to make himself calm
+down. He had decided to free the hippogriffs for the reasons he said;
+even if they didn't agree to help the fledgling war effort, they should
+be able to fly if they had to, and get out of danger's way. But he had a
+private, selfish reason for it as well, one that he hadn't even told to
+Owen, though he thought Owen might have sensed it.
+
+He needed to break a web. It always gave him a sense of freedom, the
+hope that his life wasn't defined by the war, and that someday he would
+be past all this and able to return to \emph{vates} work for the rest of
+his life.
+
+And today had been a more trying day in that respect than most. He'd had
+a fight with Draco this morning. It hurt more than it normally would.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``What made you study air in the first place, though?'' Harry asked. He
+thought that he might understand Kanerva better if he could just get an
+answer to this question. So far, though, she seemed extremely unwilling,
+or maybe unable, to provide an answer to even an inquiry this simple.
+
+The Dark Lady, who sat on a chair in the Slytherin common room with most
+of her body fuzzed into nothingness, gave him a baffled look. ``What
+else would I give myself to?''
+
+``Does it have to do with your history, then?'' Harry asked. Jing-Xi had
+told Harry that she had no idea where Kanerva originally came from, who
+her parents had been, or why she had chosen to study wind, either. She
+had simply introduced herself to the Pact when she was twenty-five as a
+new Dark Lady, and that had been twenty-five years ago.
+
+``You could say so,'' said Kanerva. ``But I would not.''
+
+``What would you say?''
+
+``That it is a question whose answer is so obvious you should be able to
+see it for yourself,'' Kanerva answered, and turned her head away.
+
+``If she doesn't want to answer the question, Harry, then she doesn't
+have to.''
+
+Harry turned his head and blinked. Draco was coming down the stairs into
+the Slytherin common room. He looked half-ill, a sign of how little
+sleep he was getting lately. Harry didn't understand why Draco insisted
+on staying up with him until all hours of the night. Harry was used to
+cat-naps by now, and he made sure to try for an unbroken night of sleep
+at least once every few days. Draco simply needed to rest more often
+than that, but lately he seemed more than reluctant to admit it.
+
+``And if you do not want to walk on the stairs, then you do not have
+to,'' Kanerva told Draco, and a gust of wind picked up the ends of her
+hair, where they trailed off into fuzz, and made them dance.
+
+Harry concealed a sigh. Kanerva had taken an immediate dislike to Draco.
+He couldn't understand why, but Jing-Xi had advised him not to worry
+about it. Kanerva wanted to stay here and help, because Harry intrigued
+her. She might not be sane, but she was capable of understanding that
+Harry would not let her stay and help if she injured his partner.
+
+``I need to,'' Draco retorted, his face going ugly now, perhaps simply
+because someone had contradicted him; Harry didn't know. ``Not all of us
+have enough power to fly around like you do. My Lady.''
+
+``Wind is more than flying,'' said Kanerva, voice gone unexpectedly soft
+and passionate, the way that Harry knew Voldemort talked about torture.
+``Wind is destruction, the heart of the howling storm that strikes
+anywhere it wishes because it does not care about the earth below. The
+wind is the lover of the sea, not the land. And, someday, the sea will
+be the death of it all. Stones, and soil, and sand, and trees, they will
+seek and find an ending in the ocean.''
+
+Harry felt his skin prickle as he listened. Jing-Xi had said something
+about Kanerva wanting to hasten the destruction of the world, which was
+one reason she had added her power to the wild Dark's the Midwinter when
+Fawkes died. It was entirely possible, of course, that she would not
+seek to fulfill that ambition while she was in Britain, but Harry didn't
+think she'd given it up, either.
+
+Draco laughed, unpleasantly, the way that he might have laughed at some
+of Luna's madder ramblings. Harry knew it was the tiredness that was
+making him act so. Under ordinary circumstances, he would have known to
+hold his tongue around a witch as powerful as a Dark Lady. And Luna
+would only have blinked and asked if he were having a speech problem
+anyway, the way that she did when students of Ravenclaw called her
+Loony.
+
+But he did not keep silent now, and Kanerva was no Luna.
+
+In a moment, Draco's face had gone blue as the air in his immediate area
+deserted him, while a swathe of wind too cold and hard to breathe
+circled behind him and scooped him up so that he hung from his ankles
+near the wall. Harry stood quickly. A fall from that height would mean
+he cracked his head open on the floor of the Slytherin common room.
+
+``Kanerva,'' he said.
+
+``I suppose you want him back unharmed,'' said the Dark Lady, sounding
+sulky. ``Even though he insulted me.''
+
+``It would be---nice, yes,'' said Harry, while fighting furiously with
+his instincts. They told him to move right now, that he had to rescue
+Draco, but he had never faced anyone like this before. He knew he could
+overpower Evan Rosier, and he could drain Voldemort's magic, but Kanerva
+was an ally.
+
+\emph{Supposedly}.
+
+``And you won't let me stay here if I don't comply?'' Kanerva asked.
+
+Harry kept one eye on Draco's blue face, trying to calculate all the
+while how long he'd been without air, and how long humans in general
+could survive without it. ``That's right,'' he said.
+
+Kanerva sighed gustily, and returned Draco to the floor. A moment later,
+his chest heaved, sucking in desperate gulps of air. Kanerva herself
+became a whirling dervish, and then a vortex of black and white wind,
+and then was gone. Harry knew she hadn't gone far, though. Kanerva was
+the only witch he had ever met whose power of shapeshifting involved
+entirely dissipating her body into an amorphous form. She would be
+wandering through Hogwarts in various shapes of air, all the while
+listening and looking for corners where she might appear to ask
+uncomfortable questions. In many ways, she \emph{was} the wind.
+
+Harry hurried over and knelt down next to Draco, putting one hand on the
+pulse in his throat and bending his head so that he could hear his heart
+and the motion of his lungs. All seemed to be working normally. Harry
+stroked the hair out of his face, and asked quietly, when he saw that
+Draco's eyes focused on him, ``All right?''
+
+``How could you let her do that?'' Draco croaked.
+
+Harry blinked. ``What?''
+
+"I was \emph{dying}, Harry, not unconscious or deaf." Draco struggled to
+sit up, but drew away from the support of Harry's arm when he tried to
+give it. ``You didn't yell at her or attack her, the way you've always
+done before when I'm in danger. You spoke to her in a reasonable manner.
+Is it somehow different when she threatens my life than when anyone else
+does it?''
+
+``She's powerful and unpredictable,'' Harry said. ``And I couldn't
+really drain her magic, not without---''
+
+``I just feel that you don't really value me any more,'' Draco said.
+``You barely speak to me when I'm there, you only seek my opinion when
+it's about Malfoy Manor or something else that you think I'm already
+qualified to speak to you about, you don't seem to remember I'm alive,
+you're always telling me to go to bed and leave you alone---''
+
+``Because you're tired and distraught,'' said Harry. ``The way you are
+now,'' he couldn't help adding. "And that \emph{matters} when it comes
+to battle, Draco. I understand that you want to stay with me every
+moment, but making yourself sick from stress and lack of sleep won't
+help either of us."
+
+"I am \emph{not} tired and distraught," Draco snarled, which only
+confirmed Harry's opinion that he was. ``Don't you dare imply that I
+need to control myself.''
+
+``You do,'' said Harry. ``You always do. But lately, that control has
+been slipping.''
+
+``I'm sorry I'm not good enough for you, then,'' Draco muttered, his
+voice choked with bitterness.
+
+\emph{This is one of those arguments where it only gets worse the more I
+talk.} Harry decided to back off. He stood up. ``I'll tell Syrinx to
+protect you today, instead of trading places with one of the others at
+my shoulder,'' he said quietly. ``And make sure that you get some
+sleep.''
+
+"I'm not a \emph{child}, and I don't need a \emph{minder.}"
+
+``Right now, you're acting like one,'' said Harry, and then he left.
+Outside the Slytherin common room, he took a deep breath and shook his
+head. \emph{You know it's just the tiredness. He'll be better when he
+actually has some sleep, always assuming that Syrinx manages to convince
+him to get some. He doesn't hate you.}
+
+It was hard to convince himself of that, though. The bad thing about
+deciding to rely on others more than he had in the past was that then it
+hurt more when they were angry with him.
+
+He went to find Owen---Syrinx was already coming towards him, attracted
+by his desire for her presence---and then to research and prepare for
+attacks. The first refugees would be heading for safehouses today. He
+hoped there was yet a chance that he might convince Michael
+Rosier-Henlin to go with his mother and little sister.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Hagrid led them by means of a path Harry hadn't seen before; of course,
+given all the unorthodox ways that he usually came into the Forest, he
+would have been more surprised if he \emph{had} seen it, by this point.
+Hagrid's lantern flashed and swung in front of them, and Harry had the
+impression of numerous creatures slinking off just out of sight. He also
+heard the steady thump of hooves from the centaurs, and guessed they
+were escorting them to make sure no one ``accidentally'' wandered off
+the path. Or perhaps to guarantee his safety, for all he knew.
+
+Harry let out a deep breath and shook his head. He had to concentrate
+his thoughts if he was going to successfully break the hippogriffs' web,
+and that didn't include thinking about random details.
+
+At last the path played out into a low clearing surrounded by trees
+whose trunks looked blue in the light. Hagrid gave a high call,
+something like a screech and a neigh mingled, and Harry saw long,
+awkward limbs move as a hippogriff stirred up from a mass of the
+sleeping creatures and headed towards them.
+
+Harry caught his breath as he watched him approach. The hippogriff had
+an eagle's head, of course, and a gray horse's lower body, but his eyes
+were the dangerous mad orange of a goshawk's. Harry could see why people
+would think him dangerous, even without the rituals one needed to use to
+address him.
+
+``Yeh know what t' do, Harry,'' Hagrid instructed him in a low voice.
+``Look 'im in the eye, mind, and bow. This 'ere is Buckbeak.''
+
+Harry bowed, bending his neck slowly and stiffly, never removing his
+eyes from the hippogriff's. Buckbeak stared back at him for long
+moments. Harry waited. It was only safe if Buckbeak bowed to him in
+turn. Otherwise, Harry would simply have to give up the notion of
+freeing the hippogriffs and making a bargain with them, at least with
+Buckbeak as the representative. Perhaps Hagrid knew another hippogriff
+who would be amenable.
+
+The hippogriff's wings quivered as he examined Harry intently. Then,
+abruptly, he bowed back, great head swinging down as though he were a
+water-bird stabbing fish on the bottom of a pond. Harry relaxed, and
+stood upright again, reaching out one hand to touch the tufted feathers.
+Buckbeak let him, even cocking his head and fanning his wings up and
+down slightly, in what might be pleasure or simply welcome.
+
+``There yeh go, Harry,'' Hagrid said. Owen let out a loud, huffing
+breath, and Harry suspected he'd just let go of his wand. ``Now. They
+can understand a lot more than they can speak, if yeh get my meanin',
+but yeh might want to use that phoenix voice o' yers, just in case.''
+
+Harry nodded, and softly began to sing, not breaking eye contact with
+Buckbeak. He showed the web, which he could see coiled in drowsing rings
+around the hippogriff's claws, breaking, and the whole flock dancing
+freely above the Forest and coming down in untamed forests in other
+areas. In return, they drew back from human prey, both wizard and
+Muggle, and the other sentient magical creatures, and watched them in
+amused tolerance. Prey like rabbits and weasels was enough for them.
+
+Harry deliberately didn't show images of the war. He didn't want to make
+Buckbeak think that the hippogriffs' help was required as a condition of
+breaking their web. They would be free no matter what, but if they chose
+to help, they would be welcomed. Harry would like to have more numerous
+scouts or spies than the Gloryflower flying horses, and especially ones
+that moved more swiftly and could direct themselves, not needing riders.
+
+Buckbeak clacked a few times, talons scraping slowly through the dirt.
+Then he made another bow, and turned his head sharply to the side, this
+time nipping at Harry's ear almost like an owl. Harry held very still
+and tried not to flinch. Unlike an owl, Buckbeak could easily tear the
+ear \emph{off} if displeased.
+
+``That's it,'' Hagrid breathed.
+
+Other hippogriffs were coming forward now, including a delicate roan one
+whom Buckbeak promptly draped a wing over---a mate, Harry thought, or
+maybe a sibling or child. All stared with wild, wary, proud eyes, but
+when Harry sang the same visions he'd used on Buckbeak, talons scraped
+and beaks clicked in agreement. Perhaps they were tired of being shut in
+one forest, Harry thought. He had heard that hippogriffs were great
+wanderers. So long as they refrained from killing humans or magical
+creatures, he didn't think their lifestyle would greatly change as they
+wandered.
+
+When he was sure he had agreement from every one of them, Harry narrowed
+his eyes so that only the web existed, and set about breaking it.
+
+He found almost at once that this was the simplest web he'd ever
+approached---rather like a bridle of old leather that had grown worn and
+soft with many uses. It had been woven for obvious reasons, to keep the
+flock in one place and away from humans so they wouldn't attack, and
+there was little personal animosity bound into it as had happened with
+the house elves and even the centaurs. Harry carefully undid the
+tangles, and when the web would have reared up like a sleepy serpent
+being disturbed, sang to it. It liked the lullaby, and settled down,
+sighing. Harry undid coil after coil, looping and draping it over his
+arms and his feet, and the web didn't appear to notice that the
+prisoners it had chained for so long were now going free.
+
+Harry was aware of a deep calm in himself as he worked, bordering on
+quiet delight. \emph{This} was what he should be doing all the days of
+his life, he thought. \emph{This} was what he had chosen, the one path
+and the one task not forced on him by prophecy or his training or the
+vagaries of his life. Dumbledore and his mother hadn't meant to raise a
+\emph{vates}. Voldemort didn't want him to be one. Even Draco and Snape
+were against it most of the time. The magical creatures, bound as they
+all had been three years ago, had been in no position to lay demands on
+him. This he did purely and solely because he wanted to.
+
+\emph{And I will do it again.}
+
+At last he held the old web in his hands, watching it sway in its sleep
+and snuggle and whisper to itself. Then he lifted his hands and blew on
+them. The web fractured into dust, blowing away entirely. Harry smiled
+thinly. \emph{If only they were all that easy.}
+
+He glanced up at Buckbeak, whom he'd continued watching from the corner
+of one eye, and saw him testing his wings as if he couldn't quite
+believe the web was gone. Before he could launch himself into the sky
+and take the rest of the flock with him, Harry sang again.
+
+This time he filled his voice with the throbbing beat of war-drums,
+singing the glories and the responsibilities and the sad duties of all
+of them in a time of such battle. The hippogriffs did not have to join
+in, but if Harry's side fell, then there would be less freedom from all
+of them. Voldemort would not content himself with taking fallen feathers
+and scraps of skin for potions ingredients, as most people did now. He
+would hunt the hippogriffs mercilessly, kill them in their prime and in
+their pride, and take their children away, simply because he could.
+
+Buckbeak screeched, bringing Harry back from the song. He took a step
+backward, hoping that he hadn't irritated the hippogriff with the
+images. Buckbeak might decide to attack the one who'd provided them
+instead of Voldemort.
+
+But the hippogriff was scraping his talons in the dirt instead, and
+half-rearing, so that his wings flared around him. Behind and beside
+him, the rest of the flock took fire, dancing in the same way, calling
+out as passionately as if there were an enemy before them right now.
+
+``That's it, Harry!'' Hagrid yelled, in the midst of the screaming,
+which reminded Harry of the way an eagle might call out before diving on
+an enemy. ``They'll help yeh now!''
+
+Harry bowed again to Buckbeak, and cast a number of quick
+Disillusionment Charms, the usual means used to keep hippogriffs from
+the sight of Muggles when people owned them as domestic animals. He
+linked the Disillusionment Charms to the hippogriffs' own magic, though,
+most of which went towards allowing them to fly. They would not be
+invisible to each other, and when they truly needed to become visible
+for some reason---such as mating or defending their territory from
+another flock---the Charms would falter, subdued by the rush of powerful
+instincts.
+
+Harry sang again, this time holding out images of the first designated
+safehouse, Cobley-by-the-Sea. Could the flock begin their patrols there,
+looking for signs of Death Eater activity or Dark magic?
+
+Buckbeak trumpeted importantly, and rose, wings spread all around him.
+The noises he used to call the others were softer this time, more like
+neighs, though still intimidating, considering how tall he was when he
+reared. Then he flicked his tail at Harry, bowed one more time, and was
+aloft, wheeling around with a speed that made the tree branches sag
+before him.
+
+The rest of the flock had joined him in moments, the delicate roan
+hippogriff pacing him easily. Harry thought he saw the moonlight flash
+once in Buckbeak's orange eyes before they were high enough that such
+details couldn't easily be seen, and the flock trailed away into the
+distance, headed for the horizon.
+
+There came a deep snuffling sound to his right, and Harry looked over to
+see Hagrid wiping at his eyes and nose with a large red handkerchief.
+``I'm sorry they couldn't stay,'' Harry murmured, suddenly wondering if
+Hagrid had really wanted the flock to leave.
+
+Hagrid blew his nose once, and then shook his head. ``I knew they had to
+go,'' he said roughly. ``They were miserable 'ere, most of the time.
+They knew the Forest too well, and hippogriffs, the best of 'em gets
+restless when that happens. And they might come back sometimes, right?''
+
+Harry smiled. ``Of course they might,'' he said, and lifted his head to
+watch the flock disappearing one more time.
+
+``Harry,'' said Owen suddenly, sharply, and his hand clamped down on
+Harry's shoulder. ``There's someone here. People in the Forest who
+shouldn't be. I just heard voices.'' He aimed his wand over Harry's
+head, and Harry heard him murmur a pain curse, followed by a
+time-delaying charm that would launch it when their enemies appeared and
+not before.
+
+Harry narrowed his eyes. McGonagall had refined the wards in the Forest
+so that they would catch those who approached Hogwarts with hostile
+intent, which argued these wizards and witches weren't hostile, but it
+was disturbing, nonetheless, that they had managed to get this close. He
+lifted his own hand, summoning his magic around him.
+
+A moment later, a slender man stepped into sight around the back side of
+the hippogriffs' dell. "\emph{Vates}?" he asked, with an accent that
+niggled at the back of Harry's mind; he thought he'd heard it before, or
+a milder version of it, but he couldn't immediately place it. He did
+know that this wizard wore blue robes with a silver symbol affixed to
+them that he hadn't seen before, a circle surrounding a pair of clasping
+hands. "We thought we would find you here. The hippogriffs rising are a
+strange thing, and where there is a strange thing, why, there is Harry
+\emph{vates.}" He grinned. He had dark hair and eyes, like Snape, but
+from that smile, he hadn't known a tenth part of the bitterness that
+Snape had.
+
+``Who are you?'' Harry asked, trying and failing to smile. He simply
+couldn't trust anyone that easily anymore.
+
+``My name is Xavier Deschamps,'' said the man, and bowed, adding a
+phrase in French that Harry couldn't translate. \emph{That explains his
+accent, at least.} ``The French Minister thought it wise to send me and
+some of my people to your aid.''
+
+Harry stared. He had hoped for some international pressure that might
+change minds at home, or perhaps ease Juniper's crushing presence. He
+hadn't imagined that he might have actual help.
+
+``Not only the French Minister,'' added a female voice behind him, and a
+witch pushed forward until she stood beside Xavier. Her accent was
+different, but Harry couldn't identify it until she fixed him with eyes
+as sharp as a predator bird's and said, ``My name is Maria Esperanza
+Diez Lozano. Call me Esperanza. I prefer this.''
+
+``And you're from Spain,'' said Harry, feeling quite proud for having
+grasped that much.
+
+``Yes.'' Esperanza didn't seem inclined to provide more information, but
+simply stood there staring at him. Harry would have questioned her
+further, on exactly what her relationship to the Spanish Ministry was
+and what she was doing there, but still a third person came up beside
+Esperanza, and Harry had to turn his attention to her.
+
+The newcomer was a tiny witch, with her head lifted as if to make up for
+her lack of height, and dark eyes with the faint squint that Lily had
+once told Harry marked a long-time duelist, used to peering down her
+wand to direct spells or watching the minute movements of an opponent's
+hand in hopes of guessing what curse would arrive next. She wore a
+yellow robe slashed with black, and yet another symbol Harry didn't
+know, this one a pair of towers on a medallion around her neck.
+
+``And I am Leonor Susana Silvas Nevas Andrade,'' she said. ``From
+Portugal.'' She peered at Harry, and waited.
+
+``Welcome to all of you,'' said Harry. He suspected from the voices he
+heard moving back on the path that they weren't alone. Of course, if
+each Ministry had decided to send some Aurors, then they wouldn't be, he
+thought, dazed. But he hadn't yet confirmed that they were Aurors, or
+what they were doing on Hogwarts grounds at all.
+
+He shook his head and gathered up the shards of his dignity. ``Shall we
+move inside the school?''
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+An hour later, with some tea inside of him, the Room of Requirement
+enlarged to hold a hundred fifty battle-trained wizards and witches, and
+an Alertness Charm he'd performed when he was relatively sure no one was
+looking, Harry felt better able to command the situation.
+
+He sat at the central table in the Room, which had four chairs, much to
+Harry's displeasure. He'd tried to make it conjure another seat for
+Owen, but the Room seemed to think it appropriate that only the leaders
+sit around the table, while the others remained in chairs along the
+walls. Since Owen refused to move from Harry's shoulder, he was still
+standing.
+
+Xavier was leaning back, spinning his wand in his hand and still
+smiling. Harry wondered if the effect came from a Cheering Charm, or
+simply long experience. He had told Harry he was the head of Cercle
+Familial, an organization within the French Ministry which worked
+closely with the Veela Council. Most of its Aurors had Veela blood, and
+they'd trained to handle both diplomatic crises and those that required
+more vigorous exercise with their wands. Since Harry's major connections
+with France so far had come through people who had Veela blood, the
+Minister had appointed Xavier and fifty of his best people to go to
+England.
+
+Harry had asked him if he'd \emph{wanted} to come. Xavier had simply
+smiled and said that yes, he had, and Harry couldn't quite get any more
+out of him. For all his continual smiling, he was more enigmatic than he
+appeared.
+
+Esperanza's group was more mixed, mostly Spanish Aurors, but with a few
+\emph{cuidadores}, who, from what Harry could make out, were those
+specifically interested in bringing magical creatures into open
+visibility again in Spain. They'd all almost instantly attacked Harry
+the moment they were introduced, talking so quickly that Harry had been
+forced to use a translation charm. The loudest of them seemed to be
+Bartolomé, who kept hold of Harry's hand as he explained that he'd tried
+for decades to convince the Spanish government to free the large,
+nameless beast chained up at Altamira, but that they hadn't been
+interested in slating the money or the people needed to study the web
+that bound it. He was sure that a \emph{vates} could get through the
+bonds that had so far baffled the best \emph{cuidadores}. Every time
+they believed they understood the structure of the web, they uncovered
+another layer. They thought now it might well be magic thousands of
+years old, which would need a Lord-level wizard's power to shatter it
+even if completely understood.
+
+Esperanza had been silent for the most part, but when she had snapped at
+Bartolomé to stop clutching Harry and sit down, he'd obeyed her
+instantly. She had hardly spoken at all, though she would respond when
+asked questions. Harry wondered if he was imagining the sneer that
+seemed permanently attached to her upper lip, or not. If not for that
+sneer, she would have seemed entirely regal. She might have made
+Andromeda Tonks squirm a bit.
+
+Leonor was different again. Harry had the impression that she was too
+self-confident to be self-conscious. She'd shaken his hand
+enthusiastically, and admired the decorations in the Room of
+Requirement, and interrupted Xavier or Esperanza a few times to ask
+questions about what Harry was doing in the war. Harry couldn't help
+relaxing when he spoke to her. She might be overwhelming in day-to-day
+conversation, but at least she was pleasant.
+
+Barely any of the fifty Portuguese wizards and witches who had
+accompanied her were Aurors at all. Instead, if Harry had grasped things
+correctly, they represented eight or nine different groups in Portugal,
+vaguely like political parties, but smaller. They had come to make sure
+their interests were protected. And at least nine of them were Dark. The
+rest were Light or undeclared, but the Light wizards talked as openly to
+the Dark ones as if they had no conflict with them at all, and in fact,
+they seemed more likely to take sides over political issues than because
+of allegiance.
+
+Harry wished Juniper could see them. It would have made his head burst
+like a melon dropped from Gryffindor Tower.
+
+He turned now to Xavier. So far he'd tried as best he could to learn the
+basics, but it was time to ask more probing questions. ``And your
+governments have no problem at all with this?'' he tried now. ``They
+don't care about my age, or the fact that they could be seen as opposing
+the British Minister's right to do what he wants with his people?''
+
+Xavier's lip curled a bit. ``The Dark Lord is not to be fought this
+way,'' he said. ``By one boy and the people he can recruit? It is wrong.
+And if the Acting Minister will not give him help, we will.''
+
+``The Channel is not a large body of water,'' Leonor broke in, as she
+had a tendency to do, Harry had noted, sipping a cup of tea the room had
+conjured for her. She was the only person who'd seemed to want one.
+``And though the distance from the shores of England to Portugal is a
+bit farther than that from Dover to Calais, still, this is no
+comfortable thing. We know that the Dark Lord will strike for us when he
+is finished with you. And the only Ladies in Europe are Dark, and not
+inclined to protect us.''
+
+``We have the right and the grace to be here,'' said Esperanza. ``Accept
+this.''
+
+Harry briefly entertained the thought of what would happen when
+Esperanza and Snape met, then pushed it out of his head. ``Very well,
+then,'' he said. "I could use help to guard the safehouses, which will
+be more vulnerable than Hogwarts will be. But the \emph{cuidadores} and
+those members of the Cercle Familial who prefer diplomatic conflicts to
+armed ones---well, I could use you to guard the magical creatures. I
+expect the Ministry to try and enforce the idea that I'm more committed
+to magical creatures than humans soon. That \emph{might} result in
+attacks against magical creature communities by enraged or frightened
+wizards and witches. It might not, and if it doesn't, then certainly
+I'll ask for help somewhere else. But in the first place---"
+
+``Consider it done,'' said Esperanza, again making it a command.
+
+Harry nodded and glanced at Leonor. ``Tell me, ma'am---''
+
+``Leonor, please.'' The small woman shook her head fast enough that her
+hair spun around her. "The title makes me feel so \emph{old}."
+
+Harry hid a smile. ``Leonor, then. Do---members of the various groups
+prefer not to work with each other?''
+
+``I have a list here of whom you should and should not assign
+together,'' said Leonor briskly, and pulled a scroll out of her robe
+pocket. At a tap of her wand, it unrolled, and Leonor leaned over it,
+touching one symbol. ``In particular, be wary of matching---''
+
+Harry settled in to listen, his shoulders slowly sinking down from their
+tense position as well. He'd expected someone to interrupt at any moment
+and declare that \emph{he} wasn't meant to lead, that a mere boy
+couldn't do so, that he should hand the leadership over to someone more
+experienced and with better ability than he had to organize and
+strategize.
+
+But, so far, the compromise of leading while listening intently and
+taking into consideration all he was told appeared to be working. Harry
+supposed he could trust in that until something bad actually happened.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry stepped inside the bedroom, shut the door lightly behind him, and
+listened. A moment later, he rolled his eyes. Draco had never been good
+at faking either snores or the relaxed stillness that came with sleep.
+
+``I know you're awake,'' he said, striding across to the bed and sitting
+on the side.
+
+Draco popped his head out from underneath the blankets, glaring at him.
+``And did it ever occur to you that I might be awake, but not desire
+your company?'' he asked, his emotions grinding under the surface of his
+voice like broken glass in sand.
+
+``No,'' said Harry. ``Because I was under the impression that it was
+desiring my company too much that kept you awake.''
+
+Draco flushed. ``You still didn't need to let Kanerva do what she did
+earlier.''
+
+"You think that was a \emph{punishment} for staying awake?" Harry asked
+in befuddlement. It truly puzzled him, sometimes, the things Draco's
+brain came up with. Of course, currently he had the excuse of sleep
+deprivation, and Harry knew---very well---that hallucinations were one
+effect of sleep deprivation, but \emph{still.}
+
+``No, for bothering you.'' Draco rolled away as though he would go back
+to sleep again, but Harry knew he wouldn't.
+
+He put a hand on Draco's shoulder and rolled him back over. Draco
+sneered and opened his mouth to make some cutting remark, but Harry
+silenced him with a kiss.
+
+Draco stiffened in surprise, then pushed at Harry's shoulder. ``If you
+think you can avoid the argument by using sex---''
+
+``No,'' said Harry, drawing back to look him in the eye. ``I think that
+you're simply worried that you're losing your place, your relevance, in
+my life, because I don't speak to you all the time and we aren't as
+close as we used to be right now.''
+
+``And so my place is just as someone you fuck, then?''
+
+\emph{Merlin, Draco, you can be difficult sometimes.} But, perhaps
+because he had the success of the hippogriffs and the meetings with the
+other countries' Aurors to buoy him up right now, or perhaps just
+because he knew Draco and loved him for whom he was, rather than whom he
+wasn't, Harry didn't feel weary. Just calm. He twined a finger in
+Draco's hair, and shook his head. ``I was under the impression that you
+were my partner,'' he said. ``My lover, but also someone who shares as
+many aspects of my life as you comfortably can, and who's involved in a
+three-year ritual with me because you love me, and who's been patient
+and understanding with me many, many times. And someone who needs this
+right now.''
+
+Draco hesitated, then said, as if admitting it somehow made him weak,
+``I have missed this.''
+
+``So have I,'' Harry murmured, and pressed a kiss to his temple this
+time. ``But I didn't want it rushed and hurried.''
+
+``Sometimes, rushed and hurried is better than none at all,'' Draco
+pointed out, and started tugging at his pyjamas.
+
+Harry was startled into laughter as he removed his own robes. ``I'll
+remember that next time,'' he said.
+
+By the time they were both naked, Harry could feel his calm translating
+into desire as gentle as his pride after freeing the hippogriffs had
+been. He rolled over on top of Draco, something he didn't often do,
+given that it reminded him too much of controlling people. Tonight,
+though, he didn't think that he could do much wrong, and he didn't want
+Draco to bear the burden of being the one who took the lead.
+
+Draco certainly didn't seem to mind, if the way he was arching and
+wriggling and panting against him was any indication. Harry slowed him
+down, however, deliberately giving the kiss his full attention until
+Draco relaxed and stopped moving so frantically, and then began to rock,
+coaxing Draco to follow him.
+
+Harry didn't think they'd ever had sex this much like embers, so far
+from the sharp, blazing passion of the rituals, or the fiery need to
+comfort Draco that he'd felt in the wake of traumatic occurrences. Dim
+light and warmth flickered across his mind, now and then giving way to
+an unexpectedly clear moment of contact between their chests or cocks.
+He felt sweat sliding and snaking between them like tears, or Draco's
+hips arching hard enough to press their groins impossibly close, or
+Draco's arms clenching on the back of his neck and shoulders like a
+moving vise, shifting their grip as if Draco didn't know what the best
+way to hold him there was.
+
+But, for the most part, it was simply motion, heat, light, warmth, dim
+as a room in summer with all the curtains drawn, even though now and
+then Harry caught a glimpse of light from the lamp or his magic, which
+was unwinding in lazy flowers all around them. Harry felt as if he
+watched from a distance, but he was also bound, body and mind circling
+in one endless ring, more than he ever had been before.
+
+Draco moved a little faster as he neared his own orgasm, and then
+abruptly he cried out, body stiffening and trembling, little aftershocks
+of the motion they'd shared together so far, his eyes so tightly closed
+and his neck so arched that Harry would have assumed he was in pain if
+he didn't know better. He made sure to keep rubbing himself, lowering
+his own hand to stroke Draco and help him through the shock.
+
+When Draco had finished and collapsed, nearly boneless, Harry followed
+him into quiet, gentle release. For some reason, he'd also imagined it'd
+be silent, but a groan forced its way past his lips, and he spasmed
+strongly, probably helped by the fact that Draco had chosen that moment
+to kiss him again and it felt like he couldn't get any air. For a
+moment, heat ate him inside and out---breathlessness in his lungs,
+pleasure pulling tight in his belly like the warmth of good exercise,
+Draco's passion claiming and drawing his own.
+
+Then it was done, and Harry felt his own tiredness coming in on him like
+a rising wave. He managed to mutter a cleaning charm, but that was
+almost it. His eyes were already closed, and trying to open them was
+like fighting against Imperius.
+
+He did manage to say, his voice not as weary as the rest of him, ``The
+next time you need that, Draco, just ask. It's not as though I don't
+enjoy it too.''
+
+``I didn't want you to treat it like a duty,'' Draco said. Or at least
+Harry thought he said that, around all the yawns. He found the heat
+continued as Draco pulled him closer to his chest.
+
+``Wouldn't,'' Harry denied, half-heartedly. He'd been up so late the
+last few nights, and felt so satisfied right now, that he honestly
+wasn't sure that sounded as clear and confident as he meant it to. "Like
+doing it\ldots{}would \emph{make} time if I had to---"
+
+And then Draco kissed him on the forehead, and then he was rather deeply
+asleep. Or maybe it happened the other way around. Harry wasn't that
+concerned about it.
+
+It had been a good night.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 19*: Wind and
+Light}\label{chapter-19-wind-and-light}
+
+Thanks for the review on the last chapter!
+
+\textbf{Chapter Fourteen: Wind and Light}
+
+Harry spasmed awake. He didn't know how long he'd been asleep, but he
+knew the sound of the alarms ringing in his head, and that was all that
+mattered.
+
+As he listened to the distant buzzing, like a stirred hive of bees, and
+threw on his robes over his pyjamas, he whispered the incantation to
+begin the phoenix song spell. A voice answered him from his left wrist
+moments later, without a trace of sleepiness. For all Harry knew,
+Peridot Yaxley didn't sleep. He had met her only once, when he
+established the set of wards now ringing in his head and asked for her
+help, and that had been in the company of Lazuli, who'd done most of the
+talking. ``Yes, my Lord?''
+
+Harry didn't bother correcting her on the title. They had more important
+things to worry about right now. ``The hive queen is approaching
+Hogsmeade,'' he said.
+
+``How long since the wards started ringing?'' Still no emotion came
+through her words. Harry shrugged as he ducked his head through the robe
+collar. He supposed that was better than someone collapsing in screaming
+hysterics, the way that most wizards and witches would have been after
+that statement.
+
+``Less than a minute.''
+
+``Then she is coming up the road towards the village yet,'' said
+Peridot. ``I will arrive soon.''
+
+Harry said, ``Yes,'' since she couldn't see him nod, and then cut off
+the communication spell. He Summoned his glasses and turned around in
+time to see Draco sitting up, frowning at him. The wards in his head
+were up to the maddened buzzing of a kicked hornets' nest by now, but
+Harry couldn't really blame Draco for not reacting. He wasn't linked to
+them as Harry was.
+
+``What is it?'' he murmured.
+
+``The hive queen is coming,'' said Harry, controlling the impulse to
+bolt out the door. If he didn't tell Draco what was happening, then
+Draco would follow him to find out what it was.
+
+Draco blinked, then reached for his own robes. Harry shook his head and
+caught his wrist. ``Only four of us are going to be in this battle,'' he
+said. ``Peridot, because her magic can let her resist the hive queen's
+desire, and Kanerva, Jing-Xi, and I. I hope that's going to be enough to
+face her.''
+
+``And what about the vampires that are going to come with her?'' Draco
+demanded. ``Won't someone need to handle them, since you'll be occupied
+fighting the queen?''
+
+``Hogsmeade's mostly been evacuated,'' Harry reminded him. There had
+been some stubborn wizards and witches who refused to leave their homes,
+despite the knowledge of what was happening, but most had been sensible
+and fled. Jing-Xi had filled the houses with illusions so that it looked
+as if the villagers still remained and went about their lives. No need
+to warn Voldemort of what they knew. ``The vampires will barely find
+anyone to hurt, and Peridot will use her magic to protect and shelter
+those who remain.''
+
+``Does that mean I can do nothing?''
+
+``You told me that your possession gift didn't work on the vampires,''
+Harry said.
+
+Draco snorted. ``No, but my Killing Curse does.'' He flung back the
+covers and spelled his robes out of his trunk. ``And if worst comes to
+worst, then I can give you magic if you falter.''
+
+Harry stared at him for a moment, weighing the chances of how much Draco
+could help him in the battle against the chances that Draco would be
+overcome by the queen's desire and become a liability.
+
+``I want to,'' Draco said quietly. ``You'd have to tie me down or put me
+under Imperius to keep me here.''
+
+Harry clenched one fist. ``Then come,'' he said. ``But Peridot has my
+permission to Stun you in seconds if you succumb to the queen.''
+
+``Handle her, and she won't have to,'' Draco said flippantly, and then
+knelt to retrieve his robes.
+
+Harry reached out to Kanerva and Jing-Xi, to make sure they stood ready,
+though they had also been linked to the wards and should have felt the
+disturbance. He found Jing-Xi, who was calmly readying herself, but
+could not find Kanerva.
+
+A blast of wind tore past his head, and whispered into his ear, "\emph{I
+am here, and I am ready.}"
+
+Harry gave the breeze a small smile, and felt it blow ahead of him,
+towards Hogsmeade. Kanerva would prepare the battlefield for them, then,
+and monitor the hive queen's progress.
+
+Harry did take a moment to think ahead, beyond the battle and what they
+must do to secure it, and how Juniper would react when he found out that
+there were two Ladies in Britain, adding their power to Harry's in order
+to turn back attacks that the Acting Minister wasn't able to prevent.
+
+Then he shook his head and forced off the smile blooming on his face.
+They had to survive the battle first.
+
+SSSSSSSSSS
+
+Indigena walked quietly among the hive vampires, feeling a bit
+disgruntled. She understood why her Lord had sent her to supervise the
+attack on Hogsmeade. She was the most trustworthy of his current
+servants---though he was beginning to recruit some new ones who might
+do, those Dark wizards turned in his direction by the Acting Minister's
+outlawing of the Dark Arts---and the only one the vampires wouldn't
+attack, given the sappy nature of her blood. She was also, likely, the
+only one immune to the desire the queen gave off, although her Lord's
+control might be firm enough on Hawthorn to make her so. She had
+abandoned humanity so completely that her sexual instincts had also
+changed, and plants did not reproduce at the same times or in the same
+ways that animals did.
+
+Still, though, this was an undignified position to be in. Indigena was
+coming to realize that she preferred the reality of clean battle to
+anything else, if she could not choose to simply retreat into her
+greenhouses and gardens and ignore that the outside world existed. No
+torture, and no sneak attacks at night for the purpose of turning the
+village of Hogsmeade and the school of Hogwarts into a queen's nest.
+
+Indigena stopped walking for a moment and tilted her head back to take
+in the giant, pale shape that moved quietly beside her. It floated above
+the ground like a swollen moon, supported by hundreds of crooked human
+legs, the remains of vampires absorbed into the queen for the purpose of
+transporting her. The belly was grub-white, and stretched wider by the
+curled shadows of unborn blood-drinkers. Queens were the only vampires
+that could produce living young, as opposed to doing it by draining
+someone else and then turning them.
+
+At the top, somewhere far above everything else, was the vampire's human
+head. Indigena had only seen her close once, a distorted, stretched
+woman's face---as everything about the queen was distorted and
+stretched---with bulging white cheeks and long red hair that glittered
+too much to be real. Her eyes had been squashed brown slits, hazed with
+the desire that she carried with her as a cloak. She had a pair of tiny,
+useless arms left, which gesticulated now and then when she was making a
+particularly important point. She did the thinking for all the vampires
+of her hive, and she was the one whom Voldemort had made his true
+bargain with, promising her a nesting site in return for her workers and
+drones attacking in certain specific places, sparing his servants, and
+leaving Connor Potter alone and alive.
+
+\emph{They should never have allowed a queen to become established,}
+Indigena thought, gazing ahead to the school and the village. \emph{They
+were doomed the moment they did. The most populated wizarding village
+and the school with the most children in the British Isles were always
+going to be targets.}
+
+Of course, this queen had been cleverer than most. Most of the time, the
+Ministry noticed signs of a vampire hive developing and sent in Aurors
+to burn and smoke the vampires out, taking especial care to kill the
+queen. It took more than a year for a queen to fully form, and most of
+the time she gave in to crazed lust before that and let her workers and
+drones drink and rape freely. Then wizards would notice, and the hive
+would end.
+
+This queen, though, had hidden herself in the sea, both as a way to
+avoid detection and to support her body when it grew too weighty for
+land, and had drawn more and more vampires, with the exception of
+especially wary and independent ones like Vermillion, into her web.
+Indigena's Lord had been aware of her, of course, but she hadn't been
+formed enough at the time of the Midsummer battle for him to use her.
+Now she was.
+
+Indigena looked ahead to the village and shook her head.
+
+\emph{Not a chance.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``I understand the queen's magic,'' said Peridot Yaxley, calmly removing
+the hood that had covered her face when she first appeared to Harry,
+Jing-Xi, and Kanerva. "It is a deeper manifestation of the kind that I
+practice. However, I cannot guarantee you total protection against it,
+\emph{because} it is deeper. I made these amulets for you, however. Hang
+them around your neck, and do not remove them."
+
+She handed a medallion to Harry, who took it carefully. It felt like
+bronze in his hand, thick and metallic and cool, but quickly absorbing
+heat from his skin. He squinted, but the design traced on it was faint,
+and he couldn't make it out in the light of the \emph{Lumos} charm. He
+ended up slipping it over his head anyway, of course, and then he felt
+the chain clasp around his throat, drawing in until he felt it would
+choke him.
+
+He blinked. The air felt fresher and clearer, and he realized the
+medallion was shielding him from the magic of lust that Peridot
+projected. He shook his head, and then looked up as Peridot said, with a
+frown, ``You did not tell me that you would bring a fourth person, and
+so I have no fourth amulet.''
+
+``It doesn't matter,'' said Draco stubbornly. Harry glanced over to see
+him standing with his arms crossed, his wand already drawn, frowning at
+Peridot as if he imagined that she would cease to exist if he did. ``I
+only want Harry in my bed. That ought to be enough to protect me against
+the queen.''
+
+Peridot laughed, a laugh as deep and red as the lovemaking Harry and
+Draco had shared three nights past, and spoke with real emotion in her
+voice for the first time. ``And is it enough to protect you against me
+now, little one?'' She stepped forward, and stretched out a hand. Harry
+felt only a prickling rush of sensation, which seemed to wash over him
+until it met the amulet and then stop, but Draco gave a choked gurgle
+and staggered towards her, eyelids fluttering.
+
+``He is very sweet,'' Peridot told Harry, and the wash of sensation
+stopped. Draco promptly snapped his eyes open and jumped away from her,
+clutching his wand. Peridot ignored him as effortlessly as if he really
+had ceased to exist, watching Harry all the while. ``And that is only a
+touch of the magic the queen brings. Tell your partner that he cannot
+withstand her if he cannot withstand me.'' She turned, her gown snapping
+around her and revealing a large portion of bare back, and strode
+towards Hogsmeade.
+
+``What was that?'' Draco snarled.
+
+``The truth,'' said Harry, with a sigh. ``That's what the queen's desire
+is like, Draco, only a hundred times stronger. She makes everything in
+the vicinity want to---well, mate. And that will make you easier prey
+for the vampires that follow her, as well as the queen herself.'' He
+took a step forward, staring into Draco's eyes the while. ``Are you sure
+that you want to stay here?''
+
+Draco took several quick, gasping breaths. Harry thought for a moment
+that he might ask to share his amulet, but then he shook his head and
+stood firm. ``No. I said that I would fight with you, Harry, and I will.
+She has to see me to influence me, doesn't she? So if I'm hiding---''
+
+``No,'' Harry said. ``It's a general influence, like a miasma or a mist.
+Once she comes near enough---'' he glanced towards the Hogsmeade road,
+where he could already see the moonlight gleaming from the queen's bulk
+``---then you'll be following the pull of your instincts, no matter what
+happens.''
+
+``He can have mine,'' Kanerva offered, sticking one hand beneath the
+bronze medallion and holding it away from her skin with a scowl, as if
+she disliked even that faint weight resting there. ``I will be in the
+form of wind most of the time, and winds do not mate.''
+
+``And what happens when you return to your body, Kanerva?'' Jing-Xi
+asked in a patient voice. ``Then you will feel the pull of your desire.
+Harry and I can resist young Mr. Malfoy's magic if he turns on us. We
+cannot resist yours.''
+
+Kanerva seemed to consider this for a moment. Then she smiled, and the
+smile made Harry want to take a step away from her. ``Then I will simply
+not return to my body,'' she said, and unslung the amulet from her neck,
+tossing it to Draco.
+
+"\emph{Kanerva}," said Jing-Xi sharply, and moved forward, but the Dark
+Lady had already shed her body, rising in a torrent of black towards the
+sky. Harry lost sight of her a moment later, as the flapping edges of
+what could have been robes and flesh melted, scattering her into the
+air. Jing-Xi sighed.
+
+``Is she right?'' Harry asked, watching the sky for a moment, even
+though he knew it was useless. From what he understood, Kanerva melted
+completely when she was like this. There was no way to find her in all
+the mass of moving air unless she wanted to be found. ``Can she resist
+the queen's desire?''
+
+``It operates on the body,'' said Jing-Xi. "Those who have no bodies,
+such as ghosts, can resist it, yes. But she is---wild when she is like
+this. I fear that she will not listen, and wander in many directions
+while you and I try to combat the queen. Hopefully that will not happen,
+as I am confident that only two Ladies and a \emph{vates} can resist a
+hive queen, but it might."
+
+Harry sighed in turn, and reminded himself once again of the perils of
+inviting wild Dark allies to his side. ``Well, I suppose that we'll have
+to trust her, as much as we can,'' he said, and turned to check that
+Draco had slid the amulet's chain over his head. Then he faced the
+Hogsmeade road again. The queen's desire was tangible now, a wave of
+heat that flooded Harry's arms like tickling fingers and made his groin
+feel tight and his breath come short. He knew it would have been far
+worse, though, without Peridot's amulet. ``You're ready?'' he asked
+Jing-Xi. ``As we planned?''
+
+``As we planned.'' Jing-Xi nodded, and held out a hand. Light began to
+beam from her palm, glinting golden sunshine that refuted both the
+rising storm of Kanerva's making and the foul white cave-light that came
+from the queen. ``And let us hope that Kanerva takes her part in our
+symphony when the moment comes.''
+
+Harry swallowed, then called his own magic. Draco gripped his shoulder
+with one hand hard enough to hurt. Harry wondered if that was just to
+let him know he was there, or because the manifestation his magic was
+taking was one that Draco hadn't ever seen before.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Indigena lifted her head sharply. Yes, she could feel the queen's desire
+breaking over her, and she had learned to ignore it by now. But she
+could feel something else now, and it was not the reproductive drive to
+produce children which the hive mother projected. This was more like the
+normal human desire for fucking, and that \emph{could} still capture
+her.
+
+Indigena knew only one person with enough of a grasp of that kind of
+magic to continue to affect her and enough daring to come out and use it
+in the middle of a hive attack. Given that this person had allied with
+Harry, that argued that Harry had known about the attack ahead of time.
+
+She touched her Dark Mark and closed her eyes. Her Lord's reply came as
+a snarl in her head. It was only a few days since he had awakened from
+the wounds Harry inflicted on him in their mental duel. He was still
+angry that it had taken so long, and any distractions from his latest
+revenge-plotting annoyed him.
+
+``My Lord,'' Indigena whispered. ``Harry knew about the hive queen. He
+is waiting, and my sister Peridot is here.''
+
+Her Lord hissed like his flesh-snake, and for long moments there was
+otherwise silence in Indigena's head. When his voice did return, it
+carried the command that Indigena had feared above all others. "\emph{Do
+not let her escape, Indigena. Your family must be shown the futility and
+the folly of opposing me. Do you understand?}"
+
+It was hard to swallow. But she had expected it, Indigena told herself.
+Of course she had. The Yaxley family was powerful, and even if most of
+them had no special interest in the wars of Light and Dark, nearly all
+of them were interested in pursuing esoteric branches of magic that
+would make them of interest to the Light and Dark Lords. Indigena had
+attracted her Lord's attention because of her expertise with plants. Of
+course Harry could not be allowed to have Lazuli on his side, or, for
+that matter, Peridot, and Peridot was the weaker, without Lazuli's
+strange nonhuman mate to defend her.
+
+So she must kill her sister. She had desperately hoped to be spared that
+fate, but she had known it might happen.
+
+\emph{Vita desinit, decus permanit}, she reminded herself again. It was
+her honor that was more important than her life, and than Peridot's
+life, too, since she had chosen to follow an opposite kind of honor. And
+though Voldemort could have ended her sister's life with a thought,
+causing her to burst into flames, that was not what he wanted. It was
+not messy or painful enough for him, and it did not test Indigena's
+loyalty to him as this did.
+
+``Yes, my Lord,'' she whispered.
+
+"\emph{Good}," he said, and then he cut off that special communication
+line with an abruptness that warned Indigena not to abuse it. She was
+the only Death Eater with a way to interrupt her Lord like that. It was
+only to be used for emergencies.
+
+She settled herself, took a deep breath, and gripped her wand. The
+vampires were flowing into Hogsmeade now, behind and beside and around
+the immense bulk of their queen, hunting for human prey. Indigena could
+hear their wails of disappointment when they found none, and see them
+lunging at people who flickered and vanished when touched. Illusions,
+Indigena guessed. Some of them might have been real, but then, that was
+the reason Peridot was there, probably. She would have removed the last
+few stubborn people who might have remained to make the illusion of
+habitation seem more real, or who had not believed there was going to be
+an attack.
+
+Indigena stepped forward, and murmured a small spell that her
+grandmother had invented, one that let Yaxley blood distinguish Yaxley
+blood. Almost at once, she felt it around the corner of a house, and
+then Peridot paced into sight. She wore a variant of the red gown she
+had worn when Indigena met her at Lazuli's house, and her aura and the
+way she moved made Indigena's mouth go dry.
+
+Peridot turned her head and saw her. She gave a smile that had nothing
+of amusement or fondness in it at all.
+
+``Hello, Indigena.''
+
+And then she hit Indigena with a wave of lust.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Jing-Xi, Kanerva, and Harry had planned this carefully. Kanerva's
+commitment to the wind could not be changed, and Jing-Xi's raw magic
+functioned best as Light, although her specialties were changes, in both
+Transfiguration and glamours. That left Harry to find some way to link
+his magic with theirs, and he did not think ice would do. It was too
+heavy, too solid, too unmoving, unable to join the fluid dance of
+Kanerva's element and Jing-Xi's shaping.
+
+So he had reached into himself, and found a connection that he had
+turned his back on for more than a year now, but which was still there,
+waiting for him, embedded not just in his bloodline or a heritage that
+could be forsaken, but in his memories.
+
+Once, he had been drowning in darkness after the loss of his hand, and
+the unicorns had come, and rescued him, and taken him swimming in the
+sea off the Northumberland beach where the Potter ancestors had sailed
+boats into the Midsummer sunrise for centuries.
+
+It was the sea Harry called now, the endless motion of the waves, the
+gray water rising and falling, the response of the tides to the moon,
+the ocean that, Kanerva had said, would swallow all the land up and make
+an end of them someday. The air around him shimmered and turned thick,
+moist, just on the edge of being too heavy to breathe. Harry felt his
+legs lift from the ground, and his hair floated around him the way that
+Jing-Xi's did in the enchantment that had been a gift from Kanerva.
+Draco gasped behind him. Harry looked back to make sure he was well, and
+saw his eyes wide, his throat straining against the clasp of Peridot's
+amulet as he sucked in air.
+
+Harry reached out, and his magic swirled around him, flowing higher than
+the roofs of the houses in Hogsmeade before subsiding, turning into a
+pale mass of water illuminated by the sun and ruffled by the moving air
+that Kanerva was summoning in greater and greater quantities. The
+alliance of three elements, wind and water and fire, the three that
+could move, against the heavy stillness of the earth that the queen bore
+with her and wanted to dig into, should work better than any other
+combination of their unalike powers that they'd been able to devise on
+such short notice.
+
+He turned and looked down the road, and the hive queen was moving
+through Hogsmeade now, accompanied by the scurrying black carcasses of
+humans who should have lain down and died already. Harry could feel the
+desire pouring off the queen even now, crashing like waterfalls into his
+sea-magic---where it was swallowed. Kanerva's winds blew and tattered it
+like clouds, and Jing-Xi's light burned it so that the magic recoiled
+back on the queen like cockroaches running from the sun.
+
+``Now?'' Harry mouthed, looking at Jing-Xi from the corner of his eye.
+Jing-Xi nodded, and took the first step in the dance, raising her hands
+above her head and then bringing them down towards the ground in a
+triangle.
+
+The air in Hogsmeade turned to fire. Beam after beam of sunlight slanted
+from her fingers and stroked the vampires, transforming them into puffs
+of colliding ashes. Then they hit the hive queen and burned deep slashes
+across her belly, frying the embryos curled there, making the very air
+shiver with a stink that the winds at once tossed away. Harry shuddered
+in revulsion at the queen's keening cry, like nothing human, but knew it
+was not enough to finish her. One Lady could not stand against the hive
+queen, and if she got closer, then the amulets Peridot had made would
+probably not protect her against the queen's might.
+
+Harry took the next step of the dance, and the ghost of the sea dashed
+forward at his command, its currents catching the still-living vampires
+and bearing them off their feet. The smell of foam and salt breasted the
+stink of the roasting queen, and the wind seemed perfectly happy to
+carry \emph{those} odors. Harry saw walls of darkness briefly obliterate
+Jing-Xi's sunbeams, and then catch them and gleam like waves illuminated
+on a summer day, and then crash down around the queen, rupturing that
+swollen belly with the sheer force of water, which was tougher than
+stone when it grew that strong, as Harry had reason to know.
+
+She screamed again, and this time her magic fully concentrated on
+answering them, instead of spreading a fog around her. Harry felt as if
+his feet were trying to grow roots. Every hair stood away from his body,
+yearning for union with the ground. He wanted to \emph{stop} moving, to
+just stay still and be fucked. His body strained against the pull of the
+water, and he heard himself utter a deep groan.
+
+Draco groaned into his ear in response, and his arm slid around Harry's
+chest, drawing him back to rest against him. The waves that curled past
+them made the movement slow, dream-like. That, and the contact itself,
+was distracting Harry from his fight with the queen.
+
+``Who are they?'' That was Jing-Xi's voice, and it seemed faint and far
+away, but the flash of the sun in Harry's eyes made it important that he
+stop paying attention to the way Draco was nibbling on his neck for a
+moment and concentrate. He lifted his head, blinking wearily against the
+temptation to close his eyes.
+
+Four figures were heading for the remains of Hogsmeade at a dead run. It
+was very hard for Harry to see the one in the lead; shadows jumped and
+boiled around him, fending off Jing-Xi's sunbeams. But the others were
+clear enough, if only for the utter strangeness of what accompanied
+them, and that strangeness---and maybe a wavering in the queen's
+attention towards the newcomers---woke Harry from his daze.
+
+One figure, a man, had enormous black creatures galloping beside him,
+with mysterious ivory gleams near their mouths. When they separated from
+him and pounded forward, then Harry could make them out: boars, dark as
+midnight, with the ivory gleams their tusks. They squealed, enormous,
+grating sounds that overwhelmed the noise of their trotters, as they
+slammed into the side of the queen and ripped her open with those tusks.
+She tried to kick out at them with her human legs, but the great pigs
+wheeled away with deadly grace and attacked again, every stiff hair
+along their spines bristling.
+
+Harry thought he was beginning to figure it out now. The shadow-cloaked
+figure would match Vermillion. And he had told Harry that one of his
+companions was called Adonis---Adonis, the lover of Aphrodite who had
+died when a boar he was hunting cut an enormous wound in his side. It
+made sense that a vampire named Adonis would have created or tamed or
+grown magical boars as weapons, at least if his name was anything more
+than an idle boast.
+
+A chorus of women, transparent as ghosts save for their long, trailing
+dark hair, wailing in unearthly voices as they swam around him,
+surrounded the second visible male vampire. At first Harry thought they
+were swimming in his sea-magic, but then he realized they actually
+ducked in and out of the earth, curveting back into sight like dolphins
+only to vanish again. They came up right under the human legs of the
+queen and chopped at them, trying to tip her over.
+
+\emph{Tammuz. That second vampire with Vermillion was Tammuz. And Tammuz
+had a lover named Ishtar associated with the earth.}
+
+And last came the vampiress, whom Harry knew Vermillion had called
+Psyche, unwinding a glittering skein of red and silver from her arms and
+flinging it wide. It opened into the wings of a hundred, a thousand, an
+exploding cloud of butterflies, all of which had serrated blades
+sticking out from their wings. They made for the vampire queen's side,
+and then up her sides, and from the next screech, Harry thought they
+must have attacked her human head.
+
+For a moment, the vampire queen absolutely could not concentrate,
+wracked as she was with pain and confusion, the boars spinning around
+her, the transparent women grabbing at her legs, the butterflies sawing
+at her.
+
+And then Kanerva finally, finally took her place in the pattern of wind
+and light and water.
+
+SSSSSSSSSS
+
+Indigena was thinking of the curses that she should use on her sister.
+She would swear to it. And yet somehow she was noticing the way that
+Peridot's hair shone in the light of the fires in the village instead,
+and she was taking one step forward and then another, and then she stood
+in front of Peridot while her sister raised one hand and traced the
+curves of her face.
+
+``You have strayed so far from true honor that you would not recognize
+it if it embraced you, Indigena,'' Peridot said softly. Then she smiled,
+and the smile made Indigena moan. ``I suppose that I'll have to do this
+in its place.''
+
+Indigena struggled to move, wanting her Lord to send a bolt of pain
+through the Dark Mark so that she would have an easier time resisting
+this. Of course, that didn't happen. Of course, she only moved closer to
+her sister instead, and Peridot kissed her, foully, sweetly, with an
+open mouth and a tongue that touched Indigena's like the shock of a
+needle going home.
+
+Indigena felt her thorns slide out of the sheaths on her back, but
+instead of lunging, they swayed above her, gentled. She had gone too
+long without pleasant contact, unless one counted the love she felt when
+her roses and her tendrils wound around her. They would not strike,
+Indigena realized in growing despair that only deepened when Peridot
+pushed at her and she fell to the ground in a tangle of robes.
+
+The fall itself was dreamlike, the ground a harsh contrast, the earth
+slamming into and impressing on her back and shoulders. Indigena tried
+to stand, but Peridot knelt over her and laid one hand on her breasts,
+keeping her in place, and Indigena was aware as she had not been in
+years of the tightening of her skin, human skin, over the shadows of
+leaves and flowers beneath it.
+
+Peridot kissed her a second time, and stroked her neck, and laughed as
+if thinking about something else. Then she said, ``I could humiliate you
+further, sister, but I see no need to do that. Only remember that your
+contempt for your sisters' magic makes you weak, and always will.''
+
+One more kiss, almost enough to remove all trace of shame and dishonor
+from Indigena's mouth in the twist of dizzy pleasure, and then Peridot
+Apparated away with a snap. Indigena dropped her head against the earth
+and panted, clenching one hand in the dirt. Her thorny rose fluttered
+and wanted to dig into the ground. If not for the fact that she had
+larger duties to face and an honor debt to consummate, Indigena would
+have let it.
+
+\emph{I will tell my Lord to annihilate Peridot with the Meleager's Fire
+potion the moment I return,} she thought, standing shakily. \emph{She is
+too dangerous to be left living.}
+
+She was in time to turn and see the utter failure of the attack.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Kanerva's wind came down from the sky like the living hand of a beast.
+
+Harry remembered what Jing-Xi had told him once. \emph{She wants the
+destruction of all living things\ldots{}}
+
+And it certainly seemed like it, as the storm's shriek quickly built to
+an outraged howl. The wind struck underneath the vampire queen, bearing
+her from her legs at last, and making her collapse with a \emph{thump}
+that Harry's water and Jing-Xi's magic had to work hastily to cushion,
+so as not to send them down with her. Vermillion's vampires rolled and
+jumped neatly out of the way. The hive vampires running around the queen
+were not so lucky, and many of them died in her fall. Harry did see
+Vermillion grab one of the few survivors and tear him apart the way
+someone might take the different pieces from a jigsaw puzzle, devouring
+the blood that dripped from his opened throat and, it seemed, at least
+half his flesh.
+
+Kanerva's wind turned, coming back around, and Harry blinked as he
+remembered what he was supposed to do now. Jing-Xi's magic was rising, a
+wall of sunlight. He hastened to join his water to it, in the form of a
+wave that rose at the far end of the village and began running towards
+the downed queen. The sunlight rode it, dancing and sparkling in its
+crest.
+
+At the same moment as the wave arrived, Kanerva's hurricane descended
+and met it.
+
+Harry gasped. Magic rang and shuddered through him, grasping and shaking
+him so violently that for a moment he could understand why Voldemort
+would grab and drain everyone he could. There was no place for morality
+in the face of power like this, only the consuming desire to have more
+and more of it.
+
+Light and Dark and undeclared, water and fire and air, the three paths
+of power mingled together, and Harry could feel Jing-Xi and Kanerva
+close to him in ways that only Connor had been before. Together, they
+poured all their magic down on the hive queen writhing on the ground.
+One wish guided all of them, a wish that Kanerva articulated, because
+she was the one who wanted it most.
+
+\emph{Die!}
+
+And the hive queen wailed, and tried to fight back, but too many signals
+were striking her divided mind at once, as Vermillion and the other
+vampires ruthlessly reaped her children, made them feel pain, drained
+their blood, killed them, and she also tried to respond to her own
+danger. Harry could feel her spasming, convulsing, the way he thought an
+ocean wave might feel those crushed to death underneath it. Still their
+magic crashed and burned and blew, and the hive queen wailed once more
+and finally died like a squashed bug.
+
+Then came the harder part: calling his magic back to him. Harry sagged,
+quietly trembling, and pictured the sea withdrawing at low tide. The
+waves would ebb out from the shore, and reveal sand that had been hidden
+under water before. He wanted his magic to come back to him in the same
+way, and leave the houses of Hogsmeade alone, as well as whatever
+vampires might still be racing around as prey for Vermillion and his
+companions.
+
+The magic did not want to listen to him. It danced and tugged at its
+leash, begging to stay out and play. Didn't Harry think it felt
+wonderful? Didn't he want to crush other things, and send his magic
+flowing across Scotland, to rouse sleeping witches and wizards out of
+bed with the sound of the sea?
+
+\emph{No}, Harry told it sharply. \emph{Come back here, now.}
+
+The magic whined, but in the end, Harry was the one who held the leash,
+and it was what must obey. It tagged back to him, sullen, and curled up
+in his body. Harry slammed down walls of desire around it. He \emph{did
+not} want to control others. He \emph{did not} want to let it out to
+play. What it had done was quite enough. Killing a hive queen didn't
+happen every day. Couldn't it be still now?
+
+At last it was, though Harry could feel a final flicker of defiance
+before it lost its separate personality and blended into his. He opened
+his eyes, shook his head, and found himself leaning against Draco. He
+stepped gently away, and smiled at him.
+
+``All collected again, I think,'' he said.
+
+``That's almost too bad,'' said Draco, and Harry saw the desire burning
+in his eyes. He stifled a laugh. At least they could say it was the
+reflection of the lust that the vampire queen had engendered. He glanced
+up as he heard a triumphant howl, and saw Kanerva appear briefly on the
+roof of a house, dancing there, her robes and her swirling hair and her
+skin of one piece with the motion of the wind. Then she was gone again,
+unbraided and unwound and taken up into the air. Harry supposed that
+could be another reason his magic was reluctant to come back. It had
+seen what Kanerva's magic was free to do, and it wanted the same
+unrestrained playground.
+
+``All right?'' Jing-Xi asked him. Harry turned and looked at her. She,
+of course, was perfectly calm and composed. The magic of the Light was
+tamer than any magic mingled with Dark, Harry thought.
+
+``Yes, I think so,'' he said, and glanced out at the battlefield,
+searching for a trace of Vermillion and his companions. They were gone,
+though. Harry shook his head. \emph{He did say that he would be my ally
+whether I wanted him to or not. I suppose this was an example of that.}
+
+``Kanerva?'' he asked, when a breeze blew past his ears that was far too
+cold for a July night.
+
+``Let her play,'' Jing-Xi said. ``She would be sullen if we called her
+in now, and she will not damage anything, I think. There has been enough
+killing to content her. She will dance in the highest heavens.'' She
+tilted her head back and looked up at the stars with a fond little
+smile.
+
+Harry followed her gaze, seeing a whirlwind that formed, obscuring one
+constellation and then another, soaring up and then up, and then
+vanishing and losing itself in the general darkness of the night.
+
+``She joined us,'' he said. \emph{This time.}
+
+Jing-Xi smiled at him. ``Yes,'' she said. ``We worked together, three
+Lord-level wizards acting to defeat a single enemy. It is the first time
+in centuries.''
+
+Harry could see why. The Pact, of course, was wary of each other, and
+had the rule about non-interference in other countries. But, more than
+that, the sheer addiction of such powerful magic pounded in the back of
+his head and still soared like a second heartbeat through his blood.
+
+\emph{You have the gift of acquiring more, if you should choose it.}
+
+Harry shook his head and pushed the thought away. It was one that had
+come from that darkest part of him that others preferred to pretend
+didn't exist. He knew how to quell it, too, and how to shed the
+exultation of battle: go and look at the corpses, clean them up, and
+hope that no villagers had died before Peridot had been able to evacuate
+them.
+
+``Come on,'' he said, and moved towards the center of the village,
+hearing Jing-Xi follow and Draco mutter about him always needing to ruin
+the moment.
+
+Above them, Kanerva danced and danced, the winds bearing laughter to
+Harry's ears sometimes, throughout and within the endless expanse of
+sky.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 20*: Twisted
+Meetings}\label{chapter-20-twisted-meetings}
+
+Thanks for the review on the last chapter!
+
+\textbf{Chapter Fifteen: Twisted Meetings}
+
+The invitation from the Ministry hadn't been so much an invitation as a
+command, Harry thought, as he adjusted his robes and tried to look
+non-threatening. The aura of magic around him, still not completely
+retracted after last night, and the Light Lady at his side didn't help
+the impression. The Aurors outside the Acting Minister's office stared
+at them both and gripped their wands more tightly.
+
+``They fear me,'' said Jing-Xi softly. Harry glanced at her. He had
+never seen the expression on her face that she wore now, as if she were
+dismayed at their fear. ``Why? They must know that I am Light, and I
+have no reason to hurt them.''
+
+``The situation is different in Britain than in China,'' Harry
+explained, deliberately casting a muffling spell so that his murmurs
+would be indistinguishable to the Aurors. ``Our people have been hurt
+and betrayed again and again by powerful wizards in the last few
+decades. No matter how reassuring you are, they're going to fear you
+just because you're more powerful than most.''
+
+Jing-Xi frowned. ``But your example should have taught them otherwise.''
+
+Harry shrugged. ``I suppose it's hard for a few years of freeing magical
+creatures and sometimes helping the Ministry to stand up against eleven
+years of warfare from Voldemort and the knowledge of Dumbledore's
+betrayal.'' He turned sharply as the door to the office opened, and
+Aurora Whitestag put her head out. She was good at control of her facial
+expressions, Harry thought. No one would know that this meeting was in
+any way unusual if one simply looked at her face.
+
+``Please, come in, Harry, and Lady---Jing-Xi?'' She pronounced the name
+carefully, and looked delighted when Jing-Xi nodded. ``Please do come
+in!'' She stepped back, out of the way, and Harry walked inside with
+Jing-Xi right beside him. He noticed that Aurora held her breath as if
+to avoid breathing in the wind that moved the Light Lady's hair
+constantly and gently around. That saddened him as few other things
+could have.
+
+\emph{We really are learning fear of magic as a people. If I can kill
+Voldemort quickly, I may change that, but I do not know what else
+could.}
+
+"\emph{Vates.}"
+
+Harry flicked his eyes forward, acknowledging and dismissing Juniper in
+the same moment. He saw two low stools in front of the Acting Minister's
+desk. They were meant to sit so far below eye level as to impose a power
+differential on them. He kept his snarl silent and simply exerted his
+magic, growing the stools upwards into regular chairs. He saw the Acting
+Minister open his mouth, then shut it again. Harry sat down, and Jing-Xi
+remained on her feet only long enough to bow.
+
+``First of all,'' said Juniper, ``I understand that there are two Ladies
+in the country. Where is the second?''
+
+``Kanerva Stormgale regrets that she could not attend this meeting,''
+said Jing-Xi, in a polished voice. ``She was wounded in the battle with
+the vampire hive queen and must spend some time recovering in the
+Hogwarts hospital wing.''
+
+Harry waited a moment, then started breathing again. It was a far more
+graceful excuse than Kanerva might have allowed to stand, had she
+decided to accompany them in wind form and make her presence known.
+
+``Ah, yes, well.'' Juniper shuffled some paperwork across his desk for a
+moment, then looked up with a frown. ``She is the Dark Lady?''
+
+Jing-Xi nodded.
+
+``I suppose you have read the text of the Ministry's recent edict.''
+Juniper leaned back in his chair. ``And you know that Dark Arts are
+illegal for anyone in the country to practice, even Lord-level wizards.
+I must ask that Lady Stormgale refrain from using them while she is in
+the British Isles.''
+
+Harry swallowed his laughter. Juniper simply didn't \emph{understand}.
+Or, more likely, he did, but he didn't care. He would only think that
+those people who couldn't obey the edict were his enemies, and there was
+scant loss in their support, even if he had to wait until the end of the
+war to put them in Tullianum.
+
+But perhaps it was possible to make him understand. Harry still didn't
+want open warfare with the Ministry if he could avoid it. The tense
+neutrality they'd maintained so far suited him fine. The only thing he
+truly regretted was the Ministry's Aurors sitting idle, or only
+arresting ordinary citizens who used Dark Arts, rather than joining them
+in their battles. When Juniper had sent him the invitation-cum-command
+this morning, Harry had known the neutrality was splintered, and they
+would have to deal with one another head-on.
+
+``Acting Minister,'' he said. ``How much do you understand about the
+transition that a Dark Lady or Lord goes through when giving herself or
+himself to the wild Dark?''
+
+``I am pleased to say that I know very little about it,'' said Juniper
+stiffly. ``Mortals were not meant to understand such things, boy.''
+
+Harry nodded. He had expected as much. Scrimgeour had told him once that
+Juniper believed even Wolfsbane shouldn't be studied, because
+understanding more about the werewolf curse only increased the risk of
+corruption from the knowledge.
+
+``The transition takes them away from Light magic,'' he said. ``For
+many, it makes them incapable of accessing it any longer. That is the
+case with Lady Stormgale. Even if she could still use Light magic, I
+doubt she would. She defended Hogsmeade and Hogwarts from the vampire
+hive queen yesterday using Dark spells. Do you really want her
+protection to wane or prove useless, sir, because she wasn't allowed to
+use Dark magic on Britain's shores? Or do you want her to become
+insulted and strike out at those she thinks responsible for the
+insult?''
+
+"It is not \emph{necessary} to use Dark magic in order to win this war,"
+said Juniper stubbornly. ``And if we allow one person to use it, then we
+have taken one step down the road that ended, last time, with suspects
+tortured rather than brought to trial.''
+
+Harry stared into Juniper's eyes. There was a kindred spirit there,
+after all, one spark of the same fear shared between them. Harry didn't
+want to indulge his taste for revenge out of fear of what he might
+become. Juniper didn't want to permit Dark magic in Britain for fear of
+what the British wizarding world might become.
+
+It softened Harry's voice, and increased his hope that compassion and
+sheer pragmatism might make their way through Juniper's walls where
+defiance would not. "Sir. Please. Listen to yourself. It is necessary to
+use Dark magic to win this war, if only because some of those who fight
+with you will use it. Would you rather see the war lost for lack of Dark
+magic, when by permitting those to use it who would use it anyway, you
+would win? \emph{You} would not have to use it, nor anyone else sworn to
+the Order of the Firebird. Allow them to use it, the ones who don't
+believe in the danger of corruption, and you would be far more likely to
+win."
+
+Juniper tensed. Harry could see the battle raging in him, and he made
+his voice yet softer and more coaxing.
+
+"Many people are fleeing to Voldemort rather than surrendering, because
+they fear what their lives will become under your government. You mean
+to avoid tyranny, but they see it as tyranny \emph{now}. Reverse the
+edict, and you will welcome more people than you drive away. Few
+\emph{want} to serve Voldemort. They want to serve their magic, to use
+it to the fullest extent possible. They're only going to him because he
+\emph{might} permit that freedom, and they know your new edict won't.
+Please, sir, reconsider. Can you?"
+
+Juniper turned his head, surprisingly, staring out the enchanted window
+of his office for a moment. Harry followed his gaze. The window looked
+out on a view of the Thames, which Harry didn't doubt was at least part
+of what the real view looked like at that very moment.
+
+``How can I?'' Juniper whispered.
+
+``How can you what?'' Harry responded at once, pitching his voice to the
+same level of lowness. ``Please, sir, tell me what you need to hear.''
+
+``How can I abandon some of my people to darkness, and save others for
+the Light?'' Juniper shook his head, his eyes fastened on the window.
+"How can I condemn some people to doing things I \emph{know} are wrong,
+only because it's expedient?" He turned back to Harry, face haunted.
+``The Light is an ideal, I know, never to be lived up to completely by
+us, but we can come nearer to it than this. And I cannot sanction the
+use of Dark spells when I know that the people using them could have
+lives that were so much better.''
+
+Harry ground his back teeth against the frustration that wanted to rise,
+and said softly, ``Sir, Lady Jing-Xi is of the Light. If you will not
+listen to what I have to say, will you listen to her?''
+
+Juniper did not nod or shake his head. He simply looked at Jing-Xi. So
+did Harry.
+
+Jing-Xi's face was calm, and she looked straight ahead, not quite
+locking eyes with the Acting Minister. ``Sir,'' she said. "I am more
+than sixty years old. I have lived in many different places in the
+world, though my home has always been China. I have had friendships with
+many different Ladies and Lords located in Light or Dark, and some
+people, like Harry, who are undeclared. And I have had enemies in the
+same places. What that has taught me is to look, first, to the nature
+and temper of the human heart involved, not the allegiance it has sworn
+itself to. There are Dark Ladies who would never sanction the use of
+torture, because it goes against personal ideals. There are Light Lords
+who could, and did, sanction the use of child abuse, because they
+honestly believed it was the right thing to do. Few people
+\emph{believe} they are serving evil. Even Lord Riddle does not believe
+it of himself, though his fear of death has destroyed his reason.
+
+"I say to you, sir, that if your heart is committed to your ideals, you
+will not drown yourself in darkness because you chose to trust your
+people, including those who practice Dark Arts. You will not be tainted
+by corruption if you remain true. And if someone around you is, that is
+not your fault, not if you did not encourage it. We cannot be
+responsible for every single response someone else makes. We cannot
+\emph{know} what consequences we engender, sometimes. That is why we
+urge people to live with the consequences of their actions, not prevent
+them. Preventing them all would require a foresight greater than any of
+us have---including you, sir."
+
+Harry let out his breath in a soft little sigh. Surely what Jing-Xi said
+would get through to Juniper. She was of his own allegiance, someone who
+had made a commitment to the Light her life's work, voluntarily limited
+her power to a certain set of spells. Surely, this would work.
+
+But Juniper whispered, ``I must at least try.''
+
+Harry's fists clenched. Juniper didn't appear to notice, though, but
+simply looked at them with the eyes of a drowning man.
+
+``I see darkness threatening my country. I see shadows creeping out to
+take the hearts of a good many of our people. I see people giving in to
+practices they would have hated a generation ago, simply because they
+get things done more quickly. Am I to put up with that? Am I to really
+grant that that is happening, simply because I feel helpless to prevent
+it? I can at least fight.''
+
+Harry bowed his head and stood. Juniper would never join them. He had
+convinced himself this was a worthy fight, even if a hopeless one. You
+couldn't argue with someone like that. Harry knew, because he had once
+had that mindset himself. He had thought that his life was worthwhile
+even though he fully expected to die serving Connor, because with that
+death he would buy a few more moments of continued existence for his
+brother.
+
+He wondered how Juniper had restrained himself all these years,
+pretending to be mentally normal and stable until the point where he
+could reach power and then unleash his stern ideals. Or had his
+obsession not grown to this level until Voldemort returned? It was
+possible, Harry thought. He could have seen their society as Light
+enough up until now, without the need for his corrective power.
+
+Harry could feel his heart ache in pity, and in unexpected force of
+sharing, and in frustration and resentment.
+
+But he would not stand aside and let Juniper dictate his actions, or
+arrest those he had come to love.
+
+``We follow different philosophies, sir,'' he said. ``I hope not to see
+you on the battlefield, but if that is what must happen, then it will.''
+
+``One moment before you go,'' said Juniper, already sounding confident
+again, as if arrogance were enough to win a war. \emph{If it were, he
+would have become King of all the wizarding world already,} Harry
+thought. "I have heard a rumor that Aurors from foreign countries have
+come to Britain to serve you. Is that true, \emph{vates}?"
+
+``It is,'' said Harry, meeting his eyes. ``France, Spain, and Portugal,
+so far. And I have sent letters to other wizarding governments.''
+
+Juniper's face tightened. ``They should have cleared it with me.''
+
+``They decided that you were fighting the war wrong.'' Harry leaned
+forward. For the sake of the similarity between them---a similarity he
+had never expected to exist, much less need to be acknowledged---he
+would give Juniper this one warning. ``They don't accept you as a voice
+of authority. Your edict against the Dark Arts began it. They don't
+think that you can win the war this way, and they have a vested interest
+in my winning it, so that Voldemort does not cross the Channel.''
+
+``Not every Minister will send troops to your side,'' said Juniper,
+softly, as if it were a threat.
+
+``I don't expect them to,'' said Harry calmly. If nothing else, he knew
+he could not count on Austria; they would not feel the need to, since
+Monika would fight Voldemort if he moved into her territory. And others
+further away would probably refuse as well, though they might mock
+Juniper. So long as they did not openly oppose him, Harry didn't think
+he needed to worry. ``But I will pursue this war with the help that's
+been offered, Acting Minister, and in my own fashion.''
+
+``That cannot continue forever,'' Juniper said.
+
+This was the part of him that Harry didn't understand, the part that
+seemingly expected Harry to give up or give in because he should owe
+some kind of ultimate allegiance to Light or the Ministry. And Harry
+simply smiled, and dealt with that part of Juniper as he had other times
+before.
+
+``You're right. It will continue until Voldemort is dead, or I am.''
+
+He turned and departed from the office, casting another muffling spell.
+Jing-Xi walked at his side, her face a study in sad wonder. Then she
+shook her head, and her face returned to normal again.
+
+``Back to Hogwarts?'' she asked.
+
+``No,'' Harry answered. He could feel a kind of twisting sensation in
+his chest, but he had known from the beginning of this that he would
+need to go where he was going now sooner or later. It was not fair that
+Voldemort could attack Muggles and they would have little or no notice
+as to what was going on. At the very least, Harry could create an
+advance warning system among them. ``You're going back to Hogwarts,
+since the Pact declared that you couldn't help me in what I was about to
+do. I'm going to summon a few people to guard me, and then I'm going to
+Surrey.''
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Aurora halted and glanced around, narrowing her eyes in annoyance.
+\emph{At the very least, if he's going to play games of spies and what
+not, then he could be on time to the secret meetings he has arranged.}
+
+Then a movement ahead of her, in the shadows, reassured her. Aurora drew
+her wand and cast the binding spells that prevented the speaker from
+getting anywhere within twenty feet of her, and the spell that would
+break his wand if he tried to cast a spell of his own. She supposed it
+wasn't fair to complain about his timing. He was the one who had to come
+through several dozen guards and wards to get inside the Ministry. She
+only had to await an owl, and then go, with Juniper's blessing, to a
+certain place at a certain time.
+
+``My lady,'' said his voice, soft and half-defeated, the way it always
+sounded.
+
+``Feldspar.'' Aurora nodded. ``And what information do you bring this
+time?''
+
+She had hardly been able to believe it when Feldspar Yaxley presented
+himself to her---he hadn't had an easy time of that either---and claimed
+that he wanted to betray Voldemort. But he had explained it enough times
+that Aurora believed him now. He had betrayed his whole family by
+fleeing away from the Dark Mark's claim during the First War, and that
+had sent his aunt Indigena into the arms of the Dark Lord and caused
+irreparable harm. He was trying to make up for it now, especially since
+Voldemort had called him back but had no interest in doing anything but
+torturing him. That torture made his hold over Feldspar weaker than it
+was for the other recalled Death Eaters.
+
+``The man who calls himself my Lord,'' said Feldspar, touching his left
+arm where Aurora herself had seen the Dark Mark faded and discolored,
+``has gathered two other members of my family into his fold.''
+
+Aurora caught her breath and stood straighter. Voldemort recruiting any
+Yaxley was bad news. ``What are their names?''
+
+``Sylvan and Oaken,'' rasped Feldspar. He was often tortured until he
+coughed up blood, Aurora knew, and then his chest was rarely repaired
+properly. ``They are twins. Distant cousins of mine.''
+
+``And what are their powers?'' The Yaxley family was well-known for
+studying obscure branches of magic, and achieving proficiency in arts
+that no one in the wider wizarding community cared about. Aurora often
+wished the wider wizarding community had not been \emph{forced} to care
+about which Yaxley did what.
+
+``They became interested in werewolves' near invulnerability to magic
+and many kinds of physical wounds.'' Feldspar paused to cough again.
+``They decided to see if they could induce that same invulnerability in
+themselves. And they did find a way, but, of course, there was a price.
+Essentially, only one twin exists in our world at a time. The other
+waits in a different plane beyond him. When the twin in our world is
+injured, he can retreat into that stronghold, and his brother comes out
+to fight. And that other plane works to heal their injuries much faster
+than even a potion. They were content to simply live at Briar-Rise for a
+long time, but they have come forward now, because all the spells that
+sustain them are Dark, and they dislike the imputation from the Ministry
+that merely by existing, they are immoral and illegal.''
+
+Aurora shuddered for a moment, and wished bitterly that she had not
+given in out of weariness and allowed Erasmus to pass that law that made
+Dark Arts illegal. At least, then, they would not be facing a pair of
+invulnerable Yaxleys. ``Is there anything else you can tell me?''
+
+Feldspar shook his head. ``They leave me out of most discussions now,
+and what I can overhear is getting rarer. I think I will soon die.''
+
+``Then why not flee?'' This was the center of Aurora's suspicions about
+Feldspar, which had almost convinced her that he was coming to her on
+Voldemort's orders. But there was no reason that Voldemort would allow
+such valuable information to spill into their hands if he knew. And, so
+far, it had all proven true. They had even foiled an attack on a small
+Irish village last week, thanks to what Feldspar told her.
+
+Feldspar's lips lifted into a dark smile, and Aurora saw that his teeth
+were blood-stained, the gums cracked and leaking. ``Because of honor,''
+he said. "\emph{Vita desinit, decus permanit.} I forgot that once. I
+never will again. I am not \emph{allowed} to forget it again."
+
+Aurora looked at him in silence for a moment. But it was true that that
+was the Yaxley family motto, and they went to insane lengths to fulfill
+it, and Feldspar's information had all proven true. What could Voldemort
+be getting out of this, if Feldspar was a double-crosser? None of the
+Ministry's information was compromised. Voldemort's attacks had been.
+
+``Stay as safe as you can,'' she said. ``And know that you will have
+died doing the right thing, if you die. The Ministry is grateful.''
+
+Feldspar mutely nodded and blended back into the shadows. Aurora left
+the small storage room. She did not know how Feldspar slipped in and out
+of the Ministry, but she did know that, every time, the most prominent
+guards and spells and wards were subtly changed, with Erasmus using the
+Unspeakables' help. Feldspar might be their spy, even a useful one, but
+he was not allowed to compromise their security.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry nodded to the others who had come with him---Snape, Regulus, and
+Narcissa. ``I'm putting you under a Disillusionment Charm,'' he told
+them. ``She's going to be nervous enough with me there.''
+
+``I am coming with you,'' said Snape.
+
+Harry scowled at him. ``You'll intimidate her.''
+
+``You should have one wizard in the house with you,'' said Snape,
+curling his lip. ``In case the Muggles go mad.''
+
+Harry sighed. It wasn't worth arguing about. He did cast the
+Disillusionment Charm over Regulus and Narcissa, however, and then
+glamours on himself and Snape, so that their robes looked more like
+Muggle clothes. Snape surveyed the dark shirt and trousers this appeared
+to give him with deep disapproval.
+
+Then they turned, and Harry took a little breath, and walked down the
+street that he had last seen on a night he'd been sure Voldemort was
+trying to kill the people he was now going to see---Privet Drive, in the
+town of Little Whinging, Surrey.
+
+It still looked much the same as it always had: neat Muggle houses with
+neat gardens, with exactly the same fences separating neighbor from
+neighbor and only slight variations in the cars that sat in front of
+most of them. Had it not been for the twitching curtains that
+accompanied his and Snape's progress up the street, Harry would have
+thought the place dead.
+
+He turned in at Number 4, Snape so close behind him Harry could
+practically feel his guardian's breath on the back of his neck. He
+knocked on the front door, and heard the sound of loudly stomping feet.
+That would be his cousin Dudley, coming to answer the door. Harry
+wondered how Dudley would react to seeing him.
+
+Not well, it appeared. Dudley tore open the door, stared at him and
+Snape, let out a long wail, and shut it.
+
+Harry blinked, and knocked again. This time, he heard his aunt's voice,
+demanding to know why Dudley hadn't answered the door. Dudley wailed
+back, ``It's Harry at the door, Mum!''
+
+There was a long pause at that. Remembering how much reason Petunia had
+to hate Lily, Harry winced at the thoughts that were probably going
+through her head. But he remained firm. Petunia was his best chance for
+establishing a network that would warn the families of magical people
+that they could be at risk from Voldemort. If she refused that role,
+then she would at least know of the danger.
+
+At last, heavier footsteps than should be the case for a woman so thin
+crossed the floor towards them, and then Petunia opened the door and
+stood looking at them. She looked askance at Snape, but, to Harry's
+secret awe, didn't spend a long time on him. She stared down at Harry
+instead, and said, ``You.''
+
+``Me,'' Harry agreed. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. ``May
+we come in, Aunt Petunia?''
+
+He could see his aunt glancing up and down the street, as if judging
+what would happen should she be seen letting freaks into her house
+against what would happen should she be seen conversing with freaks on
+the front step. In the end, she jerked her head and said shortly, ``Come
+in.''
+
+Snape snorted under his breath, and snorted again when they reached the
+entrance hall, crowded with pictures of Petunia, Dudley, and Petunia's
+dead husband, Vernon. Harry's cousin cautiously watched them around the
+corner. Harry wondered if he had lost weight since the last time he'd
+seen him, and then had to shake his head. He really couldn't tell.
+
+``What do you want?'' Petunia demanded, crossing her arms.
+
+Harry forced himself to focus on her, and remember more things about her
+than just the angry, poisonous speech she'd made about Lily last time,
+and how much she resented losing her sister to the magical world. Yes,
+it wasn't fair that Lily had been born a witch and corrupted by
+Dumbledore, but the fact remained that Petunia and Dudley were Harry's
+Muggle family, and Voldemort could attack because of that.
+
+``The Dark Lord is attacking again,'' he said quietly. ``Voldemort, the
+wizard whom I thought was trying to kill you last time. The one who gave
+me this.'' He lifted his fringe to display his scar. He heard Dudley
+make a soft noise of fear, but Petunia's stare didn't waver. ``He hasn't
+started systematic attacks on Muggles, but it's only a matter of time.''
+
+``Why should we believe this threat is any more real than the last one
+was?'' Petunia asked, frowning at him.
+
+``Because he's made one attack in the Muggle world,'' said Harry
+quietly. ``A Muggle family in London was found torn apart and drained of
+blood.'' He watched Petunia's face drain of blood in turn, and her hands
+clenched on the towel she held; she must have been washing dishes when
+they interrupted. ``That was him. Vampires.''
+
+"\emph{Vampires}?" Dudley squeaked.
+
+Petunia closed her eyes. ``And you think he might send vampires after
+us?''
+
+``Vampires, or something else. He hates Muggle families that produce
+wizards and witches.'' Harry took a step forward. ``I wanted to warn
+you. I don't know if you'll think it best to flee the country, or---I
+can offer you sanctuary in one of the safehouses I'm establishing, under
+the protection of magic---''
+
+"\emph{No}," said Petunia flatly. ``I'm not---I refuse to go anywhere
+near you people. Anywhere nearer than necessary, at least.''
+
+Harry nodded. He had half-expected that. He put up a hand instinctively
+to restrain Snape, who fell silent with a glare that Harry could
+practically feel flaying his neck. ``Then I was hoping that you could
+help me pass the word to other families who might be at risk because
+their sons or daughters attend Hogwarts, or because they have siblings
+and cousins in the magical world.'' He touched his pocket. ``I have a
+list of them who live in Surrey. At the least, it would be an early
+warning system, in case anything strange started happening. And there
+are Muggle ways of protecting yourself, I know. Snap a wizard's wand,
+and he's practically useless, most of the time.''
+
+Petunia laughed. It was an ugly sound. ``Why would I want to become
+involved in this?''
+
+``I didn't think you would,'' said Harry. ``But other people are in
+danger too, Aunt Petunia. People who, just like you, didn't ask to have
+a witch or wizard born into the family. It's no fault of their own, but
+Voldemort will treat them like it's their fault.''
+
+His aunt looked at him closely. ``Why would you want to open your world
+up to us like this? My parents had to sign a document saying they
+wouldn't talk about it, and I had a hex cast on me so that I couldn't
+even say my sister was a witch to anyone who didn't already know. Not
+even as an insult.''
+
+``You can talk to people who know,'' said Harry. "And, well, the magical
+government \emph{doesn't} want me to open up our world like this. But I
+think the most likely targets do deserve to know."
+
+``That family who died,'' said Petunia. ``Did they have wizards or
+witches attached to them?''
+
+Harry shook his head. ``Not that I know of. They were simply chosen as
+targets to make me run away from the bigger battle I was fighting. It
+was werewolves who defeated the vampires.''
+
+"\emph{Werewolves}?" Dudley interjected.
+
+``Hush, Dudley, Mummy will tell you later,'' said Petunia absently. She
+was studying Harry with eyes so narrow they almost vanished, by now.
+``From what I remember, the magical government doesn't love werewolves,
+either.''
+
+``Not so much,'' Harry said dryly. Snape snorted again.
+
+Petunia flicked a glance at him, but otherwise did a simply marvelous
+job of ignoring him. ``Setting yourself up as savior of the downtrodden,
+are you?''
+
+``I've already been set up that way, thanks to Lily and Voldemort and a
+prophecy,'' said Harry. ``And yes, I will do what I can. But I know
+almost nothing about the Muggle world, and you're one of the few people
+in it with a reason to listen to me. If you don't want to do this, I
+understand completely. But I wanted to bring the proposal to you, and
+see if you would agree. Warn you, and give you a means of contacting me,
+so that if Death Eaters did attack you, then you could call for magical
+help.''
+
+Petunia's eyes widened again. ``So you would actually---help''
+
+``Of course,'' said Harry, wondering what she took him for. \emph{Lily's
+son, probably, or a wizard. Neither of which she has reasons to expect
+good out of.} ``But I didn't know if it would be possible, especially if
+you agreed to go into hiding. You still haven't said that you'll do it,
+after all.'' He pulled an amulet from his pocket. It was modeled on the
+one Rita Skeeter had given him, which he could squeeze if he had a story
+for her and wanted to summon her. ``This is what you would squeeze if
+there was trouble. I can deliver a few more to you for other families.''
+
+Petunia shut her eyes and bowed her head. Harry waited. Snape started to
+say something. Harry pinched him.
+
+Then Petunia looked up. ``The magical world is always going to be
+trouble for us,'' she said harshly. "But at least we stand some chance
+of helping decent people who didn't \emph{ask} to have magical
+children." She held out her hand.
+
+Harry passed her the amulet and the list of names of Muggleborns'
+families in Surrey, never forsaking eye contact. He couldn't help
+feeling that, prejudices and all, Petunia was a better person than his
+mother in many ways.
+
+Petunia nodded at him once she read the list of names, as if they were
+concluding a business transaction. ``And all these people already know
+about the wizarding world, of course? No one's had their memory taken?''
+
+``No one,'' Harry confirmed. He knew that had happened a few times in
+the past---in cases where Muggle parents refused to let a magical child
+go to Hogwarts who wanted to attend, they were sometimes
+\emph{Obliviated} and the child taken anyway, perhaps given to a
+childless wizarding family---but there had been no record of it
+happening during Dumbledore's term as Headmaster. \emph{Perhaps his
+focus on me prevented him from stooping to certain levels.}
+
+``Good.'' Petunia nodded at him tightly. ``At least, if you insist on
+having a connection to us, you can make up for what Lily did to me.''
+
+Harry nodded back, not taking offense. He was never going to be lovingly
+close to his aunt and cousin, and it \emph{was} unfair that Lily had
+grown so apart from her sister. At least he might help save their lives.
+``Goodbye, Aunt Petunia. And thank you.''
+
+They left. Snape began to speak as soon as they were down the walk.
+"That \emph{odious} woman---"
+
+``You're only saying that because she wasn't afraid of you,'' Harry
+pointed out, feeling light and almost happy as he tilted his head back
+and closed his eyes. ``She---''
+
+"\emph{Harry!}"
+
+Regulus's voice came from under the Disillusionment Charm to his right.
+Harry spun, one hand flying up, expecting to see Voldemort himself
+floating and cackling at the end of the path up to the front door.
+
+Instead, he saw Evan Rosier standing there, smiling, hands clasped
+around an object in front of him. If it hadn't been full sunlight, Harry
+might have mistaken it for something else. That wasn't possible, though,
+not when the sun gleamed on the gold and Rosier's hands were
+ostentatiously arranged to display the cup's handles, shaped like
+badgers.
+
+\emph{Hufflepuff's cup. The cup Voldemort was holding. That's a
+Horcrux.}
+
+Harry sprang forward, but Rosier simply laughed at him, softly, and then
+vanished with a sharp \emph{pop} of Apparition. Harry stopped running,
+twisting to the side to avoid Snape, and swore under his breath.
+
+\emph{I don't think Voldemort would have allowed a Horcrux to get away
+from him like that. Rosier stole it, then. How, I don't know, but I
+think I know why. He did it to mess with both me and Voldemort.}
+
+\emph{Rosier's back in the game. And he's got a powerful playing piece.}
+
+\emph{And Merlin knows how I'm going to get it away from him.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 21*: Intermission:
+Poison}\label{chapter-21-intermission-poison}
+
+\textbf{Intermission: Poison}
+
+``The formula did not survive the transition.''
+
+Indigena winced. If she heard the words one more time, she thought she
+would go mad. But since she was the one her Lord had told off to tend
+Adalrico, she would have to hear them at least several times more.
+
+Cautiously, she opened the door of the small holding cell---her Lord had
+constructed stone portals between the rooms once he had enough Death
+Eaters near him to work magic---and stepped inside. Adalrico lay slumped
+against the far wall, on what had started out as a pallet but was now
+more like a shredded mess of straw and feathers. Indigena sighed, then
+put down the basin of water she carried and shook out the cloth draped
+over her arm.
+
+``Adalrico,'' she said.
+
+The man shivered and tried to curl in on himself. Indigena took a deep
+breath and ignored the shimmer of blood on his shoulders, because if she
+did not then she would begin to think about the fact that one reason her
+Lord had tortured him so badly was his anger at her over the failure of
+the hive queen's attack.
+
+``I'm going to clean your wounds,'' said Indigena. ``Our Lord has
+forbidden healing spells, but he doesn't want you to sicken from the
+infection.'' She patted her knee as she would for a dog and clucked her
+tongue, wondering if non-verbal signals would work better for him than
+words. The only person she had ever truly spent time around in a state
+of weakness was her Lord, and his illness had been different---drifting
+in his own mind as he tried to establish connections with his followers'
+Marks again, not injuries. Indigena felt more than half helpless, and
+she hated feeling that way.
+
+Adalrico peeked up at her. Indigena winced. Something essential was
+missing from his eyes, some sanity that her Lord had broken or buried.
+``The formula did not survive the transition,'' he whispered to her.
+
+``I know,'' Indigena whispered back. ``Come here.''
+
+Adalrico stood, slowly, and helped himself towards her with a hand on
+the wall. Indigena actually thought that was a hopeful sign. If he
+wasn't crawling like an animal, then he wasn't entirely broken.
+
+She carefully dipped the cloth in the water and ran it over the marks on
+his shoulders---marks left not by whips or blades or flames or pain
+curses, but by teeth. Indigena had not seen what her Lord had done to
+him. No one had. But they'd all \emph{heard} it, the sounds of teeth
+opening and closing and crushing flesh, and the screaming.
+
+``The formula did not survive the transition,'' Adalrico whispered
+again, and then he fell asleep under her hands.
+
+Indigena had to roll him over several times, so that she could reach all
+the bites, but in time she thought she'd cleaned them well, washing out
+the dirt and the straw he'd lain on. As she worked over him, she tried
+to hold back the uncomfortable sensation that most of this was her
+fault.
+
+It was one thing when she could disassociate herself from the pain
+around her by knowing she caused none of it, except for Feldspar's
+entirely justified squirming on a mental hook he'd baited himself. It
+was another thing to be sure that part of the reason Adalrico's wounds
+were so bad was because of her, and not only her failure. When she'd
+come back from the attack, she'd advised her Lord to use the Meleager's
+Fire potion on Peridot at once. He had.
+
+And found it could not be done.
+
+The variation of the potion that Adalrico had brewed and smeared on the
+letter so that Peridot would absorb it through her skin hadn't survived
+the flight by owl or the smearing. When her Lord had examined his
+memories of Snape's creation of the potion more thoroughly, he'd
+discovered that it needed to be ingested, not absorbed. It would have
+worked only if Peridot had licked her fingers thoroughly after reading
+Indigena's letter.
+
+So that hold over her sister was gone, and Voldemort's wrath had been
+terrible to behold. Or hear.
+
+Indigena wished more strongly than ever, now, that her nephew had not
+betrayed the family honor, and she could have refused her Lord's
+service. But regretting what had gone before never grew a rose. She
+gently arranged Adalrico in a sitting position, and piled some of the
+dirt from the walls around his torso to hold him up, so that hopefully
+he wouldn't sag over again and get earth in the wounds.
+
+``Cousin.''
+
+Indigena stiffened and turned, nodding reluctantly to the
+man---men---who waited in the doorway. ``Sylvan.''
+
+The Yaxley twin who occupied their plane of existence right now nodded
+and smiled, as if happy that she had his name right, at least. He had
+dark brown hair, the color of mahogany, and brilliant green eyes.
+Tremors and ripples of light danced about him, signaling that Oaken
+would be arriving in an hour or a bit more to take his place. ``Our Lord
+wants to see you now.''
+
+Sighing, Indigena gathered up the cloth and the basin and followed
+Sylvan out the door. He talked quietly as they made their way down the
+tunnel, about the Ministry's latest foolishness of trying to take
+properties away from Dark pureblood families to ``keep an eye'' on what
+they were doing with them. Indigena wished irritably that Sylvan were
+more hateful. Instead, he seemed intent on easing her pain over
+Adalrico. Oaken was a bit quieter, but not that different from his twin.
+
+Sylvan left her outside Voldemort's throne room, with a little pat on
+her shoulder. Indigena straightened her spine and strode into the room.
+
+She found the Dark Lord sitting with his hands clasped around a wide,
+clear, oddly-shaped vial. Indigena eyed it cautiously. The bottom was
+almost flat, but the sides were sharply curved, and in the vial sloshed
+a deep purple liquid that resembled the poison Indigena knew Snape had
+brewed and used in the attack on the Headmistress.
+
+``My own,'' said her Lord, and from the sound of his voice he was in a
+much better mood. "Adalrico did one useful thing before I punished him.
+He created a variation of Severus's poison that can be combined with the
+incantation for the flesh-devouring rain I have shown you. When
+\emph{this} rain falls from the sky, it will carry not only foulness but
+death with it, to both earth and humans."
+
+Indigena knew without asking that she would be the one responsible for
+creating the storm. Her Lord could not yet risk himself in open battle,
+and the others were not trusted enough for it.
+
+She accepted the vial, watching as the potion inside shimmered and
+slithered like liquid amethyst. ``How wide a storm should I create, my
+Lord? And where?''
+
+Voldemort began to explain. Indigena listened, and with each word she
+felt as if she were standing at the edge of a vast well, watching any
+chance of still behaving honorably sinking out of sight in a lowered
+bucket.
+
+\emph{But true honor is fulfilling one's promises. I know that. I must
+stay true to what I said I would do.}
+
+\emph{Vita desinit, decus permanit.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 22*: Storm Raiser}\label{chapter-22-storm-raiser}
+
+\textbf{Warning: Gore.}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Sixteen: Storm-Raiser}
+
+Harry dropped to one knee as the spell crackled past overhead, and
+looked briefly over his shoulder to see that it had made a smoking dent
+in the wood. He was impressed. Draco hadn't been able to manage that
+strong a \emph{Cremo} last year, and not only because of the wards that
+littered the Room of Requirement when it was transformed like this and
+prevented any consequences of a spell from being too damaging.
+
+``Not that powerful, are you, Harry, if you can't even block a spell
+that simple?'' Draco crowed, and started to try again.
+
+Harry raised an eyebrow and deflected his next hex with a Shield Charm.
+``I usually use wandless magic, Draco, and it's rarely confined to
+specific spells anymore,'' he said.
+
+``Then you should try some.'' Draco was dancing, panting and sweating,
+his face flushed and glowing, his hair sticking to his cheeks. Harry
+loved watching him like this. Draco often insisted that Harry relax and
+let go of his emotions, but the times he followed his own advice were
+rare. And since he shone with joy now instead of anger, he looked even
+better. ``Come on, Harry, use some spells!''
+
+Harry nodded a bit. "As you wish. \emph{Levicorpus.}"
+
+Draco flipped over and hung upside down in midair. Harry grinned as he
+dropped his wand from the shock, then stood and sauntered towards him.
+
+``Now, now, Draco,'' he said. ``You shouldn't allow yourself to be so
+distracted. What would happen if you faced a Death Eater and he used
+this spell?'' He shook his head and picked up Draco's wand, which was
+warm in his hand from both the unfamiliar core and the sweat that had
+coated Draco's hand. ``He could take your wand and bring you to the Dark
+Lord like this.''
+
+Draco, his robes falling around his face, glared. ``I thought we were
+practicing so that I could get better,'' he muttered.
+
+``And you are,'' said Harry. "Better, I mean. And we were practicing for
+that reason. But this is a spell someone \emph{could} use against you.
+Snape invented it, but most people in Hogwarts knew it by his fifth
+year, he said. A simple but effective trick if you aren't expecting it."
+He ended the spell, but used the air to gently cradle Draco and set him
+on his feet. ``Now you're expecting it, and the next time you can avoid
+it.'' He tossed the wand back to Draco.
+
+``Does that mean that you think I'm good enough to be in battle beside
+you the next time you go?'' Draco pushed his hair out of the way, and
+straightened his robes, this time trying to hide a flush of
+embarrassment.
+
+``It depends on the battle,'' said Harry quietly, as he always did
+whenever Draco posed questions like this.
+
+After the battle with the vampire queen, Kanerva had remarked in Draco's
+presence---not that Harry thought that made a great deal of difference
+to her, as she would have said what she believed regardless of who was
+there---that she thought he should not accompany Harry to battle, as he
+was only a distraction and could not help. Draco had erupted, first in
+ranting that simply made Kanerva stare at him and turn into wind, then
+into vows that he would show Harry's allies he was every bit Harry's
+equal. Harry had tried to calm him down, to explain that, in this case,
+spells and his possession gift hadn't helped, and that \emph{he}, too,
+had been taken off-guard by the queen's surge of lust, but Draco
+wouldn't hear of it. He went away to study obsessively instead, and to
+attend some of the dueling sessions that went on throughout the castle,
+even if he did have to learn from a Weasley. Syrinx, for a time, had
+nearly been run off her feet trying to keep up with him.
+
+And it showed, Harry had to admit. Draco was quicker with his wand now,
+because he was facing adults who were determined to defend their homes,
+who knew spells already that they could combine in unusual ways with the
+new ones, and who didn't hold back for fear of hurting someone they
+knew. He would be a great asset when they faced wizards who held wands
+in battle.
+
+Unfortunately, Harry had no idea what the next battle would be like, and
+thus he couldn't say for certain whether Draco's new skills would come
+in handy.
+
+``But you wouldn't hold me back?'' Draco pressed now.
+
+Harry shook his head. ``For the same reason I didn't hold you back in
+the vampire battle, Draco. It would be a violation of your free will.''
+
+Draco rolled his eyes. ``Merlin, Harry, don't knock me down with your
+enthusiasm to have me beside you.''
+
+Harry turned abruptly. Draco jumped back and stood watching him warily.
+
+As well he might. Harry had been struck with a new idea. If Draco would
+not believe him so far, because Harry had been too gentle, then he might
+believe a blunt statement.
+
+``I do want you there,'' Harry said, intensely enough that Draco
+actually flushed again. "I will always want you there. But the way
+Voldemort fights from now on might not always permit it, Draco. He
+fought with Death Eaters in the Woodhouse and the Midsummer battles. But
+he fought mentally when he took control of Snape's Dark Mark, and so far
+he's used proxies that are too powerful for most magical creatures to
+fight, never mind wizards who just turned seventeen. It took Jing-Xi
+\emph{and} Kanerva \emph{and} me to defeat the hive queen. Your not
+being able to help equally in that kind of battle has nothing to do with
+training or my wanting you there, and everything to do with magical
+strength. There will be some things that you just \emph{can't} do,
+because you're not Lord-level. Connor and Snape can't do them, either.
+That doesn't mean I value any of you any less. It just means that I
+don't need everyone in my life to be a Lord."
+
+Draco narrowed his eyes and swallowed, flushing further. It was a moment
+before he spoke. Harry watched him, perfectly willing to wait. If what
+he said got through to Draco and made him both stop blaming himself and
+blaming Harry, then waiting was all to the good.
+
+``I made a vow once,'' Draco whispered. ``That I wasn't going to be the
+suffering little wife, that I would come with you and not be left behind
+to wait for you like a good little boy.''
+
+``And you think that's what happens to Connor?'' Harry asked steadily.
+``Or Regulus? Or, Merlin forbid you ever say this to his face, Snape?''
+
+Draco shook his head impatiently and took a step forward. "I know it
+doesn't. But their situation is different, Harry. They can have roles in
+relation to you that aren't exactly \emph{equal}. Connor seems to have
+accepted his rather well," he added, with a touch of malice. ``But I'm
+your lover. I want sunlight love. I want to be as equal to you as I can,
+in as many aspects of our life as I can. Magical strength isn't one of
+those planes, but presence in battle is.''
+
+``Draco,'' Harry whispered, and leaned forward to kiss him. When he drew
+back, Draco looked a bit dazed, which was flattering. "I promise you, I
+love you no less, and I don't think you're weak, and there's no saying
+that I \emph{need} to leave you behind next time. Voldemort might not
+ever attack with a hive queen again, though I think he will if he can
+find one willing to risk herself for a nesting site now. But if your
+presence there distracts me and makes me less than equal to my enemies,
+surely that's a reason to remain behind?"
+
+``I fear what it would mean,'' Draco murmured, controlling himself
+rather than shouting. Harry was reluctantly impressed, despite its
+meaning he could lose the argument. ``What if it started a trend of your
+leaving me behind just because you were afraid, not because I would
+limit you? I'm afraid it would. You've always been a bit too protective
+of me, Harry, to the point of disdaining protection for yourself.''
+
+``And I am trying to get over that,'' Harry said. "I \emph{am}. But you
+also know that someone seizes you and I freeze, Draco. That has to be
+taken into consideration. Ignoring it doesn't make us equals. It makes
+us both stubborn children."
+
+Draco bit his lip and opened his mouth to argue back. Harry waited,
+curious to hear what he would say.
+
+He never did hear it, or, at least, not that exact variation of the
+argument.
+
+Alarms in his head, linked to the wards on Hogwarts, went mad. Harry
+staggered back, lifting his hands to his ears even though the sounds
+weren't physical and wouldn't be blocked out that way. He felt Draco
+catch his arm, and saw his lips move, but couldn't make out anything
+save the worried expression on his face.
+
+Harry shook his head and tore free, focusing on the shrill clanging so
+that he would know where the wards had been violated. The grounds, it
+seemed. Someone was approaching the castle from the front, from the
+direction of the Hogsmeade road.
+
+He frowned as he began to run. \emph{Stupid place for an attack. They
+should at least have come through the Forbidden Forest, and then they'd
+have some cover.}
+
+Of course, Voldemort did not always do intelligent things. And if he had
+brought another hive queen, the cover or lack of it would not matter.
+
+He tapped his wrist as he ran for the doors, speaking to McGonagall. The
+ward alarms were finally beginning to die, now that they'd made enough
+noise to \emph{wake} the dead. ``You've felt the breach, Madam?''
+
+``Not a breach.'' McGonagall's voice was strained enough to deepen
+Harry's frown. ``Harry, they have---a hostage on the lawn. Two hostages,
+as a matter of fact. One of them is Xavier Deschamps, the French Auror
+leader.'' She drew a deep breath. ``The other is Hawthorn Parkinson.''
+
+It didn't take Harry long to make the connection.
+
+Tonight was the full moon.
+
+And what would torment Hawthorn more than killing someone else as a
+werewolf without Wolfsbane? Which Voldemort would never have bothered to
+give her, of course.
+
+"\emph{Shit}," Harry breathed, and changed his direction. The Room of
+Requirement was closer to the Tower battlements than the entrance doors.
+He would step out of the school and see what he could from the top.
+
+Draco appeared beside him, and then Owen, and then Michael. Harry fought
+not to hiss that \emph{he} should have been with his mother and little
+sister. This was more important.
+
+``What is it, Harry?'' Draco asked.
+
+``Hawthorn Parkinson is out there without Wolfsbane,'' said Harry
+shortly, and then the steps to the Astronomy Tower were in front of him.
+He began to leap up them, touching his wrist to call on Laura
+Gloryflower. The majority of their winged horses were patrolling
+Cobley-by-the-Sea, the one safehouse that had been deemed secure enough
+to inhabit as yet. ``Laura? Can you hear me?''
+
+``My Lord?'' Her voice was startled, hence the slip-up in the title.
+Harry gritted his teeth and also ignored that. \emph{More important
+things in heaven and earth\ldots{}}
+
+``How soon can your horses get here?'' he asked. ``I'd like to have as
+many as possible circle in behind Hogwarts and come in for an aerial
+attack.'' It was the safest way he knew to take on a wild werewolf. The
+thestrals were closer, but Harry had no way to reach them or command
+them to rise from the Forest, not with Hawthorn, Xavier, and whichever
+Death Eaters had captured them between the castle and the Forest.
+
+``A detachment of them is coming,'' said Laura. ``My nephew Zephyr leads
+them. I sent them when it seemed as though there was little danger
+around the safehouse tonight. They may be there in an hour.''
+
+\emph{Not enough time,} Harry thought, as he came out on the top of the
+Tower and looked to the east. The sky was quivering with sunset,
+quivering with moonrise. He nodded, even though Laura couldn't see him.
+``Thank you.''
+
+``Is it in time?'' Laura asked anxiously.
+
+``It won't be.''
+
+``I could have them land, my lord, and Apparate the horses---''
+
+``Could you?'' Harry let out a harsh breath. ``Can they reappear outside
+Hogsmeade, so that they'll have a clear landing area to rise from?''
+
+"I'll tell Zephyr, \emph{vates}." Laura sounded a bit more collected
+now.
+
+``Thank you,'' Harry murmured, and cut the communication spell. The
+Gloryflower horses were his best chance, really. Jing-Xi was at home in
+China, attending to trouble there, and Kanerva had turned into the wind
+that morning and was blowing who-knew-where. There was no way of
+communicating with the hippogriffs or the thestrals. Their brooms were
+on the Quidditch Pitch, out beyond the front grounds, and the Death
+Eaters could easily destroy them as they flew. And Harry would rather
+that if anyone went in on foot against a wild werewolf whom he could not
+stand by and see hurt, it were him.
+
+Then, at last, he looked.
+
+Two masked and hooded Death Eaters he didn't recognize from their body
+shapes held Xavier. Harry thought he would have recognized \emph{him}
+even without McGonagall's more specific information from the wards. The
+way he stood, his head half-lifted as though he appreciated his enemies'
+efforts at intimidation but would not allow them to affect him, was
+unmistakable.
+
+In front of Xavier, closer to the castle, stood a man whose shape
+blurred and wavered with the form of powerful magic. Harry thought it
+was a glamour at first, but then he recognized some of the spells that
+maintained the blurring and wavering. He hissed in disgust.
+\emph{Sacrificial magic. Blood magic.}
+
+That man held a silver chain, and at the end of it crouched Hawthorn,
+naked, the chain wrapped around her neck. Harry felt a clear rage he
+hadn't known he carried spring up in him at the sight of her, especially
+when the Death Eater called up to him, cheerful and unconcerned.
+
+"Greetings, \emph{vates!} My name, currently, at least, is Sylvan
+Yaxley. I'm sure you can see the situation here. We'll turn a wild
+werewolf loose on your ally if you don't come down and accompany us
+quietly to our Lord."
+
+``I've refused before, and I will again,'' Harry answered, casting
+\emph{Sonorus} so that his voice rang out from the Tower top. Sylvan,
+who'd been facing the front doors, started and stepped back to look at
+him. Harry eyed the eastern sky again, and nodded. \emph{Allies who can
+fly are best. People Apparating and coming in on foot wouldn't get here
+before the moon rose, anyway.} ``These are the tactics of a bully. I
+will not surrender to them, and Voldemort knows that.''
+
+``Truthfully, my Lord does,'' said Sylvan, with a nod. ``He did think
+you would enjoy the show, though.''
+
+Hawthorn howled.
+
+Harry felt his heartbeat pick up at the sound. It wasn't like the
+controlled---well, relatively---sounds that werewolves under the
+influence of Wolfsbane made. This was the wild noise he hadn't heard in
+almost two years, since Fenrir Greyback died. Black and mourning and
+yearning for blood, it went ringing up the sky, and told everything less
+powerful to run and hide its head.
+
+And it was coming from Hawthorn's throat. Harry barely dared think what
+she would make of that in a human mindset, or what Pansy would have.
+
+Sylvan unhooked the silver chain from Hawthorn's neck, and leaped back.
+At the same moment, the Death Eaters holding Xavier whirled out of the
+way and drew silver blades---the better to be prepared if the werewolf
+attacked them, Harry was sure.
+
+Hawthorn's spine rippled. Harry could see the pale fawn fur flooding
+across her, obscuring her features and crooking her legs. She howled
+again and again, madder and madder, as her head shoved itself into shape
+and a tail sprang from her spine. Harry saw slashes of dirt appear in
+the grass as the great paws flailed and tore.
+
+He didn't realize he'd taken a step forward, to the edge of the
+battlements, until Draco's hand closed on his right shoulder and Owen's
+on his left.
+
+Xavier simply drew his wand, as if he knew running would do no good, as
+if he had always wanted to test his magic against a werewolf.
+
+Hawthorn started forward.
+
+And moonlight flashed off the silver sides of the Gloryflower horses as
+a first detachment came winging in over the trees and drove straight for
+Hawthorn and Xavier, their leader calling out a spell and swinging what
+looked like a whip of light.
+
+Hawthorn sprang aside from the whip, impossibly fast, impossibly
+graceful, and then turned and whirled upward. The horse---bearing Zephyr
+Gloryflower, Harry assumed---barely got out of the way in time. It did
+turn and huff out a blast of cold air that might have frozen Hawthorn's
+fur if it touched her, but it did not touch her. She landed on the other
+side with a mouthful of dirt and rose again, spitting and snarling, the
+worse-tempered for not catching anything.
+
+Harry saw two horses come down in a beautiful formation, their readers
+leaning wide from their backs, and snatch up Xavier from the ground. The
+French wizard moved as if he'd been trained for this, curling up his
+legs so that he didn't swing or dangle beneath the riders, and then slid
+onto the back of one horse when the second rider handed him off. In
+moments, they were far too high for a werewolf to leap, and thus out of
+danger.
+
+Hawthorn simply snarled at the loss of easy prey, eyed the two Death
+Eaters with silver blades, and charged Sylvan Yaxley.
+
+Even before she reached him, Harry knew she could not hurt him. That
+sacrificial blood magic, Lazuli had told him, had been specifically
+guaranteed to insure vulnerability. Her paw screamed through the air and
+stopped an inch away from him, and when Hawthorn resorted to teeth, her
+jaws clanged off his robes as if they were made of metal. That made the
+werewolf scream, a sound that caused Harry to shiver, and then she swung
+around and made for the Forbidden Forest.
+
+Harry closed his eyes and shook his head. The thought of the carnage a
+wild werewolf could cause there\ldots{}
+
+And he was currently the only one in the castle with the magic to face
+her, at least without a high chance of getting infected or killed---or
+killing Hawthorn, which would violate his family alliance oath.
+
+He made the decision to Apparate, though it tugged and tore at some of
+the castle's anti-Apparition wards. He would make that up to McGonagall
+later. Right now, wards were less important than lives.
+
+He heard Owen's and Draco's cries cut off as he leaped, and then he was
+standing on the moonlit grass, the trees close at his back, watching
+Hawthorn as she raced towards him.
+
+She was not as large as Fenrir Greyback had been, but that was not
+saying much, especially as Harry had never seen her when she wasn't
+under the influence of Wolfsbane. Her amber eyes seemed twice as large
+as they ever had, pools that reflected the moon back. Constant sounds
+came from her, like something thrashing in nets, snarls and yelps and
+growls and snaps and screams. She saw him and dropped, belly practically
+to the ground, before she leaped.
+
+Harry whirled out of the way, even as he saw the werewolf land and turn
+to stare at her left foreleg with a whimper.
+
+Harry swallowed. A shallow, bloody wound had opened on that foreleg, and
+he knew where it came from. Hawthorn had sworn a family alliance oath
+never to attack him or Connor. Of course, the werewolf instincts had
+made her do it anyway, but it seemed that the oath held even when she
+changed forms.
+
+The same oath made it impossible for Harry to hurt her. But he could
+keep her away from the magical creatures in the Forest, and he could do
+his damnedest to remove the hold Voldemort had on her mind. It had been
+partly for her importance to him that Voldemort had targeted her, after
+all, and partly for that same importance that other horrible things had
+happened to her, like the imprisonment in Tullianum.
+
+The werewolf had either felt the alliance oath's magic or was wary of an
+enemy who had hurt her from a distance in no manner she could discern.
+She still snarled, but the amber eyes fastened on him had a shred of
+what Harry supposed could be called curiosity.
+
+``Hawthorn,'' Harry said quietly, hoping against hope that this might
+get through to her, or at least leave the shadow of an echo in her mind
+when she awoke and went back to being human. ``Hawthorn Parkinson.''
+
+She whined, as if she disliked the name, and then licked at the wound on
+her foreleg, never moving her eyes from him. Harry watched taut,
+controlled power vibrate and shimmer through her muscles. The wound was
+bigger now, indicating she hadn't given up on the notion of attacking
+him. Harry tried to control his breathing. She might bleed to death
+before his eyes as long as he was here, but let him vanish and she would
+ravage the Forest.
+
+And letting his other allies destroy her would almost certainly make
+\emph{him} bleed to death, for such a betrayal of the Parkinson family.
+
+``Hawthorn,'' Harry said softly. ``Do you remember me? Can you feel
+me?'' He hesitated, then reached out and focused on the web that clouded
+her mind and roused the beast inside the pureblood witch on each night
+of the full moon. It was seething now, a dark wall of water and fire
+that wrapped around the vulnerable human emotions and entirely drowned
+them. Harry winced. Its color was black-red, like old blood and new
+blood mixed, or magma simmering beneath a crust of dried lava. And it
+felt him, and it nearly lashed to drive her forward.
+
+Harry struck at the central knot of the web, trying something he'd never
+done before: to fully unbind someone else from being a werewolf.
+
+The web screamed. For a moment, Hawthorn tossed as contradictory
+emotions lashed through her. Harry could feel the web's desire to kill,
+its fear of him, Hawthorn's human shame and disgust at what she had
+become, and the knowledge, instinctive to both wolf and witch, that
+going against him now would make its body bleed. A storm tore through
+her, and Harry could not help.
+
+Pain seared his left arm. Harry glanced down, and knew his alliance scar
+was opening. He had caused too much pain to Hawthorn, and the oath was
+treating it as a betrayal.
+
+He swallowed, and began to sing. He didn't know if the phoenix voice
+stood a chance of soothing the werewolf, but at the least it might give
+the werewolf something to focus on and rescue Hawthorn from mental
+confusion.
+
+It did. The web coalesced in its hatred of the phoenix, similar to but
+deeper than its hatred of Harry \emph{vates}, and the amber eyes
+glittered dangerously. Still it did not move forward, though; Harry
+thought the web now understood, in a dim way, the limitations of
+Hawthorn's alliance oath. Instead, the wolf turned and charged into the
+Forest.
+
+Harry's scar had stopped bleeding. He filled his limbs with magic that
+would let him keep up with Hawthorn, and ran after her.
+
+As he went, he whistled out warnings, projecting them frantically
+through the warbles of the phoenix song, doing his best to send the Many
+snakes to their burrows, the centaurs into the protection of their
+hollow, the thestrals into the air. He did not want anyone to come to
+harm because of Hawthorn, even as he could not hurt her.
+
+The werewolf howled again, and leaped over a leaning trunk between two
+stumps, and was lost to sight for a moment. Harry heard jaws clamp down,
+and a short scream, and a triumphant cry that signaled blood shed. He
+circled the stumps heavily, panting, wondering what she had killed.
+
+It was a hare, luckily, and not a magical creature, but Harry could only
+tell that from the pale fur scattered about. Already Hawthorn had so
+mangled the poor thing's body that its main color was black and red. She
+snarled at him now, deep-chested, and crouched over the hare as if
+thinking he would take her meal away. She ate it with two bites of the
+huge jaws, and ran on into the Forest.
+
+Harry ducked after her, trying to run through his choices in his head.
+He couldn't hurt Hawthorn or allow anyone else to hurt her. He might be
+able to keep her occupied for the rest of the night and keep her away
+from magical creature settlements, but he doubted it. And the
+Gloryflower horses he had been counting on not only to rescue Xavier but
+to keep Hawthorn occupied couldn't attack from above, given all the tree
+branches in the way.
+
+\emph{It will have to be a cage.}
+
+Harry took a deep breath and began to pull magic from himself, winding
+it into his hands, until they glowed like a sun and the light struck
+shadows from the trees and revealed Hawthorn's leaping hindquarters and
+tail. He formed the image of a cage in his mind that would neither hurt
+Hawthorn nor allow her to be hurt, and then lifted his hands and
+breathed on them.
+
+The light struck forward, shaped like lightning bolts but traveling even
+faster, and a moment later Harry heard a howl that abruptly cut off. He
+lurched around a log, tripped over a root, and had to catch himself,
+panting. So much magic had gone into the creation of the cage that he
+was left without the ability to pass mistily through obstacles.
+
+Then he rounded the next tree and saw it.
+
+The cage had taken form between the side of a hill and three trees, oaks
+sturdy enough to bear a great deal of damage. It shone like dawn, and
+seemed to be made of clouds that had decided to linger on earth. Now and
+then a flash of movement showed from inside it, Hawthorn hurling herself
+against the sides or lashing a paw through, but the material simply
+regrew itself wherever she managed to punch a hole, rather like shadows.
+The top was enclosed with a white cover, since Harry knew how high
+werewolves could jump.
+
+It would hold her. And no one less than Voldemort himself, or Kanerva or
+Jing-Xi, was getting through it before dawn.
+
+Harry paused a moment, panting hard, to recover, and phoenix song
+warbled from his wrist. ``What is it?'' Harry asked, tapping his left
+hand to release the spell. Whatever it was, it could not be harder than
+this; three Death Eaters, even one powerful in sacrificial magic, were
+hardly a challenge for Hogwarts's wards.
+
+``The situation at Hogwarts was only a distraction, I fear, my lord,''
+said Laura tightly. ``There is a rain falling in Cornwall that is eating
+everything alive---earth, stone, trees. Every attempt we've made to stop
+it is futile.''
+
+Harry didn't waste time berating himself or asking for more details,
+because there \emph{was} no time. He pictured Cobley-by-the-Sea and
+Apparated.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+He reappeared in the middle of a room set aside for Apparition, but
+already crowded with several of the witches and wizards who had chosen
+to enter the Black house as a sanctuary. They backed up when they saw
+him and stared at him, eyes wide.
+
+``What are you doing here?'' someone asked at last, when a breathless
+moment had passed during which they seemed to expect him to raise the
+roof or strike at them all with fire.
+
+``Trying to stop the rain,'' said Harry. He could hear it now, the sharp
+\emph{pock-pock-pock} of drops hitting the outside of the house. If it
+could eat through stone, he could see why the people inside the
+safehouse were panicking. It would reach them, if not soon. Apparating
+elsewhere was not the answer, however. They would only be at risk from
+Voldemort in the outside world again. Harry was sure that he had chosen
+Cornwall as the site of his attack because he had heard rumors of the
+safehouse and wanted to make other people feel they were never safe
+anywhere. "\emph{Stay here.} Unless it's already begun to flood the
+house." He looked towards a woman near him who was wide-eyed, but seemed
+to be the calmest of those present.
+
+She swallowed. "No, \emph{vates}," she said. ``I haven't heard anyone
+say that they've seen that.''
+
+Harry nodded, and strode to the window carved in the wall and covered
+with a heavy shimmer of wards, peering outside into the darkness.
+
+He saw the rain and its consequences almost at once. The drops were
+heavier than they should be, and colored a vivid purple that reminded
+Harry of the poison Snape had used on McGonagall; it wouldn't surprise
+him if Voldemort had managed to brew the potion and base the rain on
+that, actually. The drops impacted on the stone with hissing sounds, and
+ate holes in it like acid, holes which grew a little deeper each time.
+Where a rare plant grew on the rocks, such as moss or lichen, the rain
+had reduced it to little more than a black, smoking mess. There were
+larger shapes that Harry thought were gulls and other animals, at once
+burned and poisoned by the rain, roasted nearly black.
+
+``How long since this started?'' he asked.
+
+The witch who had spoken before swallowed with a click of her throat and
+said, "For ten minutes now, \emph{vates}."
+
+\emph{Shit. All this damage in ten minutes. Shit.}
+
+Harry didn't even want to think about the wizards---and surely the
+Muggles---who weren't under shelter. If Voldemort wanted to force the
+exposure of the magical world to the Muggles, he could hardly have
+chosen a better way. This was one of those things that the Muggles would
+have a hard time either dismissing or inventing a natural explanation
+for, and should not be left to face alone.
+
+``I am going to turn the storm,'' he said quietly. "I need you to
+\emph{stay here}, in the meantime. There's no telling how far the storm
+extends, whether it's only over Cornwall or it's spreading. Remain here.
+Do you understand?"
+
+"I'll keep them, \emph{vates}." The witch who had spoken before was
+sounding steadier by the second. Harry took another glance at her. She
+looked Indian, with dark skin and hair, and brown eyes that reminded him
+of Thomas Rhangnara. He gave her a judicious nod.
+
+``What's your name?''
+
+``Alice Flowflower.'' She leaned anxiously forward. "Do you think you'll
+be able to defeat the storm, \emph{vates}?"
+
+Harry understood why she'd asked the question. Whether he could or not,
+it would help if he could appear confident in front of a crowd about to
+panic. He nodded. ``I will.''
+
+There came sighs and mutters of relief from many people. Harry glanced
+out the window again, then closed his eyes. He could easily picture the
+sea-caves that were located in the cliff outside Cobley-by-the-Sea; they
+were the last refuges and escape holes in times of trouble for the
+people in the safehouse, even though sometimes they were drowned by the
+ocean. Since it didn't seem that the rain had succeeded in forcing its
+way through stone yet, they ought to be safe. He Apparated again.
+
+He staggered as he ended up at the lip of a cliff above the sea, which
+ran sleekly by under the influence of the full moon. Harry saw purple
+drops cascade into it, spreading brief, dark, rainbow patterns like oil
+slicks. He grimaced. He didn't want to imagine what the rain was doing
+to the ocean life, either.
+
+With the smell and sound of the spray thick in his nostrils and ears, he
+touched his wrist and spoke, ``Laura?''
+
+``Harry.'' Laura's voice was absolutely exhausted. ``We're above the
+clouds. We've been trying to dive through them, but we can't. If it
+starts eating through the stone, I don't know how we're going to rescue
+the refugees inside the safehouse.'' Her voice altered, towards a tone
+of horror. ``And we've been hearing the screaming coming up through it,
+too. Those poor Muggles\ldots{}''
+
+``Let me worry about that.'' Harry concentrated on keeping his tone
+smooth as the surface of the sea. ``I need to know something. Does the
+storm extend across Cornwall? Is it growing or shrinking?''
+
+``All across Cornwall, and spreading along the coast,'' said Laura. ``I
+know the center of it is somewhere near Cobley-by-the-Sea, but, as I
+said, there's no way that we can descend and look for it without hurting
+ourselves.''
+
+``And I told you not to worry about that.'' Harry layered his voice with
+all the calm he could. He already knew that he couldn't handle the storm
+by himself, but he knew someone who could, if she would come at his
+call. ``I will deal with it. Fly above the storm, and if it starts
+rising, go back to Hogwarts.''
+
+He ended the communication spell and stepped forward so that he stood on
+the very edge of the cave lip, before he lifted his voice. ``Kanerva!
+Kanerva Stormgale! Dark Lady, Lady of the Winds! Can you hear me?''
+
+No answer came. Harry thought for a moment of the people and animals
+that had died, and those that might still die if he could not stop the
+spread of the storm, and what would happen if Kanerva was up blowing in
+the winds around the Orkneys and refused to come back, or couldn't hear
+him.
+
+Then he tamped down the thought. He would find a way to handle the storm
+himself if he must, though it would mean lost time and lives. He would
+call until he was \emph{sure} that she would not come.
+
+``Kanerva!'' he shouted again.
+
+``Yes?''
+
+Harry started badly, and he might have slipped on the wet rock and
+fallen into the Atlantic if he hadn't grabbed at the cave wall. When he
+looked up, Kanerva stood next to him, her body more than half fuzzed
+into the wind, leaving only a shallow outline below the waist. Her blue
+eyes watched him with soft, inquiring curiosity.
+
+``Did you just appear?'' Harry asked.
+
+``I have been here all this time,'' said Kanerva. ``Did you think I
+would not want to watch such an odd storm rising?'' She nodded out the
+cave. ``It is a magical storm. Did you know that?''
+
+Harry swallowed bile. Of course, he had not imagined that once he had
+Kanerva with him, then he would have to persuade her to help.
+
+But he would have to. And he would not do it by panicking and crying,
+any more than he would have convinced the refugees in the safehouse to
+remain still if he did that, or Laura not to send her horses through the
+rain.
+
+"The storm \emph{is} unusual," he admitted. Kanerva nodded happily, her
+black hair billowing around her. Harry sighed and turned to look out of
+the cave, and fiercely refused to allow himself to think about the
+people who had probably died right that moment. ``But I fear that it's
+not a product of natural magic, Kanerva. It's a product of winds tamed
+and forced to someone else's will. And the purpose isn't even to give
+the winds something to do, but to bear the poisonous rain.'' He shot a
+look at Kanerva, who had stopped smiling. He shrugged. ``I'm sorry.''
+
+``You are lying,'' said Kanerva, a fierce frown on her face. ``Anyone
+who raises a storm must love the wind.''
+
+Harry breathed out slowly, to control the impulse to scream, and
+reminded himself, \emph{She is of the Dark, without the compassion to
+help on her own, and mad enough that yelling at her is enough to make
+her go in another direction. Be calm.} ``I'm afraid not,'' he said.
+``This is a product of Voldemort's, and the only thing he wants is to
+hurt me, and the people and land I care for.'' He forced a shrug.
+``Laura Gloryflower told me that it's centered somewhere near
+Cobley-by-the-Sea. I don't know where, as I can hardly venture out into
+the rain. But---''
+
+``I am going to see,'' Kanerva interrupted him, and then she whirled
+around and vanished.
+
+Harry used the time she was gone to extend his wards beyond the cave.
+The purple rain promptly ate through them. Harry bowed his head and
+closed his eyes, listening to the steam and hiss as the drops eating
+through the stone came ever closer.
+
+The air stirred around him. Harry opened his eyes. In front of him stood
+Kanerva, looking completely furious.
+
+"It \emph{is} caused by someone," she hissed. "She's standing holding
+her wand out above a flagon, and charming a potion to rise into the
+winds and \emph{make} them bear this kind of rain. It is unfair. Only
+natural magic should be able to make them do that, or me." She bent
+nearer Harry, frowning. ``For the sake of the winds, I must stop her.
+They might forget their freedom and become too used to being tame air
+that shifts in and out of lungs, or the control of spells.''
+
+``I---'' Harry began.
+
+``And you will help me, because you may be able to tell me who she is,
+so that I will know if she does this again,'' Kanerva told him, and
+seized him, and then blended them both into the wind.
+
+Harry heard his yelp die, and then they were \emph{blowing} out the
+entrance of the cave and up into the sky.
+
+Harry had for some reason imagined that Kanerva traveled as a single
+smooth current of wind, shouldering her way up and through the others.
+She didn't. She flung her consciousness from wind to wind, taking one
+current that was flowing in the right direction for as long as it would
+bear her, and then turning to another when that one sheared off, and
+then leaping again and again and again at a point near the cliffs where
+the air flurried and found itself manipulated by the rocks. The only
+senses left to Harry were sight and touch, and he could feel constant
+searing sensations of both heat and cold along the air that had taken
+the place of his skin, as Kanerva passed rapidly over patches of land
+that retained stored heat from the sun and those that didn't. And all
+the while, Harry could see the land flashing past, cliff and cave and
+rampart and patch of dead grass, and then they were eddying around a
+wide, broad meadow---or the remains of a meadow---and looking down on a
+glass flagon out of which came a purple steam that struck up into and
+joined the air. Harry flinched at the sensation of the potion that
+mingled with wind and made the rain, even though it couldn't hurt him
+without skin to act upon.
+
+He recognized the witch that stood over the flagon, of course. The winds
+could see through moonlight or darkness with the same facility, and
+their sight was perfect.
+
+``That's Indigena Yaxley,'' he said.
+
+``She does not learn, then,'' said Kanerva peremptorily. ``She should
+have listened to her sister's command, and not tried to command the
+winds.'' Harry found himself abruptly parted from her; her voice had
+sounded from above him, but now it came from the side, as if she had
+pushed him into another current to hover. ``I will teach her better.
+Watch.''
+
+Harry saw the winds begin to turn, including the breezes that had
+blended with the rain and carried it out into the storm. Indigena raised
+her head with a slight frown, but never stopped moving her wand in a
+circle above the glass flagon.
+
+Kanerva cackled.
+
+A moment later, a wind blew over the glass vial, and it rolled and then
+shattered on the stone. Indigena cursed, from the movement of her
+mouth---Harry could still only hear sounds that were contained within
+the wind, his voice and Kanerva's---and knelt as if she would scoop the
+poison up into a new container.
+
+There came a sound like a vast yawn, or someone sucking in breath and
+then letting it out, which Harry thought was closer to what Kanerva had
+done.
+
+Wind roared and ripped free of the circle Indigena had forced it into,
+striking down and around in dizzying movements that Harry could observe
+but hardly keep track of. Crosscurrents seized Indigena and tossed her
+up and down like a leaf, hurling her in a direction Harry thought was
+west. Her robes flapped like the edges of bird's wings and then
+vanished.
+
+``We will have a true storm,'' said Kanerva. ``A storm at sea, for the
+wind is the lover of the ocean.'' Harry heard her whistle.
+
+The winds turned, plunging like a herd of wild horses. For just a
+moment---perhaps Kanerva's Transfigured mind had brushed against his and
+lent him the image---Harry had a glimpse of the disordered harmony that
+they created together. Their whole was greater than the sum of their
+parts, an endlessly changing complexity that his brain had to fight to
+grasp even a piece of. Add to that how they joined in with the movement
+of the planet and the winds swarming over the sea and the winds on the
+other side of the world, and Harry thought that perhaps it was the study
+of the air itself and not the Dark that had driven Kanerva mad.
+
+Then they turned and streamed out over the ocean, carrying the clouds
+and the rain with them. Harry called out to Kanerva, whom he thought was
+going with the storm. ``Has the poison faded from the rain?''
+
+``In a moment,'' Kanerva's distracted, disinterested voice replied.
+``The rain will go, too. We want a storm of wind and sea and fire. Like
+the one we made when we defeated the hive queen.''
+
+Harry staggered as his human body formed around him again, and he landed
+on his knees near the shattered flagon. He hastily pulled his hand back
+from any chance of contact with the purple potion, and then cast a bolt
+of fire forward. He wanted to burn whatever remained of it, just to
+lessen the chance of it running into the rocks and emerging again in
+water.
+
+Then he glanced around. He could see no sign of Indigena.
+
+On the other hand, there were plenty of signs of the devastation that
+her rain had caused. Fist-sized holes gaped in the stone. Boulders
+looked slagged and half-melted. Harry knew he was kneeling in what
+looked like the place where a large fire had burned, but which was in
+fact the remains of grass.
+
+He closed his eyes. He did not like to see this, but someone had to see
+it---both to serve as a witness to the dead, and to have an idea of how
+large the problem was for Muggles and wizards alike.
+
+Wings scraped the air above him. Harry looked up to see a Gloryflower
+horse touching down near him. Laura was on its back, and she started to
+hop off, peering anxiously at him.
+
+Harry shook his head and held out his hand. ``I need to ride,'' he said
+quietly. ``To see what it has done. Take me up?''
+
+``My lord---''
+
+``Please.''
+
+Harry was glad that he had some practice at that calm tone which forced
+aside tears. Laura would certainly have hesitated to take him if he was
+half-hysterical and crying. As it was, she gave him a slow glance,
+nodded, and grasped his arm. Harry slid onto the horse's back behind
+her.
+
+Up they went. Harry could feel the wind pulling at the horse's wings and
+tail, making the silver body sway, but for the most part all the
+swirling air had been drawn out over the sea. He saw blue lightning leap
+and gleam, and the already lifting waves of white water. There would be
+a spectacular storm, but without the rain that had been the death of so
+many.
+
+``You said it spread along the coast,'' he murmured into Laura's ear.
+``Take me there, please.''
+
+Laura's spine stiffened, but then she sighed and cast one arm up in an
+imperious gesture. The horse soared higher, and higher, and then they
+broke through the cloud cover and into a deceptively peaceful gray
+world. Harry looked down as Laura murmured a spell that rolled the
+clouds back like a curtain.
+
+The effects of the storm could be seen as black, jagged lightning bolts
+from this height, carved ravines of destruction next to the sea, running
+roughly north, but bending to follow the bends of the coast, as Laura
+had said. Harry saw nothing moving on the cliffs they followed. He tried
+to convince himself the height had something to do with that, and
+failed.
+
+They reached a Muggle road, and Harry could see lights gleaming over
+piled husks of metal, and hear sirens. He cast a Disillusionment Charm
+on the horse, and asked Laura to descend closer.
+
+``Harry, what good will it do?'' Laura whispered. ``They are dead.''
+
+``Please.''
+
+She made the horse stoop, until they were only a few hundred feet above
+the cars, and Harry could have a better view of the accidents. It seemed
+that many of the drivers had panicked when the rain began to fall, and
+lost control of their vehicles. Harry couldn't count the number of
+twisted doors, the motionless bodies, the blood sprayed here and there
+across the pavement where the rain hadn't managed to wash it away. The
+living Muggles who walked back and forth from the cars to emergency
+vehicles barely seemed to know what to make of it, either.
+
+Harry focused on the injured and set about whispering what healing
+spells he could, \emph{Integro} to close wounds and other incantations
+that would slow the rate of bleeding. He didn't dare try more, not when
+he hadn't made a complete study of medical magic. Besides, there was
+probably delicate electrical equipment nearby that the presence of magic
+was disrupting. They had to leave.
+
+``Higher again,'' he told Laura, and up they soared.
+
+They were coming near villages and cities now, and Harry forced himself
+to look at carved-in and caved-in roofs, the blackened corpses of adults
+and children and animals who had run, the rank abysses of what had been
+gardens. In some places cars had driven into houses. In others, dazed
+survivors stood with heads lowered and feet shuffling, moving aimlessly
+back and forth. If other Muggles came up to tell them what to do, they
+blindly went and did it. Everything was stained red with blood, white
+with unconcerned moonlight, yellow with electric lights that went on
+blazing as if nothing was wrong.
+
+Harry tried to estimate how long the rain had lasted. \emph{Fifteen
+minutes? Twenty?}
+
+One thing was clear, though, the further Laura flew and the more ruin
+Harry saw. He could not keep things secret any longer. This necessitated
+a visit to the Muggle Prime Minister at the very least.
+
+\emph{And who's going to make that visit?} he wondered. \emph{The
+Minister of Magic is traditionally the one in contact with the Muggle
+government, but I doubt Juniper will go to him, and in any case he won't
+say or do the right things if he does.}
+
+\emph{It will have to be me.}
+
+\emph{Well, that's what I signed up for when I accepted this burden to
+fight Voldemort.}
+
+``You can go back now,'' he told Laura, and she turned her horse with a
+little grimace and exclamation of relief. Harry leaned his head on his
+hands and closed his eyes for a moment, gently massaging his brow.
+
+\emph{If I can find and destroy the Horcruxes---}
+
+\emph{Yet who can I ask to die for them?}
+
+When he opened his eyes and looked beneath the horse again, he had to
+wonder if there weren't people who would willingly give their lives to
+prevent things like this from happening.
+
+\emph{I am willing to die. Perhaps others are, too.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 23*: Come Into the War
+Zone}\label{chapter-23-come-into-the-war-zone}
+
+Thanks for the reviews on the last chapters!
+
+My apologies for the extreme lateness of this one. I was wrestling with
+the character portrayal of a human being who actually exists, not
+something I've had to do before. Many thanks to phangkyu, who is
+British---as I am not---for advice on portraying Tony Blair as he was
+circa July of 1997. I hope I've done him justice.
+
+\textbf{Chapter Seventeen: Come Into the War Zone}
+
+``I'm sorry, sir, but I don't think that will be possible.''
+
+Erasmus felt his spine stiffen. But he knew he could not show panic or
+even anger in front of his people, not now. Enough of them had broken
+into sobbing and crying when the news of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's
+latest attack had come to the Ministry. He made sure his face was wintry
+and turned back around. ``And why not, Obliviator?''
+
+He expected at least a show of respect, but Lethe Amarantha, the Head of
+the Obliviator Office, just raked a hand through her waist-length brown
+hair and gave him a weary look. ``Too many Muggles saw this, sir,'' she
+said flatly. ``The cameras were here before we were. We can change the
+memories of locals, but we can't possibly find everyone who saw
+this---disaster.'' A jerk of her head took in the ruin around them.
+Erasmus had noticed that she had yet to look at most of the piled cars
+and dead bodies directly. ``Even if we came up with one explanation that
+satisfied everyone here, other people would come in and investigate it,
+and we don't know what facts the Muggles have devised. Something would
+always match the story of a deadly rainfall. So, I'm sorry, sir, but I
+don't think Obliviating the memory of purple rain that ate metal and
+stone and living things will do much good.''
+
+Erasmus breathed out, and reminded himself that he needed Amarantha. The
+Obliviators were more crucial than they had ever been now, and they
+followed only her.
+
+But he would not forget that, on the eve of the greatest crisis ever to
+strike their world, she had disobeyed him and refused to even think
+about the worse consequences than the disturbance in a few Muggles'
+memories---the possible exposure of their world to them.
+
+``Then seek out anyone offering hints of a magical explanation,'' he
+ordered. ``Anyone who might have seen or overheard a true witch or
+wizard.'' Some of their people had come to gawk, of course, and might
+have been less than careful, just as they had been on that long-ago day
+when He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named fell at Godric's Hollow and they thought
+he was gone forever.
+
+Amarantha nodded, and turned, whistling two of her Obliviators to her.
+They came like obedient dogs, confirming Erasmus's perception that who
+dominated Amarantha dominated them. At one point, he had been sure she
+would not balk at anything he asked of her---she was Declared Light, and
+had broken with family tradition to do so, demonstrating her
+dedication---but it seemed that gross reality weighed more with her than
+he had anticipated.
+
+And then the idea hit him, and unfolded with surprising speed, like a
+rose charmed to grow and die in a few seconds.
+
+\emph{Harry appealed for help in guarding safehouses to the other
+Ministers, and they answered him. But what if I were to appeal for help
+in keeping the Statute of Secrecy intact? This is certainly something
+that concerns them---that should concern all of us. If a British
+wizarding world were revealed, it would be only a short time before they
+discovered our communities all over the planet. And Harry's actions have
+been reckless enough to threaten international law. Yes, they should
+care.}
+
+Erasmus turned, scanning the darkness, lit by flashes of Muggle
+emergency lightning, behind him. His secretary, a young man related to
+the Griffinsnest family, caught his eye, started, and hurried forward,
+stepping around oblivious Muggles who hadn't learned to see beneath a
+Disillusionment Charm. \emph{And thank Merlin for that,} Erasmus
+thought. \emph{The day they do is the day we can bid any safety in our
+world farewell.}
+
+``You wanted me, sir?''
+
+Erasmus nodded. ``I want you to begin drafting letters to the Ministers
+of Europe,'' he said. ``I'll prepare the translation spells for them.
+But you will need to look up appropriate phrasing for them.''
+
+The young man's face went pale, but he gulped bravely and shouldered on.
+Erasmus approved of him. ``What are they going to be about, sir?''
+
+Erasmus looked again at the long ravine the rain had carved in solid
+stone. And this had taken only a few minutes of destruction, from what
+the Aurors told him. Erasmus shook his head. If anything could expose
+their world to the Muggles, it was this. One would think Harry would
+take his duty of killing You-Know-Who more seriously, when their safety
+from the Muggles was at stake.
+
+``They should be about the International Statute of Secrecy,'' he said,
+``and preserving it for the sake of our community, against both Dark
+Lords and mad undeclared wizards alike.''
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Indigena Apparated, and then nearly collapsed. She heard a snarl in
+front of her, and quickly, shakily, lifted her head.
+
+A pale fawn werewolf crouched there, and its amber eyes seemed to
+dominate the whole of the world. Indigena fumbled for a chain around her
+neck that her Lord had given her when she Apparated back to his burrow
+and then here, feeling as if she used the last of her strength.
+
+Hawthorn roared and charged. Indigena held the silver chain up in her
+hand, though, and began to swing it around her head. It blazed with
+radiance as fierce as moonlight, and the werewolf halted and slowed,
+intimidated by either that or the presence of silver itself. She
+whimpered, turning her head away and actually becoming docile.
+
+Indigena's breathing slowed again. It seemed the potion her Lord had
+made Adalrico brew in order to make a werewolf docile just from the
+smell, a variant of Wolfsbane that didn't give them back human
+intelligence, worked after all.
+
+``Come here, Hawthorn,'' she said.
+
+The werewolf gave a low snarl, but slunk forward until her head was
+right under Indigena's fingers. Indigena slowly clenched her tendrils
+and her fingers in the pale ruff, thanking Merlin that Harry hadn't made
+the cage he'd trapped Hawthorn in proof against Apparition. Of course,
+he knew werewolves couldn't Apparate while transformed, and he probably
+thought most people would be unwilling to venture into a cage with a
+wild werewolf at all.
+
+Indigena closed her eyes and concentrated on the image of her Lord's
+burrow. Pain shuddered through her body where a tough coating of both
+skin and leaves had barely kept her from dying on the jagged rocks where
+the Dark Lady's winds had flung her. But she had to do this. It would
+not do to leave Hawthorn to be recaptured by Harry's side---and once she
+became human again, Harry even stood a chance of talking her out of her
+hatred. The Dark Lord was not going to lose a pawn like that.
+
+The darkness surrounded them, and for the barest moment Indigena was
+afraid it wouldn't work. But then the world lightened and widened, and
+Indigena opened her eyes to find them crouched in the burrow in front of
+the throne room, with Hawthorn's fur still tangled in her fingers.
+Already, though, the werewolf was whining and snapping as the effects of
+the potion wore off.
+
+``I'll take her from here, cousin.''
+
+She looked up. Oaken Yaxley stood over her, distinguishable from his
+brother by his brown eyes and the fact that he almost never smiled. He
+nodded and hooked a silver chain smeared with the same potion around
+Hawthorn's neck. The werewolf whimpered quietly as he led her away.
+Indigena simply knelt where she was, even though she knew she should
+rise and go to Voldemort---a fact only reinforced by Oaken turning
+around to add, ``Our Lord wishes to see you right away, cousin.''
+
+\emph{One more moment}, Indigena promised herself, half-closing her
+eyes. \emph{Just one, to rest and recover my strength.}
+
+Pain struck through the Dark Mark on her arm, making her open her eyes
+and jerk to her feet almost before she realized what she was doing. She
+sucked in a breath, swayed, caught herself on the wall, stopped the
+thorny rose on her wrist from trying to squirm into the dirt, and then
+went to confront her Lord.
+
+Voldemort hovered above the throne now; the presence of several new
+Death Eaters meant he could use their magic even when some of his older
+allies were out on missions. The flesh-snake was draped around his neck
+and his waist and his shoulders. Its eyes cut at Indigena like knives.
+
+``Explain why you failed.'' The voice was so deep, and so full of
+hissing, that Indigena had a hard time making out the words at first.
+
+``I failed because the Dark Lady there was too strong for me, my Lord.''
+Indigena might have made cowering excuses if she was a different kind of
+witch. But she was not, and so she remained on her feet, meeting her
+Lord's eyes, and did not flinch when the pain began to stab up her left
+arm as if she were having a heart attack. She could feel the leaves
+beneath her skin withering and dying.
+
+``That is not an excuse.''
+
+``It is the truth.''
+
+Voldemort hissed again, and this time he sounded like a kettle boiling.
+``The truth and an excuse are not the same thing, Indigena.''
+
+``I do not know if you wish me to beg for forgiveness, my Lord.''
+\emph{Keep your words simple. The truth, in this case, is.} ``I am not a
+Lady. I cannot face Stormgale and Jing-Xi on an equal level. I will do
+what I can to help you oppose Harry, but I nearly died tonight, and in
+such a situation, there is no excuse that would content you.''
+
+She blinked when she was done; she thought she hadn't meant to say all
+that. But instead of attacking her as she expected, or even calling
+someone else in to torture them in her place, as he had done with
+Adalrico, Voldemort continued to watch her.
+
+A moment later, he said, as if out of the blue, ``Who would you say the
+least valuable of my recalled Death Eaters is, Indigena?''
+
+``Feldspar,'' said Indigena, without even stopping to consider it.
+
+Voldemort laughed, a rasping sound like a snake slithering in large
+circles. ``Alas, I think I must retain him to make you happy, my dear,''
+he said, and Indigena couldn't say if he was joking or not. ``But, other
+than that? The one who has the fewest skills, who has done the least for
+us?''
+
+Indigena shook her head. ``I do not know, my Lord. Hawthorn did not
+accomplish all her missions, and has fought you, but you have said that
+she has the least chance of breaking free of her chains. Lucius Malfoy
+has done little specifically, but I know that you wish to retain him to
+hurt Draco Malfoy. Adalrico has made mistakes in potions, but you need
+his skills.''
+
+Voldemort went still as if listening to something, and then said, ``Yes,
+Indigena. You have helped me to make my decision. You are dismissed. Go
+into your chambers and remain there until I call for you.''
+
+Indigena was more than happy to accept the dismissal. Her body still
+ached as if the winds were tossing her, and scrapes had opened in her
+skin which bled a mixture of blood and green sap. She wanted nothing
+more than to lie down, smear her wounds with earth, and begin the
+healing process.
+
+And then think about the nightmare she was living in.
+
+She had watched drops of purple, poisonous rain strike the grass she
+loved, and wither it out of recognition. She had watched the same thing
+happen to animals, to people, and even to stone, which she tended to
+think of as impervious to harm. But the grass hurt the most. It had done
+no hurt. There was no possible way that her Lord could thin it opposed
+him, or even that it was a very valuable resource to his enemies, as
+Muggle machines could be.
+
+She was tired, and heartsick.
+
+But she knew there was no choice save to keep going. Flee, and her Lord
+could drag her back through the Dark Mark, and then she would not even
+have the dignity of chosen service. Or he would call a second honor debt
+upon the Yaxley family, and condemn another person to the same
+remorseless---and, Indigena feared, honorless---world that she was
+living in.
+
+She had made a decision. She was the one who had laid the bed of thorns,
+and the one who must lie in it. She could ask for no help.
+
+The only thing to do was keep going.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry knew what would happen when he walked through the entrance hall
+doors and found Draco, Snape, Connor, Peter, Henrietta, McGonagall, and
+Narcissa waiting for him with various looks of fury.
+
+The difference from many other situations like this he'd faced was that
+he didn't really care what they would say. He intended to defend his
+actions and move past them as soon as possible so that he could secure
+their help in doing what was truly important---contacting the Muggle
+Minister, for example.
+
+It could have had to do with the memories of carnage still present in
+his mind. It could have had to do with the fact that he'd just visited
+the cage in the Forest, and found Hawthorn gone, and suffered a surge of
+self-loathing at his own stupidity in not making the cage proof against
+Apparition.
+
+Whatever it was, the sight of people with arms folded simply made his
+mind go flat and blank, and his own arms fold in return. He stood
+looking at them, and wondered vaguely if anyone else was watching from
+around the corner and what he or she would think if so.
+
+Draco started, of course. Snape and McGonagall could sound sterner, but
+they didn't have Draco's passion for reprimanding Harry. ``What was the
+meaning of that, Harry?'' he demanded. "Running off into the Forest, and
+then \emph{Cornwall}, which we \emph{only} knew because Mrs. Gloryflower
+contacted us, was---"
+
+``The right thing to do,'' Harry said, and Draco actually shut up and
+paid attention to him. It was probably his tone of voice. Harry knew he
+sounded impatient, because he \emph{wanted} to sound impatient. Coaxing
+wouldn't work this time. ``I couldn't allow Hawthorn to be hurt, or hurt
+her, thanks to the family alliance oath. I was going to have the
+Gloryflower horses distract her, but that didn't work. I chased her into
+the Forest and shut her in a cage beyond harm. As it turned out, though,
+since I didn't secure the cage against Apparition, another Death Eater
+Apparated in and took her. That is what happened. What I did was what
+had to be done.''
+
+While Draco was still blinking, Snape rallied. "It was
+\emph{dangerous}," he said, hissing like grass in a high wind. ``When
+you promised to rely on us more, Harry, we did not mean only for potions
+and counsel. You are supposed to take us into battle with you, as
+well.''
+
+``Even when there was absolutely nothing you could have done?'' Harry
+inquired dryly. "When you would have wanted to kill Hawthorn, sir,
+because of your insane hatred for werewolves and because \emph{you} do
+not have an oath holding you back? When you could have done nothing to
+fend off the storm Indigena Yaxley raised, and only Lady Stormgale's
+control over the winds managed it? Oh, yes, of course. I should have
+come back for you at once, sir. That should have been my first priority,
+over \emph{lives.}"
+
+Snape's eyes narrowed. ``You could have contacted us from Cornwall,
+Harry,'' he said, with too much calm. ``Once you knew that Lady
+Stormgale was going to turn the rains.''
+
+``I had other things to think about,'' said Harry, and he could feel his
+anger unfolding slow coils in him, like the Squid shifting about under
+the lake. ``In particular, viewing the devastation and deciding on how
+to inform the Muggle Prime Minister of it.''
+
+"You \emph{cannot} expose our world to the Muggles." Henrietta took a
+step forward, as if she thought that would make Harry listen to her.
+``Not because of the International Statute of Secrecy---that is rubbish
+if you say it is, Harry.'' Harry forced himself not to glance away from
+the mad devotion shining in her eyes. ``But because of history, of what
+they did to us last time they knew of us, the persecution that caused us
+to retreat behind Disillusionment Charms and Muggle-repelling spells.''
+
+Harry shook his head. ``It's no good. They have clues, anyway. The
+revelations the Opallines are making on the Isle of Man, for instance.
+The sight of the dragon and my image in the skies battling the sirens
+only a few months back. And now---there are too many Muggles dead.
+Hundreds or thousands, in a few minutes.''
+
+``You should calm down, Harry.'' Peter now, trying the patient saint
+route. ``Think, talk with us, sleep on it---''
+
+``No.''
+
+Peter sighed. ``Harry, at the moment you are distraught, and have reason
+to be distraught. But you cannot choose to throw over the principles of
+our world in a day. If you wait---''
+
+``I will not.'' Harry shook his head when he saw the looks they were
+giving him. "I know that none of you will agree with me, that you'll try
+to talk me out of it, and that those arguments will take days, perhaps
+weeks. In the meantime, panic in the Muggle world will spread, and
+Voldemort may launch another attack that does even more damage. I know
+that not everyone cares about Muggles, or feels they should have as much
+knowledge as might guard them against this war. But do you know
+something? \emph{I} do. I \emph{do} care. And I will tell them."
+
+``Harry, if you are going blindly into danger, whether it is in Cornwall
+or London, it is up to us to tell you so,'' said McGonagall. For the
+first time in months, she sounded as if she were angry at \emph{him},
+rather than the officials from the Ministry who kept insisting that she
+shut the school.
+
+``And I do not think I am going blindly,'' Harry said. ``I do think that
+I went alone tonight because I am the only one who had the capability
+and the power to respond---as so many of you have insisted so many
+times, by telling me that I am a Lord-level wizard and worth
+something---and I will go alone to London because I am the only one who
+will not try to undermine this meeting.''
+
+"You can't \emph{do} that," said Draco furiously. Connor nodded fiercely
+behind him, looking at Harry in a way that would have made him shrivel
+up a few years ago, though he said nothing.
+
+Harry shook his head again. ``I'm not doing it to score rhetorical
+points in a debate with you. I have larger things to think about now.''
+
+``There is the matter of your safety tonight---'' Snape started, and
+Harry's gaze actually made him flinch.
+
+``I returned safely,'' Harry said. "I will be in danger in the
+\emph{future.} That should be what concerns you, if you truly care about
+my life."
+
+He swung around and left them silent and staring behind him. He could
+particularly feel Narcissa's stare. She had a habit of making her eyes
+cold and steady and sharp that reminded him of a Dementor's voice: ice
+spikes being driven into one's head.
+
+He didn't care, though---not truly. He could not care. He knew he might
+be acting alone in this case because no one shared his ideals, just as
+no one had shared his ideals when he first began the campaign to free
+the house elves.
+
+But it did not matter. If he had to be a leader who stood alone for this
+task, he would be a leader who stood alone. What mattered was what he
+accomplished and how he accomplished it, not whether he'd received his
+punishment like a good little boy.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Connor shook his head as he watched his brother leave. He'd never seen
+Harry so cold, nor so oblivious of the larger context.
+
+\emph{Doesn't he see? He's a symbol, too, the way that Lily wanted me to
+be when she still thought I was the Boy-Who-Lived. What he does has more
+impact than just saving lives. It encourages people to trust him---or
+distrust him.}
+
+The noticing that refused to go away would not let Connor be blind
+anymore, no matter how tightly Harry might close his eyes. Connor saw
+the gazes that followed him in the hall, how people swayed towards him
+when he spoke, how they talked over his decisions and his actions among
+themselves. Just as people had once felt safe when Dumbledore was
+Headmaster, when they believed he would fight Dark Lords before
+surrendering his students, now people were learning to feel safe with
+Harry.
+
+\emph{If he starts acting the way he used to---dashing into danger
+without accompaniment---they'll think he's reckless. And we don't need
+that.}
+
+He glanced around. Draco was still staring after Harry, but the others
+had turned away, departing in pairs---Peter and Snape---or as
+individuals into privacy to think about what had happened. No one would
+notice him slip away, probably, or at least Draco wouldn't know if
+Connor pretended to go to Gryffindor Tower and in reality tracked his
+brother down.
+
+That was what he did, walking out of the entrance hall shaking his head
+and muttering as if, like the others, he had not the slightest idea of
+how to deal with Harry. Once he reached the staircases, however, he
+stopped, drew his wand, and whispered, "\emph{Point Me} Harry."
+
+The length of holly and phoenix feather glittered as it turned, and
+finally pointed upwards, towards the Astronomy Tower. Connor snorted
+under his breath. \emph{Merlin knows why he likes going there so often,
+since it was the last place he fought Snape. But if he's up there, up I
+go.}
+
+It took him longer than he wanted it to, given that the staircases
+seemed determined to play more than their usual share of tricks, and
+twice stranded him in midair as they swung between floors. Connor kept
+hoping that no one else would reach Harry before him; he didn't think
+they would know the right things to say. But when he was on his way up
+the steps to the Astronomy Tower, listening intently, Connor couldn't
+hear voices from above him.
+
+He came out on the top, and Harry stood gazing moodily over the side. He
+turned when he heard his brother, but his eyes held only cold
+acknowledgment, not the recognition that Connor had been hoping for.
+
+\emph{Well, when in doubt, begin bluntly.}
+
+"You understand \emph{why} you pissed everyone off, don't you?" he
+asked.
+
+``Of course I understand.'' Harry's voice was bored, which Connor knew
+was a bad sign. ``I simply don't care.''
+
+Connor snorted and folded his arms. ``Don't care about what we think,
+Harry? Don't care about keeping yourself safe? And here I thought the
+promise you made to yourself at the beginning of the summer covered
+exactly that.''
+
+``I had no choice in what I did,'' said Harry, still with that level of
+careful, precise control Connor was unused to seeing from him. ``I
+couldn't allow Hawthorn to come to harm, and I couldn't wait for
+assurances that whoever came with me wouldn't harm her, and I couldn't
+wait and race through the school instead of Apparating. And if I'd
+lingered to argue instead of going to Cornwall, how many people would
+have died?''
+
+``I don't actually dispute that,'' said Connor, feeling his way
+carefully forward. ``I know that you felt you had to react quickly.''
+
+Harry's eyes narrowed. ``Then why are you here?''
+
+And Connor did know the way to phrase it, then. The problem with what
+they'd done in the entrance hall had been the yelling and the
+implication that they cared more about punishing Harry, or the fact he
+hadn't taken them along, than what he'd actually accomplished. And of
+course he wasn't going to listen to concerns floated in that atmosphere.
+He would only see it as their valuing his life over the lives of others,
+and that was not something Harry had ever agreed with.
+
+"Do you think it's best to make a hasty decision about seeing the Prime
+Minister \emph{now}, when you're so tired and upset?" Connor asked.
+``I'd hate to see you make a mistake because of your emotions. If only
+because you wallow in guilt and self-loathing for so long after making a
+mistake.''
+
+That won a reluctant smile from Harry, but he still shook his head.
+``It's not a mistake, Connor,'' he said. "He \emph{may} know about
+magic---I know the Minister is supposed to keep in touch with the Muggle
+government---but I don't think he does. Scrimgeour may have been in
+contact with him, but he never mentioned it. And Juniper won't do it,
+Merlin knows."
+
+``And you think that knowing magic will make a difference?'' Connor
+asked. ``How can it enable them to protect themselves from something
+like this storm you described, Harry?''
+
+``I don't know.''
+
+``Then why---''
+
+``But I don't know that much about the Muggle world,'' Harry
+interrupted. ``And neither do you, Connor. They may be able to do
+something. At the least, they may be able to prevent panic. The
+government can react more effectively if they know something about
+what's going on than if they don't.''
+
+Connor tapped his foot on the flagstones beneath them. He certainly
+wasn't as violently prejudiced against the Muggle world as someone like
+Lucius Malfoy---or Erasmus Juniper---was, but he couldn't help a frisson
+of fear at the thought that Muggles might know about wizards soon.
+
+"There are \emph{more} of them than there are of us, Harry," he said.
+``They could hurt us if they try.''
+
+Harry cocked his head. ``Did you really imagine I was going to tell him
+where to find the entrance to the Ministry, Connor, or Diagon Alley?''
+He gave a soft snort. ``That's assuming he'll even listen to me, since
+I'm not the Minister of Magic.''
+
+"What \emph{are} you going to tell him, then?"
+
+``That we're fighting a war,'' said Harry, "that this is not a natural
+disaster---though I wonder how even \emph{they} would spin this to make
+it look like one---and that his people are at risk. That's all. After
+convincing him that magic is real, of course."
+
+``It's a risky decision,'' said Connor doubtfully.
+
+Harry snorted again. "And wouldn't you want to know about a war that
+might affect you, Connor, even if you weren't fighting directly in it,
+even if there \emph{was} little you could do to protect yourself against
+it? At least it will give the government a structure and a basis to work
+with. Whether they'll tell ordinary people, I don't know. I doubt it.
+But imagine blows coming from nowhere, blows that you can't defend
+against and which have no explanation. Wouldn't that terrify you more?"
+
+``Yes, but---''
+
+``But what?''
+
+Connor shook his head. All the objections he could come up with sounded
+too much like the anti-Muggle slurs the Dark purebloods kept
+speaking---that the danger of Muggles was less than the danger of
+wizards, and why should people who couldn't do anything to help know
+anything? Except that there were plenty of wizards who couldn't do
+anything to help, either, and they knew. And if Connor didn't believe
+that wizards and Muggles were really different kinds of people, then he
+couldn't argue that there was a qualitative difference in what they
+should know.
+
+\emph{And so many wizards have been sluggish and slow to help Harry with
+anything, or even join in the war at all. They're still counting on
+Lord-level magic to save or damn them. They think they can do nothing,
+so they won't struggle forward. Isn't that pretty much the Muggle
+situation right now? Maybe the Muggle Minister can frame it so that his
+people won't panic.}
+
+``You've thought about this, haven't you,'' he accused his brother.
+
+Harry smiled a little. ``Yes. I first made the decision when looking
+down on what the rain left.'' Connor found it hard to be sure in the
+moonlight, but he thought Harry's face went gray. "There is no end to
+the death Voldemort will cause if he begins another attack like that,
+Connor. And if he stirs up the Muggles enough, the chances of an
+exposure of the wizarding world that we \emph{don't} control and can't
+predict just become greater."
+
+``You could have said this in the entrance hall,'' Connor murmured.
+
+Harry's face hardened again, and he shook his head. ``To a bunch of
+people whose major thought is punishing me? No. Approach me with
+rational arguments, the way that you did, and I'm willing to speak and
+listen. But they were speaking then as if I should feel guilty for
+protecting Hawthorn and going to Cornwall. I don't.''
+
+Connor shrugged and searched for words. ``It wasn't about punishment,''
+he said. ``Not for me. It's never been, Harry.''
+
+Harry arched an eyebrow at him.
+
+``It really isn't,'' Connor said earnestly. ``I don't want to keep you
+in line, like Snape does, or keep you in bed, the way Draco does.'' He
+could feel his face flushing red, and he hurried quickly past that
+mental image. He \emph{still} didn't want to think about his brother
+having sex. He could think of many other things with aplomb, but
+not---that. ``It just worries me when it seems that you don't consider
+your life as important as the lives of others.''
+
+``I'm trying,'' said Harry, and his voice was hard. ``But just because
+I'm trying doesn't mean it will happen in every situation, Connor. I
+decide from moment to moment, circumstance to circumstance. If the
+danger in Cornwall had been less severe, or I had more time to respond,
+then perhaps I would have let someone else come with me. But, as it was,
+I had to make the decision on the fly. And I refuse to apologize for
+that.'' He leaned forward, eyes fastened on Connor's face. ``There are
+many, many things that are more important than my life.''
+
+Connor studied his brother. He half-wanted to claim that this was
+another sign of Harry's training to value himself less than anyone else.
+
+But---
+
+He was afraid that it was just a sign of the man Harry had become after
+healing from his training, instead.
+
+He'd chosen to pursue multiple causes where he did have to believe that
+his principles were worth more than his life in order to pursue them at
+all. And the idea that other people's lives were more important than his
+could be backed up by all kinds of philosophical justifications that
+he'd mostly learned as he wove the supports for those principles in his
+mind, not from Lily.
+
+\emph{Oh, Harry,} Connor thought, understanding, as never before, what
+Draco and Snape must have been feeling when they knew his \emph{real}
+brother, before he did. \emph{I know it's important. I know that you
+wouldn't be happy unless you were doing something like this. But I wish
+you could see how hard it is for people who just want} you \emph{to be
+safe, instead of everyone innocent in the world.}
+
+He nodded. ``I think I understand. I'm sorry.''
+
+Harry nodded back, but didn't apologize. Connor could understand that,
+too. It would have been a lie.
+
+He left Harry there on the top of the Astronomy Tower, and went back to
+Gryffindor. Ron was waiting for him, propped up on one elbow in his bed.
+``Harry all right?'' he asked quietly.
+
+``Yeah.'' Connor lay down in his own bed and closed his eyes. Respecting
+the signal that he didn't want to talk, Ron turned away with a rustle of
+blankets.
+
+Connor spent some time hoping that the meeting with the Prime Minister
+went well for both Harry and the Prime Minister, and then some time
+thinking about Parvati, whose parents still wouldn't let her visit
+Hogwarts often, and then some more time slipping gently into sleep, that
+gray half-state where the worries of the day gradually grew more and
+more muffled.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry slipped gently into the office and shut the door behind him. The
+man sitting on the other side of the room looked up, murmured a name
+Harry couldn't make out, and then went back to the document he was
+reading, apparently dismissing it as the wind.
+
+Getting past Muggle security had been easier than Harry expected. It had
+turned out that \emph{Extabesco plene} worked just as well on Muggles as
+it did on wizards, and cameras and whatever other security devices they
+used couldn't pick up on traces of someone who wasn't technically in
+existence at the moment. The biggest challenge for Harry had been
+waiting for other people to pass through doors so that he could follow
+them. He didn't want to start opening doors on their own and making
+someone so jumpy he would think he had to get the Prime Minister out of
+danger.
+
+Now Harry cast a few silencing spells at the walls, since he fully
+expected the man to cry out when he revealed himself, and then another
+moment studying the Muggle. He was fairly ordinary as far as Muggles
+went, Harry supposed---young, probably not fifty yet. His face had a
+look of intent bustle that Harry thought might be innate, or perhaps
+related to the fact that he had just come into office recently and had a
+lot to deal with.
+
+\emph{Including the carnage last night,} Harry remembered with a wince,
+and the memory battered down his last objections to revealing himself to
+the man. He took a deep breath and dropped the \emph{Extabesco plene}.
+
+The Muggle looked up at once, and then half-stood, his mouth open. In
+another moment, he caught himself and slowly sat down again, his eyes
+locked on Harry and a faint smile creeping up the side of his mouth.
+
+``Hullo, sir,'' Harry said quietly.
+
+``You should know,'' said the man conversationally, ``that the British
+government does not negotiate with terrorists, young man.'' He looked
+Harry up and down. ``Even terrorists who appear to be sixteen,'' he
+added, with more of a question in his voice.
+
+\emph{Terrorists? Oh, of course. That's probably what they assume
+happened last night. And they're not far wrong. Voldemort certainly
+works by terror.} Harry decided that he might as well cut straight to
+the chase.
+
+``I'm not a terrorist,'' he said. ``My name is Harry.''
+
+``If you're not a terrorist,'' said the Prime Minister in a very level
+voice, ``would you mind, greatly, telling me what you're doing in my
+office?''
+
+``Have you ever heard of a man called Rufus Scrimgeour, sir?'' Harry
+asked. He kept his hands down and away from his body, while he used his
+will to place a locking charm on the office door. There might be a
+silent way of calling for help from inside, and Harry wanted to make
+absolutely sure they weren't interrupted.
+
+``Can't say I have,'' said the Minister. ``Odd name. Odd name. And I
+haven't heard of a `Harry' either. If this is about a pet cause of
+yours, you could have addressed it in a letter, you know, like any
+normal person.''
+
+He had a half-smile on his face and was talking in a low voice, the way
+someone might soothe a frightened horse. Harry recognized it, and had to
+grin wryly. That was the same voice he'd used to speak to the refugees
+in Cobley-by-the-Sea last night.
+
+The man---Harry remembered someone saying his name was Blair---seemed
+surprised by the smile. At least, he sat back a little and looked at
+Harry, and Harry took the chance.
+
+``Then I suppose you haven't seen magic,'' he said.
+
+Almost at once, Blair's posture altered again, though Harry wondered if
+an ordinary terrorist come to lock himself in the office with the Prime
+Minister and demand attention would have noticed. The man was really
+very good at not giving his emotions away. He had decided that Harry was
+mad, of course.
+
+``I'm generally more ready to see rabbits pulled out of hats when one
+makes an appointment,'' he said.
+
+Harry nodded. He had thought this would be the hardest part of it. He
+clasped his hands together and then drew them apart, letting strands of
+light shaped like a spiderweb splay between his palms.
+
+Blair frowned, but said, ``Mirrors. I fail to see what---''
+
+Harry blew on the light, and it detached itself from his palms and
+drifted over to hover halfway between him and Blair. Blair's hand
+twitched, as if he were ready to reach for a weapon.
+
+``I have told you---'' he began.
+
+Harry concentrated, and the light grew solid and then settled into a
+heavy metal plate. Harry had deliberately not chosen a threatening
+shape, and he had already seen a scrap of paper on the floor he could
+Transfigure. While Blair was still staring at the plate, Harry picked up
+the scrap of paper with his magic, wafted it in front of the Prime
+Minister, and transformed it into a single vivid purple flower with
+green markings, like nothing native in either the mundane or magical
+worlds. He set it carefully on the plate.
+
+The silence was eloquent.
+
+Blair simply looked at the flower and the plate. Then he sat back and
+locked his eyes on Harry's again.
+
+``There must be mirrors involved somewhere,'' he said, but his voice was
+slightly higher-pitched than it had been.
+
+``No mirrors,'' said Harry. He fought to keep his patience. He had known
+this part would be difficult; that was the whole point. ``What would
+convince you, sir? What would prove magic for you beyond a doubt,
+without the need to resort to explanations of mirrors and wires and tame
+animals up my sleeve?'' Privately, he thought changing the man into an
+animal would do it, but he wasn't practiced enough at human
+Transfiguration to attempt it. Becoming an Animagus was very different
+from forcibly changing someone else; even McGonagall did it with the
+greatest of care.
+
+``Nothing would,'' said Blair. He seemed to be getting steadier now.
+``Magic doesn't exist.''
+
+Harry frowned, but he had planned for this. He reached into his robe
+pocket, making sure that his hand motion was slow enough not to frighten
+the Minister, and drew out his shrunken Pensieve, which he enlarged with
+a quiet word and set on the desk. Watching it grew bigger certainly made
+Blair's eyes widen, but he shook his head and murmured, ``An optical
+illusion.''
+
+``The silver liquid inside is memories,'' said Harry. "Specifically,
+\emph{my} memories, of what happened last night. Will you visit them
+with me?"
+
+``And how would I do that?'' Blair now sounded as if he were humoring a
+child. Harry spent another moment studying his face, though, and could
+see the first flickers of doubt behind his eyes. Harry really had nearly
+broken through with the transformation of the paper, or perhaps the
+plate, or perhaps his entrance. Blair was trying to hold on to his
+reality, but it was being severely challenged at the moment.
+
+``Place your head inside the Pensieve.''
+
+Blair shook his head and smiled kindly at him. ``Now why would I do
+that, Mr.---do you have a surname? You only ever introduced yourself as
+Harry.''
+
+``I know,'' said Harry. ``And no, I gave up my surname when my parents
+were tried for child abuse.''
+
+The Prime Minister's eyes kindled. ``And would there be a record of this
+trial?''
+
+``Hardly,'' said Harry. ``None that you can access, at any rate.'' He
+regretted not bringing a copy of the \emph{Daily Prophet} with him, but
+Blair would likely have found some way to dismiss that, as well, even
+the moving photographs. ``Please, sir, put your head into the
+Pensieve.''
+
+``I will not---'' And then the man cut off, his eyes widening as he
+stared over Harry's shoulder.
+
+Not about to fall for one of the oldest tricks in the world, Harry
+sharpened his senses instead of turning around. He felt nothing,
+however, save a rush of magic. When he glanced back, cautiously, he
+understood what had happened. His frustration, the latest in a long
+series of emotions he'd been feeling almost without a break, had relaxed
+his control over his magic. The shadows of jungle trees glittered on the
+walls, and in every single one clung a black jaguar with green eyes, all
+of them splitting at Blair.
+
+``You---know something about lights and shadows,'' said Blair, but his
+voice was a bit more cracked and strained now.
+
+"This \emph{is} magic," said Harry quietly. He knew why Blair was so
+affected. The visions, a Muggle might be able to fake with a clever
+light show, but it was much harder to create the sensation that swirled
+around them now, magic pressing against the skin like flesh and fur,
+fire and sunlight. ``This is mine. I'm one of the most powerful wizards
+in our world, sir, and that's part of the problem. Another powerful
+wizard is opposing me, and in his hatred for me, he's striking out at
+Muggles---I'm sorry, ordinary British citizens---and wizards alike. The
+memories are in the Pensieve. Please, will you view them?''
+
+Blair hesitated again. Harry let the sensation of magic in the room grow
+stronger, and waited.
+
+The Prime Minister must have considered himself a good judge of
+character. He straightened, and nodded slightly, as if committing
+himself to the cause, consequences be damned. Then he edged forward and
+lowered his head cautiously into the silver liquid of the Pensieve.
+Harry followed.
+
+In silence, he watched as the scene from last night played out, from the
+moment of his arrival at Cobley-by-the-Sea. Most of the time, he
+observed Blair, and watched the man devour it all with sharp ears and
+eyes, from the fact that other people spoke to Harry with urgent fear
+and using unfamiliar words, to the fact that Harry called out to
+Kanerva, to the fact that he got a \emph{response}. Blair jumped when
+Kanerva appeared beside him in the memory. As he listened to her
+accented English, Harry saw one hand slowly close into a fist.
+
+\emph{He doesn't like the idea that there are more of us,} Harry
+thought. \emph{A whole world of wizards, living out beyond Britain.}
+
+He closed his eyes briefly. He had known he was taking a risk, with
+this. And turning back now was simply not a choice, not when Voldemort's
+attacks on the Muggles were likely to get larger and more destructive.
+
+Harry thought he caught the moment when the man became a true
+believer---Harry's memory of riding with Kanerva on the winds. Skipping
+from current to current, the muddled and dizzying flashes of the land
+they passed over, mingled with the sensations of heat and cold, were as
+they had passed into Harry's head, touched, perhaps, with a bit of
+Kanerva's own sensations to flesh it out and keep it from being
+overwhelming, since the Pensieve recorded what was truly \emph{there}
+and not only what one person remembered.
+
+Blair continued silent, of course, even as Kanerva disrupted Indigena's
+potion and whistled the winds out over the sea, and as the flying horses
+descended. Harry looked over during his ride above the ruins of Muggle
+villages and cities and roads, and saw him standing with head bowed and
+eyes closed.
+
+``I think I've seen enough,'' he said abruptly.
+
+Harry nodded, and tugged himself sharply backward, adding a bit of magic
+to pull Blair out when he seemed unsure how to remove himself from the
+Pensieve. Blair sat back in his chair behind the desk and closed his
+eyes, then opened them again.
+
+``I want to know more,'' he said. "How many of you are there? Where
+exactly do you live? Who is the wizard you're fighting? Why have
+\emph{you} come to me, and not some more proper representative of your
+government?"
+
+Privately, Harry was impressed with the man's ability to overcome a
+major shock like this and soldier on. ``You're dealing with me because
+our competent Minister was assassinated at the beginning of June, by the
+wizard I'm fighting, and his replacement is incompetent,'' he said. "The
+man I'm fighting is called Voldemort. He uses magic like the rain last
+night because he \emph{wants} to, to torture and kill, and because
+Muggles---ordinary humans---are nothing to him. I'm not going to give
+you complete answers to the rest. We live with and among you. We have
+pretty much since the beginning of time. I'm sure you understand why I'm
+unwilling to say more than that." He locked eyes with Blair and waited.
+
+Blair nodded tightly. "And you think that Voldemort will win this war?
+What was your \emph{purpose} in coming here?"
+
+``To warn you,'' said Harry simply. ``To make sure that one person, at
+least, had an explanation.''
+
+Blair went on gazing at him for long moments, then shook his head. "And
+you actually expect me to explain \emph{magic}?"
+
+``It's up to you what you choose to do with the information,'' Harry
+said, while privately reflecting that many things about this war would
+be a good deal easier if he believed in the rightness of using
+compulsion. "I don't know enough about the Muggle world to say what the
+best way of explaining it is. Hopefully \emph{you} should know how to
+prevent panic."
+
+``And will another attack like the one last night happen again?''
+
+``I don't know,'' Harry said, folding his arms and hoping he looked
+stern instead as if he were trying to hold himself up. The night without
+sleep and the constant roiling emotions were rather getting to him. "I'm
+trying to prevent it. Voldemort is trying a war of attrition, however,
+hoping to wear down both wizards and Muggles without losing himself. I
+\emph{do} know the way to kill him, and I hope to do it soon." He
+hesitated for a moment, then offered, "There's a prophecy that claims he
+\emph{will} die, though who will kill him is a bit unclear."
+
+``A prophecy.'' Blair closed his eyes. ``Yes, why not a prophecy? We
+have had nearly everything else.''
+
+``Prime Minister? Are you all right, sir?''
+
+``The disturbances on the Isle of Man,'' said Blair abruptly, looking
+rather alarmed. "That isn't \emph{your} lot, is it?"
+
+``Some of them,'' said Harry, feeling a vague embarrassment, even though
+as far as he knew the Opallines had only invited a few Muggles to tour
+their home, Gollrish Y Thie, the immense house shaped from the bones of
+a British Red-Gold dragon. ``Yes.''
+
+Blair appeared to be thinking furiously for a moment. ``Then they aren't
+illusions or the brilliant prank the Manx are treating it as.''
+
+``No, sir.''
+
+``I'll have to prevent writeups,'' Blair muttered savagely. ``In the
+meantime, I'd appreciate it if you could control them as much as
+possible. Managing this will be hard enough without more of you lot
+getting in the way and making us question everything we thought we
+knew.''
+
+Harry sighed. ``I'll speak to them, but I can't guarantee that it will
+do much good. They're my allies, not my slaves.''
+
+Blair opened his mouth as if to say something, then shut it. He studied
+Harry intently, but this time, Harry couldn't tell what he was thinking.
+Then he nodded. ``It's been a pleasure speaking with you, Mr. Harry,''
+he said, voice almost succeeding in convincing Harry that he didn't find
+the title ridiculous at all. ``If another magical attack happens, I
+count on you to give us warning, or at least help in dealing with it.''
+
+Harry nodded, and kept any of his feelings to himself. He \emph{had}
+rather announced himself as the spokesman for the entire British magical
+world. Blair might not receive the help he was demanding, and he knew
+it, but he would treat Harry with all the responsibility he was claiming
+to have.
+
+``Good day, sir,'' he said, and removed the locking and silencing spells
+he'd used on the room, calling the Pensieve to him and shrinking it
+again as he did so. He had just vanished behind \emph{Extabesco plene}
+when the door burst open and several people swept into the office, all
+babbling at once.
+
+``Sir, what happened? We---''
+
+``Couldn't hear you, sir! Were you---''
+
+``There's a group claiming responsibility for the attacks in Cornwall
+now, sir, say they'll have control of Parliament by sunrise---''
+
+Harry slipped out in the confusion, once they cleared the door, and took
+a deep breath as he hurried out of the Muggle building. At least he had
+a better idea where he was going, this time, since he'd found his way
+through.
+
+He'd invited the British Prime Minister into the war zone, and he wasn't
+entirely sure if he would be thankful for it later.
+
+For now, he thought it necessary, and he would do what he could to
+defend the decision, and to insure it played out well, and to live with
+the consequences if it all fell down.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 24*: I Will Take From You
+Everything}\label{chapter-24-i-will-take-from-you-everything}
+
+\textbf{Warning: Cliffhanger.}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Eighteen: I Will Take From You Everything That You Have
+Loved}
+
+``Good morning, Mother.''
+
+Narcissa lifted her eyes from behind the \emph{Daily Prophet} long
+enough to nod to Draco. ``Good morning, Draco.''
+
+Draco took a seat at the kitchen table and stared blearily at nothing
+until Narcissa slid a cup of tea in front of him. Then he drained it,
+and sat there once again staring at nothing. His mind felt like a misty
+sea full of icebergs, grinding and drifting, and he didn't know how to
+make them stop drifting or dissipate the mist. Things between himself
+and Harry had been in a state of low-level war for the past six days. He
+still thought that Harry should have used the communication spell from
+Cornwall to say that he was well, and had survived the rain, before he
+returned. He had to admit, grudgingly, that Harry was right about the
+wisdom of taking someone with him. No one else could have added much to
+Harry's success with the rain, and they would have hindered him badly
+when it came to Hawthorn.
+
+But he did worry about Harry still, and he did think that Harry was
+pulling away from relying on others again, convinced he had to do
+everything in the war himself, and he did think that the decision to
+show the wizarding world to Muggles was the wrong one. He had tried to
+explain as much to Harry last night. Harry had listened politely enough,
+but with the tightness around his nostrils that said he attributed most
+of what Draco said to love of himself and anti-Muggle prejudice. The one
+emotion he valued, the other he didn't, and even the emotion he valued
+he seemed prone to treating as something of lesser importance.
+
+Draco was in an agony of frustration, caught in a limbo between
+completely agreeing with Harry---which would be wrong, because he didn't
+\emph{want} to---and finding the words to persuade Harry to his side,
+which wouldn't come either. Harry had been extraordinarily busy with
+meetings and research the last few days, and trying to figure out where
+Voldemort would attack next, and seemed to assign their bickering a low
+priority.
+
+Well, Draco didn't.
+
+\emph{Especially with the sixth courting ritual coming up,} he thought,
+and once again drained his cup of tea. Then he blinked, and realized he
+didn't know how the tea had got there. He saw his mother putting down
+her wand, though, so he could guess.
+
+``I wonder what, specifically,'' Narcissa said, as if to the paper, ``is
+making you so unhappy, Draco. You've had arguments with Harry before.
+What makes this one different?''
+
+Draco didn't answer. He was staying with his mother in Silver-Mirror for
+now, supposedly to comfort her about the devastating loss of Lucius and
+read about wards so that he could help prepare Malfoy Manor as a
+safehouse. In reality, she comforted him more than he did her, and
+simply ignored the idea of the safehouse as gracefully as she ignored
+most things having to do with the Muggle world. She didn't even speak to
+him about Harry unless he began the conversation. Draco supposed she was
+letting him have the peace and space and time he needed to think about
+things himself, and sort them out.
+
+But now she was speaking to him about Harry, beginning the conversation.
+Draco tried to pull himself out of his misery long enough to make a
+coherent reply.
+
+``I feel as if Harry's growing further and further away from me,'' he
+said quietly, staring at the table, ``like this is one argument that we
+won't resolve. And I've told him about the courting ritual that will
+happen on his birthday, but he's simply shrugged and said that he'll be
+there when it happens, since he agreed to it. I don't think that he
+cares about me next to the war, Mother.''
+
+``He certainly does not express it in the best way,'' Narcissa said
+calmly. ``But I have been through similar situations with your father
+before, Draco.''
+
+Draco checked the impulse to stare at her. This was the most neutral way
+he'd heard her mention Lucius since the Dark Lord recalled him. He
+forced himself to stand and examine the loaf of bread on the counter, so
+that he could select which pieces he wanted for toast. ``Really?'' he
+asked, when he thought he could sound interested but not desperate.
+
+``Yes,'' said Narcissa. ``We are both very stubborn, much as you and
+Harry are, and neither of us want to admit that we are wrong in case it
+is a sign of weakness. And sometimes a duel is not appropriate.'' Draco
+imagined she was smiling when she said those words, though he knew she
+wouldn't be if he turned around and checked. ``What I did in such cases
+was to take the moral high ground. It did not matter how eloquent my
+words were. I simply told him that I still loved him, that he made me
+unhappy, but that I did not wish to make him unhappy. I insisted on a
+conversation, and if the only impression we could make on one another
+was to agree never to have that subject at the dinner table again, that
+is what we did.''
+
+Draco turned and frowned over his shoulder at her, even as he took two
+pieces of bread from the loaf. ``That sounds like playing on his guilt.
+I've used the tactic enough with Harry that I don't want to use it
+again.''
+
+Narcissa gave a small laugh, or a sound that Draco supposed might have
+been called a laugh in another woman. Her eyes shone like icicles.
+``That is not what I did to Lucius,'' she said. ``He had no guilt to
+play on. I simply told him the truth. It is unlikely that Harry realizes
+how unhappy you are, Draco, or the source of your unhappiness, or he
+would not have let you suffer this long.''
+
+``Sometimes I feel as if he doesn't value me at all,'' Draco muttered,
+scowling at the bread. "I \emph{know} that's not true, but---he makes
+promises and doesn't keep them, like deciding to rely on us, or pay
+attention to our bond even in the midst of war. And he lets people like
+Kanerva Stormgale get away with threatening me."
+
+``Then tell him that,'' said Narcissa.
+
+``I have,'' said Draco, casting a household charm he'd learned perforce
+to toast the bread, since living by the labor of house elves now felt
+odd. ``He simply insists that he does care for me.''
+
+``Ah,'' said Narcissa. ``Then you have not found the right tone. Do not
+say it as an accusation, my son. Say it as the truth, and force him to
+use Legilimency if necessary to examine your perspective. Or the spell
+you invented that puts him into a Pensieve and forces him into your
+mindset.''
+
+``But then he'll apologize, and make more promises, and promises are a
+temporary solution with him.'' Draco jabbed his wand at the bread, and
+flame nearly broke out over one piece. Draco hastily stopped that, and
+retracted his wand to the proper distance to spread the same even warmth
+all over the toast. ``I don't know what to do to make it a permanent
+solution.''
+
+``There is no permanent solution,'' said Narcissa. ``Any more than there
+was a way to stop Lucius and I from dueling for the rest of our lives,
+or make the rift that happened between us impossible.'' Her voice had
+altered, and when Draco looked at her, she appeared more as the mother
+he remembered than she had for the past two months. ``I thought your
+time with Harry had taught you more of change than that, Draco.''
+
+Draco resisted the urge to hiss or stamp his foot or do something
+childish and less than eloquent. His bread had finished toasting. He
+went to the chilled cabinet which held the butter, glad that Harry
+hadn't got around to forbidding him conveniences like that yet. ``I know
+that what he does will change,'' he said. "Freeing one magical species
+is never the same as freeing another. He's convinced me of that.
+But---isn't the whole \emph{point} of the joining ceremony so that we
+have one thing in our lives that will never alter?"
+
+``No,'' said Narcissa, and Draco flinched a bit at how stern her voice
+had become. ``Being married---or joined---is harder than being in love,
+and there are more ways of doing it, I think. You'll be together, Draco,
+but that doesn't mean endless sunshine and no arguments.''
+
+``I didn't think it meant no arguments,'' said Draco weakly, aware that
+he wasn't expressing himself well. \emph{If I was just as good at making
+speeches as Harry is, this wouldn't be a problem,} he thought in
+frustration. ``I just---I did think it meant no large rifts, I suppose.
+I can't see myself ever separating from Harry the way you separated from
+Father.''
+
+``And yet, things like this happen,'' said Narcissa. "What you must do,
+Draco, is let go of your conviction that every change is a permanent one
+and that you will be in this argument, or this joining ritual, or this
+stage of your bond, forever. Harry has accepted that, I think, which is
+why he worries less over your arguments than you do. But this is
+something that you have to come to terms with on your own. The way I
+suggested approaching Harry \emph{requires} that you truly believe the
+breach between you can be healed. Only then you will you approach him
+with some other tone than accusation or resignation that you have to
+give in to him yet again to get what you want."
+
+Draco nibbled his lip. ``And if I do think that he really is neglecting
+me, and that I shouldn't have to spend so much time asking for what I
+want?'' he asked at last.
+
+``Then say it,'' Narcissa said. "\emph{Without} whinging."
+
+Draco sighed. He was having to grow up again, and this time, he didn't
+have something like Calibrid Opalline's threat to marry Harry which
+would propel the growth for him. It had to be his own decision, his own
+intent that drove him, and the goal was harder to meet.
+
+\emph{Me alone.}
+
+He didn't know if he could do it today, he admitted, as he buttered his
+toast and then sat down to eat. But he would think on it. There were
+still a few days between now and the joining ritual. He had time to come
+to terms with what his mother suggested, and think up ways to say what
+he really wanted and which would make Harry listen to him.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``What do you think?'' Thomas asked, holding the stone up.
+
+Harry examined it, and smiled. ``I think it's perfect.''
+
+That brought a shine to Thomas's eyes that hadn't often been there since
+his wife died. ``Thank you, Harry,'' he said, and turned the stone from
+hand to hand. ``I didn't mean to make it look like a shell,'' he added
+thoughtfully. ``Or so bright. But it makes a nice counter to the gray
+stone.''
+
+Harry nodded, his eyes fastened to the tiny white scallop Thomas held,
+which glittered as if made of quartz. This was the counter to
+Voldemort's ward-draining stones, which Thomas had finally devised after
+a month of intense work. And, small as it was, it shone with power, and
+it would now be easier to create others like them and embed them in the
+walls of the safehouses.
+
+"I never tried to \emph{make} something just like this before," Thomas
+said softly, his eyes fastened on the shell. ``I mostly used my
+knowledge to learn new spells, or to help me make decisions, like
+Declaring for the Dark. I'm not sure if it's different, but it feels
+different to me.''
+
+Harry understood. As long as putting his knowledge to practical use was
+a choice, Thomas was still free from at least some of the implications
+of the war. Now it appeared to have swallowed his life as it had
+swallowed Priscilla's.
+
+Harry resisted the urge to touch him on the shoulder and say everything
+would be all right. It never would be again, not the way it would have
+been had Priscilla lived. ``How are your children?'' he asked.
+
+``Recovering,'' said Thomas. "Melissa took it hardest, but she---well,
+she knows her mother is \emph{dead}. Rose is helping with the others.
+She's always been the most adult. And Robert is going to be a
+seventh-year here. In Ravenclaw, did you know? The Headmistress had the
+Hat Sort him yesterday. He's studying. It's a way of putting aside
+grief."
+
+``And you, Thomas?''
+
+The man turned a gentle, melancholy smile on him. ``I miss her,'' he
+answered. ``But I'll live without her.''
+
+Harry opened his mouth to say something, but Thomas had turned away,
+moving towards a table on the other side of the room. He'd chosen a
+chamber in the dungeons to make his area of study, and it was already
+scattered with old, heavy tables and sturdy bookshelves. Harry was sure
+at least one Head of Slytherin House had had offices here.
+
+``I need to make sure that the scallops can hold up under pressure,'' he
+said. ``If you'd excuse me, Harry? So far, they always explode if
+someone else is in the room when I'm testing them.''
+
+Harry nodded and shut the door behind him as gently as he could. He
+wasn't sure if Thomas's claim about the shells was true or not, but it
+was a harmless lie if it wasn't, and if it would make the shells
+stronger, it would end in protecting the refugees in the safehouses more
+efficiently.
+
+He took one step up the dungeon corridor, and a wash of intense tingling
+assaulted him, as if he'd been sitting with all his limbs curled beneath
+him and they'd all gone to sleep. Harry shivered and hugged himself
+tight, leaning against the wall as he closed his eyes. The tingles
+radiated down from his scalp, along the bridge of his nose, and centered
+somewhere around his mouth. Another line moved up to join them,
+beginning at his heart and using his sternum as their route. Harry stood
+with eyes shut until the mad tingling went away.
+
+``Harry?''
+
+\emph{Just whom I don't want to speak with right now,} Harry thought,
+and opened his eyes. He knew what the sensations were perfectly
+well---his magic stirring as he approached his seventeenth
+birthday---but they always made him feel nervous and tense after they
+occurred, and Merlin knew that speaking to Draco was difficult enough
+without that. ``Draco,'' he said. ``I was just going to the Room of
+Requirement to supervise Ginny's latest dueling session.''
+
+``I want to talk to you,'' said Draco quietly.
+
+One look into his eyes, and Harry found himself swallowing his retort.
+Draco's eyes were intense, and there was no hint of petulance in the way
+he held himself, leaning slightly forward so that he could look into
+Harry's face. Talking with Ginny and watching the progress of the local
+witches and wizards as they learned---which he'd already done that
+morning, anyway---suddenly seemed much less interesting.
+
+``All right,'' he said. ``Here?''
+
+``No better place,'' said Draco. "Given that several Slytherins
+returning for next year are crowded into the common room now, and
+\emph{someone} would bring down any silencing spells we put on our
+room." Harry nodded; the few fifth- and sixth-year Slytherins whose
+parents would let them attend this term had been cautious enough to send
+them a full month early, perhaps for shelter as much as study, and they
+currently milled through the common room in search of something to do.
+Draco leaned one shoulder against the wall and looked at Harry
+thoughtfully. ``Do you know that it took me so long to settle this
+argument because I thought it would never end?''
+
+``You did?'' Harry blinked. He had \emph{known} it would end, though he
+wished it could have been earlier.
+
+``Yes,'' Draco said, and scratched the back of his neck. ``And only
+later did I realize how stupid that was. But I felt that way.'' He
+leaned forward again. ``And now I feel as if you're neglecting me,
+making other things not simply equal in importance but more important
+than our joining.''
+
+It would have been so easy to take offense---but not when Draco spoke
+frankly and in that tone, without either apologies to call on Harry's
+guilt or self-defenses of himself to spark anger. Harry nodded slowly.
+
+``I would like to know,'' Draco said, his head lifting as if he were
+putting on a show before an audience, "what you see when you look into
+the future. Not the images the room in Hogwarts showed us before the
+first joining ritual. Not anything you \emph{think} I want to hear. What
+you actually see. What does our future look like to you?"
+
+``Difficult,'' said Harry, giving Draco the same blameless honesty Draco
+had given him. ``Filled with arguments, both between us and ones where
+we stand back-to-back against the world.'' He hesitated, wondering if
+the next word he wanted to use was too soppy, but Draco's gaze drew it
+out of him. ``Unending.''
+
+Draco gave a shallow nod. ``That is what I wanted to hear, Harry,'' he
+breathed. ``And what do you need to make you remember it more often?''
+
+``You mentioning it more often,'' Harry admitted. "It \emph{is}
+something that I could lose in the chaos of the war."
+
+``I've used the Dreamer's Crown a few times now,'' said Draco, stepping
+back enough that Harry didn't feel crowded. ``Each time, it shows my
+worst decision would be badgering you about losing our bond to the war.
+And yet I continue to do it. I did it that night you came back after
+Cornwall, and even if anger and worry made me do it, I should have been
+more considerate and waited. Forgive me?''
+
+Harry blinked again. He'd never heard Draco ask for forgiveness in that
+tone of voice before. There was---not submission in it, not
+manipulation, but simple honesty.
+
+\emph{And that might be the deepest manipulation of all.}
+
+But, even if it was, Harry couldn't see himself caring. He felt far more
+interested in the resolution of this argument than he had been in the
+resolution of their last few. Then, part of the reason he had wanted to
+cover up the breach was so that he didn't have yet \emph{another} thing
+to worry about while he tried to lead this war. Now, he wanted to
+reconcile because he wanted more of Draco's presence like this in his
+life: asking for what he wanted, offering what apologies were needed and
+no more than that, reaching out of his own free will.
+
+``I do,'' he said. ``Thank you for coming to me and speaking like this,
+when you meant it.''
+
+Draco's eyes flashed as if in triumph, but he was certainly allowed to
+feel triumph when this had worked so well, Harry thought. He felt a
+delicate happiness as well, barely distinguishable from quiet
+satisfaction. If Draco had a relationship with him that was equal and
+based on free will, it meant something of his principles \emph{could}
+survive the war. He hadn't sacrificed them all with his actions so far,
+and Draco was learning to live by them because he wanted to.
+
+``Good,'' Draco said quietly. ``These last few days have been difficult
+for me, Harry. I truly had to confront the fact that everything could
+change again in a week's time, and I missed you.''
+
+``I missed you, as well,'' Harry said softly. He would give more than
+that if Draco wanted, dress it up in more elaborate words, but it was
+the truth. He wanted Draco at his side for more reasons than needing his
+emotional support in the war. He wanted Draco at his side because he
+wanted him there.
+
+``And besides,'' Draco added, with a small smile, ``it would have been
+hard to perform this next joining ritual if we were angry with each
+other.''
+
+``What a difference from February,'' Harry muttered, and then shuddered
+all over again as the tingles started, this time around his wrists, as
+if he wore iron cuffs. Draco watched in curiosity. He might have guessed
+this was happening, Harry thought, as he fought off the irritating
+sensation, but he hadn't been close enough to Harry all week to watch it
+happen.
+
+``What's that?'' Draco asked, when it subsided.
+
+``My magic,'' said Harry, as casually as he could. ``Getting ready for
+my birthday.''
+
+Draco's face altered, and suddenly he looked more like the gleeful boy
+Harry had known in second and third year, as he started discovering the
+full extent of Harry's magic. "I \emph{knew} that you wouldn't feel a
+little twitch the way you thought you would," he said. ``If nothing
+else, the magic needs to expand into different areas of your body.'' He
+wrapped an arm around Harry's waist, propelling him further down the
+hallway. ``We'll have to have a festival, you realize.''
+
+``Why?'' Harry asked plaintively. He did hope that his birthday passed
+without fuss. Not only was it the time of his next joining ritual with
+Draco, it was Connor's rise to his full power and adult status as well,
+and of course there was the research and the strategizing that had to be
+done every single day---if Voldemort didn't choose that day for an
+all-out attack, which Harry had placed high odds on. ``Draco, I don't
+want one.''
+
+Draco glanced at him intently, seeming to listen to his words instead of
+disregard them as usual. ``Harry, have you noticed the way people are
+looking at you lately?''
+
+``When I'm suffering from an attack of magic, or not?'' Harry muttered,
+arching his shoulders as a ripple moved through them.
+
+Draco rolled his eyes. ``I didn't mean your actions, prat. I meant that
+they're looking to you as a leader. They're willing to trust and follow
+you unless something spectacularly bad happens, but you can increase
+their trust with a festival like this. Give everyone something to cheer
+on, relax over, bond over. It's certainly a worthy enough occasion. You
+aren't just an ordinary seventeen-year-old wizard coming into his power,
+Harry, and in your best moments you know it. This symbolizes your having
+all the strength you can possibly command, the strength that you finally
+need to defeat Voldemort. I think people would be happy to celebrate
+that.''
+
+``I still think my full magic has broken free from its bonds,'' Harry
+argued feebly, and then bent nearly double when a pulse seemed to settle
+in his chest.
+
+Draco gave him a patient look that was still there when he straightened.
+``Do you really?'' he asked, but not as if he were interested in Harry's
+opinion. ``I promise, Harry, Connor can share this festival.''
+
+``All right, all right,'' Harry muttered. ``But I want to register my
+displeasure at the idea.''
+
+``My mother won't care,'' said Draco, his face bright. ``She's already
+been planning.''
+
+Harry gave him a glare and some vituperative mutters, but now they were
+back in a place where those mutters could actually be taken as a teasing
+complaint, and Harry was more than grateful for it.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry woke up the morning of July thirty-first, and blinked. From what
+Draco had told him about the sixth joining ritual, he was sure it would
+already have begun when he opened his eyes, but his sight still seemed
+to be normal. He sat up slowly, turning his head from side to side, and
+then bent over with a sharp gasp as pain and energy raked like claws
+down his shoulders, glittering as they seemed to open skin. He knew that
+his magic wasn't \emph{really} wounding him, which only made it harder
+to take.
+
+Draco was awake in a few minutes, laying his hand on Harry's shoulder.
+``Are you all right, Harry?''
+
+``Just---fine,'' Harry managed, around a gasp. Warmth curled around his
+neck and flowed like blood into the imaginary wounds. He had time for a
+breath of clear air, though, and a thought of worry. He really hadn't
+expected his magic to react this strongly. Why was it doing it at all?
+Would he suffer some unexpected agony when his magic fully manifested at
+the exact minute of his birth, sometime around noon?
+
+He had no idea. He knew Connor had been experiencing upsurges of his
+magic, too, in the past twenty-four hours, but nothing as acutely
+painful as this. He bowed his head, closed his eyes, and ducked beneath
+the waves of it, shoving it away and forcing himself to concentrate on
+something else, until it departed. When he opened his eyes, Draco was
+gently caressing his cheeks, staring hard at him.
+
+``It's just a sign that you're going to be an exceptionally powerful
+wizard, Harry, that's all,'' he said comfortingly.
+
+``I'm already an exceptionally powerful wizard,'' Harry muttered,
+leaning into the caressing hands. "Besides, you said it yourself: this
+isn't an \emph{increase} of one's magic. It's more like---I don't know,
+like the power finally settling into its proper place. Like a child
+growing into its limbs. And why hasn't the ritual started yet?"
+
+Draco chuckled. ``Because it starts when we kiss for the first time on
+this day.'' He leaned forward until his lips were an inch away from
+Harry's. ``Are you ready?''
+
+Harry nodded, then closed his eyes as another wave of prickly pain
+assaulted him.
+
+``You're sure?'' Draco sounded concerned. ``We can wait until you've
+manifested, Harry, if you want.''
+
+``I don't want to let this stupid thing defeat me,'' Harry said grimly.
+``Yes, Draco, come on.'' When Draco hesitated further, he opened his
+eyes and leaned forward, deliberately taking control of the kiss as he
+didn't do very often.
+
+Light broke between their lips, across their eyes, across their faces.
+Harry gasped and tried to put an arm over his eyes, but the kiss
+lingered, and he couldn't move. He \emph{could} see shades of the light,
+though: white as apple blossoms, the delicate red of blooming roses,
+green as summer leaves. All living colors, the way that Draco had warned
+him they would be.
+
+When he pulled back at last, he could hardly look at Draco for a few
+moments, but he did study the colors blazing from him.
+
+Draco's skin seemed to have turned to crystal, and he shone with piled
+fires as if they reflected from jeweled facets in him, flashes of
+diamond and sapphire and topaz. Those were his good points, Harry knew;
+the diamond light meant, among other things, a tendency to love fiercely
+and not let go of what he felt that devotion for. The sapphire was a
+tendency to plan ahead and care about his future, and the topaz the
+ability to give up things he valued for the comfort of his loved one.
+
+This was the Firing of the Virtues, which would make everyone they
+looked at today rather like a stained-glass window, setting all their
+virtues ablaze and open to sight while dimming their flaws into shadows.
+The effect would lessen after a few minutes of exposure. Draco had
+promised that he and Harry could watch the festival from a distance at
+first, so he would have a chance to get used to the colors the
+celebrants glowed before he ventured among them.
+
+Now, he squinted and opened first one eye, then the other, until the
+intensity stopped. Then he smiled wryly at Draco. ``I wish I could see
+yourself,'' he said.
+
+``The same,'' Draco whispered, and slid a hand along Harry's cheek,
+shuddering. ``I'm afraid that we don't have time for sex, though,'' he
+went on in a mournful voice. ``The festival starts in forty minutes.''
+
+``Time for a shower, though?'' Harry asked, and extended his hand, which
+to his vision was normal. One couldn't see one's own colors during the
+Firing of the Virtues.
+
+Draco brightened, and followed him willingly into the loo.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Unsurprisingly, when Draco and Narcissa had suggested the idea of a
+festival to the Headmistress---ostensibly for Harry's birthday, of
+course, but really more as an excuse for everyone inside the castle to
+celebrate and remove their minds from what lurked outside---she had
+adopted the idea. Also unsurprisingly, Draco thought, holding Harry
+around the waist as they both squinted from just beyond the entrance to
+the Great Hall, she had decorated the Great Hall as if this were a high
+day of the Light.
+
+The walls were hung with---triangles of glass, backed with other
+triangles of glass. That was the best description Draco could come up
+with for them, and he did not wish to know where McGonagall had got
+them. They each flickered with a leaping fire of some kind that sent out
+beams of honest sunlight, mingling with the sunlight that came through
+the windows.
+
+Opposite the glass triangles, what looked like large mirrors in rainbow
+hues spun on strings and reflected their light. The effect was a
+shimmering haze in the hall, with hardly one shadow left. And, of
+course, because McGonagall was keen on House unity, there were six
+points at which the crossing beams were enchanted to reflect a pair of
+House symbols shining together: a golden lion with a silver snake around
+its neck, a bronze eagle perched on the back of a yellow badger, and so
+on. It was rather sickening, but at least the long tables filled with
+food helped make up for that, Draco thought, and so did the genuinely
+cheerful voices of the refugees thronging between them.
+
+His eye fell on the one table that didn't contain food and drink, and he
+smirked. He wondered what Harry would make of it, by the time he finally
+managed to see through the light and noticed it.
+
+``Draco.'' Harry's voice, right on cue, was flat and displeased. "Did
+\emph{you} do that?"
+
+``I may have contributed,'' said Draco loftily, curling the arm further
+around Harry's waist and sweeping him into the room. ``But I in no way
+arranged for this. I suppose there were many people who just wanted to
+wish you a happy birthday, Harry. Well, you and your brother,'' he added
+fairly. One end of the large, gift-piled table held a string of presents
+for Connor.
+
+``There are too many---''
+
+``Happy birthday, Harry!'' came the chorus from many throats, all of
+them people who shone in the Firing of the Virtues, overwhelming Harry's
+objection. Harry shook his head, sighed, gave Draco a charged look, and
+moved to greet them. He looked awkward, but Draco found he didn't
+particularly care. Harry would have looked awkward in a gathering of six
+people. This was a day when he shouldn't mind being made a fuss of. He
+was finally of age, and some of the people who had looked down on him as
+a child in the past would listen to him now.
+
+Besides, other people needed this.
+
+Draco saw the way their eyes focused on Harry, and, even more
+interestingly, how their virtues flared wildly when they saw him. Harry
+might not actively encourage other people to demonstrate good behavior,
+but they did it anyway, looking up to him as a hero and an inspiration.
+What he meant to cause was perhaps ultimately less important than what
+he did cause.
+
+Draco was smug that no one else got to see Harry shining as he did,
+though. Harry was a layered bank of candles to his sight, topaz and
+emerald---self-sacrifice and consideration, which Draco knew he didn't
+have very much of himself, if any at all---and onyx, which stood for
+hard decisions made and passed. There were other colors under than
+those, but Draco had all day to gaze at them.
+
+And other people, too, he admitted grumpily, looking sideways at his
+brother-in-law, who sat with his arm around his Gryffindor girlfriend.
+Topaz there, no surprise, and rubies for courage. One thing the Firing
+of Virtues was supposed to do was remind the joining pair of the larger
+world beyond their rituals, the world they would be a part of as adults
+by the time their dance was done.
+
+It reminded Draco that other people existed and had their good points,
+yes. That didn't mean he had to like it.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+By the time it was almost noon, Harry's arm hurt from being shaken, and
+his mouth hurt from smiling---even laughing---and his hands hurt from
+opening gifts. He was starting to think his skin would hurt from
+blushing, too, any moment. So many of the gifts were helpful, such as
+books on rare potions and spells that the givers imagined might help him
+defeat Voldemort, or enchanted necklaces and blades and rings and other
+treasures that would help him move silently or see his enemy from a
+distance. Harry knew that he could at least afford to bring other people
+with him more easily now, even if his own magic would protect him more
+efficiently than the vast majority of the gifts.
+
+A few of the younger children who had come to Hogwarts for safety had
+given him books stolen from the Hogwarts Library. Harry gravely thanked
+them and promised to use the library as a storage place for them, under
+the stern eye of Madam Pince. It was a harmless enough lie, and it made
+their faces light up.
+
+Fire and light surrounded him, and he wanted badly to hide under a bed
+and never come up for air again. He was used to being in a room with at
+least one person who disliked him and thought he wasn't fulfilling his
+duty. Having this many people all focused on him, thinking of him as the
+Boy-Who-Lived and their hope, was exhausting. Add to that the ritual
+that made them shine, and the amount of goodness and inspiration in this
+room alone was enough to make Harry feel humbled.
+
+Connor had plenty of gifts to open as well, for which Harry was
+grateful. Parvati had got him something that made him flush dully and
+hide it again. Harry wasn't about to ask what that was.
+
+He knew when Connor opened Harry's gift to him, though. He stared at it
+for a moment, then threw back his head and laughed loudly enough that
+the Hall rang with it and many people glanced curiously in his
+direction.
+
+"What makes you think I \emph{need} this, you prat?" he challenged, and
+held up the set of bristles that was inside the box. They were supposed
+to attach to a broom and make it go even faster. Of course, with the
+Firebolt he had, which Harry had got him for Christmas, Connor already
+flew faster than most people, and his skill on a broom had always been
+better than the vast majority's. The gift was an insult, in a way. Harry
+had intended that.
+
+Now, Harry half-shrugged, and made his voice as innocent as possible.
+``You won your match with Slytherin last year too easily. Don't want you
+getting cocky and losing to Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw.''
+
+Connor gravely separated a quarter of the bristles from the rest, and
+threw them at his head. Then he flicked his wand, and a gift rose from
+beside him and sailed over to Harry. ``Here, then, you can open this
+next.''
+
+Harry picked it up. It was his gift from Connor, a small but fairly
+heavy box. He heard a sleek clicking from inside it, like marbles.
+Curious, he undid the lid, and blinked when a cascade of round, colored
+objects flew into the air.
+
+They \emph{were} marbles, or at least they looked like them. They
+arranged themselves in front of him, and began to sing in a high-pitched
+chorus.
+
+"\emph{When life brews you a lousy potion,}
+
+\emph{And trouble swamps you like an ocean,}
+
+\emph{Don't you dare frown,}
+
+\emph{Or say that you're down,}
+
+\emph{Because the Singing Cheerful Objects are in motion!}"
+
+Harry stared. Each marble had a smiling face painted on it, some
+wizards, some witches, and some fat figures in what were presumably
+meant to be Muggle clothes. They circled Harry's head, then fell down
+with a pattering around him and stuck to his robes, radiating warmth.
+Then they started to purr like Kneazles.
+
+``Connor, what on earth---''
+
+``For when you're not feeling that well.'' Connor shrugged, but his eyes
+were full of mirth. ``From Fred and George. Don't you like them?''
+
+The marbles purred and cuddled closer. Harry couldn't stop his laughter,
+so he didn't try.
+
+His laughter turned midway through to a choked cry, though, when the
+minute he'd been born struck and his magic began to blaze through his
+body.
+
+Harry quickly discovered he'd been wrong about this being a simple
+process. His magic headed through his body like a tide flowing up an
+estuary, rooting out small pockets of power all over and carrying them
+along in the general flood. Harry dropped his head into his arms and
+started to shake. He felt Draco's hand start to touch his back, and then
+draw away; he probably remembered that Harry hadn't been able to touch
+him when he was going through his own transition.
+
+And a transition it was. Behind the feeling like flowing water came
+fire. Harry felt warmth rake him, tenderly, from the skin down to the
+vitals. He imagined he must be blazing hard enough to hurt Draco's eyes
+by now. His power shifted around in him, and then came to rest like
+Fawkes on a perch, settling firmly into place amid the dreaming glow of
+the flames.
+
+He felt more---aware of himself than he had before. It was as if the
+barriers that he usually kept his magic behind had been lowered, but
+only for him. Now, when he looked up and blinked, he \emph{knew} what
+his magic could accomplish. He could see the trees and the deep, rich
+colors that his magic usually radiated when it was free at any time he
+wanted. He knew exactly what his power was, and what its limitations
+were.
+
+Or he thought he did. He was stunned to find himself closer to the floor
+than before, and in an unfamiliar body. He took a step forward, and what
+made the motion wasn't a hand or a foot, but a paw.
+
+Draco laughed above him, and stooped over him. Harry looked up at him
+and hissed, which didn't stop Draco from ruffling his ears. ``Your magic
+had to go somewhere, it seems, Harry,'' he said. ``You're in your
+Animagus form.''
+
+Harry shook his head uncomfortably, dislodging Draco's hand, and waved
+his tail as he called on his magic. The air chilled in front of him,
+creating a temporary mirror of ice so that he could stare at himself. He
+was a larger lynx than he had expected, his coat shining in the light of
+the Great Hall almost as red as a Weasley's hair, with shades of brown
+and fawn and straw woven in further down. His tail stood straight up
+behind him like a guard dog's. His eyes were brilliant green.
+
+Perhaps because he had changed this way, he thought, he could still see
+in color. Or were felines supposed to be able to see in color? He
+couldn't remember.
+
+``Change back now,'' Draco demanded. ``Or I'll put the cute little kitty
+on my lap and hold him there.''
+
+Harry sneezed at him in disgust, then closed his eyes and concentrated
+hard, remembering his human body, and, above all, the new feeling of the
+magic slinking through it. In moments, his body flowed and reshaped
+itself and changed, and then he was crouching on the floor, luckily
+still wearing his clothes. He stood up and swatted at his robes,
+ignoring Draco's attempt to pet him.
+
+He sat down with great dignity, ignoring the laughter and the catcalls,
+and randomly opened the first gift in front of him.
+
+It turned out to be Draco's.
+
+Harry stared at the document inside. Then he turned and stared at Draco
+in turn, who looked half-proud and half-smug, and a bit embarrassed.
+
+``I thought you couldn't access your vaults yet,'' Harry whispered.
+
+``I can't,'' said Draco cheerfully. "I haven't bought it. I just
+contacted the owner, and he agreed to send a description. If we buy
+it---well, correction, if \emph{I} buy it for \emph{you}, since it's
+supposed to be a gift, after all---then I'll ask the goblins to
+challenge the Ministry for control of my vault."
+
+Harry lifted the document out with hands that trembled. He couldn't help
+it. Knowing that Draco didn't see any problem with his fame, and in fact
+wanted him to take advantage of it more often than he did, just made the
+gift more special.
+
+It was a wizarding photograph, and a description, as Draco had said, of
+a tiny cottage somewhere out in the wilds of Wales, or maybe
+Ireland---no, definitely Wales, Harry found as he read on. It was on an
+Unplottable piece of land, and the person who owned it controlled the
+wards absolutely. No one could visit there but someone to whom the owner
+had given both verbal and written permission. All cameras, including
+wizarding ones, spontaneously failed. There were special wards to
+discourage spying artificial animals and Animagi and other magic that
+people might use to get around the wards. If Harry chose to live there,
+he would have absolute privacy.
+
+The cottage's name was Aerie, from the description. Harry smiled and
+leaned over to kiss Draco.
+
+His brother cried out then, though Harry finished the kiss before he
+turned around. He was half-eager to see if Connor would manage to assume
+his own Animagus form, a boar, but it seemed he wasn't that lucky.
+
+He did shake in Parvati's arms, leaning back with his cheeks flushed and
+his eyes, when he opened them, shining. And Harry became aware of a new
+kind of power in the room: cheerful, brash, hearty, and very, very
+Gryffindor. The only time he had felt anything like it before was the
+night that Connor had saved him from going to Voldemort. Now Connor was
+come fully into that kind of determination, that magic that said,
+``Bugger this,'' to obstacles and bulled straight through.
+
+And, of course, he had come into it fifteen minutes after Harry did,
+being fifteen minutes younger.
+
+``Welcome to adulthood, little brother,'' Harry felt free to tease, when
+Connor opened his eyes.
+
+``At least I didn't turn into a kitten,'' Connor retorted, which made
+those who could hear it laugh.
+
+Harry started to respond, but the sound of owls' wings startled him. He
+looked up, searching, and inwardly wishing that no correspondence would
+intrude on this celebration. Then he reminded himself how petulant that
+wish was. He'd had nearly two hours free of the pressure of the war.
+Surely that ought to be enough.
+
+Two owls, both gray ones, soared through the windows of the Great Hall.
+One of them made for Harry, one for Connor. Harry felt a bit sick at the
+thought of gifts from Evan Rosier.
+
+But he found, when the owl settled in front of him and held out its leg,
+that the letter bore an official Ministry seal.
+
+And it was in a black envelope.
+
+\emph{Like the letter that came for the Weasleys, about Percy,} Harry
+thought, and again Voldemort's words rang in his head.
+
+\emph{I will take from you everything that you have loved.}
+
+With somewhat nerveless fingers, Harry reached out, grasped the
+envelope, and opened it.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 25*: Intermission: An Old Debt
+Repaid}\label{chapter-25-intermission-an-old-debt-repaid}
+
+\textbf{Warning: Severe gore.}
+
+\textbf{Intermission: An Old Debt Repaid}
+
+The new wards on Tullianum hadn't really done much in the way of
+protecting the prison, Indigena thought.
+
+The problem was that the people weaving the wards did not
+\emph{understand} the earth their Ministry was built on. They conceived
+of it as emotionless, motionless rock and stone and soil, even after
+Indigena had burst in the first time by convincing her plants to grow up
+through it and the earth to bear the tendrils, vines, and flowers. They
+assumed stronger wards underground were enough.
+
+\emph{But not when one can speak to the earth,} Indigena thought. This
+time, it was even easier, as the last time she opened Tullianum she had
+still been mostly human. Now the soil felt her coming and began to reach
+out, currents of warmth traveling through the dirt, the stone rippling
+in tiny tremors that no other human would ever notice because they
+wouldn't reach the surface. They did not pull back simply because she
+willed them to, but they were ready and willing to listen to her,
+because she treated them like equals.
+
+When they learned what she wanted, they pulled back in a long, smooth
+split like a skirt tearing, and took the wards with them. The wards
+could not float in air as wards in buildings could. Here, they were
+anchored to stones and dirt, a solid medium, rather like wards
+underwater, and if their anchors parted, they perforce parted.
+
+Indigena turned and gestured down the tunnel her vines had opened behind
+her. The others followed her upwards, treating it like a mixture of
+corridor and ladder. Sylvan, Adalrico, and Hawthorn were a small force,
+but Voldemort hadn't felt the need to send a larger one. Only those with
+some need should go to Tullianum---with the exception of Indigena, who
+was doing it partially to prove to her Lord that she could lead a
+successful mission.
+
+This one was going to be successful, Indigena knew, as Hawthorn and
+Adalrico climbed out of the cracked stone floor into a silent prison.
+The wards weren't sending out alarms, and Indigena's plants, seeking
+people not inside the cells, had taken the Aurors standing guard. The
+whole of Tullianum's central corridor was a mass of dancing green
+tendrils and disturbed dirt.
+
+Indigena waited until both Hawthorn and Adalrico looked at her, and then
+nodded. ``You know what to do,'' she said. ``You have come for your
+vengeance. Go and claim it.''
+
+Adalrico closed his eyes and whispered a detection spell. A door a few
+paces away from him glowed, and Adalrico held out a ward-stone towards
+it. In moments, the protective wards were gone, and Adalrico had the
+door open with a simple \emph{Alohomora.}
+
+Inside, Pharos Starrise looked up, but only for a moment. Then his eyes
+shut, and his head tilted back so that the cords in his neck stood out,
+and his mouth opened in a silent scream as the magical weapon Adalrico
+carried exerted a punishing force that Indigena couldn't feel.
+
+Hawthorn, meanwhile, had turned towards the Aurors caught in the
+tendrils. She could not readily identify her attackers from that night
+when she'd been arrested for being a werewolf, Indigena knew, but that
+didn't matter. She would slaughter Aurors, and that would hurt the
+Ministry, and give the woman a taste of vengeance satisfied.
+
+That was the reason Voldemort had sent both of them on this mission, in
+fact: to strengthen the hold of their hatred over them by having them
+confront the objects of that hatred. By that alone, Indigena knew that
+Voldemort had decided to sacrifice Lucius Malfoy, though what he was
+going to do with him Indigena didn't know as yet.
+
+``What prisoners can we have, cousin?'' Sylvan asked her.
+
+Indigena whispered a quick detection spell of her own, and a slender
+vine, threaded through with red in all its leaves, arched itself like a
+cracking whip and struck two doors. ``Anyone but the people in those
+cells,'' she answered. ``Those are mine.''
+
+Sylvan gave her a curious glance. ``I was unaware that you hated
+anyone.''
+
+Indigena shook her head. "This is not for someone who wronged \emph{me}.
+It is the only thing I can do to make up for a helplessness I once
+felt."
+
+Her cousin nodded, and then turned, eliminated the wards on another
+cell, and pulled out the woman inside. For a moment, he cupped her
+cheeks between his hands. Indigena was unsure the woman actually saw
+him. After a few years here, with nothing to do but stare at blank walls
+for a majority of the day, most prisoners went mad.
+
+Sylvan must have found what he was looking for in her eyes, however,
+because he sighed and closed his own, half-relaxing. A series of small
+cuts opened in a circle around the sides of his face, and out of them
+came glittering spikes that shone like, and might actually be, diamond,
+for all that Indigena knew. The spikes came down and fastened in similar
+places on the woman's face. Sylvan jerked his head back, eyes still
+closed, and tugged the woman's face off like a mask.
+
+When her lipless mouth began to scream, he laid her down on the floor
+and went to work, chanting the words of a long Latin spell as he wove
+the blood magic.
+
+Indigena shook her head as she pursued her course to the first door that
+her detection spell had indicated. Sylvan and Oaken maintained their
+invulnerability through an ongoing series of unwilling sacrifices. That
+was the reason they had joined her Lord in the first place; they knew
+that, if Harry won, the world he created would not be hospitable to
+them, and he would certainly never welcome them to fight at his side.
+
+She removed the first door by the simple expedient of asking a few of
+the green tendrils in the hall to wrench it off its hinges. They did so,
+and then began tossing the door from one thicket to another, playing
+tag. Indigena smiled. They were among the most playful plants she had
+ever invented, a side effect of having the exuberance to break through
+solid stone.
+
+Inside, Lily Potter started up from her bed and stared.
+
+``Hello,'' said Indigena cheerfully. ``I suppose you know already that
+I'm a Death Eater. Indigena Yaxley. And I've come to punish you for what
+you did to Harry in the past.'' She felt a slow green satisfaction
+uncurl in her. The reason her Lord had agreed to let her have James and
+Lily was so that their deaths would hurt Harry---he would kill everyone
+Harry had ever loved, excluding his brother---but Indigena doubted that
+would really be the case. Harry \emph{had} loved his parents, but surely
+he did not now. And Indigena had wanted to do something like this ever
+since she saw Lily walk out of the courtroom with her life and illusions
+intact.
+
+``You can't,'' said Lily, as if that would stop her somehow. She seemed
+to be watching around Indigena's sides, preparing to make a run for it,
+but the playing vines filled the whole of the door. ``I've already been
+punished.''
+
+Indigena cocked her head. ``That might be true, and if that's the case,
+then you shall only have a painful death. Painful, but quick. I am not
+at home to drawn-out torture.'' She looked over her shoulder and nodded,
+and a beautiful vine crept forward, bearing a red flower that still made
+Indigena's heart swell when she looked at it. Her giant variation on the
+sundew was a shining thing. "But first, I must see if you \emph{have}
+been punished."
+
+The sundew lunged forward and wrapped its gently fringed tentacles
+around Lily before she could react, holding her motionless in a wet
+cocoon. Indigena nodded when she felt the flower's attention shift to
+her. ``Now, love.''
+
+The ordinary sundew was a predatory plant whose juices dissolved the
+insects it captured. Indigena had adapted it so that the juices sought
+another prey than flesh. They trickled into Lily's body now, climbing
+into her bloodstream and ascending swiftly to the brain.
+
+There, they raced into her thoughts and mingled with her memories.
+Indigena waited, now and then touching the sundew's stem when it
+wriggled at her for reassurance. Each sundew had to be made to respond
+to a limited range of memories, so far; it was her one regret that she
+hadn't been able to breed them so that they would work for many types of
+prey.
+
+But then, it was not as if she had cause to use them very often, either,
+since they were made to dispense justice and not vengeance.
+
+The tendrils gave a sudden and violent flex. Indigena could feel a cold
+smile working its way onto her face.
+
+``No, you have not been punished at all,'' she said softly. ``I was
+afraid not. Your death will be full of emotional pain, then. I am
+sorry,'' she added, while letting her expression show that she wasn't
+sorry at all.
+
+``I don't know what you mean,'' Lily whispered, and tears were trickling
+down her face. ``I've been punished. Let me go.''
+
+``No,'' said Indigena simply, and sent the second sundew in the hall to
+fetch James. While they waited for him, she smiled at Lily, and
+explained. "I was looking at your memories to see if you understood what
+you had done. And you did not. You've been stripped of your magic, left
+to rot here, denied contact with your children and your husband, and
+\emph{still} it's not enough. Still, you don't understand that what you
+did was wrong. So." She nodded at the sundew. ``This flower shall make
+you understand, before you die.''
+
+``You can't do that,'' Lily whispered. "You \emph{can't}."
+
+``My dear,'' said Indigena gently, "many things about me are supposedly
+impossible. And yet I survived triple-linked blood curses, and I have
+come this far into a darkness that should have destroyed me. I trust
+that you will at least leave me this contact with the possible that I
+\emph{enjoy}."
+
+She looked up as the second sundew dragged James in, flexing all over.
+Yes, he did not understand, either.
+
+"\emph{Probo memoriter,}" she whispered, and flicked her wand.
+
+Normally, the spell displayed a person's memories about a specific
+subject to the caster. But Indigena had adapted the sundews carefully,
+and at the command, they released the prepared memories into Lily and
+James's head. Her Lord had been more than glad to lend her memories of
+Harry in pain, including the graveyard and what he had seen in the boy's
+head of his past while the scar connection between them was still open.
+
+Indigena poured those images into them---and more than the images, the
+feelings behind them. She let them feel every single thing they had done
+to their son, and, through him, to their second son and to other people.
+Though this justice was mostly for Harry, Indigena had some fondness for
+Connor as well. If they could understand how they had nearly made him
+useless by spoiling him so much, then she would be even more satisfied
+than she felt right now.
+
+Of course, it would be hard to top the satisfaction she felt as she
+watched them writhe, their faces wrinkling, or as she touched the
+sundews and briefly caught a glimpse into the chaos of their minds. They
+were swirling amid black-red pain. They were face-to-face with the
+consequences of their actions, and the knowledge that those consequences
+had caused immense grief and suffering.
+
+Indigena felt no need to let up on or modify the intensity of the
+memories, even when she heard Lily screaming again. Let the silly woman
+scream. Indigena could not change time and make her fall on her knees
+uttering the cries for pardon that she \emph{should} be giving, but she
+could at least make her understand before she died. If Indigena had
+simply killed her, then it would have been a hollow victory. Lily would
+have died believing herself a martyr.
+
+She was not. Nor was she an innocent victim. Indigena had felt the
+longing to make her understand that ever since she'd gone to the
+Potters' trial in the guise of Iris Raymonds.
+
+And now she had. The sundews had stopped pouring memories. James was
+staring at the far wall with eyes that looked as if he had seen the
+world shatter into black ash and poisonous rain. And Lily's face looked
+as if she had seen the Dark Lord reign triumphant and rearisen, and the
+Dark Lord was herself.
+
+``Now you are punished,'' Indigena said softly.
+
+James turned his head away. Lily uttered a sick sound of pain, as if she
+had blood stuck in her throat.
+
+Indigena whistled.
+
+The sundews clamped down harder, and their tendrils snaked around Lily
+and James, smearing their faces with sweetness, making them breathe in
+deliberately poisoned honey. The digestive juices in the flowers
+themselves simply sensed or gave memories. The tendrils acted like those
+of an ordinary flower, attracting and then trapping their prey.
+
+Lily and James drowned behind a mask of honey, much as they had lived,
+but this time, they were aware of the rottenness that lay behind it.
+Indigena nodded as she let her sundews feast, and partially digest the
+bodies. She didn't let them have the heads. The bodies needed to be left
+recognizable.
+
+That done, the sundews slithered out after her. Indigena joined
+Hawthorn, who was covered with blood, in the hall, and Adalrico shortly
+after. He was clutching a set of fingerbones. Indigena didn't ask. She
+knew Pharos wasn't still alive, because their Lord had forbidden
+Adalrico to bring him back to the burrow as a hostage.
+
+``Where is Sylvan?'' she asked, glancing around.
+
+``Here, cousin.''
+
+Indigena turned, and saw him jogging up behind her, brushing aside ferns
+as he came. His face and hands dripped red-black gore thick as
+marmalade. His green eyes shone more brightly than they had in some
+time, and now and then he paused to chew something in his mouth. He
+nodded to her, graceful and composed even behind all the blood. ``Shall
+we go?''
+
+``We shall,'' said Indigena, and led them down again, the sundews and
+the vines slinking gracefully around her. The tendrils brought Lily's
+cell door along as a toy, partly in a reflection of Indigena's mood.
+
+She felt better than she had in some time, and convinced there could be
+justice even in darkness.
+
+\emph{Even if the recipient does not know it.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 26*: A Lock of Severed
+Hair}\label{chapter-26-a-lock-of-severed-hair}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Nineteen: A Lock of Severed Hair}
+
+Harry knew the letter by heart almost before he finished it, because the
+words seemed to find echoes in his head and rebound themselves back, as
+if his skull were made of stone.
+
+\emph{July 31st, 1997}
+
+\emph{Dear Harry} vates:
+
+\emph{This letter is to inform you of the deaths of your parents, Lily
+and James Potter, found in their cells at Tullianum this morning
+murdered by Death Eaters. They were identifiable by those parts of the
+bodies left intact, and as soon as they can be checked for traces of
+Dark magic by our Aurors, their bodies will be released to your custody.
+We here at the Ministry are sorry for your loss.}
+
+Connor made a strangled sound, and Harry looked up to see him staring at
+his own letter with a similarly strangled, twisted face. A moment later,
+he dropped his letter on the table as he tore himself free from
+Parvati's arms and \emph{ran}.
+
+Harry stood, speaking as he moved, so that no one else would think he
+had to accompany them. ``We've just received news that our parents were
+murdered,'' he told the room at large. ``Please excuse us.''
+
+He went after Connor, navigating easily by the sound of his pounding
+footsteps, the only ones in the corridor; if someone who lived in
+Hogwarts hadn't come to the festival, Harry didn't know who they were.
+Connor was making for Gryffindor Tower, but he got delayed by a trick
+step he would ordinarily have jumped over. By the time he freed his
+foot, Harry had reached him.
+
+``Harry,'' Connor whispered, turning his head away. ``Just. Leave me
+alone. I can't talk to you right now.''
+
+Harry ignored him, slipping his arms around Connor's waist and bearing
+his brother backward until he had him cuddled against his chest. His
+ears picked up the sound of footsteps following them, and he wrapped the
+\emph{Extabesco plene} around them both without a thought. He didn't
+want to be found right now, even by Draco. No one else was likely to
+understand the depth of Connor's grief.
+
+``Yes, you can,'' he said, running his fingers through his brother's
+hair. ``I know that you don't think I'm sorry they died, but I am.''
+
+``Why?'' Connor whispered. "They did horrible things to you, Harry. I
+know that, but I---I still loved them, \emph{damn them}, and I don't
+expect you to feel the same way. Just---" His arms had found their way
+around Harry's shoulders by now, and seemed determined to clutch tight,
+despite his earlier words. ``Just don't say anything bad about them, all
+right? I couldn't bear that right now.''
+
+Harry nodded against Connor's neck.
+
+``I know that you're sorry about them the way you're sorry about anyone
+dying,'' Connor whispered. ``But don't say that. Let me pretend that
+you're sorry because of who they were.''
+
+Harry tightened his clasp on his brother's back and said nothing. The
+truth was that his sorrow had more of an edge to it than that. He
+remembered Voldemort's words about taking everything he had loved from
+him too well.
+
+The \emph{only} reason Lily and James had died had been because Harry
+had loved them once, and Voldemort was determined to reap the world of
+everyone like that. They weren't prime targets. They weren't people he
+loved now. They weren't as easy to reach as innocents wandering the
+countryside; it must have taken a bit of effort to prepare the Tullianum
+raid, as a matter of fact. But Voldemort had meant it when he said
+Harry's love would doom someone else, and he was proving it.
+
+The dissatisfaction that thought created was gnawing a hole in Harry's
+heart, eating a small corner of it and rendering it scraps.
+
+\emph{Who might live, if I hadn't shown that I valued them?}
+
+For some people, of course, it was too late; Voldemort knew full well
+that Harry loved Connor and Draco and Snape and oh, so many more. But
+there might be others, further from him, whom Voldemort would consider
+targets and Harry wouldn't even think to warn. They could have lived if
+his enemy's hatred was not so cruel and so widespread, and if Harry had
+been a bit more cautious about his affection.
+
+``I didn't realize how much I hoped they would change,'' Connor
+whispered then. ``Well---James, at least. Not Lily. I'd given up hope of
+Lily. But as long as he lived, I thought there was the chance he might
+owl someday, asking to see me---us---and t ell us he was sorry, though
+of course it would never have been enough.''
+
+Harry nodded against his neck again, and wrapped his arms more tightly
+around Connor when he sagged. Then he made soft soothing, clucking,
+crooning noises, and Connor dissolved at last into helpless sobs.
+
+Harry folded up the unfortunate thoughts and put them away. Even if they
+were true, and James and Lily would have lived if Harry hadn't loved
+them, this was no time to voice it. He couldn't do anything to convince
+most of the people around him not to love him, and Connor needed support
+far more than Harry needed to say stupid things. Harry would lend his
+support through the funeral, if Connor asked him to attend, and his
+strength. It was what he did.
+
+The discontent had made a small place to lie down in his heart, but it
+could stay there. It wasn't really a new thought, after all.
+
+Harry had often wondered what his life would be like if things could
+only have changed, or, rather, remained the same---if no one had ever
+known what Lily had done to him, if he had stayed Connor's guardian.
+This wasn't even his first proof absolute that people dead now would
+have lived if he had stayed that way. It was only a newer and sharper
+version of it.
+
+SSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco had crisscrossed the hallway for the third time when he heard soft
+voices, and rounded the corner to see Harry kneeling in front of his
+brother, talking. Connor's face was a mass of tears, of course. Draco
+paused to push his worried expression into a stoic mask. He didn't care
+about Lily and James, he cared about Harry, but if Connor was actually
+grieving, he wouldn't want to see Draco's indifference.
+
+Connor's virtues were blazing especially bright now, but they were
+occluded by the burst of Harry's topaz. He said something that made
+Connor shake his head from side to side, but Draco could only make out
+the words when he got closer.
+
+``---of course I want you there. Just because you renounced their name
+doesn't mean that you renounced their blood.'' Connor had the good grace
+to hesitate, at least, and add, ``If you want to come, of course.''
+
+``I want to be there,'' Harry said, and his voice was full of such
+soothing comfort that Draco had no idea what he really felt.
+
+``Thank you, Harry.'' Connor squeezed his hand for one moment, and then
+leaned against him. Harry put his arms around him, and patted his
+shoulders twice. His eyes made Draco think about backing off. If anyone
+came looking to tease or bother Harry's little brother in the next hour,
+Draco wouldn't place a high priority on their lives.
+
+He took a cautious step forward anyway, and Harry lifted his head and
+looked at him. Draco blinked. The gaze he was receiving now wasn't one
+he'd been subjected to in a long time. Harry was evaluating him as a
+potential threat.
+
+He nodded, though, and whispered so that Connor's small gasping breaths
+almost covered his words, ``What did you want, Draco?''
+
+``Just to find you,'' said Draco. ``To make sure you were safe.''
+
+``I'm fine.''
+
+\emph{Fine, my arse,} Draco thought, but Harry's face was calm and
+closed. His eyes were the only things that challenged that impression,
+and they were full of burning wrath and fury for his brother's sake. If
+Harry grieved for his parents, if he felt their loss as a blow, Draco
+had no idea.
+
+``We'll hold the funeral as soon as we receive the bodies,'' Harry went
+on, his hand moving up and down Connor's spine the way he would soothe a
+baby. ``We're unlikely to want to linger. The funeral will be near Lux
+Aeterna. Lily's family would hardly want her body back, and James was a
+worthy heir of the Potter line at one point in his life. He should be
+laid to rest near his family.''
+
+\emph{And he sounds like he's planning a funeral for strangers,} Draco
+thought. \emph{Which might actually be the healthier reaction. Damn it.
+There's nothing I can do until I know if he needs comfort or not.}
+
+``Will I be welcome to attend?'' he asked.
+
+``That's not my decision to make.'' Harry looked down at Connor. ``What
+do you say about that, brother?''
+
+``He can come,'' Connor's voice welled out, muffled. "But not if he says
+anything bad about them. I just---I want this to be a day when they're
+laid to \emph{rest}. I don't want them as specters in our lives, of
+either cruelty or gladness."
+
+Harry nodded. ``And what about other people?''
+
+``The same conditions apply to them.''
+
+``Of course,'' said Harry, and stood, easily carrying Connor with him
+because of his magic. ``I'm going to get him to bed, Draco. You can tell
+the others that I'm fine. I'll be staying in Gryffindor Tower tonight.''
+
+``Tonight?'' Draco couldn't help asking. ``It's barely one in the
+afternoon, Harry.''
+
+``I know that,'' said Harry. ``But Connor needs rest.'' Draco realized
+only then that the sobs had become snores, and Connor appeared to have
+dropped straight into exhausted sleep, though he still clung desperately
+enough to Harry to defy that impression. ``And removing myself from him
+now would probably wake him up.''
+
+He turned and walked away. Draco licked his lips and couldn't resist one
+more call. ``Harry, are you all right?''
+
+``Fine, of course,'' Harry said. ``Why wouldn't I be, given what they
+did to me?'' And he rounded the corner and was gone.
+
+Draco shook his head slowly. That was actually the reaction he supposed
+Harry should have, if he'd given up on caring about his parents
+altogether. He would only attend the funeral and show sorrow for his
+brother's sake. He wasn't grieving, he was sorry for Connor's grief.
+
+\emph{Except that his acting is so convincing that I have no idea if
+that's what he feels, or not.}
+
+He turned to find Snape, wondering all the while what to tell him.
+Should they be concerned about Harry, or not?
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+As Harry had thought, Connor didn't wake when Harry laid him down on his
+bed, but the moment Harry adjusted his position, he stirred and fretted,
+the way he had when they were still children sleeping in one cot and
+Harry would try to leave for a lesson. Lily had taken to telling him
+those early vows, while Harry was still too young to completely
+understand them, through the bars of the cot. Harry would lie still,
+arms around Connor, and listen.
+
+He did that now, curling protectively around Connor and listening to the
+faint sounds that came through the Tower windows along with the
+sunlight. He lay there he didn't know how long, watching as the shadows
+shifted and the sunlight withered and waxed with each passage of a
+cloud. It was a warm day, at least to lie fully clothed under blankets
+and next to someone else's body heat. Harry didn't let the sweat trick
+him into releasing Connor, though. He wouldn't have let it happen if he
+were lying in the same position with Draco.
+
+\emph{Or if Draco was comforting you---}
+
+Harry cut himself off with a small shrug. He didn't think he needed the
+comfort. The major emotion he felt about the death of his parents was
+regret for the reason Voldemort had killed them. From the angle that
+Draco and Snape would see it, he certainly should feel relieved and
+proud that they were gone; they'd done so much to hurt him. Draco hadn't
+grieved even over Lucius as much as Harry had expected him to, given
+what Lucius had done to hurt the Malfoy family name before he was called
+back to Voldemort. Snape despised James and hated Lily. And Connor
+didn't expect grief of Harry, but he needed support.
+
+So it was most comfortable for everyone if he just remained the way he
+was now.
+
+Harry watched the changing sunlight, and waited for Connor to wake up.
+He expected more tears, a need for more soothing words, and some
+questions about the unfairness of life. Connor was an adult, almost, but
+he hadn't lost someone so close to him since Sirius. He would need
+reassurance that the confusion he felt was all right, that a funeral
+near Lux Aeterna was all right, that even his tears could emerge because
+it wasn't wrong to grieve for someone dead.
+
+In the meantime, Harry watched the sunlight track across the walls.
+
+SSSSSSSSSS
+
+Snape turned Harry's head slowly back and forth, peering intently into
+his eyes. Harry bore with it, his face absolutely expressionless, as it
+had been in the last few days since his parents' deaths.
+
+That wasn't to say he was welcoming Snape's Legilimency into his mind.
+Every time Snape tried, even to catch a glimpse of the emotions he was
+sure Harry must be feeling, he met a thick, choking kind of mist he
+hadn't seen before. He was sure Harry wasn't suppressing his emotions,
+because he had promised not to do it again, but he \emph{was} defending
+his thoughts.
+
+And for the last few days, he had helped his brother plan for the
+funeral, comforted Potter when he needed it, reassured those people
+frightened by the sudden appearance of such dark news in the middle of a
+festival, sent formal condolences to the Ministry on the loss of so many
+of its Aurors, commiserated with Tybalt Starrise about the death of his
+brother Pharos, and acted all the while as if this attack had only
+affected those he loved and not himself, or people he had once loved.
+
+It was quite maddening for Snape. But Harry's mask had not cracked once,
+nor shown any strain. Snape was close to having to accept that it was
+the truth, not a mask.
+
+\emph{Well, there is one thing I have not tried.} He had tried
+Legilimency on the sly, the offers of Calming Draughts and Dreamless
+Sleeping Potions, and surprising Harry when he was not with someone else
+and might let his guard down, but he had not tried simply asking him.
+
+``How are you, Harry?'' he asked, staring at him.
+
+``Fine, sir.'' Delivered with no hesitation, and no flinching. Harry
+stood, eyes locked on his, as if waiting for more questions.
+
+``How are you feeling?'' Snape pressed. He half-wanted to grimace at
+such words coming out of his own mouth, but this was
+how---normal---parents talked to their children, and all the other roads
+had dwindled into nothing.
+
+``Strong,'' Harry answered. ``And calm.''
+
+\emph{That got me exactly nowhere,} Snape realized. But he'd held Harry
+long enough. Harry was already glancing politely at the door, as if to
+remind Snape that he had a meeting to attend with his brother and a
+curator of pureblood traditions from Diagon Alley, who knew the details
+of how to arrange a formal funeral when both parents in the Potter line
+had died at once.
+
+``If you need help,'' Snape said quietly, ``you will come to me, won't
+you?''
+
+``Of course,'' said Harry, a trace of faint surprise coloring his voice,
+as if he were surprised that Snape even needed to ask such a thing.
+``You or Draco.''
+
+And then Snape had to let him leave. He half-lidded his eyes, studying
+Harry's posture and the way he walked, and could see no clues there,
+either. He hadn't been skipping meals or sleep; that, Snape knew. He had
+simply picked up his role as tower of strength and guardian as though it
+were no strain on him at all, even though Snape knew it \emph{must} be.
+
+But with no evidence, all he could do was wait until---or in
+case---Harry asked him for help.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry gave a little shake to settle the tension in his shoulders as he
+emerged from Snape's office. The way that both his guardian and Draco
+had peered at him in the last few days was getting to him. They both
+wanted something from him that Harry didn't know how to give.
+
+They wouldn't approve of his real emotions about his parents---not the
+regret, nor the dissatisfaction over the way things had fallen out and
+the yearning for them to be different. They would tell him sternly that
+his parents had been evil and deserved their deaths, or that of course
+Voldemort was only doing this to get at him and he mustn't let that
+happen. They would pile more strain on Harry than he could handle right
+now. He was doing well as things were. He wouldn't do as well if he had
+to defend and explain his emotions constantly along with everything
+else. The questions both Snape and Draco put him through were minor and
+tolerable, compared to that.
+
+He hurried his steps. Connor was meeting with the curator in an
+abandoned classroom McGonagall had let them take over, near the
+dungeons. He didn't have far to go, but he was already late.
+
+The curator, who was already speaking with Connor when Harry arrived,
+was a short man with silver hair and a long beard that reminded Harry of
+Dumbledore's. His robes were different, of course, covered with silver
+runes and symbols that proclaimed ancient heritage and his devotion to
+that ancient heritage instead of moons and stars. His name was Barnabas
+Followwell, apparently. Harry gave him a nod as he slid into the seat
+beside his brother.
+
+Followwell studied him for a moment. ``Your brother tells me that you
+have renounced your last name,'' he said.
+
+Harry, though a bit surprised the man hadn't known that before he came,
+simply nodded again.
+
+The curator sniffed. ``Then you should know that there are certain
+duties you will not be able to perform during the funeral, because you
+are not considered to be true family of the deceased.''
+
+\emph{If I'd known how much trouble renouncing my last name was going to
+cause, I would have done it in private,} Harry thought in irritation. He
+opened his mouth to explain that he'd known that and didn't mind
+refraining from those duties, but Connor actually snarled and broke in.
+
+"Then we don't \emph{want} that kind of funeral. We'll choose one that
+doesn't have these---these \emph{idiotic} tendencies saying that only
+certain people can pick up a gong or play a flute or swing a censer.
+You've already been condescending to me because my mother was
+Muggleborn. Don't you \emph{dare} start being condescending to my
+brother."
+
+Followwell blinked a bit, and pushed his small, square glasses up his
+nose. ``Young man, there is no need to be rude---''
+
+``He just lost his parents,'' said Harry, leaning forward. ``His parents
+whom he found out had abused him, and me, during the first eleven years
+of our lives. Tell me your feelings on the matter would be clear and
+uncomplicated. Sir.''
+
+After a moment, the curator nodded stiffly, and then withdrew a pouch
+from a thick braided thread around his neck. He spilled a mass of
+documents onto the table, handling them as carefully and reverently as
+if they were ancient parchments, though from what Harry saw, they were
+much likelier to be modern copies of ancient parchments. ``As your
+legacy is split between the two of you---your brother has told me about
+your being his heir, Mr. Harry---this funeral may do.'' He separated one
+scroll from the rest and handed it over.
+
+Harry picked it up and studied it. The list of customs at the top of the
+document was familiar to him, and while they were simple, they had a
+long history and were certainly profound and respectable enough. Best of
+all, this kind of funeral would allow for coffins that weren't open at
+all, which would be to their advantage. The Ministry had delivered James
+and Lily's bodies yesterday, and Harry had taken charge of them, so that
+Connor didn't have to see them. What remained of them was the size of
+his lynx form.
+
+``This will do,'' he said. ``What do you think, Connor?''
+
+``Fine,'' said Connor abruptly, without even glancing at the parchment.
+He rubbed his forehead.
+
+Recognizing the signs, Harry stood quickly and nodded at Followwell.
+``We'll ask that you deliver the instruments we need to us in three
+days' time, sir. That's when the funeral will happen.''
+
+``Wonderful.'' The man looked somewhere near happy. Harry wondered if he
+was grateful that this transaction was done, or if he simply liked using
+historical funeral customs, whether or not he liked the people involved.
+Harry suspected the latter, from the reverent way he took the parchment
+back. ``I will send them to Hogwarts---or should I use the Lux Aeterna
+direction?''
+
+``Here,'' said Harry, knowing that the man's owls wouldn't be able to
+get through the wards around Lux Aeterna. He glanced quickly at his
+brother, who was sitting with his hands clasped tightly around his head
+and muttering under his breath. ``It was a pleasure working with you,
+sir.''
+
+``A pleasure.'' Followwell nodded back, though Harry doubted he thought
+that way, and departed.
+
+Harry turned to Connor and clasped his forearms, pulling his hands away
+from his face. ``Tell me what's wrong,'' he said.
+
+``I hate feeling this way,'' Connor said, voice muffled. "Is this the
+way you felt before the trial, Harry? Thinking you should hate them more
+than you did? Unable to despise them as much as you wanted to, because
+you felt they were victims? I didn't feel they were victims then. And
+now I do. They're \emph{dead.}" He took a deep breath. ``But that
+doesn't excuse what they did before death. But it shouldn't have to, I
+should be able to feel regret for their deaths if I like. But I don't
+know why it's so strong.'' He put his head back in his arms, yanking
+hard on Harry's grip to break it. ``I hate this.''
+
+``They are dead,'' Harry whispered, and embraced him this time. ``There
+is no need to apologize, Connor. Yes, I went through that confusion, and
+I wish that I could have spared you that set of emotions forever. But
+the hatred and the pity and the regret and the grief and the guilt are
+all real. It's better that you recognize them, rather than choosing one
+and castigating yourself for feeling the others.''
+
+Connor pressed forward into the embrace and held him strongly back.
+``I'm glad that you're here, Harry,'' he whispered. ``Since Parvati's
+parents still won't let her visit me for long periods.''
+
+``I know,'' said Harry, and began to rub circles on Connor's back, which
+seemed to soothe him more than most other gestures. "And in a few days,
+Connor, this \emph{will} be over. The loss will be there, but not as
+fresh."
+
+``I'd punch anyone else if they said that,'' Connor muttered.
+``Especially Draco. But from you, it sounds all right.''
+
+Harry closed his eyes and gathered Connor closer, feeling ready to kill
+anyone who might try to hurt his brother.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+The funeral began under a gray-washed morning sky, with clouds hanging
+above the sea and letting glimpses of gold peek through. Harry watched
+the clouds sway, and wondered if the weather could have chosen a more
+perfect reflection of Connor's mood. It was better than burying their
+parents in either full rain or full sunlight.
+
+The procession began at the beach where the Potters sailed their boats
+off into the east on Midsummer morning, near the waves. Connor took a
+step forward until he stood up to his ankles in the washing water. He
+held a boat like the parchment ones in his hands, but made of carved
+cypress wood, the symbol of death. Followwell had been able to produce
+one without much trouble; he kept such symbols for all the major
+pureblood families, he had assured Harry.
+
+``The Potters came from the east on Midsummer,'' said Connor. His voice
+was soft and didn't carry far, but there wasn't a large crowd there in
+any case. Just Harry, Draco, Snape, Peter, and, standing off to one side
+and speaking very carefully to the rest of them when he did speak,
+Remus. ``I am sending this boat back into the east in memory of my
+father, and my mother, who became a Potter by her marriage. By the name
+of Helen Potter, who defeated the Firestar Lord who had loved her; by
+the name of Ebenezer Potter, who gave his life to shut the Shining Gate
+against the last of the sidhe; by the name of Mafalda Potter, who
+pursued her own life's course and damned those who damned her; I give
+them back into the sea, and trust that they will welcome them.''
+
+He breathed on the boat, then placed it in the water. For a moment, it
+bobbed, and Harry was sure that it would sink to the bottom, that it was
+too heavy with its thick wood sail. Then a breeze that hadn't been
+blowing a moment before started to blow, and the wooden sail belled like
+real cloth. Connor stepped a bit away from it as it began to move, and
+then stood with head bowed until it vanished quietly into a wave that
+opened to receive it, like a mouth. Harry bowed his head with him.
+
+Connor waded back to shore then, and flicked his wand to levitate the
+coffins. Both were for full-size bodies, though Lily and James made
+small and gore-soaked bundles in them. That didn't matter, Followwell
+had said; the coffins should honor what they had been in life, not what
+they were at the moment of death. And Connor had agreed, though Harry
+thought that was partially because his brother wanted this over with so
+badly.
+
+They made a small procession from the beach, over the hills behind it,
+across the grass to the Potter graveyard. Harry walked in silence, and
+so did the rest of them, to commemorate the silence that James and Lily
+were even now passing through. Harry did see a shadow on the grass,
+though, and when he glanced up, a large gull was keeping perfect pace
+with them, gliding like a hawk, now and then tilting its head down to
+watch them with one bright, beady eye. Harry kept expecting it to cry
+and break the solemn stillness, but it never did. He was almost sure he
+saw the hand of the northern goblins in that. They might not have cared
+greatly about the Potter line, which after all had owned one of the
+linchpins binding their web, but they could acknowledge the \emph{vates}
+who had freed them and his brother.
+
+They arrived at last at the graveyard. It didn't look like a graveyard,
+and it had actually taken Connor and Harry most of a morning to find it.
+The ground was planted with a vaguely purplish grass that Harry knew was
+magical, though its magic seemed oriented to letting it survive the cold
+wind from the North Sea. Here and there, gentle curves, so soft they
+could almost be extensions of the hills, mounded the earth. Only when
+one drew close did one notice the tiny, ship-shaped stone in the center
+of each mound, containing a name and dates, and sometimes a longer
+inscription.
+
+Followwell had prepared the stones for them, with Connor choosing the
+inscriptions. James's gave his name and dates, and the single word
+\emph{Father}, Lily's her name and dates alone.
+
+Harry came forward while Connor used his magic to open holes in the
+earth and then pile the disturbed soil off to the sides, ready to form
+the mounds when they were done here. The gull had alighted on James's
+coffin and stood there with head cocked, as if wondering what he was
+doing.
+
+Even bloodline heirs who had disowned themselves were allowed a final
+farewell. And that was what Harry intended to give. He put his hand on
+James's coffin and bowed his head. Snape and Draco's eyes burned on his
+back. Harry ignored them. What he felt about his parents' death was his
+secret and going to stay that way, and it was not as though they could
+hear what he was going to say now. James had been living, and now he was
+dead. That was worthy of respect.
+
+\emph{I wish you had been a better man,} he thought. \emph{I wish you
+had had a better life. I wish I had known you better. I wish many things
+had been different.}
+
+He stepped away, and Connor came forward to speak his part. Harry kept
+one eye on him as he moved towards Lily's coffin. Connor was composed,
+as the Potter heir had to be for this part of the ceremony, and his
+voice resembled the surface of the sea that morning: hard, but
+variegated with all sorts of contrary emotions.
+
+``We are laying my parents to rest today. I cannot claim my relationship
+to them was uncomplicated. They abused my brother and I.'' Followwell
+had said truth was best, and it seemed Connor would tell everything.
+Harry was impressed. He knew he could not have done it. "They were not
+the good people I thought they were for the first eleven years of my
+life. I will not say that does not matter.
+
+``But they are dead now, and in a manner that no one deserves to
+perish.'' Connor put his wand in his pocket and pulled out a silver
+knife, holding it to his scalp as he severed two locks of his hair. ``I
+will mourn them for the rest of my life, even if what I am mourning is
+more shadow than it is reality.'' He stepped forward, moving past Harry
+gently as he laid one lock of hair on James's coffin and one on Lily's.
+The gull watched him in interest, but didn't try to peck at the hair.
+``I shall send part of myself with them, the one remaining son of both
+their body and their blood.''
+
+He stepped back, and went to work widening the graves again. That left
+Harry to face Lily's coffin.
+
+Harry studied it in silence. The box was plain, dark wood with
+anti-rotting spells worked into the frame, and silver clasps. He knew
+what lay inside it. He had seen the shadow of the skull and the severed
+neck against the wrapping.
+
+\emph{Part of my life lies there, too.}
+
+It did, Harry thought, and, for just this moment, he would face it and
+admit it, and ignore the thoughts of what Snape and Draco would say
+about it. Snape and Draco had no right to dictate his emotions, or his
+response to what had happened.
+
+\emph{She understood me in a way that no one else ever has. She was the
+first to give me a vision of the future. She was the first to teach me
+about sacrifice, about compassion, about what the world meant and that
+there were more people in it than just me. And whether anyone wants to
+admit it or not, she's part of the reason that I am who I am, and part
+of the reason that good as well as bad things happened---even if she
+never intended the good things. To deny that is tantamount to denying
+myself.}
+
+\emph{Goodbye---}
+
+And for a moment, the world seemed to turn bright and hard as diamond.
+The gull cocked its head to watch him in turn.
+
+But Harry couldn't do it, in the end. He could not give her back the
+name of ``Mother'' she had so efficiently stripped from herself.
+
+\emph{Goodbye, Lily. Would that I could mourn you more.}
+
+"\emph{Diffindo}," he whispered, concentrating, and a lock of hair
+dropped from his head into his hand. He laid it on the coffin next to
+Connor's. He refused to look and see if anyone was watching him and
+gaping. What he felt for his parents was \emph{his}, to guard and lock
+away if he wished, and to refuse to explain.
+
+He did not truly believe that his parents would have much existence
+beyond the grave, not if they did not become ghosts. The world of
+spirits was so bewildering that even what little necromantic magic he'd
+studied, to free thestrals, gave contradictory reports. He was sending
+the hair not to accompany Lily on any journey, but in token and sign of
+what would never come back.
+
+Connor lifted the coffins carefully, James first, then Lily, and lowered
+them into their graves. The gull stayed until the last moment, then took
+flight, crying loudly, over their heads. Harry saw more than one person
+start at that, but he tilted his head back and watched it soar into the
+multi-colored sky, gaining height with each beat of its wings.
+
+``James Potter is passed,'' said Connor, and from the sound of it, he
+was fighting tears. "Lily Potter is passed. \emph{Ave morti.}"
+
+And then the coffins were down, and Harry heard the shuffling sound of
+earth heaping in above them.
+
+He did not look. He kept watching the gull instead, until it was a
+circling, dancing speck flown so high that it was hard to distinguish
+from the leading edge of a cloud.
+
+They might ask him questions. Harry would not answer. For today, his
+mind was as silent, and as difficult to interpret for any augurer, as
+that sky.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 27*: And Sometimes There Is
+Light}\label{chapter-27-and-sometimes-there-is-light}
+
+\textbf{Warning: Very heavy slash in the third scene.} It's been edited
+for this site, but the full version is available at Skyehawke or my LJ.
+
+\textbf{Chapter Twenty: And Sometimes There Is Light}
+
+``And so the Pact won't forbid you from doing this?'' Harry had to
+admit, he was intrigued by Jing-Xi's latest effort to help him, but not
+if it meant that she would be snatched out of the country by the other
+Lords and Ladies for breaking her word when she first came to Britain.
+
+The Chinese Light Lady spent a moment looking over the list of Horcrux
+locations, then shook her head. ``No. They were horrified by the idea
+that Voldemort has more than one Horcrux, even Alexandre, who surely has
+one himself. They will permit Kanerva and I to do whatever we can to
+destroy them.'' She gave a small smile as she rolled the parchment up.
+``However, I would not suggest setting Kanerva to this sort of task. She
+can hardly control herself as it is.''
+
+Harry nodded. Juniper had sent him a letter yesterday asking him to tell
+his Dark Lady friend to stop making winds blow at hurricane speeds all
+over the British Isles. The problem, of course, was that Harry couldn't
+simply reach Kanerva like that; she was the one who decided to appear or
+not, and she hadn't chosen to appear in bodily form since the night of
+the slaughter in Cornwall. She could be causing the winds, or she could
+be dancing and delighting in them, or those could simply be the places
+that she traveled through on her way to another part of the island.
+
+``Harry?''
+
+He looked up, wondering if there was anything else Jing-Xi needed. He
+had given her everything the bird and Regulus had told or shown him
+about Horcruxes, which wasn't much. He would entrust her and Thomas the
+search because they were both research wizards; they would discover more
+if anyone could.
+
+``Your magic is hovering in a halfway state,'' said Jing-Xi softly.
+``You have accepted its full power, but not allowed it to settle. Why
+not?''
+
+``There hasn't been time,'' said Harry, thinking of the mess his life
+had become since their parents' deaths. Planning for the funeral and
+comforting Connor and everyone else who had lost someone in the Death
+Eater attack on Tullianum had taken most of his time, and then there had
+been some press conferences, because people were panicking under the
+idea that if the Ministry's secure prison could be attacked, anywhere
+else could be and \emph{would} be. And now he was determined to find and
+end the Horcruxes once and for all, but of course one could not simply
+do that. ``I came into my full power on my birthday, and I haven't used
+it greatly since then.''
+
+Jing-Xi placed the parchment with the Horcrux locations in her pocket
+and stood. Her hair writhed around her like a nest of dancing snakes.
+``I would like you to go outside and use it now. Maintaining it in such
+a limbo state uses up extra energy of yours to keep it there. Allow it
+to settle fully into your body, and you will feel a little less tired.
+Even a bit of weariness can make the difference between life and death
+in a battle situation, as you well know.''
+
+``Jing-Xi---''
+
+``What?''
+
+Harry tossed his head, wondering if part of the restlessness he felt at
+any mention of his magic, or indeed at any mention of what had happened
+on their birthday, came from that limbo state. ``Can you suggest
+something useful for me to do with it? I can't think of anything right
+now, but I don't want to waste the magic.''
+
+``It does not need to be something useful,'' said Jing-Xi, and then she
+smiled at him. ``In fact, it might be better if it was not. From what
+you have told me, on your birthday the magic was in a playful mood. Let
+it pass through that mood and come out the other side.''
+
+``So no concentrating on the Horcruxes and hoping my magic points me
+towards them?'' Harry asked, even as he stood up.
+
+Jing-Xi shook her head. ``You have not relaxed or played since your
+birthday,'' she said. ``I think it's time, Harry.''
+
+``I didn't mean to---'' Harry began.
+
+Lightly, she reached over and clasped his wrist, and the sensation of
+her power eddying over his like sunlit water calmed him. ``I am not
+blaming you,'' she whispered. ``Merely advising you. Go out and play
+until your magic finds its proper place, Harry. Then you will have more
+energy to meet the problems in front of you, and you will lighten your
+mind.''
+
+Harry lowered his eyes and nodded. ``Sorry,'' he murmured. ``I've
+been---on edge.'' Snape and Draco kept trying to talk to him about the
+funeral. Harry kept telling them they weren't talking about that. And
+the number of things that had gone wrong made him hypersensitive
+whenever someone started talking about another mistake.
+
+``I know.'' Jing-Xi squeezed his wrist one more time, and walked him
+towards the door. ``Never fear. Thomas and I will turn up information on
+these Horcruxes. We turned up information on the laws underlying the
+Grand Unified Theory, didn't we? Even though it took us years.''
+
+``We don't have years,'' Harry murmured.
+
+``Well I know it.'' And then she hugged him, which so startled Harry
+that he didn't return the embrace. She let him go, gently pushed him
+into the hallway, and shut the door behind him while he still blinked.
+
+``There you are, Harry.''
+
+Harry concealed a groan. Draco was leaning against the wall, waiting for
+him, and now he stood straight and nodded. Harry steeled himself for
+some new query about the funeral, or how he was feeling.
+
+Draco only asked, ``Where are you going? Do you want me along?''
+
+That left Harry unsteady, waiting for the attack. But he mustered a
+smile and said, ``Outside to play with my magic like a good little boy,
+the way that Jing-Xi told me to.''
+
+``Too bad it isn't to play with something else,'' Draco murmured, and
+Harry choked. When he shot a glance at his partner, though, Draco's eyes
+were very wide, and he looked the picture of innocence. ``You didn't say
+whether you wanted me along. Can I come?''
+
+Harry hesitated, but at last said, ``I don't see why not.''
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+They stepped out under such a beautiful sunset that Draco's breath
+caught. For once, the clouds had drawn back enough to show the light
+without the rain, but hadn't departed completely, so that the light had
+them to play with. The gray behemoths glinted with pink dripping down
+the underside, thick as paint. Above them arched lavender, and some
+nameless, wine-dark color that made Draco wish he could have sat under
+it and watched it develop, so that he would discover what it was made
+of. In the east, the blue-black darkness was already complete.
+
+But the most beautiful thing was the dome of the sky itself, beaten and
+shining like hammered gold. Draco clenched his hands and lost himself in
+the sight for a moment, until Harry's magic released him.
+
+Draco would have known that feeling anywhere, the heady press of fire
+and fur along his skin. Turning, he saw Harry with his hands extended
+and his head bowed, the dark blue and purple light bursting around him,
+inchoate shapes of trees and jaguars and snakes whirling and blazing and
+fading. Then the magic settled itself and struck out at clouds, trees,
+grass, Draco himself.
+
+He dropped to one knee as he felt the emotion the magic was giving him,
+wave after wave of solemn high happiness, of a peace stolen from the
+changing world and transplanted for this one moment. He closed his eyes,
+to conceal the tears this was bringing forth, and blindly put out a
+hand. Harry found and clasped it, pulling him close to stand with an arm
+around his shoulders, while he continued to send peace forth.
+
+Draco forced his eyes open, because he wanted to watch. The lake, in
+front of them, rippled and began to dance under the pressure of a slight
+breeze. The light it reflected broke and scattered, but formed new
+patterns, triangles and circles, of radiance so extreme that Draco's
+sight burned. The air warmed and brightened, and it became hard to tell
+what was Harry's magic and what was retransfigured sunset. Light and
+power blended together, and Draco felt a distant, trembling premonition
+of what made people Declare for Light.
+
+This was not the strongest magic he had ever felt, nor the most
+satisfying. It \emph{was} the most beautiful. And beauty could seduce
+hearts.
+
+\emph{I should know,} Draco thought, as he tilted his head back and
+stared into Harry's eyes. His hand came up and swiped softly at Harry's
+cheeks, the tears leaking across them. Then he reached up, hooked his
+arms around Harry's neck, and pulled him down into a firm kiss.
+
+Harry made a startled little noise, but didn't refuse, kissing back and
+collapsing so that they were chest-to-chest. Draco felt his magic lift
+and drape them both like a cloak, then extend in all directions as
+though the cloak were woven of a spider's web. It caressed earth and air
+with stored heat. Draco arched his back, and he \emph{knew} what he
+wanted, as suddenly and as completely as if it had been written in
+letters of fire on the back of his eyelids.
+
+Accordingly, when Harry tried to roll them over so that Draco was on
+top, Draco gripped his shoulders and stopped him.
+
+``No,'' he said quietly. ``Not this time.''
+
+Harry froze in place, the way he tended to do when he assumed he'd made
+a mistake, his eyes wide and confused and searching Draco's. He must
+have seen what Draco wanted there, because he gave a little shuddering
+buck, like a hooked fish.
+
+``N---''
+
+Before he could even get the refusal out, Draco cupped his face and
+brought it down again, kissing him breathless, trying to convey with
+that gesture how much he \emph{trusted} Harry. He knew Harry was trying
+to refuse because he didn't trust himself, didn't trust his own capacity
+to control and dominate people.
+
+\emph{How can I make him see that this isn't about domination? I have
+perfect confidence in him.}
+
+\emph{Perhaps I should just say it.}
+
+``Harry, you aren't going to hurt me,'' said Draco. ``I mean it,'' he
+added, as Harry's head started shaking. "I \emph{know} that you're not
+going to hurt me, because I trust you not to hurt me." He nuzzled his
+head into the side of Harry's neck, smugly congratulating himself on
+falling in love with him. Who else could he experience this level of
+trust with? ``Come on. We both need this, and I know we both want
+this.'' He rolled his hips against the hard warmth at Harry's groin, and
+Harry caught his breath with a little gasp and a sob. ``Please.''
+
+Harry swallowed once, then nodded. Draco half-convulsed with the
+strength of the joy that ran through him.
+
+``All right,'' Harry whispered. ``Here?''
+
+Draco was impressed with himself for managing to arch an eyebrow. ``Not
+unless you want to use a Disillusionment Charm, and not unless you
+Transfigure this grass into a cushion,'' he said. ``Too uncomfortable
+otherwise.''
+
+Harry nodded, then stood and held out his hand. ``Let's go to bed,
+then,'' he whispered.
+
+As he took Harry's hand, Draco realized there was something different
+about it. The sense of tension, of danger, he'd felt around Harry for
+the last few days had melted, or at least muted. He no longer seemed as
+if he would burst into flames if someone said the wrong thing. And his
+magic had filled the air with a deep purring that Draco had to
+concentrate to hear.
+
+Doubtless, some of that was because Harry had just used his magic in
+rather a spectacular manner. But Draco knew part of it was also due to
+him.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry hoped that Draco couldn't see his nervousness as they returned to
+their bedroom, and he set up the strongest silencing and locking spells
+he knew. It wouldn't do to be disturbed in the middle of this.
+
+He should have known better.
+
+He jumped a bit as Draco's arms curled around his middle, and he
+murmured into Harry's ear, "You're \emph{not} going to hurt me, Harry.
+Pain in sex can be unforgivable, but this isn't about to be. And do you
+know why?"
+
+``Not the slightest idea.'' Harry could hear the panic building in his
+voice, and could do absolutely nothing to stop it. He knew things about
+himself that Draco didn't. He had that darkness inside him, that
+darkness that liked the idea of hurting others, of dominating them for
+his pleasure. So long as he put limits on himself---so long as Draco was
+the one inside him, and not the other way around---Harry knew things
+would work, because they had worked in the past. This, though---it
+reminded him of possession, of being controlled, of the phoenix web. He
+hated compulsion on himself, but he would kill himself before he would
+control someone else like that. He didn't see why every relationship he
+had couldn't just be equal.
+
+``Because I know it will be slight, and I know I'll forgive you for it
+if it happens.'' Draco kissed the back of his neck, and then pulled
+away. Harry heard the sound of buttons sliding through cloth.
+
+He turned around, wondering if Draco would give the notion up once he
+saw the fear in his eyes. But Draco's face was utterly serene, though
+lit with a blaze, as if part of the sunset light had migrated under his
+skin. He gave Harry a look that was not a smile, and Harry knew that
+Draco understood the fear, and intended to lead him through it anyway.
+
+And then Draco smiled.
+
+Harry would have taken a step back if the door wasn't behind him. He
+felt punched him in the gut. He had never seen such perfect trust in
+someone else's eyes.
+
+``I want this,'' said Draco, and ran a hand through his hair in what
+looked like an accidental gesture, though that ``accidental'' gesture
+drew attention to the glints of light in his pale hair and the motion of
+his arms, so Harry had his doubts. "And you know what I'm like when I
+want something, Harry. Besides, I know that not \emph{all} of you is so
+reluctant as you pretend." He cocked his head. ``Don't tell me you're
+not curious. Don't tell me that you haven't wondered what this would be
+like. Because of the pleasure I'm experiencing when I bed you, if
+nothing else.''
+
+Harry flushed as he felt his cock give a twitch. ``I've thought about
+it,'' he said. ``But I had ethical objections.''
+
+Draco just gave a soft laugh, as if Harry's ethical objections were an
+endearing trait of his, and nodded to Harry's clothes. ``Off with them,
+now,'' he said. ``And then I want you to kiss me.''
+
+"We \emph{were} kissing," Harry felt compelled to say as he began to
+fumble at his clothes, his fingers feeling thick and clumsy. ``On the
+grass.''
+
+``Not like that,'' Draco said, and sauntered to the bed, lying back on
+it, so that he could watch Harry undress. "The way I kiss you when
+\emph{I} top. I want to be spoiled."
+
+Harry blinked, and paused in undoing his trousers, which made Draco hiss
+at him in impatience. ``That's spoiling?'' He had never considered it
+so. To him, it had been more like a sign of a contract between him and
+Draco, that this was all right, that from moment to moment Draco was in
+charge and it was all right.
+
+``The slowness I use, when I'm dying to go faster, is,'' Draco pointed
+out.
+
+Harry considered it, and could see that. He nodded, and went back to
+undressing. His hands continued to shake, but he reckoned the tremor was
+a little less pronounced than before.
+
+\emph{Maybe.}
+
+He kicked off his trousers and pants at last, and walked towards the
+bed. He found he could barely look directly at Draco, which was
+ridiculous. How many times had he seen him naked before? Hundreds of
+times, that was what. And yet, with Draco lying there and looking at him
+with the expectation that this time Harry would take the lead, it was
+suddenly mortifying.
+
+Draco sighed. It didn't get Harry's back up like any sigh had this past
+week. It wasn't a sound that said Harry had made some mistake and needed
+to be scolded for it. It was a sound of loving exasperation, and it gave
+Harry the impulse to grin at him instead.
+
+``This is the part where we meet each other again, I see,'' Draco, and
+leaned forward, running his fingers up Harry's arm. Harry gave a strong
+gasp, swaying so hard he nearly fell over. Draco spent a moment more
+stroking him, then pulled away and raised one eyebrow. "Remember how
+good that feels? That's \emph{pleasure}, Harry, and nothing you need be
+cautious about. Now, come \emph{on}."
+
+``I suppose I'm still worried about hurrying you,'' Harry murmured,
+crawling onto the bed.
+
+``Think about what you feel when you're in my position,'' Draco
+demanded, lying back and pulling Harry on top of him so that they lay
+chest-to-chest---and groin-to-groin, which made Harry nearly forget
+about listening for a moment. Luckily, Draco was there to lift his chin
+and remind him. ``Don't you want to make me feel like that?''
+
+``Yes.'' Harry wondered who had taken his voice out of his throat and
+put this gasping, husky, guttural thing in its place. He lowered his
+head and carefully licked at the side of Draco's neck, and then blew on
+his ears. Draco sighed and let his head fall back against the pillow,
+running one hand down between their chests.
+
+``Come on, Harry,'' he whispered.
+
+Harry grinned. He didn't think he'd ever heard that exact tone in
+Draco's voice before---begging without begging, pleading without
+pleading. He'd tried to make it sound demanding, and failed miserably.
+
+Harry decided to see if he could get Draco to sound like that again. He
+moved down his chest, altering his position from moment to moment so
+that Draco couldn't tell what would happen next. Now he blew across his
+nipples, now he simply ran his fingers lightly up and down the sensitive
+skin near Draco's ribs, now he suddenly changed direction altogether and
+hovered near his groin. Draco muttered and thrashed and moaned, and
+sometimes, when Harry hit one of his extremely vulnerable spots---of
+which he had fewer than Harry, which wasn't fair---he made a garbled
+sound that was rather like a version of a coo.
+
+The first time he made it, he froze, and then stared at Harry. "Tell me
+that I did \emph{not} sound like a dove just then," he muttered. Or, at
+least, he tried to mutter it, Harry knew. His voice, broken with pants
+and half-moans and long pauses between individual words, made it sound
+rather more like a stutter.
+
+``You didn't sound like a dove just then,'' Harry announced obediently,
+and pressed down on his own groin for a moment to relieve the need. Then
+he went back to work, flicking Draco's nipple at the same moment as he
+blew on his ear. There came the coo again.
+
+"That is \emph{not} me," Draco denied. ``You're casting some spell or
+something.''
+
+``Am not,'' said Harry, and repeated it, to get the sound a third time,
+though Draco tried his best to keep it in. ``That's all you.''
+
+Draco half-opened an eye and glared at him. ``If you weren't making me
+feel so good, I'd---''
+
+Harry cast a wandless lubrication spell then, deciding he'd rather do it
+while he was riding high on the confidence of making Draco feel this
+good, rather than fumble it later due to nervousness. Draco's eyes
+widened, and this time he sounded like a dying mouse. Harry couldn't
+hold back his laughter, which had a distinctly proud edge to it.
+
+``You told me once that Malfoys don't squeak,'' he murmured, and worked
+his way down Draco's body, deliberately moving so that he tortured every
+most sensitive spot at least once on the way. "And we established that
+Blacks don't make embarrassing noises, either, because you said so. So
+perhaps it's just \emph{Draco} who makes noises like this because he's
+so eager to have his boyfriend inside him that he just can't hold back."
+
+``You---wanker,'' Draco managed, in between gasps, as Harry gently ran a
+hand across his arse.
+
+"Oh, well, if you wanted that, you could have \emph{asked,}" said Harry,
+and closed his other hand around Draco.
+
+It became a contest then, with Draco attempting to curse him, or perhaps
+even summon his wand and do it for real, while Harry teased him slowly
+and taunted him with circling one finger very gently across his arse,
+never quite putting it where Draco wanted it. When he finally \emph{did}
+put it where Draco wanted it, Draco arched his back and, Harry would
+swear later, half-barked.
+
+``Ah,'' said Harry, concentrating on coordinating the movements of his
+hands so that he didn't think too much about either his own rising
+desire or his fear. "So that settles it. You aren't a mouse or a dove
+after all. You're a bloody \emph{seal.}"
+
+``Wanker,'' Draco said weakly, his head rolling back and his eyelids
+fluttering. "How do you---ah---\emph{stand} this?"
+
+``Obviously, you aren't quite as good as I am,'' said Harry, and
+carefully added another finger, listening all the time for the slightest
+hitch in Draco's breathing, the slightest gasp of pain. He knew he
+wouldn't be able to resist his instincts if it happened; his hand would
+move away from Draco like it would from a fire.
+
+Draco made an indignant noise, arching his neck into impossible shapes.
+"See---what happens---next time---\emph{Harry!}"
+
+Harry waited a moment, to be sure that that last cry was a sound of
+ecstasy and not of agony---
+
+"\emph{Move!}"
+
+Definitely not agony, then. Harry resumed the motions of his hands,
+watching all the while as Draco's face flushed and his skin bristled
+with sweat. He could almost lose himself in the watching, almost forget
+about the excitement that leaned heavily on the inside of his neck and
+throat. Was this what Draco felt in his position? This intensity of
+pleasure knowing he was responsible for someone else's pleasure?
+
+And then he turned a corner in his own mind.
+
+This wasn't about power at all. At least, it didn't have to be. No
+wonder Draco trusted him. He had already known it was about feeling
+good, and he'd wanted to share that, to see that Harry had pleasure he
+hadn't known before.
+
+And to feel it himself, of course, because Slytherins were nothing if
+not selfish.
+
+Harry lowered his head and rubbed his cheek against Draco's stomach,
+drying any tears that might have crept out---tears he certainly wouldn't
+admit to---because Draco, damn it, was \emph{Draco}.
+
+``I think that's enough, Harry,'' Draco said abruptly, sounding far too
+composed, and lifted his legs high enough to drape them across Harry's
+shoulders.
+
+\emph{He's coherent? I'll just have to do something about that.} Harry
+removed his fingers, slowly, and arranged himself so that he was where
+he needed to be, casting another lubrication spell. He looked down, and
+watched the shine of the wet skin, his and Draco's, and the way his
+chest jumped and shuddered and shook, so intensely was his heart racing.
+
+``Harry.'' Draco's voice was unexpectedly clear and clean and coherent,
+all of which Harry was grateful for right now. ``I trust you.''
+
+Harry nodded, closed his eyes, and then slid gently forward.
+
+As it turned out, when Draco did make a noise of pain, Harry couldn't
+pull away because he was entangled in Draco's legs and Draco's body
+generally. He bent forward, gasping, and summoned his magic to help him
+hold his body still and his voice steady as he asked quietly, ``How much
+did I hurt you?''
+
+``Not much,'' said Draco, and he sounded both pained and composed.
+"\emph{Move.}"
+
+Harry didn't think he was able to resist a command given in a voice like
+that, and slowly slid forward again, stopping every time Draco made a
+noise, until Draco's voice repeated again, like a trumpet sounding a
+charge, "\emph{Move.}"
+
+At last, finally, he could move no more, and he sagged forward and let
+his forehead rest on Draco's chest, panting. He knew he was bending
+Draco nearly in half, but Draco didn't complain, and Harry couldn't have
+held himself upright at that moment. His skin was one blaze of heat, his
+mind one blaze of various emotions---terror and excitement and remorse
+and lust---making the world surreal.
+
+He found he didn't need instructions for the moment when Draco was ready
+for him to move again. By that time, Harry would have been surprised if
+either of them could have spoken, anyway. He shifted his hips back and
+then forward, and cried out at the warmth while Draco cried out at the
+end of a pleasure that Harry knew well.
+
+And he got to know this pleasure well, too, as he took it, motion after
+careful motion, seemingly impossible to halt once he started. He wasn't
+rough---he made sure of that---but he was thorough, because it seemed
+impossible not to be. And when he found his pace speeding up, he thought
+about stopping it only for a moment.
+
+Then he recalled Draco saying he trusted Harry, and decided that, in
+return, he'd have to trust Draco. Instead of assuming that he'd hurt
+Draco and Draco simply didn't want to say so for fear of ending their
+bedding, he'd assume he hadn't hurt Draco \emph{until} he said so.
+
+And, another corner turned, he began to move more smoothly and more
+confidently, and also to look beyond himself. His hand took up the
+motion on Draco again, and Draco gave a gasping little breath of
+surprise.
+
+Then he began pushing back, as if hoping to regain some sort of control.
+Harry groaned, and caught a glimpse of Draco's smirk. He redoubled the
+force of his own hips, and Draco gave a deeper gasp than his and arched
+in a motion that once more reminded Harry of a seal as it moved through
+the water.
+
+Merlin, it felt so \emph{good}, made it so hard to think of the war and
+Voldemort and their parents' deaths and all the other things that had so
+troubled Harry. It didn't make them cease to exist, but it carved itself
+out a place in the midst of them, and Harry had a perfect moment before
+his eyes as an illustration of what it really meant to live
+\emph{simultaneously}, to not let the good things stop existing because
+of the war. Draco was tight and hot around him, and tempting in other
+ways, groaning now steadily, as if he could hardly find the air for
+anything else, but more than anything, it was \emph{good.}
+
+Draco lost control first, which Harry felt smug about as he felt the
+wetness pour over his fist. And then he felt the moment trembling before
+him that he'd been most afraid of, when he thought for sure that
+refusing to hold himself back in sex would hurt Draco. He could resist
+it, if he liked, and dim its impact. His Occlumency would help him with
+that if nothing else did.
+
+The haze cleared from his mind long enough to leave him that choice,
+untrammeled.
+
+And Harry chose trust again, flung himself off the cliff and into
+mid-motion, trusting Draco to tell him if it hurt. He leaned forward and
+came hard enough that it should have hurt \emph{him}, but it felt,
+instead, like pleasure equal to the pain would have been, and his whole
+body shook, and it \emph{did} take magic to keep him from collapsing
+after that and crushing Draco's face against his chest.
+
+Carefully, or as carefully as he could with his hands shaking like an
+old man's, he ran his fingers through Draco's hair and tilted his head
+back. ``Are you all right?'' he whispered.
+
+Draco blinked, then lunged up, despite the awkward angle and the bones
+Harry could hear creaking in his neck, and kissed him by way of answer.
+Harry felt the \emph{Yes} in his mind more strongly than words could
+have conveyed, and relaxed.
+
+Gently, he pulled out of Draco again and gathered him up in his arms,
+murmuring cleaning spells and spells to make them dry and warm. Draco
+yawned and cuddled close to him, but wasn't asleep, as Harry knew from
+the fact that the soft, contented murmurs refused to turn into snores.
+He stroked Draco's back and neck, and circled around and around the main
+thought in his head, a source of deep wonder.
+
+\emph{He trusted me. And it was all right. And I didn't hurt him. And I
+trusted him, and it was all right.}
+
+And if he'd trusted him with this, did that mean that Harry could trust
+him with other things? His feelings about his parents and the funeral,
+for example, and the darkness that lived inside him?
+
+\emph{Maybe,} Harry thought, pulling Draco closer and starting to kiss
+the back of his neck. \emph{Not right now, not while we're so
+comfortable. But later. I'm going to.}
+
+Inevitability was as a road that led him towards that level of
+confidence.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Thomas sat up.
+
+It was the first time he'd felt something like this since Priscilla's
+death, a bolt of lightning that struck from his eyes down to his chest
+and then bounced back up to his brain. He had buried his grief with his
+wife and set about comforting his children and making things for the
+war. It was what needed to be done, and, as Harry was forever reminding
+people---by actions instead of words; Thomas was sure that he would shut
+up in embarrassment if he talked about it as often as he acted it
+out---when there was something to be done, one did it. He had
+half-expected, without knowing why he was so sure of it, never to feel
+that excitement that accompanied a sudden discovery again.
+
+And yet\ldots{}
+
+Here it was. Here it \emph{was.}
+
+Thomas bent close over the list of family names from Little Hangleton,
+his fingers writhing on the edge of the parchment. He felt Jing-Xi adopt
+a careful listening stance across from him. She knew something was
+traveling through his mind right now, and she would be ready to hear it,
+but she wouldn't interrupt, in case that caused Thomas to lose the
+researcher's trance.
+
+And Thomas was grateful for the silence. He stared long and hard at the
+name in the middle of the list. \emph{Gaunt.}
+
+Then he closed his eyes and dived deep into his memory. He knew many
+things, but he could not keep them all in the forefront of his mind at
+all times. So they lay in deep waters, and reeling one specific piece of
+information back to the surface was sometimes like catching one specific
+fish or diving for one specific pearl.
+
+In this case, he was remembering the book he'd read Gaunt in before. A
+wizarding genealogy, years ago, when he was trying to figure out what
+had happened to the famous ``Lost Families'' who'd supposedly started
+wizardry in Great Britain. Slytherin had descended from one of those
+families, and so his descendants had been of interest to Thomas, but
+he'd lost them in a thicket of intermarriages, criminal trials that had
+persuaded his descendants to vary their names, exiles to the Continent,
+and orphans of war who could remember only scraps and fragments of their
+parents' pasts, or who were made the magical heirs of other families and
+given new names. That was where everyone lost them. In the end, Thomas
+had been forced to admit defeat, but he'd written down his best guesses
+for where the Slytherin line had gone to ground.
+
+\emph{Peverell} had been one of those guesses, and that family had
+sprouted other families, who in turn were possibilities for candidates
+of Peverell descent.
+
+And one of them had been Gaunt.
+
+Thomas sat back with a triumphant laugh, and nodded to Jing-Xi when she
+leaned forward to share the moment.
+
+``We'll want to look at Gaunt properties near Little Hangleton,'' he
+said, and turned to an ancient map that was divided by territory
+belonging to certain Muggle and wizarding families. ``And for evidence
+of a Gaunt woman bearing a child away from her family's native land. I
+would wager my skin that a Gaunt woman was Tom Riddle's mother.''
+
+``And if the Gaunt family possessed a powerful magical object---''
+Jing-Xi began.
+
+``That's our Horcrux,'' said Thomas, and his excitement blazed brighter
+and brighter, summoning other memories. ``Come to think of it, I believe
+I read once that the Peverell family used rings to mark their true
+heirs\ldots{}''
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 28*: The Dark
+Years}\label{chapter-28-the-dark-years}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Twenty-One: The Dark Years}
+
+Harry finally put out a hand and splayed it palm-down on the parchment,
+preventing Thomas from moving it, so that he could actually
+\emph{glimpse} what was happening on it. Thomas, who had been about to
+substitute another family tree for that one, blinked and then gave him a
+sheepish look. ``Was I talking too fast again?''
+
+``Yes,'' said Harry absently, and bent over the tree so that he could
+get a good look.
+
+This one showed the descent of the Gaunt family from the Peverell
+family, at least as Thomas had reconstructed it; the higher branches
+were dotted with numerous question marks, to show that there were other
+families with claims just as strong to be true heirs of the Peverells.
+The branches steadied as they moved down the centuries, though, and
+closer to modern times.
+
+They also contracted. It seemed that the House of Gaunt had been in the
+habit of marrying cousins, rather like the Black family. The last
+generation was a man named Marvolo---Harry half-bared his teeth,
+remembering what Tom Riddle's full name was---and his two children, a
+son, Morfin, and a daughter, Merope. Both had been born near the turn of
+the century. If either of those children had ever had a child, the tree
+didn't record it.
+
+``And you think Merope was Tom Riddle's mother?'' he asked, tilting his
+head back to see Thomas. ``Why?''
+
+``Look.'' Thomas whipped the Gaunt tree away and lowered another
+parchment in its place. Harry saw that it wasn't another genealogy after
+all, the way he had suspected. It was a copy of a trial record from the
+Ministry. He leaned over it, and exclaimed so loudly that Madam Pince
+glared at them from her desk.
+
+The trial record claimed that Morfin Gaunt, ``the only member of the
+House of Gaunt then left alive,'' had been arrested for the murder of
+three Muggles, by the last name of Riddle, in 1943. He had confessed to
+killing them, so the Ministry hadn't seen any reason not to toss him
+into Azkaban. He had died there, apparently still believing that he had
+actually committed the crime.
+
+``But it's likely that Voldemort killed his father and his grandparents
+instead,'' Harry said softly, his mind turning inward.
+
+``Oh, yes, extremely likely,'' said Thomas, shocking him out of his
+reverie. He took the trial record away and replaced it with what seemed
+to be a map. Squinting, Harry couldn't orient himself until he made out
+a line labeled ``Thames'' in the middle. Even then, though, he couldn't
+make out what the map covered. Twining lines of many different colors,
+sometimes subtly different shades, ran in and out and around each other,
+and sometimes had the labels of years beside them. He looked up at
+Thomas and shook his head in confusion.
+
+``Oh. Sorry.'' A faint blush touched Thomas's cheeks. ``This is a spell
+that Jing-Xi invented, some years ago. It allows us to track people by
+magical signature, and that, combined with the magical gifts of certain
+families, means that we can know that Merope Gaunt was in London in
+December 1926.'' He hesitated for just a moment, gratifying Harry, and
+then touched a dark green line with some confidence. ``She was alone,
+and she died very shortly afterward. But the building near which she
+died---'' he rapped his finger hard against one small square "---was a
+Muggle orphanage. And we \emph{know} that Tom Riddle was reared in a
+Muggle orphanage. That, along with a little information about him such
+as his real name, was known to a few members of the Order of the
+Phoenix, and Dumbledore passed it to your friend Peter."
+
+``What gift did you use to track her?'' Harry asked.
+
+Thomas stood straight and proudly cocked his head. ``Who says that we
+used one?''
+
+``You just admitted it,'' Harry pointed out, a bit amused. ``And it's
+just wondrous that the spell could pick up a trail that old without
+one.''
+
+Thomas flushed. ``Yes. Well.'' He cleared his throat. ``We used
+Parseltongue. We don't know for certain if Merope was a Parselmouth
+herself, of course---we could hardly ask her---but she carried the
+magical signature for it. She certainly passed it on to her son. And of
+course it's not surprising that descendants of Slytherin would have that
+gift. For me, that's just proof positive that the Gaunts really are the
+last of that line, not the Thickbrackets or the Hornflowers or all the
+other descendants of Peverell with a claim to the title.'' He gave a
+sharp nod. ``And I'm reckoning that we'll find that a Peverell ring is
+one of the Horcruxes.''
+
+Harry half-closed his eyes. He felt he was on the verge of an important
+discovery, but it hung in front of him, just out of reach, and he
+couldn't yet grasp it. ``So Parseltongue was a blood gift in Slytherin's
+line,'' he murmured. ``There's no sign that Merope was the magical heir
+of her father.''
+
+``No,'' said Thomas firmly. "We tried to track her using the
+\emph{absorbere} gift at first, actually, since we thought part of the
+reason Tom Riddle might have developed his powers so absurdly young was
+that she might be an \emph{absorbere} and have died right near him, thus
+allowing him to absorb that gift within a few hours after his birth. But
+no such luck. That truly is a power original to him alone in his line,
+it seems. Parseltongue worked. Whether or not Tom Riddle was his
+mother's magical heir, he was her blood heir, and that is a blood-passed
+gift."
+
+And the notion that had been taunting Harry burst full on him like a
+sunrise.
+
+``Thomas,'' he said, ``I'm also a Parselmouth, and yet I'm certainly not
+connected to Tom Riddle by blood.''
+
+``I know,'' said Thomas, his face taking on a certain shine that Harry
+had only ever seen in his eyes when he discussed the Grand Unified
+Theory. ``And that would have been impossible to explain, except that I
+studied the tunnel between you and Voldemort, and I came up with a
+theory.''
+
+Harry blinked, and it was a struggle not to lose his idea in his
+startlement. ``When did you do that?''
+
+``In Woodhouse, before your father told me to stop, and that I was not
+to make you the subject of an experiment,'' said Thomas, without a trace
+of embarrassment. "What I found there was that \emph{all} magic passes
+freely back and forth between you two, including the Parselmouth gift
+that would ordinarily be passed only to a Riddle---or Gaunt,
+rather---blood heir. I have told you that magic has free will." He
+waited for Harry to nod. "And by then, the Parseltongue magic knew that
+its host would have no heir of his body. So it changed and adapted
+itself when the moment came for the \emph{absorbere} gift to flow into
+you. It \emph{made} itself become a gift that could be passed to a
+magical heir, it seemed, because it wished to survive when Tom Riddle
+died. It was determined that he not be the last Parselmouth in Britain,
+and perhaps one of the last Parselmouths in the world." Thomas shook his
+head, eyes shining. "Magic is a wonderful thing, Harry, truly, and we
+are only on the \emph{brink} of understanding it, not fully there. We
+will not be fully there in my lifetime, nor for a hundred lifetimes
+thereafter."
+
+Harry clenched his hands slowly, feeling the fingers of his left hand
+chill as they slid across the silver emblem in the center of his palm.
+``Do you think it's possible, then, that from a certain angle, I could
+be considered the blood heir of Slytherin's line?'' he asked.
+
+Thomas stepped abruptly back from the table, and whispered, "That is a
+brilliant idea, Harry, \emph{brilliant.} Part of what made the Gaunts
+whom they were was the inheritance of that magic. That was the truest
+sign of their descent from Slytherin, not any rings they might have
+managed to lose, or perhaps sell for food. And by passing to you, in a
+way, it makes you a Gaunt. I \emph{must} research this."
+
+He looked as if he were about to dash off to do it right then, but Harry
+managed to press the documents he'd given him back into his hands.
+``You'll want this,'' he said. ``I just need one thing from you:
+directions to that orphanage in London. I'll be going there to learn
+what I can about Tom Riddle's childhood.''
+
+Thomas cocked his head and blinked rapidly. ``Well, you know, Harry,
+that tracking spell really only reveals where someone went, and
+sometimes how they died. It doesn't tell you anything about their
+character.''
+
+Harry smiled. ``I won't need that tracking spell. I'll have someone with
+me who can learn things from objects.''
+
+``Oh, good,'' said Thomas vaguely, his eyes blazing and elsewhere.
+``Well, here then, Harry.'' He copied a street name rapidly onto a scrap
+of parchment, then tossed it to Harry and hurried out of the library.
+Madam Pince cleared her throat significantly and looked at Harry, as if
+to say that that would be a good act to imitate.
+
+Harry pocketed the parchment, returned a few of the books he'd been
+using before Thomas interrupted him like a small excited whirlwind to
+their usual places, and then departed the library. His mind was
+elsewhere, on the implications of his being the actual blood heir of
+Slytherin---if it were true.
+
+There was an Unassailable Curse on that small shack on the hill above
+Little Hangleton, which Harry now imagined was probably the one-time
+home of the Gaunt family, and the hiding place of the Peverell ring,
+assuming that Voldemort had made it into a Horcrux. The Unassailable
+Curse said that only someone with the blood of Slytherin could bypass
+it.
+
+If Harry could be considered, in a technical sense, the blood heir of
+the Gaunts, since Parseltongue along with everything else had come down
+to him through Tom Riddle, then his blood might be enough to unravel
+that curse.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Luna nodded solemnly to Harry. ``If no one else has ever come asking the
+orphanage the story of Tom Riddle, then the doors must be eager to tell
+it,'' she said, and carefully put her wand back into her pocket. She'd
+been casting spells on the warped wood of a classroom door when Harry
+found her. He hadn't quite dared to ask her what that was about, though
+perhaps she was easing its pain. ``I will go with you. But, for now,
+there is another question to ask. You must come with me.'' She clamped
+her hand on his arm and started tugging him in the direction of the
+stairs.
+
+Harry allowed her to tug him, knowing from the shadows of his movement
+that seemed to shift just off to the side that Owen and Charlie were
+following. ``What is it, Luna?''
+
+``The object that hates the whole world,'' Luna answered him, giving him
+a bright glance. ``The one I felt in the Headmistress's office. The
+stones have watched for it, for it moving, and they have told me
+nothing. I think the truth is otherwise, but I need you with me to
+divine it.''
+
+Harry nodded, and obediently followed until they stood outside the
+gargoyle, which jumped aside in a moment when it saw Luna. Luna gave it
+an absent-minded little pat and continued pulling Harry up the moving
+staircase by main strength. Harry could hear shuffling above them, and
+guessed that McGonagall had heard or seen them coming, via the wards,
+and was waiting to meet them.
+
+Sure enough, she nodded when the door into her office opened, and not at
+all as if she were surprised. ``Harry. Miss Lovegood.'' She lifted her
+eyes just beyond Harry, and smiled a little. ``You might as well come
+in, Mr. Rosier-Henlin, Mr. Weasley. What can I do for you?''
+
+``I have to test something, Headmistress,'' said Luna, and then hauled
+Harry front and center, just before the Headmistress's desk. She was
+quite strong when she wanted to be, Harry reflected. "I don't think it
+was moving around after all. I think it was \emph{waking up}, and that
+was the source of all the trouble. It---" Abruptly, she went still, and
+snapped her head up and to the side, holding out a hand. All of them
+were silent, but though Harry listened, he couldn't hear anything.
+
+``There,'' Luna breathed. "Did you \emph{feel} that?"
+
+Harry shook his head. ``No. Sorry.''
+
+``I was wrong, the first time,'' said Luna triumphantly. "I thought it
+was an object that could scurry around in the school, and that I felt it
+at some times and not at others because it was in the office at some
+times and not at others. Then I thought it must be something Professor
+Snape carried with him, because he was always nearby when it got angry.
+But it's getting angry at \emph{you}, too, Harry. So it's always here,
+but it only wakes up when someone it hates is in the office."
+
+``Where is it?'' Harry felt compelled to whisper.
+
+Luna lifted one hand, and unerringly pointed at the wall beyond the
+Headmistress. ``There,'' she said.
+
+Harry squinted as McGonagall moved out of the way. Secure in its glass
+case, the Sword of Gryffindor glinted at them.
+
+"The \emph{sword}?" McGonagall sounded befuddled. ``The sword hates
+Harry and Severus? Why would it?''
+
+``The sword is a Horcrux,'' Harry corrected grimly, pieces falling into
+place in his mind with a series of \emph{clicks} so strong they almost
+hurt. He had always known that one of the Horcruxes was hidden at
+Hogwarts, and the Sword hadn't been moved out of the building in the
+last few decades. Voldemort had a penchant for favoring artifacts of the
+Founders, at least if Slytherin's locket and a ring said to come from a
+family descended from Slytherin proved anything, and the Sword certainly
+counted. And during his second year, the Sword had burned him when he
+tried to touch it. It had done the same thing to Professor Snape; he had
+confessed that in one of the letters he sent to Harry over the summer
+while he was at the Malfoys', as if hoping to make Harry feel that he
+was not alone in being rejected by an artifact supposedly of ``good.''
+
+``Why would it burn you, though?'' Owen asked from behind him. Harry
+turned to look at him, and saw that he appeared just as confused as
+McGonagall. ``Shouldn't it like you, since the Dark Lord marked you?''
+
+Harry shook his head. ``We betrayed him---Professor Snape and I both.
+We're not good, obedient little servants.'' He faced the sword, feeling
+much worse about turning his back on it now, though it hadn't outwardly
+changed from the blade he remembered. ``Do you think that's right,
+Luna?''
+
+``That's right,'' said Luna, her face radiating not just serenity but
+confidence. "You've figured it out, Harry. And now it \emph{really}
+hates you." She cocked her head to the side, listening for a moment, and
+then added, ``But it's smug, too. It has something even worse than the
+usual Unassailable Curse on it. It's sure that you won't manage to
+destroy it.''
+
+``We'll see about that,'' Harry muttered, then promptly felt silly
+talking to a sword.
+
+A moment later, though, a curl of darkness unfolded and drifted along
+the blade, and Harry saw a pair of dark eyes watching him, similar to a
+pair he'd seen only once before: in Sirius's face, when Voldemort had
+come close to possessing him completely during third year. The sword
+hissed, a noise that was a cross between a serpent's hiss and the
+crackling noise of a fire, and then fell silent.
+
+``What shall we do with it?'' McGonagall asked. Harry glanced at her,
+and saw that, if she had any qualms against believing that an artifact
+of Gryffindor was a repository of a shard of Voldemort's soul, it was
+gone now. ``It cannot stay here.''
+
+``Oh, but it should,'' said Luna, sounding surprised. ``If it's moved,
+it might find a way to send a message to Voldemort. And it can't
+actually hurt you, Headmistress. It doesn't even hate you, just those
+whom Voldemort marked and who betrayed him. It wouldn't even have a
+problem with Harry if he were just a good little heir or with Professor
+Snape if he were just a good little Death Eater. We should leave it here
+until I have a chance to talk to it more and see what the curse on it
+is.'' Then she abruptly slipped her hand away from Harry's arm and
+walked around the desk towards the sword. ``Unless I can make it tell me
+that now.''
+
+``Be careful, Luna,'' Harry said. His heart had jumped into his throat.
+When each Horcrux was destroyed, he would have to face the shade of Tom
+Riddle implanted in it, and he had no idea if he was ready to do that,
+should it come forth now and attack her.
+
+``I told you, it doesn't hate me,'' said Luna, giving him a patient
+look, and then leaned forward and hissed softly at the blade. Her eyes
+closed, and she adopted a listening posture that reminded Harry
+disturbingly of Professor Trelawney, on the night that she had recited
+the fourth prophecy to him.
+
+Harry didn't think he'd been in a room that was this silent in a long
+time. When he glanced back, Owen's face was tight, and Charlie's ashen,
+as if they were trying to figure out what other objects might be
+Horcruxes, and the best way to protect Harry from them. McGonagall had
+already recovered from her fear, of course, by the time Harry looked at
+her, and was studying the Sword as if contemplating the best way to take
+it, snap it, and cast the halves into a bonfire.
+
+At last, Luna stepped away from the Sword and gave it a stern look.
+Harry wondered if she were silently communing with it. Then she turned
+around and said, ``The Unassailable Curse says that someone can't just
+kill herself in front of the Sword and want to die to destroy the
+Horcrux. She has to kill herself by stabbing herself through the heart
+with the Sword.''
+
+"\emph{What}?" McGonagall breathed.
+
+``That's impossible,'' said Owen, disbelief in his voice. ``How in the
+world could anyone do that?''
+
+``That would be, probably, why Voldemort chose that particular curse,''
+Charlie pointed out in a dry tone.
+
+Harry closed his eyes, and the third stanza of the fourth prophecy came
+back to him.
+
+"\emph{The second, no one can afford}
+
+\emph{To ignore the curse that seems a wall.}
+
+\emph{But that curse is true, and from the Lord,}
+
+\emph{And its only destruction is a fall.}"
+
+He could feel everyone turning to him as he recited that, but he didn't
+open his eyes until he'd finished. Then he nodded bleakly to Luna. His
+throat felt too dry, and his heart too fast. ``I think you're right,''
+he said. "I think that \emph{is} the only way this particular Horcrux
+can be destroyed. The curse is real, and ignoring it and disdaining it
+won't get us around it."
+
+``But what does that last line mean, then?'' Charlie demanded.
+"\emph{Its only destruction is a fall?}"
+
+``Mr. Weasley, I'm surprised at you,'' said McGonagall, in a voice that
+proved she'd fully recovered herself. ``Don't tell me that you've never
+heard of the honorable tradition of falling on one's sword?''
+
+Harry nodded. ``To commit suicide by stabbing oneself with one's sword.
+That is the only way we're going to kill this Horcrux.''
+
+``But no one would---'' Charlie stopped, then said, ``Can you envision
+anyone with the courage or the desperation to do that?''
+
+``Not right now, no,'' said Harry, his eyes lingering on the Sword of
+Gryffindor. ``But we should keep it in mind. I think what the prophecy
+is warning us against is trying to find some other way around this, or
+doubting that the curse is real and was placed by Voldemort. We won't
+find any way around it. We have to do it this way.''
+
+He looked at the Headmistress. ``I do think it best if the Horcrux
+remain here for now. It's fairly well-known that you have the Sword of
+Gryffindor in your office. If it's taken out, then someone might wonder
+why, and word might reach Voldemort. Do you agree with this?''
+
+``As Miss Lovegood has said, the Sword does not hate me.'' McGonagall
+looked self-possessed again. ``Yes, I will leave it here.''
+
+``Good,'' said Harry. He gave one last glance at the Sword, and shook
+his head. \emph{To think that Dumbledore tried to use it as a test of my
+goodness during second year, and was sure that I wasn't good when the
+thing ended up burning me.}
+
+\emph{Well, one of us was evil, but it wasn't me.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+It was fairly easy to find the Muggle orphanage, even in the crowded
+streets of London and in a part of the city where Harry hadn't been
+before. Thomas could give very precise directions when he wanted to. And
+they could easily cast a Disillusionment Charm over him, Luna, Charlie,
+and Owen.
+
+No, the difficult thing was hurrying Luna along when she wanted to stay
+and talk to the streets.
+
+``But some of these are cobbles laid centuries ago,'' she complained,
+when Harry coaxed her away from yet another conversation. ``They've
+never had a chance to talk about all the murders they've witnessed, and
+they wanted to know if the drunks who lay on them got home safe to their
+families.''
+
+``You can talk to them later,'' Harry promised, tugging gently on her
+hand. ``But, in the meantime, we might find another Horcrux in the
+orphanage.'' Harry thought it at least a likely place, since he knew
+that one of the Horcrux hiding places was in an unremarkable desk in a
+narrow room. And Tom Riddle would take advantage of the fact that hardly
+anyone knew anything about his past, including his mother's name and
+that he'd been reared among Muggles.
+
+``Oh, that's right, we might,'' said Luna, and she walked along beside
+Harry without any more prompting.
+
+They reached the door of the orphanage and slipped through it. The
+building was so quiet that Harry might have thought it was deserted but
+for the sounds of children shouting somewhere near the back. It
+certainly seemed dusty, and Harry guessed that it didn't make very much
+money.
+
+A heavyset man with a shock of shaggy black hair came into the front
+room when he heard the door open, but after several glimpses around, he
+shrugged, scratched the back of his neck, and ambled out again. Harry
+suspected he was just glad that the prank, which he probably put down to
+passing adolescents, hadn't been worse.
+
+Luna reached out and ran her hand down a wall that framed a narrow
+staircase. ``They remember him,'' she breathed. ``They've had a few
+other magical children here, too, but never one like him. He was the
+strongest. And he did worse things than anyone else, too.''
+
+Harry nodded. He wouldn't be surprised if the inbreeding in the Gaunt
+family had forced evil traits to the surface that otherwise never would
+have appeared. Voldemort might have been \emph{somewhat} twisted by his
+raising among the Muggles, far from the wizarding world, and by the fact
+that he was an orphan without parents, but that wasn't enough to make
+someone open the Chamber of Secrets when he was sixteen and decide that
+he wanted immortality around the same time.
+
+\emph{Unless he was abused.}
+
+The thought made Harry squirm a bit, as he thought about the possible
+similarity between himself and Voldemort. Their souls certainly vibrated
+in sympathy, enough to allow him to become Voldemort's magical heir. And
+Lily and Dumbledore had been convinced they had a potential Dark Lord on
+their hands the night after his attack on Godric's Hollow---
+
+\emph{Stop thinking like that,} he told himself. \emph{Unless you
+uncover actual evidence of that, you don't know that it happened, and it
+probably wasn't abuse like you received, anyway. Otherwise, Voldemort
+would understand more about love and compassion.}
+
+``He came up and down these stairs many times,'' Luna went on in a
+dreamy voice. Harry heard footsteps coming close to the room again, and
+hastily raised a silencing spell. The Muggle peered directly at them,
+shook his head, and left. Luna, locked deep in her trance, her fingers
+brushing back and forth across the wood like waving tendrils of seaweed
+or Jing-Xi's hair, didn't notice. ``The bottom stair tread didn't like
+him. He always paused there and leaned around the corner to listen to
+secrets. Or he took scraps of breakfast from the hungriest children and
+taunted them with them, and stood here to do it. The other children
+learned early not to bother him.'' Luna frowned then, and a note of
+censure intruded itself into her voice. ``He used his magic to punish
+them if they did anything he didn't like, and they didn't know what it
+was, but they knew better than to go against him.''
+
+Harry understood. Luna was the daughter of a Light pureblood family,
+reared on the ethic that, even if Muggles weren't equal to wizards, it
+was wrong to remind them how unequal they really were. The rules against
+showing off magic in front of Muggles weren't just to protect the
+wizarding world; they were also to prevent unnecessary outbursts of
+jealousy and hatred, fear and distress.
+
+``He dragged a girl by her hair across the steps once,'' Luna whispered.
+``She was bleeding from a cut on her shoulder. He knelt down in front of
+her and laughed and whispered to her. The stairs couldn't hear what he
+said, but it made her faint. He laughed, and cut a lock of her hair.''
+Luna paused again, then said, "And that's what he did with everyone. He
+\emph{took} something from them. A lock of hair, a scrap of skin, a
+fingernail or a toenail. Or, sometimes if they had something that
+reminded them of their parents, he took that instead. He killed their
+pets. He set things on fire from a distance, with the power of his mind,
+and they didn't know how he did it. He made boys bigger than he was back
+away with a glance. Those were dark years, while he was here."
+
+Harry shivered convulsively. Listening to Luna's soft voice recite
+things that no one alive, except Voldemort himself, probably knew now
+made him glance over his shoulder, half-expecting the shade of the
+handsome, uncaring boy he'd met in the Chamber of Secrets to stride past
+him.
+
+``And that's all they know,'' said Luna abruptly, stepping back from the
+staircase. ``They think that the walls in the room where he stayed might
+know more.'' She gave a fluttering pat to the wall, as though reassuring
+it that she would come back and talk more to it later, and then went
+upstairs. Harry and his guards followed close behind. Harry felt
+half-useless, but compelled to follow. At least it was much easier to
+discover the truth this way than it would have been researching on his
+own.
+
+By the time they caught up with Luna, she was in the middle of an old
+room that had been converted to a storage closet, from the look of it,
+though when she knelt down and pushed aside some rubbish that had
+accumulated on the floor, Harry could see marks that might represent the
+legs of a bedstead.
+
+``He lived here,'' Luna said, eyes still closed. ``The floor didn't mind
+him, because he never really did anything but walk across it, but the
+walls hated him, and the ceiling. They had to watch while he played with
+his magic and the trophies he took, or, sometimes, burned them, and then
+the people he took them from would get sick.'' Luna fell silent again,
+then said, so softly Harry could hardly hear her, ``Once, he burned
+three trophies, all from the same girl. She died. The Muggles said it
+was disease---tuberculosis. The walls and the ceiling tried to tell them
+the truth, because they knew, but the Muggles couldn't hear them.''
+
+Harry couldn't help the question. ``How old was he then?''
+
+``He'd been in this room for ten years,'' Luna answered.
+
+She sat in silence for a moment more, then added, "He didn't do that
+again. The sight of her death was too much for him. He started fearing
+death, hating it. He stopped caring about hurting other people, unless
+they'd hurt him, or they \emph{could} hurt him. He was much more
+interested in ways to avoid death. The walls say that he read all sorts
+of books about old magic, alchemy, and sometimes religious books, too,
+but he wasn't interested in those. He wanted to find some way to survive
+death inside his body."
+
+\emph{And he found it, too,} Harry thought, sickened and fascinated.
+
+``The floor remembers seeing an old wizard come to fetch him when he'd
+been here eleven years,'' said Luna abruptly. ``He had a russet beard,
+and he walked in soft shoes, so the floor liked him. He delivered a
+letter to the boy. The walls say that he talked about Hogwarts.''
+
+\emph{Dumbledore.} And, of course, though Dumbledore had known under
+which conditions Tom Riddle had grown up, he hadn't tried to interfere.
+He had thought it best to let the boy have free reign, and free will,
+and develop into whom he wanted to develop into.
+
+And then, regretting that fiercely by the time Voldemort fell, he'd
+tried to control Harry strictly, so that there was no chance of his
+power ever getting out of hand and turning him into a second Tom Riddle.
+
+\emph{He wasn't so much like me after all,} Harry thought, and shook his
+head to free himself from that chain of associations.
+
+``And then he left,'' Luna went on, straightening up. ``He came back
+sometimes, for holidays, but never for long, and then he didn't spend as
+much time in this room. If he did something else nasty, another murder,
+it was far from the walls. He never had any blood on him when he came
+back. The floor remembers the taste of blood, since it didn't taste it
+often.''
+
+Harry waited, but Luna had opened her eyes and was standing in the
+middle of the room, looking sadly at an old, broken bed piled in the
+corner. It seemed that the room had nothing more to tell her.
+
+``Luna,'' Harry said quietly. She looked at him. ``Do you think there's
+a Horcrux here?''
+
+Luna shook her head.
+
+\emph{Damn}.
+
+``But there used to be,'' Luna added.
+
+Harry stood straight. ``What makes you think so?''
+
+Luna nodded to a desk in the corner of the room. Looking at it, Harry
+uttered a low curse as he recognized the desk from the image that the
+bird had shown him, when trying to share the locations of the Horcrux.
+``The desk remembers an object that hated the whole world,'' said Luna.
+``It was long and slim, and made of wood, like itself, but sometimes it
+hissed to itself and talked. It was very old.''
+
+``A wand?''
+
+Luna drew out her own wand and held it solemnly towards the desk. A
+moment later, she nodded.
+
+``And someone took it?'' Harry asked.
+
+``Someone who walked softly, and contained the living,'' said Luna,
+squinting slightly, as if she were reading a page with blurred words.
+Then her face cleared. "Living \emph{wood}, that's what they mean. Not
+dead wood like them, already made into objects. A woman made of plants."
+
+Harry groaned. ``And she took the Horcrux,'' he muttered. ``I would bet
+that it's probably hidden in one of her gardens.''
+
+\emph{And that would fit the prophecy, too. Isn't there a verse about
+night's poisoned garden? And this is the third Horcrux we've discovered
+clues to, too.}
+
+``Probably,'' said Luna, not sounding concerned. ``Now, can I go back
+outside and talk to the cobbles? I've made the room sad. It didn't want
+to remember the magical boy who lived in it. I want to leave.''
+
+``We can,'' said Harry, since it didn't seem likely they would learn
+anything more here. He nodded to Owen and Charlie, and they followed him
+and Luna down the stairs, still heavily under cover of the
+Disillusionment Charm.
+
+As they went, Harry looked around at the blank wooden walls, and the
+unwelcoming staircase, and wondered if it had looked any different when
+Tom Riddle lived here. Had he ever known what happiness was? Had he ever
+been abused? Had he always thought of his magic as a tool of domination
+that made him special, better than the people around him, or had there
+been a point in his life when he innocently tried to share it?
+
+Then Harry shook his head. \emph{This is really only useful as far as it
+lets me understand him. The boy who lived like that is long dead, and I
+have to deal with what he is in the present.}
+
+\emph{Like me or not, my magical father in a sense or not, he has to
+die.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 29*: Face the Boy Across a
+Battlefield}\label{chapter-29-face-the-boy-across-a-battlefield}
+
+\textbf{WARNING WARNING WARNING: Really, really severe gore, violence,
+and torture in the last scene. I deliberately made it as sickening as I
+could. Please avoid this if you don't want to read it.}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Twenty-Two: Face The Boy Across A Battlefield}
+
+``Come here, Indigena.''
+
+Indigena went there, her eyes now and then darting from her Lord to the
+man who crouched at his feet. As she had suspected, it was Lucius
+Malfoy. But he didn't seem to be bleeding yet, and Indigena had never
+known her Lord to be \emph{gentle} about a sacrifice. She didn't know
+what was going to happen.
+
+But she suspected it, and it was confirmed in the moment that the
+flesh-snake turned its red eyes to her, and her Lord's voice said,
+``Hurt him, Indigena.''
+
+She bowed, keeping her face still and perfect. That was easier than it
+might have been for anyone else, thanks to the contours of leaves
+beneath her face that would hold her muscles in any position she wanted
+them to---or change her face altogether, to that of Iris Raymonds.
+``Yes, my Lord. Shall I put him on my thorns?''
+
+``That death takes too long, Indigena,'' said Voldemort. ``I wish you to
+torture him here, in front of me.''
+
+Indigena took a deep breath, and then risked the one thing she could,
+chose the one path out of confinement. ``No, my Lord.''
+
+And then the silence was as still and perfect as her face had been.
+Indigena locked her eyes on the far wall of the burrow and awaited her
+Lord's explosion. In the meantime, she studied the richness of the soil.
+Deep and dark, and it stayed where it was put. She regretted that she
+could not have planted a garden here. She could have reared flowers
+matched in fineness only by the ones in Thornhall itself.
+
+``What did you say to me?''
+
+What made it worse was the softness. If Indigena hadn't been listening
+for the tone of intense rage---and hadn't known it would be there
+anyway, whether or not she listened for it---she might have thought that
+Voldemort was asking her tenderly, gently, why she had failed to take up
+this task.
+
+She glanced back at him, looking at his empty eye sockets, eaten by the
+poison of the Many cobras, and repeated, ``No, my Lord.''
+
+Another pause of silence, and then Voldemort said, ``You must explain
+this to me, Indigena. You know what will happen if you refuse me for too
+long.'' He nodded at Lucius, who remained motionless, though crouched in
+a position that must have been uncomfortable. ``Your body will become
+mine, and your mind, to do with as I will. You bear the Dark Mark, and I
+can control you through that, should I choose.''
+
+``Yes, my Lord,'' Indigena acknowledged. She could not deny that. Her
+hatred of Feldspar would make a fine chain, should her Lord choose to
+employ it.
+
+``Then explain why you are defying me.''
+
+And that was easy, though Indigena doubted Voldemort had meant to make
+it so. As she recovered from her failure on the Cornwall mission, and
+heard more and more about what had happened in the wake of the raid on
+Tullianum, her heart had firmed. She knew death waited at the end of
+this road, but she had accepted that she would die, in one way or
+another, ever since she took the Mark. At least she would die on her own
+two feet. And if her body continued to exist after that, she would still
+account it dead, because her free will would have perished.
+
+``I am not one for torture alone,'' she said simply, eyes locked on
+Voldemort's. ``I have not ever been. I did not mind torturing Evan
+Rosier, my Lord, because I could feed my thorns with his blood and
+flesh. And I have stood by while you tortured others, and never said a
+word. And I fed the truth to the Potters because it was the only way
+they might know justice before their deaths. But lingering pain without
+a second purpose has never been my choice.''
+
+``That does not matter, Indigena,'' Voldemort said, his voice
+dangerously flat. ``I am asking you to make this choice.''
+
+``And it is one that I cannot make,'' said Indigena, even as she tried
+to fill her memory with the sound of shifting dirt and the crackling and
+creaking of a tendril as her rose unfolded around her wrist. "There are
+some things in me that clash too strongly with my definition of honor. I
+know that you can control me and \emph{make} me do them, but in that
+case, I will not be the one doing them."
+
+Voldemort was silent for a long moment. Then he said, ``You came to my
+side because of honor, Indigena.''
+
+She nodded, and sniffed the scents of the soft perfumes drifting around
+her body, so that she would have their company in the darkness of her
+enslaved mind.
+
+``I must hold you with honor.'' Voldemort's voice was softer than she
+had ever heard it. ``You came to me when I was wounded, and aided me
+without compulsion from the Dark Mark. You have never considered going
+to Harry and betraying me. I know that. I know the furthest reaches of
+your mind, and I know that you do not fear my wrath now, because you
+have refined the fear from your soul.'' He was silent for long moments
+more, while Indigena blinked in astonishment. That almost sounded like
+compassion, and she knew her Lord did not feel compassion.
+
+\emph{He does not,} she thought, as she studied him and the slow way his
+hand caressed the flesh-snake. \emph{But he knows loyalty. He felt for
+Nagini, the snake that stayed with him for so many years prior to her
+death. If I had ever shown doubt in my allegiance to him, some
+temptation to run, then he would not recognize mine. But I never
+wavered, and so he recognizes that steadfastness.}
+
+``I will not force that sacrifice from you,'' Voldemort went on.
+
+Indigena bowed, and breathed a bit more easily. It seemed that she would
+keep a scrap of her honor after all, even as she continued to run down
+into the darkness.
+
+Voldemort looked down on the kneeling Lucius. ``Of course, this does
+mean that we must find some other use for you,'' he said, and idly
+kicked out. Lucius fell over, unable to move, and lay there, his nose to
+the dirt, while Voldemort contemplated. Indigena thought the position
+amusing, and fitting for what he had become.
+
+``Ah, yes, I know,'' said the Dark Lord suddenly, and his voice was a
+purr as he glanced at Lucius again. ``Lucius.''
+
+``My Lord?'' His words were partially muffled by the floor.
+
+``You will go to Malfoy Manor, and stay there until you see signs of
+activity.'' The snake swayed and danced around Voldemort's waist. ``I do
+believe that Harry will be using it as a safe house soon.''
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco closed his eyes and bowed his head.
+
+He'd studied wards for the past several days to get to this point, so
+intently that he hadn't wanted to interrupt his study to go to the
+orphanage with Harry. He wished Harry well, of course, and he would want
+to be by his side in battle, but if he was ever to make a contribution
+to the war effort that didn't lie in Harry's shadow, he would have to do
+this, which only he could perform.
+
+He could feel the wards around Malfoy Manor throbbing beneath his skin
+like a heartbeat, or a tumor, when he touched them. The chains tightened
+and grew thicker when pulled. Draco wasn't going to simply tug on them,
+though, as he would when raising the Manor's defenses against intruders.
+He was going to change their very nature, so that only certain people
+would be able to enter the Manor.
+
+After much discussion with Thomas Rhangnara, Draco had finally chosen
+wards based on the intentions of the people entering the house. They had
+to either be completely neutral in the conflict against Voldemort or
+actively opposed to him. Compliance with either Voldemort or the
+Ministry would mean being bounced from the wards and unable to enter.
+
+Harry might have been a bit unhappy about that, if he'd known all the
+details. Draco wasn't. There should be no one innocent caught up in the
+web. Children who were too young to understand the conflict would be
+accounted neutral. Members of families who preferred the Ministry to
+Harry might seek to undermine his war effort so that Juniper could
+succeed, and though they might deserve shelter, they would have to find
+it at some other place than Malfoy Manor.
+
+Narcissa had expressed her disapproval in cool tones. Draco had listened
+to her as politely, and discounted the objections---politely, he hoped.
+It wasn't as though he would often be visiting the Manor, unless Harry
+moved there. He didn't have to \emph{live} in the same house with
+Mudbloods and Muggles.
+
+But now he had to change the wards.
+
+He sank into deep silence; he sat in his and Harry's bedroom, and right
+now Harry was rather busy collecting those refugees from Hogwarts who
+would be going to safety in the Manor. The rest of the Slytherin House
+knew better than to come near their door, after a short but powerful
+talk that Draco had had with them the other day. The wards became the
+only thing that was real, twanging, glinting golden chains that
+stretched from his body into the distance.
+
+Draco began to change them.
+
+As Rhangnara had told him, he visualized each link changing, the gold
+that made them up right now bleeding away and being replaced with
+pewter, the color that Draco had chosen to represent wards based on the
+guests' intentions. It was hard, of course. The old wards were ancient
+and thick, and had hosted generations of Malfoys and those rare people
+they trusted. Most of all, Draco himself had been reared to think it was
+only right that his family have a place they could retreat from the
+world, and that the wards provided that place. Changing them involved
+going against his own convictions as well as the magic.
+
+But along with the visualization and the spells Draco had cast before he
+began---spells to strengthen his concentration and his will---he had his
+own beliefs on the matter. He wanted to contribute to the war effort, in
+a way that only he could. He wanted to be able to make \emph{some} use
+of the Manor, which otherwise would sit empty, since his mother had no
+intention of entering it until she reconciled with Lucius and Draco had
+no intention of leaving Harry's side. He knew the intense need that
+Harry's side had for secure, warded properties. He wanted to do
+something to make Harry proud of him, to show that he was moving on and
+leaving at least a few of his prejudices behind. Therefore, he would do
+this.
+
+His new beliefs pushed at the old ones, and Draco felt the chains
+lessening bit by bit. It helped that he could think of gold as soft and
+malleable, likely to melt in the fires of his convictions. He knew each
+link, too, thanks to his status as heir of the Malfoy properties. Each
+one he saw as dimming in color and shifting in properties, and, little
+by little, reluctantly, they changed.
+
+Then a flash of golden light enveloped him, and he felt another will
+shoving back against himself, as if a second Malfoy opposed his intent
+to change the wards.
+
+Draco kept calm. Rhangnara had told him this might happen. Old houses
+quite often had some protection built into their wards, so that a
+rebellious child, a blood traitor, or someone who had managed to fool
+the wards into thinking he was of the family could not change or drop
+the defenses on a whim. This was a fragment of the spirit of an
+ancestor, come to test Draco's courage.
+
+Draco answered with a flash of pewter light, and all the arrogance he
+could muster. \emph{I am Draco Malfoy, son of Lucius Malfoy and Narcissa
+Black, only heir of the line, accepted joining partner of the most
+powerful undeclared wizard in the British Isles and the only} vates
+\emph{in the world. Who are you?}
+
+The voice hesitated, and Draco gained some ground, changing five golden
+links to gray before it could respond. Then it answered, \emph{It does
+not matter who I am. What matters is that you are degrading the wealth
+and pride of our heritage!}
+
+Draco laughed. \emph{You can't even remember, can you?} Again the
+hesitation, and Draco pushed against the center of that strength, which
+seemed to hover in the air somewhere between the chains. \emph{You might
+not even be a Malfoy, but a wandering ghost caught and held by the
+wards, or some bastard child condemned here because you were no use to
+the family otherwise. At the least, you have no proud name to match
+mine.}
+
+\emph{Do you know what you are doing to} this \emph{proud name?} The
+voice was screeching now, and Draco imagined a tiny stamping figure like
+a house elf, because it amused him.
+
+\emph{Of course I know,} he said, \emph{and I know that as true Malfoy
+heir, the wards and the Manor are mine to do with as I like.}
+
+The voice snarled back at him, and then seemed to decide to use all its
+strength in shoving against him. But Draco was past the midpoint now,
+with the chains all around him changed to pewter and the colors rippling
+away from him, flowing down the wards to the horizon, melting the gold.
+He knew he was going to succeed.
+
+Flash, and change, and spurt like a starburst, and then the voice wailed
+in indignity and went back to its place as a guardian. Draco blinked,
+and opened his eyes to what felt like a changed world---shards of glass
+grinding under his skin. He had been told to expect that, too, until the
+wards had time to get used to their new nature and the Manor to its
+changed status.
+
+He didn't care. He had done it, and Harry would find out and look at him
+with love and pride, and Draco had enough love and pride in himself for
+any ten wizards even if Harry didn't.
+
+He flopped back on their bed then, a small smile on his face, and slept
+for two hours.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry sighed. He had argued with Michael Rosier-Henlin for an hour, and
+if the boy didn't want to go with his mother and little sister to Malfoy
+Manor for safety, then he didn't have to go. Harry wished that
+\emph{someone} would have, however, since none of his sworn companions
+had been enthusiastic about the idea of Michael staying with Harry and
+swearing another oath.
+
+Instead of thinking about Michael, who currently stood behind him in
+Medusa's room with arms folded and looked ready for another fight, Harry
+turned to Medusa. ``You have everything you need, Madam?'' he asked
+gently.
+
+Medusa nodded wanly. She had Eos wrapped close in her arms, and a small
+trunk floating behind her that contained the objects she'd managed to
+create or been given in Hogwarts. Though several people had tried to
+help her, Harry suspected she hadn't taken anything but those items she
+truly needed for her baby daughter. Medusa obviously didn't like
+charity.
+
+``Then we may leave,'' said Harry, and escorted her down to the entrance
+hall, where the other refugees who would go to Malfoy Manor were
+waiting. Medusa buried her head in Eos's baby blanket and refused to
+look up. Eos was awake, Harry saw, but watching everything with large
+solemn eyes, absurdly quiet for a baby of five months old. Harry thought
+about making absurd faces to see if she would laugh---she was supposed
+to be his goddaughter, after all---but refrained, in the end. He didn't
+think Medusa would appreciate it.
+
+Most of the other refugees straightened up the moment they saw him, and
+Harry nodded carefully to them. Thirty-five people, most of whom had
+fled to Hogwarts for safety immediately after the first vampire attack,
+or in the wake of the first attacks on Harry's allies. Ignifer and
+Honoria were among them, though Ignifer was going mostly as a bodyguard
+for the others, Harry thought, and Honoria because she would not be
+parted from Ignifer. She currently stood upright with the aid of a
+wooden leg, cheerfully refusing any more help, and making jokes about
+losing limbs that didn't seem to reassure the anxiously hovering Ignifer
+at all.
+
+``We'll go out beyond the wards around Hogwarts to the edge of the
+Hogsmeade road, and Apparate,'' said Harry quietly, drawing their
+attention. ``I know that I've shown Malfoy Manor to most of the adults,
+but does anyone else require a glimpse of it?''
+
+Heads shook. Most of the party was tense and unsmiling, Harry
+saw---probably intimidated at the thought of venturing out beyond
+Hogwarts for the first time in a few months, even though they'd agreed
+to leave the school so as to be farther away from Harry in the case of a
+direct attack by Voldemort, and even though the transfer to the
+safehouse at Silver-Mirror had gone perfectly. Well, perhaps they did
+have something to worry about.
+
+Harry stayed closed to Medusa and Eos as they left, but it wasn't long
+before Ignifer came up to him, bouncing her wand across her palm.
+
+``Why isn't Malfoy accompanying us?'' she asked.
+
+It took Harry a moment to realize she was talking about Draco, and he
+smiled a little ruefully. ``He still has his share of pride,'' he
+answered. ``He has agreed to let strangers live in his home, but he
+would prefer not to watch as they possess it.''
+
+Ignifer grunted. Harry wondered if she was saying she could understand
+that. They walked a few feet further in silence, and then Ignifer said.
+``Do you think he will mind if I kill his father?''
+
+Harry blinked twice, then glanced at her. ``You know that Lucius is a
+slave to Voldemort, and did not---''
+
+``He cut off Honoria's leg.'' Ignifer's voice was soft, and Harry might
+not have thought she was furious except for the curl of flame bubbling
+over the edge of her hair. ``I want him dead.''
+
+``I can't let you kill him,'' said Harry.
+
+``Even in the heat of battle?''
+
+Harry was forced, sharply, to remember that Ignifer \emph{had}, after
+all, Declared for Dark, and could presumably use subtlety and cunning
+when she wanted to. She acted enough like a Light witch most of the time
+that he could forget.
+
+Instead of replying with the sharp tirade she probably expected,
+therefore, he said mildly, "Do you know, each time I think the lesson of
+misplaced vengeance is going to strike my allies, and yet it
+\emph{never} seems to work? Bulstrode, Parkinson, Starrise, Snape---the
+list of those who have fallen victim to it is abnormally long. I suppose
+that I shouldn't be surprised to see another case beginning."
+
+Ignifer's spine stiffened, and then she glanced away from him. ``You
+have made your point,'' she murmured, so gently that Harry could hardly
+hear her. ``But I still want Malfoy dead.''
+
+``I can understand that,'' said Harry, his heart beating harder with
+relief. ``What I can't understand is giving up your duty to guard
+others---your duty to guard your partner, in fact---to chase misplaced
+vengeance.''
+
+Ignifer gave a curt nod. ``You need not worry about that.''
+
+``Good.'' Harry squeezed her arm briefly, then lifted his head. They had
+passed the edge of Hogwarts's anti-Apparition wards. He raised his
+voice. ``Now, concentrate on the image of Malfoy Manor, and Apparate.''
+
+He gently took Medusa's arm, although he knew she probably didn't need
+the help, and closed his eyes. The image of the blue-gray house he'd
+seen so many times showed clearly on the back of his eyelids, and he
+jumped.
+
+There was a bright twitch of the world around him, several sharp
+\emph{cracks} as people came into being, and then screams. Harry's eyes
+flew open, and he moved to put himself between Medusa and Eos and
+danger.
+
+Lucius Malfoy was attacking from the left.
+
+He didn't look at all like either the Lucius Harry had known or the
+Death Eater Harry had heard mentioned during the First War---thought
+that latter might have something to do with his lack of a cloak and a
+mask, Harry thought, finding humor, somehow, in the haze of his anger
+and shock. His hair flew around him, and his face was covered with dirt
+as if he had spent days lying in it. His wand shot spells without pause,
+so he must be doing them nonverbally. And almost all of them were pain
+curses. He hadn't raised a shield that Harry could see.
+
+Almost certainly, Voldemort intended Lucius to die fighting Harry.
+
+Harry heard Ignifer give a snarl, and snapped at her without turning
+around, even as he raised a \emph{Protego} around the target of Lucius's
+first pain curses, a woman with three small children. ``Get them into
+the Manor and stay with them, Ignifer!''
+
+There came a moment shared between Lucius's deflected curses and
+Ignifer's silent struggle to obey. Harry knew he'd won both when Lucius
+had to duck and Ignifer spoke from behind him in a loud, deliberately
+calm voice, chivvying people towards the Manor's front door.
+
+Lucius's eyes locked on Harry. Harry felt his heart ache with pity. They
+only held insanity on the surface. Someone else looked out of the bottom
+of them, and that person was begging for help.
+
+``Fight me, Potter,'' Lucius whispered, and his wand struck out, with a
+curse Harry knew well---the Blood Whip.
+
+Harry dropped the shield, which would explode in the face of that curse,
+and rolled smoothly on the ground. The curse shot over his head, and
+from the scream that followed, Harry knew it hadn't struck someone, that
+that was just a cry of fear; he knew the sounds of pain too well. He
+stood and concentrated on the image of Lucius standing motionless, while
+relaxing the barriers on his magic the way that Jing-Xi had taught him.
+
+The air flooded with images of shadowy cats and snakes, and Lucius
+slowed down, his movements heavily weighted. Harry began to breathe a
+bit more easily. If he could hold Lucius still, it was possible he could
+recapture him, and hold him in one place until he managed to talk him
+out of the hatred Voldemort was still using to cage him. On no account
+would Harry kill him, not if he still had a choice.
+
+``Do you remember me, Lucius?'' he asked softly. ``The man who made a
+truce-dance with you? The man who gave you the gift of Parseltongue, and
+received a link to the wards of Malfoy Manor in return? Your son's
+lover?'' He took several steps forward, never removing his eyes from
+Lucius's. ``You left behind a son and a wife who love you, who are
+willing to share their lives with you if you return. Isn't that better
+than what you have now, Lucius?''
+
+Lucius squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, though, given the
+weight of Harry's magic on him, it moved as slowly as though he were
+underwater. Harry could feel the strands of compulsion winding around
+him, originating from the Dark Mark on his left arm. If Voldemort
+possessed the ability to make Lucius go against him, Harry thought, it
+would come from that.
+
+``You can do this,'' Harry whispered. ``You can struggle. I know you
+can. I've fought enough times with you, you stubborn bastard.'' He made
+sure to lace his voice with affection. True insults might drive Lucius
+back into the arms of the Dark Lord. ``I refuse to believe that you
+would give up simply because you're fighting Voldemort.''
+
+Slowly, Lucius's eyes opened. Harry looked into them, quietly,
+confidently. The insanity had dimmed. Something like sense was rising to
+the surface again.
+
+``You can do this,'' Harry coaxed. ``Narcissa misses you. Draco misses
+you. Isn't that worth more than all the hatreds you've held on to, the
+clever plans you wove that couldn't save you, the---''
+
+Lucius's eyes moved past him, and towards the Manor. A moment later, a
+flood of vile, foreign magic filled the air around him, and Harry's hold
+snapped like leaves. Lucius snarled and lifted his wand again.
+
+Harry knew Voldemort must have used the image of people who weren't
+Malfoys entering the Manor to fire Lucius's hatred. He moved, not to
+hurt Lucius but to raise a shield and then tug on the magic that flowed
+between him and Voldemort, wrapping it around himself and refusing to
+let more run down the tunnel. Voldemort was exerting an awful lot of
+effort to reach Lucius from this distance. If Harry could make that
+hard, he might give up his pawn rather than take a wound.
+
+It didn't seem so, though, perhaps because Voldemort could also command
+Lucius to use his own magic. Lucius used a sharp green lightning bolt,
+which resembled some curses Harry had seen before but which he didn't
+actually know, and which turned out to explode shields. Harry found
+himself flat on his back, gasping, his control over his magic shattered
+and his cheek flayed open almost to the bone.
+
+He lunged upright, reaching again for Lucius, this time envisioning the
+cloud cage that had contained Hawthorn, and which he would make proof
+against Apparition.
+
+But Voldemort had learned his lesson about sacrificing pawns. Lucius
+Apparated out moments before the air around him turned thick and golden.
+
+Harry cursed, slamming a fist against the ground to relieve the feeling.
+His magic turned the grass to molten glass. Harry blinked, shivered, and
+stood, cradling his hand against his side. He heard pounding footsteps
+behind him and turned, eyes scanning the ground for casualties. There
+was no one dead, but a blood trail led towards the door of the Manor.
+
+Ignifer was running towards him, wand held high. She skidded to a stop
+at the sight of his bleeding cheek, her flames leaping around her like a
+wall. ``He hurt you,'' she said. Her narrowed eyes traveled past him to
+lock on the place where Lucius had stood. ``And escaped.''
+
+``What part of `stay with them' did you not understand?'' Harry asked.
+His chest was heaving, but his mind was perfectly clear. He had lost
+hold of Lucius, but he would most likely have other chances. His wound
+was minor, the least of his worries; it could have been so much worse.
+He frowned at Ignifer, who looked taken aback. ``I told you to remain
+with the refugees in the Manor. You're the strongest witch among them.
+They need your protection.''
+
+``I\ldots{}'' Abashed, Ignifer looked away from him.
+
+Satisfied that she had the point, Harry softened his voice. ``I know.
+You saw me hurt. But sometimes that doesn't matter, Ignifer. Sometimes
+you need to make the hard choices, and my life is worth less than the
+lives of thirty-six people---thirty-seven, counting yourself. Do you
+understand?''
+
+Ignifer nodded, though she didn't look happy about it. ``Why do you
+think Malfoy was here?'' she asked, changing the subject.
+
+``Voldemort probably sent him for his knowledge of the territory, and to
+punish both me and him by making me face him in battle,'' said Harry,
+pushing aside the thought of what he would say to Narcissa and Draco
+when next he saw them. It hadn't been his fault that he lost Lucius; he
+had not known that Voldemort could force his captured Death Eaters to go
+against Harry's magic. In the future, he would know that. ``I imagine
+that we'll see him again.''
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Adalrico had been waiting.
+
+He had felt something more than despair ever since Pharos Starrise had
+died whimpering over the sound of his own bones. The hatred that had
+condemned him to serve under the Dark Lord was ended. He could not look
+at the fingerbones hanging in the corner of the burrow room where he
+brewed his potions and feel his loathing towards the Starrise family
+with the same intensity as before.
+
+\emph{Pharos has a brother\ldots{}}
+
+But Tybalt Starrise had done nothing to him, and Adalrico most often
+ignored the voice in his head in favor of staring at the fingerbones
+again, and daydreaming about the day of the Tullianum raid.
+
+Sometimes, now, in a corner of his mind so deep that he barely allowed
+himself to realize it existed, he dreamed of Millicent, and Marian, and
+Elfrida. He dreamed of them, and he dreamed, too, that he had been
+allowed to go back to them, somehow rescued and redeemed from his chains
+in the blackness.
+
+But he had never thought seriously that he might have a chance like
+that---at least until Lucius Malfoy Apparated back from Malfoy Manor,
+and the full might of Voldemort's anger descended on him. As Adalrico
+knelt, eyes on the floor, in a corner of the throne room, he felt the
+chains on his own mind slip a little. Voldemort was intent on making
+Lucius pay, so intent that he wasn't keeping as tight a leash on his
+other recalled servants as he should.
+
+Adalrico let his eyes track, inch by inch, over to Hawthorn Parkinson,
+but saw no twitch of movement from her. Then he remembered that she had
+other hatreds to chain her here. One of them, Indigena Yaxley, stood a
+few feet from her, arms folded as she watched the interplay between
+Lucius and Voldemort with a resigned expression. And Hawthorn was
+probably dreaming of killing Lucius herself.
+
+Feldspar Yaxley was absent, but he would probably have been too cowardly
+to move even if he was here, Adalrico knew.
+
+So this was his chance alone, should he choose to take it.
+
+The screaming from Voldemort about Lucius's failure, mingled with the
+hissing of his snake, went on and on, and even a few of the other Death
+Eaters---minus Sylvan Yaxley, who was cycling into Oaken Yaxley just at
+that moment---began to shift uneasily. Adalrico knew they were thinking
+about the rage and hatred behind that screaming, and what might happen
+should Voldemort decide that Lucius was not enough of a target for him.
+
+Adalrico knew that his own disappearance would increase those emotions
+in the Dark Lord, but he did not care. He couldn't do anything to save
+either Lucius or Hawthorn. He felt something like himself for the first
+time in months. He wanted to go back to his wife and daughters, and if
+Voldemort's hold on him lessened any more, then he was going to take the
+chance.
+
+Voldemort leaned forward in his throne, the snake actually slithering
+off his lap to confront Lucius, and his hold lessened.
+
+Adalrico took the chance.
+
+He focused all his thoughts on the house at Blackstone, since it was the
+place he knew best, and certainly better than trying to Apparate to
+Hogwarts and being bounced from the wards. Once he was back in his
+house, he could raise the wards. He had designed the ward-destroying
+stones. He knew their weaknesses, and he could resist anyone trying to
+reach him. The hardest part would be fighting the call of the Dark Mark,
+but with his hatred held back, he could do even that.
+
+Just one moment more, to let the library of Blackstone coalesce in his
+mind's eye.
+
+And then Voldemort noticed him.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Indigena lifted her head. Before, she had not felt that the atmosphere
+around her was truly dangerous. Her Lord would scream, and he would
+torture Lucius to death, but she had already expected that.
+
+Now, though, silence filled the air like smoke from a fire, and Adalrico
+Bulstrode was making little, choked, helpless sounds, holding his head
+in his hands as Voldemort and his snake stared at him.
+
+\emph{He tried to escape,} Indigena realized, as she watched the others
+straighten. \emph{And our Lord sensed him.}
+
+She could almost feel the vast weight of Voldemort's anger swinging,
+centering now not on Lucius, who had only failed him, but on the man
+stupid enough to oppose him. Indigena took a moment to fortify herself,
+raising the same shields against compassion that she had during Severus
+Snape's torture in the Chamber of Secrets. She did not care for the
+torture, but she would not interfere. It was not her place.
+
+``Indigena.''
+
+She clenched her fists, causing the thorny rose to try and worm its way
+into her hand so that it could spread the fingers, and looked up at her
+Lord. ``Yes, my Lord?''
+
+``I assume that your prohibition against torture extends to torturing
+Adalrico, as well?'' The calm in Voldemort's voice made the statement
+worse.
+
+Indigena nodded in silence. She was not sure that her Lord would
+actually give her a choice when he was this enraged, but she had to
+refuse the opportunity to torture no matter what.
+
+``That does not matter,'' Voldemort whispered. ``That does not matter. I
+am minded to try something that requires the sacrifice of a Death
+Eater---one who took the Mark willingly, one whose Mark my magic may
+circle through. Only the rarity of my servants until now kept me from
+trying it. And now that I have a servant I may sacrifice, and one versed
+in the necessary torture, there is no need to hold back any longer.''
+His voice changed, to a whipcrack. ``Oaken!''
+
+``My Lord.'' Indigena's cousin rose to his feet, showing off the
+brown-bronze eyes and stern face of the quieter Yaxley twin.
+
+``You have tortured people, I know,'' said Voldemort.
+
+``One every month for the last ten years, yes, my Lord,'' said Oaken,
+without flinching or changing his expression. ``Unwilling sacrifices are
+necessary to maintain our invulnerability.''
+
+``Then you will have no objection to taking this man and doing what I
+tell you to do with him.'' Voldemort pointed his finger, and the snake
+jerked its head, at Adalrico.
+
+Oaken did not blink. ``No, my Lord.''
+
+``Excellent.'' Voldemort stood from his throne and walked steadily
+forward, the snake gliding next to his heels to insure that he did not
+do so blindly. ``Stretch him spread-eagle, then. Indigena, your vines
+are required to bind.''
+
+Adalrico made small, futile motions as if he wanted to struggle, but
+their Lord's control over him was too complete to let him do so. As she
+made vines sprout from the earth to tie him, Indigena felt a moment's
+stab of pity for him. And then it was gone back into the washing tide of
+horror, as she watched Oaken stride forward and crouch down over
+Adalrico, insuring that his limbs went where they needed to go.
+
+When that was done, Oaken glanced up at Voldemort, who stood looking
+down at Adalrico as if he still had eyes.
+
+``The Death Eaters swear an oath to me,'' Voldemort whispered. "That is
+the true secret of service, that oath. \emph{Do you consent to serve me
+all the days of your life?} That created a bond that cannot be broken,
+and the Mark is the visible sign of it." He outlined the Dark Mark in
+the air above Adalrico's left arm, though he did not touch it. It was so
+quiet, save for his words, that Indigena could hear as well as feel her
+heartbeat. She felt the other Death Eaters leaning forward all along the
+wall, trying to guess what would happen next and how to avoid it
+themselves.
+
+``Adalrico's time to serve me, alive, is done,'' said Voldemort, and
+then sank to the floor. ``Oaken Yaxley, I desire you to make a Dark Mark
+of Adalrico Bulstrode, to see that his body imitates in shape what his
+arm bears. Do not touch his left arm, but warp every other part of him
+as you see fit. And make sure he stays alive and conscious.''
+
+``My Lord,'' said Oaken, and bowed, and began.
+
+Indigena watched, both because she felt Adalrico was owed a witness to
+his demise and because she thought she knew what her Lord would do to
+her if she were to look away.
+
+She saw Adalrico's belly opened, the intestines drawn out like braided
+ropes, twined around his body in the shape of the snake, running from
+shoulder to shoulder and arm to arm to form the sinuous curves. She saw
+his legs broken and reformed, the bones in them used to suggest the
+pattern of scales; Oaken spent a long time on that, as if the detail
+were important. She saw his head twisted to the side and then bent
+inwards to his chest. His torso would become the center of the skull,
+Indigena saw. His ribs were broken and extended through the skin to form
+the teeth of the skull. Large, bloody patches of overturned flesh made
+the eyes. Adalrico's right arm was obliterated, pieces of it used to
+carefully layer the dome of the skull.
+
+And all the while, Adalrico screamed, until he could scream no more.
+What stopped him was not the exhaustion of his voice, but the placement
+of his mouth. Indigena saw a pair of lips opening and shutting somewhere
+in the center of the skull design, but Oaken---well, it was Sylvan by
+then---smoothed a hand over them, and they shut forever, so as not to
+disrupt the harmony of the design.
+
+Soon it became impossible to think of what lay before them as Adalrico
+Bulstrode, or as human at all. It was a Dark Mark sculpted in skin, in
+bone, in flesh and organs and quivering meat.
+
+And through it all, the left arm remained untouched, the Dark Mark
+uncovered, black and gleaming in the dim light of the burrow.
+
+When it was done, Sylvan stood back and looked at the Dark Lord for
+further instructions. Indigena, breathing heavily against her own
+nausea, looked, too. Her Lord's eyes were not open, of course, but his
+snake-like, bone-white face conveyed his deep bliss in the twins' work.
+
+``Now,'' said Voldemort, his voice barely above a whisper, ``make a cut
+in my left side. Use your magic. It must go to my magical core.''
+
+Indigena had a faint inkling, then, of what her Lord intended to do. He
+could use the magic of his Death Eaters because of the Dark Marks. His
+power could run through the Marks in a vast circle instead of draining.
+
+But she did not know, yet, whether she was right. So she was forced to
+watch as Sylvan cut a hole in her lord's left side, and dug deep, using
+magic to keep him alive all the while, aiming straight for the magical
+core. Indigena listened to the intently muttered spells with detached
+admiration. At some point, Sylvan---Oaken now---would need to cross the
+divide that separated the world of soul and spirit from the world of
+flesh and blood, and they were doing so even as they kept up the work of
+cutting. In their own way, they were true artists.
+
+She thought that a moment before she vomited.
+
+Her Lord did not seem to notice. Of course, he had not wavered since the
+cutting began, instead staring at the Dark Mark made of Adalrico, his
+face unchanging. And then he started, and Indigena knew that Oaken must
+have reached the magical core.
+
+``Bring up his left arm,'' he whispered. ``Press the Dark Mark to the
+hole in my core.''
+
+Oaken didn't hesitate, separating the left arm from the rest of
+Adalrico's body by a simple Cutting Charm, and then feeding it through
+the hole in Voldemort's left side, murmuring another spell that would
+let the limb cross that same divide between the world of spirit and
+flesh.
+
+The world shook and quivered. Voldemort placed his right hand on the
+Mark made of flesh, and Indigena felt the moment---as a crawling in her
+left arm---when he began to draw up his magic.
+
+The magic tried to drain out the hole in her Lord's magical core that
+Harry had cut with his variant of the Fisher King Curse---
+
+And was stopped. The Dark Mark contained a piece of Voldemort, and the
+magic drained into Adalrico's Dark Mark, circled through it, and then
+circled back into the magical core itself.
+
+At the same moment, Voldemort intoned, "\emph{Ebibo minutalem!}"
+
+The Dark Mark under Voldemort's hand, all that was left of Adalrico,
+softened and shook, and then writhed up and plastered itself around
+Voldemort like one of the fake masks Indigena had seen Muggles wearing
+for Halloween. It clung there for long moments until it abruptly all
+softened further and streamed into the cut in his left side. Sealed
+twice, Indigena thought, dazed, with the Dark Mark providing the
+immediate plug to the hole and the flesh shaped into a Dark Mark
+providing a second, symbolic plug on top of that.
+
+And, since Adalrico had taken the Dark Mark of his own free will---as
+had every Death Eater, or Voldemort would not have accepted them---there
+was a good chance that this counted as a willing sacrifice.
+
+The burrow flooded with magic. Indigena could not see. She could hear
+her Lord laughing, and smell her own vomit, and taste the heavy tang of
+blood, and feel soft musky fur pressing against her skin, but she could
+not see. The Dark Lord had arisen again, and he was cloaked in Darkness.
+
+She \emph{did} know that the magic raised in this burrow was beyond
+anything she had ever felt before, that Voldemort was the most powerful
+wizard she had ever encountered, and her knees bent without conscious
+volition, casting her down with humbled mind and bowed head.
+
+Voldemort laughed, and laughed and laughed, and the Darkness went up
+like an unfolding flag to challenge the dominion of the Light, promising
+terror and torture and magic resurrected---the life of despair, the
+death of hope.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 30*: Intermission: In
+Transition}\label{chapter-30-intermission-in-transition}
+
+\textbf{Intermission: In Transition}
+
+A tunnel opened between Millicent and the distance, in what she later
+understood as the moment her father died.
+
+She choked and fell to one knee, hearing her mother's soft, anxious
+voice asking her what was wrong. Millicent put up a hand, but was unable
+to speak as her vision flooded with darkness and light, alternating
+pulses of it that at last settled into a single image: a clenched, black
+stone fist on a white background, with \emph{Duramus} written beneath it
+in dark letters.
+
+By that, the symbol of Bulstrode, she knew that her father was dead, and
+from this moment on she must be the head of the Bulstrode family in
+truth as well as in name.
+
+The fist spun away in the next moment, and Millicent saw a storm of dark
+snowflakes flying towards her. She spread her arms to embrace them,
+though the power of the transition still would not let her rise from her
+knees.
+
+The magic hit her as the transfer of gifts began between her and her
+father. She had been his magical heir, and so his power did not flee at
+his death, to become one of the many wandering shades summoned on
+Walpurgis Night, but gave itself to her. Millicent felt the capacity for
+blackfire grow strong in her stomach. The secrets of Blackstone unfolded
+themselves in her head like songs she had always known but temporarily
+forgotten. The last and most terrible defense of the Bulstrodes---the
+Medusa gaze, never to be used on anyone who would escape alive to tell
+of it---flared behind her eyes.
+
+And then it was done.
+
+Millicent knelt where she was for long moments, eyes still shut. She had
+fallen one person, and she would rise another. From this moment, the
+future and the fortunes of her family depended on her.
+
+When she stood, her eyes were empty of tears, her face calm, but that
+fact alone made her mother burst into tears and cling to her. Millicent
+smoothed her hair, one part of her mind on the mourning that would need
+to be done, one part of her mind on Marian---her heir, now, in truth as
+well as name---and one part thinking of the message she would need to
+send to France.
+
+It was a time of war, but that only meant that the future of Bulstrode
+was less secure than ever. It did not bring an end to obligations, or to
+the life that would need to continue when the war was done. Millicent
+intended to summon Pierre Delacour, marry him as their families had
+already agreed, and do what she could to conceive an heir. She would not
+ordinarily have rushed to have children, but she might not be alive a
+year from now, and Marian was a slender thread to hang everything on.
+She must do what she could.
+
+\emph{More than just my blood flows in me.}
+
+``Was it swift?''
+
+Millicent blinked and looked down at Elfrida's face. She was about to
+say that she did not know the answer to that question, but when she
+opened her mouth, she found she did. Echoes of agony rolled through her
+muscles.
+
+``No,'' she said. ``It was slow, and there was much pain.''
+
+Her mother shut her washed-out, pale blue eyes, and slowly nodded. Then
+she seemed to gather strength to herself. Millicent knew that, in
+important ways, that was a lie. That strength was always there, but for
+the most part Elfrida leaned on her husband in public and summoned it
+only to defend her children.
+
+Now the task of defending at least one of her children would always be
+hers. So when her face bristled with an edge of gold, and her body
+filled with the lioness strength of the \emph{puellaris} witch,
+Millicent was not surprised.
+
+``That is as it must be,'' she murmured. ``Will you be using the Stone
+Chamber?''
+
+Millicent considered that for a moment. The Stone Chamber was the last
+refuge of the Bulstrodes, never revealed to anyone outside the family;
+not even all those who married among them had known of it, unless they
+had revealed themselves to be as loyal and trustworthy as Elfrida had
+been to Adalrico. In that chamber, members of the family could be
+transformed to statues and endure a war or a persecution that way,
+behind an Unassailable Curse that only the willingly spilled blood of
+Bulstrode could negate.
+
+There was a chance, of course, that they might be left that way forever
+if no free member of the family survived the war or persecution. But
+Millicent would leave a vial of blood just in case, and if worst came to
+worst, there was Edith Bulstrode, her third cousin, Henrietta's
+daughter, studying in France.
+
+\emph{They will come out of this alive.}
+
+``I think we must,'' she said, opening her eyes and staring into her
+mother's. ``I do not know what Father died to bring about, but I know
+that the Dark Lord was happy. Things are about to get worse. Much
+worse.'' She added the notion of warning Harry to her list of what she
+had to do.
+
+Elfrida nodded shallowly. ``Then I would prefer to become a statue with
+Marian, and stay there, knowing no one can harm us.''
+
+Millicent kissed her mother on the brow. ``It shall be done.'' She
+turned to face the Hogwarts Owlery. She would send the message to Pierre
+first, and then find Harry.
+
+Her father would have no funeral. Millicent knew, as surely as she knew
+anything, that there was no body left.
+
+But she did fill one fist with crystalline light as she went to the
+Owlery, turning it the color of quartz, and directed one glinting beam
+through a window into the sky, where it might shine.
+
+\emph{Farewell, Father. Even in death, there is life, and there is life
+beyond it, in the form of the blood that must continue.}
+
+\emph{Duramus.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 31*: It Gets
+Uglier}\label{chapter-31-it-gets-uglier}
+
+\textbf{Warning: Gore.}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Twenty-Three: It Gets Uglier}
+
+Harry nodded. ``I understand, Millicent. Thank you for the warning.'' He
+stroked the scar on his left arm, the only remnant of his bond with
+Adalrico, before he could help himself.
+
+Millicent followed his gesture with her eyes, and then shook her head.
+``Just because my father is dead does not mean the alliance is broken,''
+she said. ``I fully intend to fight at your side, Harry. The only time I
+should be absent from the battle is for my wedding, and for the birth
+itself, assuming that we're unlucky enough to have the war continue
+throughout my pregnancy.''
+
+Harry frowned. ``Most pureblood witches don't fight when they're
+pregnant. Dark ones, at least.'' He'd read enough history as a child to
+know that. So important were those pureblood children that pregnant
+witches sometimes vanished from society for a year altogether, partly to
+protect the child and partly to give birth in absolute safety and avoid
+attempts by enemies to destroy the newborn infants.
+
+A faint curve of her lips was the only response from Millicent, who
+cocked her head to the side. ``I am not most witches, Harry. And I do
+have an heir, unlike many of them---just not a child of my own blood.
+Not yet. I accepted the formal family oath knowing what it could mean.
+There are spells that conceal the magical signature of a baby.'' She
+gave a brief flex of her arm. ``And there's one advantage to being a
+tall, hefty Bulstrode woman, you know. It's much harder for people to
+tell you're pregnant than it would be with one of those delicate little
+witches.''
+
+Harry nodded. ``If you're sure.''
+
+``I am.'' Millicent caught his eye. ``And I don't want you to blame
+yourself for my father's death, either. He was already dead, unless he
+managed to escape. I would have had to kill him the next time I saw
+him.''
+
+Harry gave a convulsive shudder. He couldn't imagine giving up on
+someone like that. There were times he was glad that his morals were
+closer to the Light's than the Dark's, whatever education he might have
+received in Dark pureblood history or rituals.
+
+Millicent turned and left their bedroom. Harry glanced across at Draco,
+who sat on the edge of their bed and had his head buried in his arms,
+muttering. Millicent had interrupted their conversation about Lucius.
+Harry had let her on seeing her face, since he knew it was an important
+message she carried, but in some ways he thought he should have shut her
+out. Now Draco had retreated into himself.
+
+``Draco?'' he asked gently.
+
+``If I'd gone!'' Draco exclaimed, tossing his head upright. "If \emph{I}
+had gone, then he might have seen me, and his love for me might have let
+him overcome that damn hatred. From what you said, you were close.
+Voldemort's hold on him must have been weaker than we thought. If I were
+there, he could have broken free."
+
+``You can't blame yourself for that.'' Harry wrapped his arms around
+Draco and drew him back so that he lay against his chest. "No one knew
+Lucius was going to attack. I thought there \emph{might} be an attack.
+Voldemort knows the kind of house I'll look for to be a refuge, and
+Malfoy Manor is a natural choice, assuming the wards changed. But we
+couldn't have known it would be him."
+
+Draco turned and pressed his face into Harry's shoulder, keeping it
+there. ``I just don't like it,'' he muttered. ``I hate regret, but this
+time I can't help feeling it.''
+
+Harry stroked his hair and bent his head so that his face nuzzled into
+his partner's neck. ``I know.''
+
+Draco's hold on him gradually eased, and then he sat back, shaking his
+head. ``Will there be some of those foreign Aurors around Malfoy
+Manor?'' he asked. Harry thought he saw a shine of tears in the corners
+of Draco's eyes. Wisely, he did nothing to draw attention to it.
+
+``Yes. Esperanza's people. I'm dividing them between all the
+safehouses.'' Harry clasped Draco's hand, ignoring the half-hearted
+gesture he made to move it aside. ``And they're doing some good, Draco.
+There was a skirmish near Cobley-by-the-Sea the other day that was
+probably a result of Death Eater recruiters visiting Dark families in
+the area. The Aurors didn't manage to capture any, but none of them
+escaped. Voldemort won't receive any information about safehouses in the
+area.''
+
+Draco cocked his head curiously. ``It doesn't bother you that your
+allies are so much more willing to kill than you are?''
+
+Harry shook his head. ``No. I know it has to happen. I know it's war.
+I'm trying to get more used to doing it myself.'' One of the first
+things Narcissa had said when she heard about Lucius's failed attack,
+her head held high and her lips tightly shut, was that Harry should have
+killed Lucius if he could not hold him. That way, Lucius would not be
+alive to kill someone else in the future. "But a swift death is better
+than many people will be able to hope for in this war, and better than
+what Voldemort will offer. I won't be against those who can offer it,
+and who are willing to offer it. I \emph{will} be against torture, and
+unwilling sacrifice, and the murder of innocents."
+
+``Sometimes,'' Draco breathed, ``I wonder if you should not be. You
+wouldn't have a semi-war with the Ministry if you were more committed to
+demonstrating your power, Harry, or looking away from exceptions to your
+rules.''
+
+``Yes, but that would mean compromising myself irrevocably.'' Harry
+rolled onto his back, still holding Draco in his arms. He intended to
+visit Narcissa again soon---his first attempt at comforting her about
+Lucius had been anything but good---but there was no reason he had to
+hurry. And it was pleasant to lie here, cradling Draco. It would give
+him strength to continue during many hours when he didn't have it. ``And
+I fear that more, the loss of my principles.''
+
+Draco laughed softly and nestled more fully against him. ``I don't think
+you could do that, Harry. There's no true darkness inside you.''
+
+Harry stared up at the canopy of the four-poster bed, and stroked
+Draco's hair, and didn't answer. He \emph{did} think about telling Draco
+his secrets, sometimes, but then Draco came out with something like
+this, and Harry wished for nothing but to preserve that innocence
+untainted.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+It was manifestly obvious to Narcissa that Harry did not understand
+\emph{why} his attempts at comforting her had failed.
+
+He assumed it was partially his fault that Lucius was in Voldemort's
+service, and that she needed apologies from him, and reassurances that
+they would win him back. But it was not his fault. It was Lucius's, for
+succumbing to the spell of hatred in the first place, and perhaps making
+it imperative for Draco to kill him, should they meet in battle. Harry
+had made a mistake by not killing or capturing Lucius during his raid on
+Malfoy Manor, but that had nothing to do with why Lucius had gone back
+to the Dark Lord.
+
+Narcissa would welcome the chance at reconciliation with her husband if
+it could happen. But she would not, could not, live in a dream world
+where that hope ruled her. She would, and \emph{had to}, exist in the
+hard, real world where he was the servant of an enemy.
+
+So, when Harry slipped back into her room after an hour when he'd spent
+time with Draco---she could tell that at a glance---Narcissa told him
+the truth. ``It was not because of you that Lucius went to the Dark
+Lord,'' she told Harry.
+
+He gave her a confused glance. ``I know that,'' he said. ``Even if he
+hates me, I'm only one among many people he hates.''
+
+Narcissa shook her head. ``You are not responsible for casting him
+there,'' she repeated, ``and therefore, you are not responsible for
+winning him back. The next time, if he endangers our allies or a
+safehouse, strike hard, Harry. Kill him. It would be better than leaving
+him alive to serve as a slave and to point up a vulnerability in our
+side. He would thank you if he could.''
+
+Harry narrowed his eyes and studied her as if she were speaking in a
+language he had never heard before. ``Why, Mrs. Malfoy?'' he asked at
+last. ``Don't you want your husband back?''
+
+``Narcissa,'' she corrected him, for at least the hundredth time since
+they'd met. "And of course I do. But I would rather not see your
+attention divided and distracted with \emph{getting} him back. Surely
+you can understand that much, Harry."
+
+``He didn't manage to do more than wound me and one other person at the
+safehouse today---''
+
+``That does not matter,'' Narcissa cut him off. ``And the next time, it
+will be worse. I have put him aside from my heart, Harry, and if you are
+holding back in anticipation of inflicting some fatal blow on me, you
+need not worry about it.''
+
+``And Draco?''
+
+Narcissa closed her eyes. She could not say that her son was as fully
+mature as she was, as able to put his father aside from his heart and
+embrace what must be done. That didn't mean that he would object,
+though, or ever show his grief to Harry. What he wanted more than
+anything was his own adult life, and that had to have Harry in it. It
+did not \emph{have} to have Lucius. Lucius's own actions over the past
+year and a half had made sure of that, lessening Draco's dependence on
+him in a way that he had never expected or desired.
+
+``He will not be as sanguine as I am, but he will survive,'' she told
+him. ``I know that half the reason you held back was because of us,
+Harry.''
+
+``Half the reason,'' said Harry, and his voice had grown cooler than
+Narcissa expected. ``But that leaves half the reason still unexplored,
+doesn't it?''
+
+Narcissa opened her eyes and frowned at him. ``I do not understand you,
+Harry.''
+
+``I also did it because I value Lucius as a person,'' said Harry. "And I
+want to set him free of slavery as I would want to set a magical
+creature Voldemort had enslaved free. And I never wish my heart to
+become hardened to sacrifices, resigned to necessity as the best course
+of judging a war. Sometimes, yes, I have absolutely no choice, as
+happened the night that I went to Cornwall. But even there, I acted as
+necessary to \emph{save} lives, not to kill those who opposed me. I will
+take other chances for as long as I can, Narcissa. When I think I have
+no choices left, then I will strike quickly and hard, yes."
+
+``You cannot live like that,'' said Narcissa, frowning more deeply. She
+was sure that Harry understood this already. He had had numerous
+examples proving the truth, in any case. ``You will have to destroy
+those who face you. Voldemort will have an intolerable advantage against
+you otherwise.''
+
+"And if I do that \emph{all the time}, then Voldemort will have won,"
+Harry countered calmly. "I should simply kill myself when the war is
+won, because I will have nothing left to live for. The part of me that
+values freedom and not mechanical duty is the part that loves Draco, the
+part that chose the \emph{vates} path. I will not endanger that part of
+me---"
+
+``Though the struggle to keep it safe will endanger others?'' Narcissa
+challenged. She could not believe what she was hearing. Harry was often
+careless with his own safety, rarely with others'.
+
+Harry shook his head. "I do not think it will, Narcissa. Where it might,
+then yes, I will kill first and ask questions later. But most of the
+time, it won't. And I will not kill simply as a \emph{precaution}, for
+fear of what \emph{might} happen. That way lies the Ministry's slippery
+slope, Juniper's paranoia."
+
+Narcissa wondered if the difference between Harry and other war leaders
+she had heard of came down to something as simple as age, or Declared
+allegiance, or the fact that Harry was a \emph{vates}. Regardless of any
+of that, she had never heard of a path similar to the one he now
+proposed. One grew hardened by war and did what had to be done. She was
+not sure that Harry's way, remaining open to the world and refusing to
+grow jaded, would work.
+
+But then, Harry \emph{did} do what had to be done, she thought. It was
+simply that those duties encompassed more than the traditional hard
+duties of a war leader. How difficult was it really, after all, to make
+a decision on the battlefield for which your people would applaud you
+later? Not as difficult as witnessing pain, or killing people on your
+own side swiftly to prevent their torture, or burying the dead.
+
+She inclined her head, slowly, still unsure, but feeling more confident
+than she had been in some time about the way Harry was managing this
+war, and particularly that aspect of it that concerned her husband.
+``Thank you for explaining to me, Harry.''
+
+Harry caught her hand, kissed the back of it, and then turned and strode
+from the room, leaving Narcissa alone. She walked thoughtfully to the
+window and stared out of it. A few people were coming up the Hogsmeade
+road, surrounded by an escort of foreign Aurors, probably to seek refuge
+in Hogwarts.
+
+\emph{And that would be impossible, too, if we really were living in
+some stories out of the history-tales. Most leaders would turn away
+people who can't contribute to the defense of the strongholds. Harry
+does not.}
+
+Narcissa clenched her hands on the windowsill and gave a firm nod. She
+knew that Harry had stern, clear-eyed people at his back---herself among
+them---who would protect him if it turned out that his decisions left
+something to be desired. In the meantime, they might as well follow his
+path and see if it worked.
+
+\emph{We can turn him back if it does not. Most of the time, Harry
+listens to other people.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``Sir?'' Xavier's voice came out of the phoenix song spell on Harry's
+left wrist, distracting him from a daily tour of the wards. He halted
+and cocked his head, wondering if something had gone wrong near the
+safehouses that the Cercle Familial had been split to guard. Xavier had
+been a target once before, the night that Voldemort arranged the trap
+with Hawthorn in her wolf shape, so it was only natural the Death Eaters
+might seek him out again.
+
+``Yes?'' he asked.
+
+``We have a family recently arrived in Britain from Ireland, who wish to
+seek shelter in Hogwarts,'' Xavier said. ``I have escorted them to
+Hogwarts with help from a few of my siblings. May we approach?''
+
+``Of course. Only give me time to inform the Headmistress, and I'll come
+out and meet them myself.'' Harry had heard little from Ireland, where
+things were, as far as he knew, tense and quiet, most of the wizarding
+families looking to Cupressus Apollonis and his Ministry allegiance.
+These refugees might have valuable information.
+
+He told McGonagall new refugees were approaching and to drop the wards,
+and then hurried to the entrance hall doors. Halfway there, he found
+himself shadowed, and checked a sigh when he realized his shadows were
+Owen and Bill. Well, they could come if they \emph{must.} Harry thought
+the protection less important on Hogwarts's grounds than it was when
+there was a known enemy outside.
+
+He stepped onto the road, and found Xavier and his companions already
+close. Both the women following him looked more Veela than he did, with
+long silver hair and a graceful, swinging stride that made it seem as if
+they would break into a dance at any moment. Harry might have been
+puzzled by Xavier calling them his ``siblings,'' but Xavier had
+explained that it was one way the wizards and witches in Cercle Familial
+traditionally referred to each other, as most Veela could make a claim
+to be related to each other in a way that most humans could not.
+
+The family they escorted was small, a dark-haired woman with a pinched
+and silent face, a man who walked in her shadow, and three children, all
+of whom looked to be between the ages of five and eight. Harry wondered
+what their story was. The look on the woman's face said it was nothing
+good, and the way that the man shivered and ducked behind his wife
+promised nothing better.
+
+It was the children who concerned him most, though. Two of them were
+frightened, but otherwise normal. The one who walked in front, bent as
+if against a strong wind, was a boy, and Harry saw that he had probably
+misjudged his age; he was nearly old enough to start at Hogwarts, it
+seemed. He kept shivering, and Harry wondered if they had encountered
+the new magic Voldemort had been so excited about when he killed
+Adalrico.
+
+A stab of grief tried to overcome him. Harry reminded himself that the
+problems of the dead came secondary to the problems of the living, and
+stepped forward, spreading his hands in as non-threatening a manner as
+possible.
+
+The woman saw him and halted, which forced the halt of the man and the
+two younger children. The boy in front kept walking, as though he
+noticed nothing but the path his eyes were focused on. Harry winced.
+\emph{Yes, something traumatic happened to him, and not long ago.}
+
+``Harry,'' said Owen sharply. ``They've been through Dark magic.''
+
+``That's obvious. Hush,'' Harry said. He didn't want the boy's first
+impression of Hogwarts to be as threatening as whatever his family had
+fled from. He took a step forward and half-crouched, so that he was at
+the walking boy's eye-level. ``Hello. What's your name?''
+
+The boy glanced up at him, but didn't stop walking, his legs rising and
+falling like an automaton's. His face was set in a picture of absolute
+misery, and it looked as though he would crash right into Harry rather
+than stop.
+
+``You'll be safe in a few moments,'' Harry murmured. ``First, though,
+can you tell me your name?'' The boy was a few feet from him now, and
+hadn't paused.
+
+The boy opened his mouth, and stopped, struggling to speak. Harry moved
+a step nearer, not wanting to miss whatever whisper might emerge.
+
+He heard a wordless roar behind him, and then a body crashed into his,
+bearing him out of the way just as the boy exploded.
+
+Harry heard the sound of flesh falling and pattering around him, the
+thicker sound of blood, the screams of shock and panic and rage. He
+rolled, caught, breathless, beneath Owen, and not able to see what had
+happened.
+
+``Is Bill all right?'' he asked, when he could muster the breath to
+talk. He tried to sit up, only to have Owen push him flat again and keep
+him there. Owen was a year older than he was, and far stronger. Harry
+frowned up at him, and received a scowl so dark back that he looked
+away.
+
+``It was a trap,'' Owen whispered. "He was full of \emph{Incrementum}
+spores, but more virulent than any I've ever seen before."
+
+``What happened to Bill?'' Harry reiterated.
+
+``He's fine,'' said Owen, and glanced over his shoulder, then nodded
+once. ``Yes. The spores were likely meant for you, and if they don't
+attach to the living flesh they're attuned to in the first few seconds,
+they die. But they would have attached to you, with you standing that
+close.'' Finally, he sat up and let Harry roll over and look at what had
+happened, though he kept one arm in front of Harry's chest.
+
+The ground was red and black with gore. Harry swallowed the temptation
+to be sick, since, after all, the boy was dead, and he had to worry
+about the living, Bill and the boy's family. Bill stood just beyond the
+gore, his wand leveled at something on the ground next to his feet and
+his eyes blazing. A diamond glow surrounded the fang earring in his
+right ear.
+
+Harry gazed at the spores in front of Bill, eyes narrowed. They were
+larger than the Black Plague spores Adalrico had created, and looked
+more dangerous. They were enormous puffballs, red as if flushed with
+blood.
+
+``What do they do?'' he asked Owen.
+
+"\emph{Incrementum?}" Owen shifted to stay in front of Harry when he
+tried to move. "Stay here for now, my L---\emph{vates}. They're Dark
+magic. We learned about them in Durmstrang. They're meant to multiply
+fast, so fast that they infest a body and take control of it away from
+the wizard. A modified version of possession; after they take over, the
+body belongs to the wizard or witch who sent the spores. Usually,
+they'll use the victim until he's full to bursting with the next
+generation of spores, then tune them and send him after someone else."
+Owen shook his head. ``Those spores were tuned to you. Before that, they
+must have been tuned to the boy.''
+
+``So this is Voldemort's work?'' Harry supposed he might have turned to
+that tactic---he did want Harry on his side if he could get him, after
+all---but it seemed strange that he'd risk the destruction of Harry's
+body at a further point in time.
+
+``I doubt he would have the knowledge to make them work to their full
+potential,'' said Owen darkly, scowling at the puffballs, and blocking
+another attempt Harry made to move forward. "They require both powerful
+magic \emph{and} specialized knowledge, which is one reason they aren't
+used often. They're part of the branch of magic associated with
+reproduction, and fertility."
+
+And, like that, Harry knew who must have sent the boy.
+
+``Monika,'' he breathed.
+
+Owen gave him a confused look. Harry shook his head, and stood. ``The
+Dark Lady of Austria,'' he explained shortly. "She breeds magical
+creatures. Something like the \emph{Incrementum} spores would be easy
+for her." Shaking his head again, he turned to the family who huddled
+between the three French wizards, who had all taken out their wands.
+``And she would be cruel enough to stuff a child with them and send him
+to explode on me if she could. She wouldn't care.''
+
+Finally, finally Owen let him move forward. Harry touched his shoulder
+in passing, and squeezed hard. ``Thank you,'' he whispered.
+
+Owen nodded slightly, and Harry stepped forward to face the boy's
+family. The man had backed away, his mouth working wordlessly---at
+least, he'd backed away as far as he could with Xavier's wand pressed
+between his shoulder blades. The woman had enfolded her two younger
+children in her robes, but the thin line her mouth was pressed into told
+Harry that she, at least, had known about this.
+
+Harry focused on her. ``Why?'' he asked quietly.
+
+The woman shook her head. Harry cast a translation spell. He now thought
+it extremely unlikely that the family had come from Ireland. More
+likely, Monika had filled the boy with \emph{Incrementum} spores in
+Austria, then sent the family to Britain through Ireland so they would
+attract less attention.
+
+As he thought more about it, Harry decided to change his first question.
+There was something he wanted to know more.
+
+``I want to know his name,'' he told the woman.
+
+She couldn't pretend not to understand him now, but she could still
+refuse to answer, and it seemed that was what she wanted to do. Harry
+went on staring at her, and let some of his magic rise, until she
+flinched. Then she answered, reluctantly, ``Aaron.''
+
+Harry slowly nodded. ``And why did you let the Dark Lady fill him with
+spores?''
+
+As he had hoped, the realization that he already knew they came from
+Monika was enough to break the woman's courage. She slumped, her body
+folding inward as if to protect the two children left to her. ``We're
+hers,'' she whispered. ``We owe allegiance to her. We live on land that
+belongs to her. She was the one who kept us safe from Muggles for
+years.'' She lifted her head, as if hoping to find understanding in
+Harry's eyes. ``When she asked us for a favor, such a small favor, in
+return, how were we supposed to refuse her? She is a Lady.''
+
+Harry fought to keep from curling his lip. He didn't expect Aaron's
+mother to understand his disgust. It was less a disgust at her, anyway,
+and more at the entire system of Lords and Ladies and Declarations. That
+it could command mindless obedience, sacrifices, like this, was
+disgusting. A Light Lord like Dumbledore, a Dark Lady like Monika---what
+was the difference between them? And ordinary wizards and witches were
+so ready to roll over and give in because of fear or awe about stronger
+magic.
+
+\emph{Stronger magic doesn't make someone good,} Harry thought savagely.
+\emph{It doesn't make someone right. It doesn't make us entitled to
+anything that anyone else has---including the lives of their children.
+Lily knew no better than this woman, and Aaron became a victim just like
+I did.}
+
+\emph{I wish that Scrimgeour was still alive, or at least that the
+Ministry was under the influence of someone more competent. Ordinary
+wizards and witches do deserve that middle ground that Scrimgeour
+dreamed of where they can settle their own affairs without influence
+from posturing people who insist on calling themselves Lords and Ladies.
+If Juniper would accept help from me, and would actually implement it, I
+would work to insure that the Ministry was free of both Voldemort and
+me.}
+
+``What did she want?'' he asked.
+
+The woman shook her head. ``I don't know. To control you, I would
+assume, my Lord, but I know nothing more. I only know that she put us on
+a boat for Ireland, and we were to pretend that we had always been
+there, with the aid of Memory Charms.''
+
+Harry nodded shortly. ``And what will she do to you, when she finds out
+that this trap failed?''
+
+The woman's wide eyes were answer enough.
+
+``If you will give me your oath that you intend to harm neither me nor
+anyone else here,'' Harry said, ``I will give you shelter in Hogwarts. I
+cannot guarantee that you will be safe from Monika forever; this attack
+proves that her arm is long. But you can have a place here.''
+
+Tears filled the woman's eyes, and Owen gripped Harry's shoulder and
+shook it lightly. "Are you \emph{mad}?"
+
+``No,'' Harry said, turning to face him. ``What else would you suggest I
+do, Owen? Cast them out? They have no relatives here, no friends. And I
+hardly expect Monika to be friendly to them when she realizes what
+happened.''
+
+``They would not be safe inside the castle,'' Owen said. ``You have no
+idea who will wish to harm them when word gets out, Harry.''
+
+``Then I will send them to a safehouse,'' Harry said stubbornly. ``They
+should not suffer for Monika's paranoia.''
+
+"If you \emph{must}." But Owen looked deeply unhappy about it.
+
+Harry turned to make the arrangements, anger boiling in him all the
+while. That this could have \emph{happened}---that Monika could get
+around the Pact by sending servants into Britain, while staying
+physically out of the country herself---infuriated him.
+
+And so he had another message to send when this was done.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+He had no winds, as Kanerva did, to summon the Lords and Ladies of the
+Pact. He was not sure they would come even if called, should their
+youngest member be the one doing the shouting. Besides, he didn't know
+if he needed or wanted an audience.
+
+In the end, therefore, he sat before the fire of the Slytherin common
+room, and called on Monika alone.
+
+He made himself remember every detail of the clearing where he had seen
+her when Kanerva's call went out, the strange creatures grazing, the
+heavily warded cottage, the dip and rise of the land. He envisioned it
+in his mind, until the image wavered between him and the rest of the
+room. He had no fear of being disturbed when he opened his eyes and
+found himself gazing at it. The rest of the Slytherins were staying away
+from him for right now, since they'd felt the intense shimmer and waver
+of magic around him. And Owen, Bill, and Xavier and his sisters had kept
+silent for the moment about what had happened on the path, since Harry
+had enjoined them to.
+
+He had not done this before. That should not, theoretically, matter.
+Once his magic knew what he wanted, Harry trusted it to establish the
+connection. He would not have if he had not seen Monika and her home
+before, or if his rage were not so deep, a clear sea studded with dark
+green flowers, but both were true.
+
+``Monika.''
+
+He felt his voice shudder out of him and into the image, which rippled
+in response, and then became like one of Kanerva's wind-windows,
+picturing what was really there. Monika stood near one of the grazing
+creatures, caressing the one curled around her wrist, which looked to be
+a cross between bird and snake. She looked up with faintly narrowed
+eyes, and locked her gaze on Harry.
+
+``I see Aaron failed,'' she murmured. Since Harry still had the
+translation charm in effect, he could understand.
+
+``He did,'' said Harry. His voice deepened and cooled even further. At
+least she had not made a joke of it. He might have attacked if she had.
+``Might I inquire why you sent him and his family after me?''
+
+Monika whispered to the creature around her wrist, and then tossed it
+up. Green-golden wings flared around a frilled face filled with jagged
+teeth, a creature out of nightmare. Harry watched it soar up and
+disappear.
+
+"Part of it is the fact that you might free my children when you are
+done with your \emph{vates} work in Britain," said Monika. ``I have
+already had to tighten my webs. But not all of it. Have you yet realized
+that Lord Riddle has come back to full power?'' Her eyes narrowed again,
+locked on him.
+
+``He cannot have,'' said Harry. ``I cut a hole in his magical core with
+the Fisher King Curse. I am the only one who can heal it.''
+
+``Do not ask me of the method.'' Monika folded her arms. ``But the truth
+is that he has returned. We felt the flag of his power unfolding over
+Britain this morning.'' She cocked her head. ``Such power is more than
+attractive, and if the prophecy can be believed, unclear thing though it
+is, you will be the one to win against him, even as strong as he is. You
+are his magical heir. His power will pass to you on the moment of his
+death.''
+
+``How did you know the prophecy?'' Harry demanded.
+
+Monika's smile deepened, but she didn't reply.
+
+``And so you sought to control me and the magic that I will inherit,''
+Harry finished flatly.
+
+``Yes.'' Monika did not sound at all sorry for it. Harry told himself
+that he had known she wouldn't be. It didn't stop his impulse to strike
+her dead where she stood. ``I would be more than safe from your webs. I
+would be the most powerful witch in the world with even a third of that
+power, which is probably all that the spores could manage to transfer to
+me. Lord Riddle is the strongest Lord in the world.''
+
+Harry had not known that, but it made sense. If nothing else,
+Voldemort's \emph{absorbere} ability, and his reckless use of it, would
+guarantee that.
+
+``I want your word you will not interfere in Britain again,'' he said.
+
+Monika laughed softly. ``Why in the world would I give you that? And how
+can you trust me if I do? You know that the Pact will not consider this
+to be a violation of my word to stay out of your country, but if you
+come to Austria, I will be justified in defending my home ground.''
+
+Harry stood. ``I do not have to physically come to Austria.''
+
+He drew on his magic, the deep rage he had felt when his parents were
+arrested, and some---a tiny bit---of the darkness that lay pooled in
+him, whining anxiously for an outlet. The air in front of him chilled,
+and came together in the shape of a serpent. Harry caressed its white
+scales, outlined with gold, and saw the unwillingly fascinated
+expression on Monika's face.
+
+``This creature shall not be subject to your magic,'' Harry told her,
+``since it did not come from sexual reproduction. And I will direct it
+to travel to Austria. Sooner or later, it will find you, and if you have
+interfered in Britain again, it will kill you. Slowly.'' He would fill
+its fangs before it left. Many poison would do, he thought. He wondered
+if Monika would enjoy being blind as Voldemort was. ``You cannot affect
+it, slow it down, or stop it, and its vengeance will endure even if I
+have died or fallen under your control in the meantime. I will give it
+instructions in Parseltongue not to obey me after my initial commands.''
+He bent his head close to the snake and did just that. The serpent
+blinked gold-fringed eyes, then curled around his wrist and extended its
+tongue, tasting the source of Monika's magic so that it would know where
+to go when it began its journey.
+
+``No one would let a creature so wonderful go,'' Monika said softly.
+
+``I just did,'' Harry assured her.
+
+Monika studied him a moment longer, then bowed. ``Perhaps I shall not
+find some way out of it,'' she said. "Until then, you have my word that
+I will not interfere in your country. \emph{Vates.}" She paused. ``But
+even if I do not, others will come for your magic, standing ready to
+reap it when Lord Riddle falls. It is too tempting, and the idea that an
+undeclared adolescent should control it is not to be borne.''
+
+She clapped her hands, and Harry's window darkened and drifted apart.
+Harry sat back for a moment and closed his eyes. Both the contact and
+creating the serpent had taken a toll on his magic.
+
+``Harry?''
+
+Harry stirred himself reluctantly and sat up. Draco was coming down the
+stairs, and unlike his emotions over the death of his parents or the
+darkness inside himself, Harry knew this was not a secret that could be
+hidden.
+
+``I have something to tell you, Draco.''
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 32*: Nor Iron Bars a
+Cage}\label{chapter-32-nor-iron-bars-a-cage}
+
+\textbf{WARNING WARNING WARNING (again): Torture, murder, gore, and RAPE
+in the second scene. This one is even nastier, in its own way, than
+chapter twenty-two. Please skip the scene if you need to.}
+
+The chapter's title comes from Richard Lovelace's ``To Althea, From
+Prison'': ``Stone walls do not a prison make,/ Nor iron bars a cage.''
+
+\textbf{Chapter Twenty-Four: Nor Iron Bars a Cage}
+
+Harry swallowed, and slowly inclined his head. ``I understand,'' he
+said, not looking at Jing-Xi. What else could he say? This was not her
+fault. She was obeying laws set up long before she was born.
+
+``I am sorry, Harry,'' Jing-Xi said quietly. "And I agree that it is an
+incidence of hypocrisy. But the Lords and Ladies are wary of what could
+happen if they did grant permission for others of the Pact to send small
+creatures---spies, and servants such as Monika has---into the country to
+help you. Some of them would help you. Some of them would try to help
+you only to gain the power you stand to inherit when Tom falls. And some
+of them would help Voldemort, because they would rather deal with a Dark
+Lord, even the most powerful Dark Lord in history, than an undeclared
+\emph{vates} whose actions they still cannot determine." She shook her
+head, looking weary. ``The noninterference rule of the Pact states that
+they will not allow something to occur merely because it did once
+already. Thus they will shun Monika, but she will not be punished. They
+almost expected this of her.''
+
+Harry sighed. He had hoped for more help once the Lords and Ladies heard
+Voldemort was returned to full power, but it seemed that was not to be.
+``I understand,'' he repeated. \emph{What else can I say?}
+
+Jing-Xi reached out and cupped her hand beneath his chin, lifting his
+face, smiling warmly. Harry felt her magic slide over his like the flood
+of sunlit water it often resembled. ``I am here, Harry,'' she said.
+``And I can help defend your allies, even if I cannot carry my strength
+into offensive battle. Kanerva can do the same. Depend on us. Thomas and
+I think we may yet find a way around the Unassailable Curse on the Sword
+of Gryffindor.''
+
+Harry's tongue burned with the longing to say that they wouldn't,
+because the prophecy claimed they could not, but then he realized whom
+he sounded like. \emph{Dumbledore and Lily relied on prophecies to the
+exclusion of all else, including human kindness and compassion. I will
+not do that, not let my own stubbornness shut off avenues of hope.}
+
+``Thank you, my Lady,'' he said instead, and kissed the back of her
+hand, and retreated from the room.
+
+Owen met him there, face grim and tired. Harry braced himself for news
+of an attack on a safehouse, but what Owen had to say was different in
+degree, if not in kind.
+
+``Someone tried to attack Aaron's family,'' he said bluntly.
+
+``Are they hurt?'' Harry demanded at once, turning towards the hospital
+wing. It was where he had sheltered Aaron's parents and siblings, behind
+strong but subtle wards that would only flare if someone carried actual
+physical violence to them.
+
+Owen shook his head and sped up so that he matched Harry stride for
+stride. Harry was aware of another sworn companion appearing close to
+his shoulder. Bill, from the sound of the footsteps---longer legs, since
+he was taller than Charlie. ``Those wards made sure of that. But it's as
+I suspected, Harry. Other people don't want them here, not after hearing
+what they did to you.''
+
+``That wasn't them,'' Harry muttered in disgust. "That was Monika. And
+what do others think \emph{they} would have done, put in Aaron's
+mother's place?"
+
+``Resisted,'' said Owen. ``Besides, Harry, most people are not as
+rational as you are. They know that you were attacked. And the attackers
+are sheltering in Hogwarts. Some people think you are blind to the
+danger, others that you are fanatically compassionate even if that
+compassion could doom you.''
+
+``And either is a weakness,'' Harry finished, his voice clipped.
+
+Owen paused, then nodded reluctantly.
+
+``Compassion is much more rarely a weakness than they think it is,''
+Harry muttered. ``But, well. Thomas has finished fortifying a safehouse
+in London. I'll move them there tonight.'' He looked at Owen out of the
+corner of his eye. ``Can I trust you to escort them the distance?''
+
+Owen shook his head. ``I do not want to be away from you for that length
+of time,'' he said calmly. ``I would not hurt them, because you asked me
+not to, but neither will I leave your side. The first responsibility of
+a sworn companion is to his Lord or Lady, above family, above victims,
+above pride.''
+
+\emph{I suppose if he wouldn't abandon me for Medusa and Eos, or his
+brother, I can hardly ask him to do that for strangers,} Harry decided.
+``Very well. I'll send Tonks.'' The former Auror had taken over dueling
+classes, but there were other teachers---Moody and Peter among
+them---and missing one night, or being reassigned to a different
+teacher, would not hurt her students.
+
+They had reached the doors of the hospital wing by then, and Harry
+cautiously pushed them open. He found Madam Pomfrey standing next to the
+bed that cradled Aaron's mother---and, currently, her two younger
+children, who had their faces buried in her robe---trying to reason with
+her through both her sobbing and the translation charm. The matron
+glanced up, and Harry didn't miss the flash of relief on her face when
+she saw him, even though she tried to temper it.
+
+``Harry,'' she murmured. ``There was an attack, but it didn't even
+scorch the wards. I'm trying to make sure it didn't touch her children,
+who were nearer the edge of the wards than she was, but I can't get
+through to her.''
+
+Harry nodded, and Madam Pomfrey moved aside. Harry crouched down in
+front of Aaron's mother and half-closed his eyes. He had learned her
+name, though so quickly it took him a moment to remember it---
+
+``Liane,'' he said quietly.
+
+She looked up at him slowly, eyes still overflowing with tears of
+exhaustion and fear. Harry squeezed her wrist gently, and she shuddered,
+her mind returning from wherever she'd cast it.
+
+``I am sorry,'' she said. ``But I woke, and there was a dark figure,
+much like the servant of the Lady that fetched me, and---'' She shut her
+eyes and her lips, seeming to resist saying anything further. Harry
+wondered if it was pride that kept her silent, or unwillingness to
+reveal too much about the circumstances surrounding Aaron's death.
+
+``You have nothing to be sorry for,'' he said. He could have blamed her,
+but what would words of blame do? Voldemort was back in the world. Harry
+had no wish to make the lots of other people, or his own, harder. ``It's
+all right, Liane. I promise. It will be all right. We'll move you to a
+safehouse where other people don't know who you are or what happened.''
+
+``So no one will hate us?'' Liane whispered.
+
+Harry shook his head. ``Not unless you do something to make them hate
+you.''
+
+A faint half-smile, the first he'd won out of her, was his answer for
+that. ``Thank you,'' she said. ``I think I would like to sleep now.''
+She gathered one child, the younger one, closer to her, and handed the
+other over to her husband, who retreated into the next bed with dark,
+watchful eyes fastened on Harry's face. A moment later, if they weren't
+asleep, they were at least still.
+
+Harry sighed, and then turned and carefully studied the air in front of
+the wards. He hoped that he'd be able to find who had done this, at
+least if their magic was familiar to him. There were so many people in
+Hogwarts now, and coming in and out through the wards as they arrived
+for dueling training or refuge, that the chances of it being someone he
+knew were much smaller than before.
+
+As it turned out, he did know the signature, and he stiffened in shock.
+
+``Harry?'' Owen hovered in front of him. ``What is it?''
+
+``Nothing,'' Harry muttered. ``Not right now, anyway. I'll go find
+Tonks, and talk to her about escorting Liane and her family to the
+safehouse in London.''
+
+He carefully avoided Owen's eyes as he went down the hall. \emph{Why in
+the world did Michael attack them?}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco had become very practiced at telling when Harry was awake and only
+pretending to be asleep. Of necessity, Harry had in turn become even
+better at feigning slumber. He lay with his head pillowed on Draco's
+shoulder and his breathing even and completely relaxed until he
+\emph{knew} from the soft snores next to him that Draco was deeply
+asleep. Then he opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling of the
+four-poster.
+
+He'd found Tonks and given her instructions about Liane's family; she'd
+been glad to accept the assignment. But he hadn't been able to shake
+Owen off so that he could find Michael and talk to him alone. He had no
+idea what the boy thought he was doing. Some warped demonstration of
+loyalty? Choosing random targets for his anger? Something even stranger
+than that?
+
+\emph{I will have to talk to him. Just another problem in a slew of
+them, a sea of them.}
+
+The image of the sea called to mind the shifting, variegated light and
+darkness of the North Sea on the day he and Connor had buried their
+parents. Harry decided to use the image to lull himself to sleep if he
+could. He imagined the rising and falling waves, the quietude behind
+them, the movement that was a lot like the movement of Draco's chest
+beneath his ear.
+
+And then the darkness parted.
+
+Harry found himself gazing at an image of Malfoy Manor, which made him
+frown and cock his head. \emph{Why am I seeing this? It's certainly not
+something that I normally picture when I close my eyes, or that I would
+expect to see on the verge of falling asleep. Spillover from Draco's
+dreams, perhaps?}
+
+He was trying to figure out if he was in the right frame of mind to
+share Draco's dreams---it didn't seem likely, but stranger things had
+happened to him in his life, Merlin knew---when pain took him by the
+throat.
+
+He recognized the sensation almost at once. Voldemort had broken through
+the Occlumency and the defensive Legilimency Harry had put up around the
+scar connection. He paralyzed Harry's body in the midst of agony so
+complete that Harry almost forgot he had limbs.
+
+Darkness curled and lapped around Harry like the shifting coils of some
+great serpent, and then surged forward around him to fall on the still
+vision of Malfoy Manor. By the nearly full moon in the sky overhead,
+Harry had no doubt that he was seeing it as it was this night.
+
+\emph{If I'm seeing it as it is at all,} he tried to remind himself.
+\emph{This could be a trick, a false vision, a deception---}
+
+\emph{Hush, my heir,} Voldemort's voice said, full of laughter and
+hatred. \emph{I am showing you the truth, because I wish you to watch
+them die.}
+
+And then Voldemort was there, walking towards the Manor under the
+moonlight, and Harry was voiceless and could not scream. Voldemort
+lifted one pale, gleaming hand. The snake wound around his waist saw for
+him, and in any case, he could feel the glinting pewter edge of the
+Manor's changed wards.
+
+He opened up the gullet of his \emph{absorbere} gift.
+
+Harry felt him drink the Manor's wards, absorbing the magic of the shell
+planted in the walls as easily as if it were a Muggleborn child's.
+Alarms tried to cry, but they fell silent too quickly. Voldemort turned
+and looked over his shoulder and nodded, and three people came forth
+from behind him. One was Lucius, one was Hawthorn, and one was the
+shifting shape of Sylvan and Oaken Yaxley.
+
+``I have told you what to do,'' he said. ``Do it.''
+
+The three Death Eaters bowed, only one of them smoothly, and then strode
+past him and towards the house.
+
+Harry was fighting furiously to wake up, and every time he lashed up he
+was drowned by the sheer strength of Voldemort's will, soothing him the
+way that someone might soothe a cantankerous pet. \emph{You cannot wake
+up,} Voldemort told him. \emph{You cannot stop this. You can only watch.
+I shall take from you everything you have loved, I told you that, and I
+meant it. Rejoice, for some of your loved ones shall escape me this
+night. I shall take only two.}
+
+Harry imagined Ignifer and Honoria dying under Lucius's and Hawthorn's
+wands, and struggled harder.
+
+\emph{Hush, Harry. If you burst your heart, then what shall the war
+effort and the prophecy do? What shall I do, without my beloved son?}
+
+The vision moved, and Harry accompanied Lucius and Hawthorn into the
+hallways, saw them meet the first resistance, and watched them lift
+their wands.
+
+And he understood, then. Voldemort had sent them to maim, not to kill.
+Again and again Lucius intoned curses that removed limbs, and Hawthorn
+chanted blood spells that would turn the most basic of bodily functions
+on her victims, but leave them alive to suffer. There was a shine like
+tears in her eyes. Harry had no idea if it was truly that, however, or
+simply the reflected light of the moon on the amber of her gaze, since
+she was so close to becoming a werewolf.
+
+Ignifer and Honoria came into their way, but Lucius and Hawthorn avoided
+them both, only raising shields against Ignifer's fire. Ignifer soon
+enough left them, when she saw she could do no good, and concentrated on
+defending the others from the wrath of the two Death Eaters---when she
+could. It was not often she could find someone who was not already
+wounded.
+
+Harry was at a loss for a moment, and almost forgot to fight. If not
+Ignifer and Hawthorn, then who were the two Voldemort meant?
+
+And then the scene shifted, and he saw Sylvan Yaxley entering the room
+where Medusa sheltered with Eos.
+
+\emph{No!}
+
+Harry lunged against the dark barrier of Voldemort's strength once more,
+and again was forced down. He tried to break free, to open his eyes so
+that he might rejoin the waking world and fly to the Manor's defense and
+theirs, but he could not. He could not even close his eyes and will the
+vision away.
+
+He had no choice but to watch.
+
+Medusa was awake, holding Eos close to her chest and crouching behind a
+very powerful Shield Charm. It did her no good. Sylvan softly spoke a
+spell that Harry had never heard before, his left hand held out and
+slightly crooked, and Eos flew out of Medusa's arms and into his.
+
+Sylvan stood gazing down at her for a moment. Harry's vision went gray
+and he felt a warning twinge in his chest as he watched the monster
+looking at his goddaughter. He \emph{had} to reach her. He was supposed
+to protect her. He wanted---
+
+\emph{What you want makes no matter,} Voldemort crooned in his ear.
+\emph{Watch, Harry, and learn the folly of opposing me.}
+
+Sylvan gripped Eos by her legs and stepped back. As she cried, he
+whirled and slammed her, head-first, against the nearest wall.
+
+Her wailing silenced as her skull smashed open, and Harry couldn't look
+away from the mixture of blood and brains that slid down the wall.
+Medusa made a sound like nothing living and tried to attack, but Sylvan
+had a plan in place for that, too. Harry saw him catch her on a diamond
+point of light and hold her there, even as his body rippled and wavered
+and cycled into Oaken.
+
+Oaken had bronze-brown eyes that showed no emotion at all. Harry had no
+doubt in that moment that he was looking upon Adalrico's killer. His own
+heart was hot in his mouth, as was the taste of bile and the pain like a
+branding iron piercing his throat.
+
+"\emph{Diffindo}," Oaken said, and Medusa's robe split open down the
+middle. The diamond point of light pressed forward at the same moment,
+and ripped her back open, continuing inward until it rested against one
+of her internal organs.
+
+Oaken took a step forward, opening his own robes.
+
+\emph{He's going to rape her. He will.}
+
+Harry flopped again like a wounded fish, and still he could not move,
+and still he could not close his eyes, and still he could not stop this.
+The ruins of Eos's small body still slid down the wall, and still Oaken
+walked forward until he stood in front of Medusa, gaze uninterested.
+
+He pushed forward, and she screamed.
+
+Harry could remember feeling what he felt then only twice before, once
+when he watched a boy butchered by werewolves while he was bound to the
+altar stone in the graveyard at the end of fourth year, and once when he
+watched Loki, in werewolf form, tear open a door and evade his magic to
+get to a former Auror Harry was guarding. Every other time, even when
+he'd had to kill the children in the Life-Web, he'd at least been able
+to do \emph{something}. He'd saved them, though at the cost of a good
+part of his honor and his integrity. He had to be able to save Medusa.
+It was too late for Eos, but---
+
+And he could not move. When Voldemort's magic clamped down around him
+like the jaws of a werewolf around its prey, he lost even the slight
+freedom to struggle that he had had so far.
+
+\emph{Do you see?} Voldemort asked, voice stern and proud, as if he were
+narrating the exploits of a favorite child to a friend. \emph{Each time
+he rapes her, he pushes her onto the spike behind her. She is impaled
+from both front and behind. It is almost poetic.}
+
+Harry screamed and lunged again. He could hear the ripping of her flesh,
+and her cries. Then the spike pressed inward enough that she could not
+scream. Harry knew it had most likely pierced a lung.
+
+\emph{I have to. I promised her. I said I would be Eos's godfather. I
+promised to protect her. I named her. And she's dead, and Owen's mother
+is dying in front of me, and I said she would be safe, and she isn't,
+and I have to---}
+
+There was only one choice, and he knew it.
+
+Even as Medusa expired, even as Oaken exhaled a loud sigh and slumped
+forward over her dying body, Harry reached out and opened the first of
+the many gates that kept the dark part of him which enjoyed domination
+locked up.
+
+He heard its eager whining, and then it slid forward, and then Harry
+flung all his will to hurt and hate and torture and cause pain against
+Voldemort.
+
+Even as Voldemort flinched, Harry could hear him laughing.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco was already awake, because he had felt the damage to the wards
+around the Manor, and it had hurt. He had seen the blood pouring from
+Harry's scar and tried to wake him up, but he couldn't do it. Harry only
+kept twitching and mumbling and sometimes crying out. Then he'd lost his
+voice and been unable even to do that. He just uttered little
+half-choked moans that made Draco frantic with concern for him.
+
+The rational part of his brain urged him to leave Harry and get Snape,
+who might be able to wake him up. But Draco couldn't bring himself to
+leave. He just stayed there, Harry's body twitching like a nerve in
+thrumming flight, and whispered words of love and longing and desire for
+him to come back.
+
+Later, he would have cause to bless the irrational part of his brain.
+
+Harry abruptly stiffened and fell silent. Even his breathing seemed to
+stop. Draco had to lower his head to Harry's chest, so that he could
+hear his heart pounding and reassure himself Harry was still alive.
+
+And then he saw the walls turn to ice, and all the lights in the room
+went out at once.
+
+Draco did not hesitate. It had been years since Harry was this angry. He
+didn't care. He recognized the sensations of the fury that had
+accompanied them when they went together to face the Chamber of Secrets.
+
+This time, though, he didn't have to stand there, a helpless, frozen
+statue, while Harry faced death and danger without him.
+
+He closed his eyes and jumped, following the old familiar trail of his
+possession gift into Harry's head, prepared to share his thoughts and
+the danger---
+
+Save that what he found when he opened his eyes in the mental world was
+unlike anything he'd seen before.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry knew a distance separated him from Voldemort, even now. The scar
+connection was a tunnel flowing with magic, or led into the tunnel
+flowing with magic, and Voldemort had littered it with traps to prevent
+Harry from having easy access to his mind.
+
+But that did not matter.
+
+His rage surged beneath him, released from its confinement, a deep black
+horse that bore Harry on racing legs along the path of traps.
+Voldemort's Legilimency snapped at him, and Harry answered with crushing
+force of his own, and Voldemort's Legilimency lay down and died. Mirrors
+tried to baffle and confuse him, but Harry could not see anything in
+them darker than his own soul. His own resemblance to Voldemort was
+dangled before him as a bait to pity. Harry laughed it off.
+
+\emph{He is like me? Then it will make it all the easier for me to
+destroy him.}
+
+Harry leaped the last distance, and became aware for the first time of
+someone racing beside him. When he turned his head, he was stunned to
+see Draco there, clinging to a second black horse that was a
+representation, Harry supposed, of the possession gift that had let him
+ride the trailing edge of Harry's thoughts.
+
+``What are you doing here?'' Harry snapped.
+
+``Learning, apparently.'' Draco leaned forward to clutch the neck of his
+horse. ``I never knew you had such darkness inside you.''
+
+Harry snarled. He'd told Draco about the attack from Aaron, but not
+about the darkness in its pool, thinking they'd have plenty of time for
+that conversation. "Then you should know to fear me now, and \emph{go
+back.}"
+
+Draco threw his head back and laughed. Harry just stared at him until he
+finished, and shook his head. "Harry, don't you understand? I
+\emph{admire} the darkness in you. I wish you used it more often. Why
+wouldn't I? I'm a Dark wizard."
+
+Harry didn't have the time to answer, and he certainly didn't have the
+time to examine his own mind, identify the hooks by which Draco had
+latched on, and cut him loose. They were almost upon Voldemort. Harry
+could feel his power building, getting ready to slam into the
+snake-faced bastard.
+
+``Hang on, then,'' he said, and the full force of his hatred went home.
+
+Harry had never wanted to hurt someone so much in his life. Fudge,
+Umbridge, Lily, Juniper when he had taken Snape, Dumbledore, all of
+those were pale shadows before this, his true enemy. He summoned
+everything black and dangerous from within himself, backed it with the
+will that let him remain \emph{vates}, and pushed it into Voldemort's
+head through the scar connection.
+
+At the same time, he drew their conjoined magic tightly to him through
+the tunnel in which the bird flew, and whipped it around and around his
+body like thread coiling on a spindle, trying to keep Voldemort from
+using it to defend himself.
+
+The Dark Lord repelled the first onslaught, of course. He was stronger
+than Harry was, the most powerful wizard in the world. He seemed a
+little shaken, which Harry told himself was the best he could hope for.
+
+And then he opened his \emph{absorbere} gift again, and began to suck
+magic from the wounded inhabitants of the safehouse.
+
+Harry knew he could hurl himself at that gullet and accomplish nothing
+except to get both him and Draco drowned and drained, made Squibs. He
+circled away, therefore, kicking the black horse beneath him until they
+were racing through what looked like a high and starry sky, and then
+came in from behind.
+
+This time, his rage was deep, and quiet, and he concentrated all his
+will on the one overwhelming thing he wanted from Voldemort, as he had
+wanted it of Fenrir Greyback. \emph{Vanish. Disappear. I want you to
+cease existing.} Now.
+
+The boundaries of Voldemort's body and existence trembled. Harry snapped
+at them, tore at them, and went howling on. His progress had slowed now,
+and the black horse beneath him kicked, hooves scrabbling for purchase
+as though in mud, with Draco silent beside him. But he had to make it
+forward, and he would make Voldemort vanish if it was the last thing he
+did.
+
+\emph{Go. Cease existing. Hear me. Vanish.} Now.
+
+He wanted to control Voldemort, dominate him, separate one atom of his
+body from another. He could feel them parting, if he concentrated. He
+shoved, and more and more magic came howling up from within him, as he
+drew on Voldemort's own power to make him do what Harry wished.
+
+His throat drew tight. His heart beat in his ears like wine. He labored,
+muscles straining like those of a draft horse, and still he threw
+himself into the push again, and again, and still again.
+
+\emph{Collapse. Die. Fold inward. I command it.} Now.
+
+And Voldemort was melting beneath him, rolling away, collapsing like a
+pile of snow on a high summer day. Harry opened his mouth in a thin,
+bird-pitched screech of triumph---
+
+And then he realized that Voldemort had only Apparated, and not melted
+away at all. Harry hissed in frustration, and his magic coiled around
+him like a series of scorpions, tails lashing, all angry, all wanting to
+kill something.
+
+His magic and his temper tumbled around him, and the darkness, loosed
+from its cage, roared and panted in gladness.
+
+And Harry could not control it, could not draw it back.
+
+He felt the rush gathering itself beneath him, the black horse
+solidifying, drawing greedily on the strength he'd invoked. It wanted to
+go further, unfold and explode across the world, hunt down every Death
+Eater and every Ministry official who believed in Juniper's nonsense and
+kill them all.
+
+\emph{No! No, damn it!}
+
+But his own desires were struggling against his own desires. Even though
+he wanted what he had always told everyone he wanted---the freedom for
+everyone to make his or her own decisions, and the ability to think
+through their actions without fear---he also wanted to see a world where
+the webs were unraveled already and he had accomplished everything he
+wanted to accomplish.
+
+And now the world lay flat and gleaming beneath him, his power rearing
+like a wave, like a herd of horses of the night wind galloping past the
+moon. No one could oppose him, not if he chose to use what was his, the
+power of his birthright. He could drink magic as Voldemort could, and
+from a wider variety of sources, and then he would locate the Horcruxes
+by ripping their places from Voldemort's mind, and convince Death Eaters
+to die as willing sacrifices, and end this once and for all.
+
+The vision tempted him. He wavered.
+
+And one moment of wavering in this dark world of power, where he hovered
+on the edge of Lordship, was eternity.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco did not at first understand what was happening, and then he did.
+He felt a sting of mild annoyance.
+
+\emph{All of this would have been much easier if Harry had just told me
+he harbored such darkness from the beginning.}
+
+But he could direct the dark horse he rode, at least while Harry wasn't
+actually galloping away with him, and he directed it around now in a
+large circle until he was in front of Harry. He reached out, and put his
+hand on his lover's shoulder.
+
+Harry's green eyes rose to meet his, seething with power. Draco caught
+his breath, and trembled with his own weakness. Part of him wanted to
+tell Harry to go on and ravage the world, end the war, do whatever was
+necessary to keep that magic burning. Even though he knew Harry would
+hate it, that part of him didn't care. It was the part that had embraced
+the Dark with the most dangerous Justification possible, and which
+rather loved the thought of Harry the Dark Lord. Draco was not of the
+Light, and never would be, even if he changed his mind about Muggles and
+Mudbloods. The Dark was far more than a matter of blood.
+
+But because he had no fear of what Harry was, he could guide him back to
+what he wanted to be.
+
+``Harry,'' he murmured. ``Listen to me.'' He gestured to the black
+horses and the starless sky around them, being careful not to loose
+Harry's gaze as he did so. ``What caused all this?''
+
+``I saw them kill Eos Rosier-Henlin by smashing her head open against a
+wall.'' Harry's voice was flat. ``I saw them rape Medusa even as a spike
+tore her apart from the inside.''
+
+Draco winced, but slowly nodded. ``But was this darkness always inside
+you? Or did it rouse itself only because of those things you saw?''
+
+``Always there,'' Harry whispered.
+
+``Then you can guide it back to its place,'' Draco whispered in return.
+"You aren't caught up in something alien to yourself. This \emph{is}
+you, Harry." He spread his arms, and felt the winds of Dark magic travel
+past him, making him shiver and start and yearn to follow. ``You can
+command it the same way you can command your compassion, and put that
+aside when necessary. Put this aside, too.'' He lowered his voice even
+more and leaned forward. ``You could have told me about this. I would
+hardly have rejected you for it.''
+
+Harry frowned. ``But you would have insisted that it didn't exist, the
+same way you would have insisted that I shouldn't grieve for my
+parents.''
+
+\emph{I knew it.} But that was a conversation they would have later, not
+right now. Draco shook his head. ``Not once I saw proof, I wouldn't
+have. You can trust me more than that, Harry.'' He made sure to keep his
+voice reassuring, not accusatory. It was probably the accusations, like
+the ones he had made after the slaughter in Cornwall, that had made
+Harry so certain Draco would turn away from his darkness and his
+emotions over his parents' deaths. ``Besides, this doesn't frighten me,
+or make me despise you.''
+
+``How does it make you feel, then?'' And the intensity of Harry's gaze,
+which actually made Draco's face begin to bleed, told Draco how
+important his answer was.
+
+He answered honestly. ``Rather like fucking you, actually.''
+
+Harry blinked, and the darkness around them began to falter. Draco could
+see starlight through the clouds now, and the black horses no longer
+tossed their heads as if impatient to run away.
+
+Draco nudged his mount closer to Harry's and wrapped his arms around his
+chest. ``Come on,'' he murmured. ``You made Voldemort back off. Come
+back to yourself, Harry. You'll have other chances to fight him like
+this.'' \emph{Merlin, I hope so.} Draco had never been further from
+afraid in his life. His skin was tingling, and he wished there was some
+town of wizards associated with Voldemort nearby, so that Harry could
+smash them into smithereens and relieve some of his frustration. ``Come
+on.''
+
+Harry gave one deep shudder, and then the horses dissolved beneath them
+and Draco was tumbling, with Harry in his arms, down a bleak,
+featureless pit. He didn't let it bother him, even when the sensation of
+spinning grew acute. He merely held fast to Harry, and felt Harry
+finally cling back, with an openness that he hadn't shown in months.
+
+They landed with a bump on something soft, and the darkness tore away,
+and they were back in their bedroom. And Harry was crying without sound,
+so that if Draco hadn't been able to see the tears on his face, he would
+never have known he was crying at all.
+
+``Voldemort is going to take everything I've loved from me,'' Harry
+whispered. ``One by one. He took Medusa and Eos, and he let Honoria and
+Ignifer escape, just so he could kill them later. How long before you're
+dead, Draco? Or Snape? Or Connor, Peter, Henrietta, all the rest---''
+
+``Hush,'' Draco said, and dragged him closer still. ``We will protect
+ourselves, Harry, and you can help, given that magic of yours. Weep for
+Medusa and Eos now. We'll plan later.''
+
+Harry might have protested, perhaps, if he wasn't so very weary and
+traumatized. But instead he put his head down and cried, still without a
+sound, though now and then his shoulders shook.
+
+Draco smoothed his back, and, awful as the deaths had been, and ruined
+as the wards around Malfoy Manor now were, he found that his major
+emotion was contentment. He had not known Medusa and Eos Rosier-Henlin,
+not well. He cared about them mostly for the effect their deaths would
+have on Harry. What \emph{did} matter was that Harry had faced the
+darkness within himself, and he seemed more willing to trust Draco with
+it now.
+
+\emph{These will be Dark times,} Draco thought, feeling rather like
+Harry had looked after Lily and James were murdered: intent on fighting
+anyone who tried to drag Harry away from him. \emph{But I'm a Dark
+wizard. All the better to flourish in them.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 33*: Swear Not By the
+Moon}\label{chapter-33-swear-not-by-the-moon}
+
+Thank you for the reviews on the last chapter!\textbf{\\
+}
+
+\textbf{Warning: Some gore.}
+
+This chapter's title comes, of course, from \emph{Romeo and Juliet}.
+
+\textbf{Chapter Twenty-Five: Swear Not By the Moon}
+
+He had not expected that, had Lord Voldemort. He had been sure of
+himself when he went to Malfoy Manor, but he had not been sure
+\emph{enough}. He had not expected Harry's return strike to open wounds
+in his body along every joint, all the places where Harry had tried so
+hard and so earnestly to part bone from bone and sinew from sinew.
+
+Harry had tried his very best to will him out of existence, and had not
+been successful. Lord Voldemort knew the reasons he had failed. The
+Horcruxes bound him here. As long as they existed, then he would exist.
+If a reflected Killing Curse had not driven him completely away on that
+dark and bloody night here sixteen years ago, then a simple blast of
+will, no matter how strong, would not, either.
+
+He took to his throne room, and allowed only Indigena in to see him. She
+came with her eyes on the floor, as if she could not bear to take in the
+sight of his wounds. ``My Lord?'' she asked.
+
+He considered her with the wisdom of snakes, the deep and long-sliding
+coil of serpents, while he stroked the flesh-snake around his waist.
+There was warmth brewing in his belly to match the warmth that brewed
+under the sand in one corner of the burrow. He considered sending her
+out to make the next strike.
+
+But Indigena was a valuable servant, and with Harry as maddened as he
+was---but not maddened enough to yield to his hatred, alas and alas and
+may the darkness cover him---then he might kill her on sight. He would
+not risk losing her.
+
+``Send Hawthorn to me,'' he said.
+
+Her words ``My Lord,'' were almost soundless, but he heard them, did
+Lord Voldemort, and he smiled. He would have known her reason for not
+answering to him if she had dared.
+
+He would let Hawthorn smell the blood from his wounds before she looked
+upon him, he decided. That would push her closer to agreeing to what he
+wanted her to do, and not fighting his pull. Of course, the moon's call,
+rising full the next night, would in fact do most of the work.
+
+He would keep his word to his heir. He would not kill too many of those
+Harry had loved, too quickly. But he would kill one or two a night.
+Surely he could stand that pace.
+
+And there was one Harry had loved, in London.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry let five minutes pass while he cried and Draco comforted him. When
+they had passed, then he pulled away, shaking his head and ducking from
+the hand that Draco reached to comfort him. Draco frowned in
+exasperation.
+
+"Harry, now that you've told me that you recovered from your parents'
+deaths less well than I thought you had, and now that you've just been
+through \emph{trauma}, I would hope you'd forgive me for wanting to
+worry over you." His voice cooled and sharpened to a blade as thin as an
+icicle.
+
+``I would forgive you, if such a thing needed forgiveness,'' said Harry,
+and hoped that his smile reassured Draco. ``But I'm not the one who's
+traumatized.'' He turned and began to pull his clothes on over his
+pyjamas.
+
+"Of \emph{course} you are---"
+
+``It's the victims at Malfoy Manor who know the meaning of trauma,''
+said Harry steadily. He could feel the darkness still spreading icy
+tendrils through him, less banished forever than dismissed from the
+forefront of his mind. That was well enough. He would endure that. It
+was probably what he deserved for not facing it, and not telling Draco
+about it, in the first place. ``I need to check on them, and prepare St.
+Mungo's to receive them. And then I have to call on Kanerva to return,
+in whichever way she'll answer me, because I need her winds to guard the
+safehouses. And then a speech to make. It'll have to be a damn inspiring
+speech, given what we're facing.'' He paused, then shook his head,
+wondering how he could have forgotten this. ``No, wait. First, I'll need
+to tell Owen and Michael about---about Medusa and Eos.'' His throat
+closed up. He would have sobbed again if he had the choice. But he
+didn't.
+
+Draco was not impressed, and Harry knew it both from his voice and the
+way he let his hand fall on his shoulder, as if could hold Harry in
+their bedroom by sheer pressure. ``You can wait until your tears have
+dried, Harry. Come on---''
+
+``No. I'm sorry, Draco. I do love you, and you handled yourself
+magnificently tonight, and without you I would have been lost.'' Harry
+caught the hand and squeezed until he almost forced the blood from it.
+He wanted Draco to understand how much he truly appreciated what he had
+done, and how little he could do in return. ``But there's no one else
+who can do all this.''
+
+``Someone should be able to,'' Draco muttered, as he reached for his own
+robes.
+
+Harry gave him a thin, fleeting smile. ``Believe me, I'm working on
+that.'' \emph{I could have died tonight, or fallen victim to my own
+darkness, and the war effort would have faltered. It's time that I made
+people stop relying on me and start relying on my principles.}
+
+His scar had bled streaks across his face to join the tears, Harry found
+when he touched his face. He thought about that for a moment, and then
+decided to leave them. Hopefully, they would drive home the point of his
+speech better than any mere words could have, and why it was necessary
+that people stop thinking he was the last best hope for everything.
+
+The images of Medusa being raped and Eos's shattered skull tried to come
+back.
+
+Harry forbade them. Give in and start thinking of himself as traumatized
+by those images, and he would \emph{be} traumatized by those images. As
+long as he could continue convincing himself otherwise, then he would.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Indigena had not heard all the plans for tonight's raid before the
+twins, Lucius, and Hawthorn left. She had only known that they planned
+to attack Malfoy Manor, and that they were leaving her behind.
+
+She found Oaken washing the caked gore from his hands in a fountain that
+her Lord had raised from the side of the burrow with his newfound power.
+When Indigena asked him why, he told her, in a tone that made it clear
+he found the slaughter boring.
+
+A moment later, he glanced up, and seemed to notice that she was still
+staring at him. ``Cousin, what is it?'' he asked, his voice seamed with
+concern for the first time. ``Did I do something wrong? Does our Lord
+wish me punished?''
+
+``Not at all,'' Indigena whispered. ``No, nothing like that. I shouldn't
+have been staring, Oaken. Excuse me.'' She turned and strode rapidly
+towards her own chamber, her heart pumping with shock and the rose on
+her left wrist, the rose that had killed Minister Scrimgeour, opening
+and fluttering convulsively. She placed her other hand over it to shield
+it from sight, and sat down on the soft, smooth dirt as soon as she was
+able, closing her eyes.
+
+It was no wonder that her Lord had left her behind. They'd had
+a---``conversation'' was the only word Indigena could find for it, the
+night after he regained his power. He had asked her what else she would
+not do for him, besides meaningless torture. She'd told him that she
+could not be a witness to rape. She found it distasteful, partly because
+it reminded her of what happened to her under her sister Peridot's
+magic.
+
+And this was his version of kindness, in sparing her from seeing this
+sight.
+
+Indigena still could not move against him unless she wanted to wind up a
+puppet, unable even to refrain from torture or rape herself. But there
+was a rule---in fact, it was almost an unwritten law---that said Death
+Eaters could move against other Death Eaters.
+
+She needed to stop Sylvan and Oaken. They did not care about what they
+did. They had not come to serve her Lord because of honor, but because
+they knew there would be no place for their kind of magic in a world
+where Harry ruled. If they stayed in the Dark Lord's service, then rape
+would be a weapon he regularly used, and one Indigena would be tainted
+by. \emph{Low magic, filthy magic.}
+
+She knew who could destroy Sylvan and Oaken, whose magic was wild enough
+to do so, who might grow interested and take it up as a sort of mad
+quest.
+
+She had no idea how to currently contact Evan Rosier, however.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Ignifer started when her left wrist chirped, and nodded to Honoria, who
+was sitting next to a woman and comparing her lost leg to the woman's
+lost arm, to show that they had someone contacting them at last. They'd
+fled from Malfoy Manor with everyone they could rescue---pitifully few,
+only fifteen---and were now crowded into Honoria's house. Honoria had
+contacted Tybalt Starrise. As soon as he could ready places for
+everyone, he intended to take them, and contact St. Mungo's.
+
+It wasn't Tybalt's voice that spoke from Ignifer's hand, though, but
+Harry's. ``Ignifer? Are you well?''
+
+``A few wounds, is all,'' Ignifer replied automatically, before she
+remembered that Harry shouldn't know about this at all. She frowned.
+``Harry? Where are you? Did you go to Malfoy Manor?'' She hoped not. She
+had felt the power of Voldemort's magic backing Lucius's attack, and if
+Harry had arrived, then Voldemort would have remained to fight him.
+
+``No. I saw it in a vision.'' Harry's voice was more than sane, as if he
+had a tight grip on his emotions and wanted to keep them from exploding.
+``I need to know how many of you there are, Ignifer, and what kind of
+wounds you have.''
+
+Wearily, Ignifer pushed her hair out of her eyes and studied the people
+gathered around them. Everyone was missing at least one arm or leg, even
+the children. One man had been reduced to nothing more than a torso and
+head. It had taken several powerful Light spells for forcing life back
+into the dying to keep him alive. Ignifer forced herself to gaze at him
+with open eyes, and remember the costs of war. ``Fifteen rescues,'' she
+said. ``So seventeen with me and Honoria, but we don't have more than
+minor wounds.'' Honoria flashed her a small smile, confirming that, and
+Ignifer felt as if someone had reached in and squeezed her heart.
+``Everyone's missing at least one arm, Harry, and we have one limbless
+case.''
+
+``All right,'' Harry said calmly. ``I'll be firecalling St. Mungo's, and
+telling them to expect---''
+
+``Tybalt Starrise is already doing that.''
+
+There was a momentary silence, and then Harry whispered, ``You called
+him?''
+
+``Of course,'' said Ignifer, wondering if something was wrong. Had Harry
+learned something worrying about Tybalt that made him suspect he was a
+traitor? Had Death Eaters attacked Tybalt's house, too? ``Should we not
+have?''
+
+``No, you should have, that's perfect,'' said Harry, still whispering.
+"I simply thought---I'm too used to acting alone, Ignifer, to having to
+make every single arrangement, and you just reminded me that I don't
+have to. Not all the time. I just---thank you. \emph{Thank} you. And
+thank you for sparing as many lives as you did."
+
+The deep and simple gratitude in his voice stiffened Ignifer's spine.
+This was what it meant to have a place, a belonging, a home. Harry
+fought to protect her, both from ordinary danger and from more subtle,
+insidious ones like the danger of losing her soul to misplaced
+vengeance, and in return she fought to take care of the more helpless,
+dependent people around her.
+
+``If you need a lieutenant, Harry, I am always here,'' she said.
+
+``And me, too,'' Honoria added behind her.
+
+``Tell Honoria that she's too flighty to be a lieutenant,'' Harry said,
+his voice relaxed and almost cheerful, at least compared to the first
+tone he'd addressed Ignifer with. ``I'll be doing other things. For now,
+Ignifer, these people are your charge. Remain with them, no matter where
+they go, or at least until the Healers at St. Mungo's are done with
+them. Then you can bring them back to Hogwarts. We'll be establishing
+other refuges, ones I hope are safer, but I can't blame them if they
+never want to live anywhere outside Hogwarts's walls again.''
+
+``I will remember that,'' said Ignifer, feeling pride pour into her like
+lead that stiffened her spine and her will. ``And you may count on me,
+Harry.'' She hesitated, then, hating to say what came next, but having
+to say it. ``Harry. You should know that Medusa and Eos---''
+
+``I know,'' said Harry calmly. ``I saw them die. And death came as a
+mercy, Ignifer, and I have no doubt they perished.''
+
+Ignifer decided, carefully, that she would not ask. That too-sane tone
+was back in Harry's voice again. She did not know what had happened; she
+had simply noticed that, when they made it out of the safehouse, there
+was no sign of Medusa or her daughter. "Then we await your next
+commands, \emph{vates.}"
+
+Harry spoke a final soft thanks, and the communication spell cut off
+just as Honoria's fireplace flared to life. Ignifer turned to face it,
+her wand held out, but it was only John Smythe-Blyton, Tybalt's partner,
+one hand held up as if that would actually shield him from a curse
+should Ignifer decide to cast one.
+
+``St. Mungo's is ready,'' he said. ``There are Healers here, and they'll
+come through the Floo connection, with your permission, and help you
+into the hospital.''
+
+Ignifer stared. Even granted that this was Tybalt, who had a way of
+getting things done, she had expected this to take longer. ``So
+quickly?''
+
+John smiled, an expression that warmed his brown eyes from the inside
+out. ``There may possibly have been overuse of Harry's name. And a few
+delicate reminders that while Harry welcomes allies who use all kinds of
+magic, the Acting Minister outlawed Dark Arts, which could conceivably
+include a few of the more important spells that the Healers use.''
+
+Ignifer smiled grimly and put her wand away. ``That's a cost I can
+accept.''
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry could not believe how much strength Ignifer's pronouncement had
+given him. So long as he did not have to do \emph{everything} by
+himself, so long as other people would bear part of the burden, then he
+thought he could get through this.
+
+He stood on the Astronomy Tower, with Bill and Charlie seemingly
+plastered to his back, and Draco to his side. It was the only place he
+could be sure Kanerva would hear him, and thus he shouted for her,
+lofting his voice into the winds. ``Kanerva Stormgale! Dark Lady of the
+winds blowing up and down! I have a challenge for you!'' He dearly
+wished he could simply set her on Voldemort---she would probably relish
+that, even---but the rules of the Pact said that Jing-Xi and Kanerva
+could not help him with offensive attacks, only defensive. Thus, he'd
+put her magic to use protecting the safehouses, if she listened to him.
+
+He received no response for a few minutes. Harry narrowed his eyes
+slightly. He knew how to manipulate Slytherins, though, and Kanerva was
+not so very far from that most of the time.
+
+``She's afraid, I suppose,'' he said, letting disappointment color his
+voice, and turned back towards the school. ``Well. I can't blame her for
+being so. Now that Voldemort has returned to full power, she may be
+considering leaving Britain altogether---''
+
+A gust of wind seized him and tried to blow him over the side of the
+Tower. Harry felt Draco grab for him, but he forced strength into his
+own limbs and broke the hold. He had to go with this. He had known what
+calling Kanerva afraid would do, and he was prepared to face it.
+
+He hung in midair, while her face formed out of the wind in front of
+him, blue eyes keener than usual, black hair streaming behind her. "I am
+\emph{not} afraid," she told him, while her fingers flashed like raking
+talons around him and Harry felt the strum of the nails along his skin.
+
+Harry regarded her calmly, and ignored the terrified shouts from his
+sworn companions and his partner. ``You refused the idea of a
+challenge,'' he said, with a slight shrug of his shoulders. ``What else
+could you be?''
+
+She snarled at him, and her nails dug bloody furrows along his back.
+Harry simply raised an eyebrow. ``Voldemort has caused me worse pain
+than that, this night,'' he said.
+
+Kanerva was distracted. ``What did he do?''
+
+``Killed a baby by smashing her head open, and sent one of his servants
+to rape her mother,'' said Harry.
+
+``And why does that hurt you?''
+
+\emph{Sometimes,} Harry thought, while ignoring the ground far beneath
+him and the way he lazily spun, \emph{I forget that the transition to
+the Dark snapped her sanity, and she needs the simplest things explained
+to her.} ``Because it does,'' he said, since he knew that she recognized
+next to nothing of morality. She had the same savage innocence as any
+windstorm.
+
+Kanerva's face flicked away and appeared floating at his shoulder.
+``Very well,'' she said. ``It does. And the challenge?''
+
+``Now that Voldemort has returned to his full power, he can eat wards,''
+Harry told her. ``No refuge is safe, unless we conceal it with
+Unassailable Curses---and most of those we can use, Voldemort could also
+bypass. He can drink the magic. He can drink wards, and the shells
+Thomas has made that repel the ward-eating stones. But he cannot drink
+your winds.''
+
+Kanerva formed two hands again and clapped them together with a clicking
+of nails. Harry watched some drops of his blood fly away from the long
+fingers and towards the ground. "You are \emph{clever}," she praised.
+``No, he cannot swallow them all, can he? And if my magic flies from
+wind to wind---''
+
+``As your consciousness flies,'' Harry said, remembering their wild
+journey over the ground and through the various air-currents on the
+night of the Cornwall attack.
+
+``---Then he cannot swallow it,'' Kanerva ended dreamily. ``Every time
+he tries, it will flee somewhere else. And the physical winds, those not
+made of magic but which come to my call because I love them, he cannot
+drain as he drains magic. They will shield and conceal my spells. A
+whirlwind of moving wards.'' She suddenly looked at him with an anxious
+snap in her blue eyes. "Can the pattern be different for each safehouse?
+One pattern would be \emph{boring.}"
+
+\emph{And unsafe}, Harry thought, \emph{since Voldemort could attack all
+of them at once if he figured out the key to one.} ``They can be,'' he
+assured her. ``Can you take this challenge?''
+
+``I can,'' said Kanerva, and started to blow away in her excitement.
+Harry sucked in his breath as he fell, but a moment later she had
+snatched him and set him back on the Tower. ``We cannot have you
+falling,'' she said. ``Your ideas are too good. Unless you wish your
+head smashed open to match the baby's? To show solidarity with her?''
+She paused anxiously, to await his verdict.
+
+``Having my head whole will be fine,'' said Harry.
+
+``This is a challenge,'' Kanerva said contentedly. ``Why did you not
+call on me to attempt it before?'' She sounded more curious than
+chiding.
+
+``Because I did not know that Voldemort would return to full power.''
+Harry rubbed his head, which ached, and then grunted a little as Draco's
+arms wrapped around him again and stole his breath. "I thought the wards
+we had would be enough, once we learned to repel the ward-eating stones.
+Now we need to guard against his \emph{absorbere} gift, and your winds
+are the only things that can do that."
+
+Kanerva purred at him, sent a breeze to ruffle his hair, and then
+vanished. Harry closed his eyes, letting himself enjoy the cool
+sensations for a moment, and then stood, shaking his head at Draco when
+he would have restrained him.
+
+``Now to tell Owen and Michael,'' he said quietly.
+
+SSSSSSSSSS
+
+Owen felt as if a safe, secure castle---Hogwarts, perhaps---had opened a
+door and left him to stand in chill, constantly blowing air. He bowed
+his head and fastened his hands over the back of his neck.
+
+Harry had quietly told the story, holding emotion back from his voice.
+Owen knew why he had done that. He was trying not to intrude on their
+grief, or make it seem as if he felt more sorrow for their mother's and
+little sister's deaths than they did.
+
+Unfortunately, it seemed that Michael didn't know that.
+
+"And you don't \emph{care}?" Michael sat in the middle of his bed,
+staring at Harry in disbelief. "You can speak of these deaths as if they
+were something you saw at a distance and---speak like \emph{that}?"
+
+They were in the Ravenclaw seventh-year-boys' room, the place where
+Michael was currently sleeping. Harry had had a terrible time putting
+both his own sworn companions and Draco outside it. They seemed to
+assume that Michael and Owen would want to hurt Harry when they heard
+what had happened.
+
+With Michael, they seemed to be right. He was rising to his feet now,
+clutching his wand, his eyes wet and red-rimmed. Owen knew he didn't
+look much better himself. And he didn't \emph{feel} much better, having
+to step between his brother and his Lord.
+
+Michael leaned forward, straining to fire a curse around him at Harry.
+Owen seized his wrist and squeezed it, listening to bones and tendons
+grinding until Michael uttered a pained, choked sound and released his
+wand, letting it plummet to the carpet.
+
+``How can you justify this?'' he whispered. "Even \emph{you} shouldn't
+be able to, Owen. You swore to him, and look what it's done to our
+family. We entered this damn war, and we've lost our parents, our
+sister, our honor, our dignity. Rosier-Henlin doesn't even exist as an
+independent family anymore, only a footnote on the bottom of a list of
+Harry's allies. He'll get us all killed in the end. You heard what he
+said about Voldemort. He's killing people who are important to Harry.
+That's the only reason he killed Mother and Eos. The \emph{only}
+reason."
+
+``Listen to me,'' Owen said quietly, bending his head and putting his
+lips near his brother's ear. ``Every loss we've sustained has been an
+honorable one. Eos is the only member of our family who died without
+conscious choice. Mother knew she was in danger, no matter where she
+went. And Father died on the battlefield, and committed suicide to save
+us. We'll win no vengeance and no honor by blaming Harry, Michael. Can't
+you see that's what Voldemort wants you to do?''
+
+Michael closed his eyes and stood still, shaking his head. Then he said,
+``I should have been there.''
+
+``And don't blame yourself, either,'' said Harry, appearing silently at
+Owen's side, and nearly startling him enough to make him let go of his
+brother. "He would want you to do \emph{that} even more. I don't think
+you could have saved her. He sent Sylvan and Oaken there with the
+intention of r-raping your mother and killing Eos." Owen had to admit he
+was gratified to hear a slight tremble in Harry's voice when he spoke of
+the deaths, now. He was not entirely unaffected. ``You would have become
+a third victim, or you would have been immobilized and forced to
+watch.''
+
+``You don't know that,'' Michael whispered. ``Just as you don't know
+that Voldemort only killed them to spite you---''
+
+``Voldemort told me so himself.''
+
+Michael tore his body away and tossed his head proudly. ``Not everything
+in this war is about you, Potter,'' he said, and then turned and stormed
+out of the room, even if it was his room.
+
+``I'm sorry---'' Owen started to say.
+
+Harry's hand covered his mouth. ``You're hardly the one who needs to
+apologize,'' he murmured. ``Perhaps I should have waited longer to give
+you this news.''
+
+``No,'' said Owen quietly, while the feeling of cold, black wind blowing
+around him increased. ``We needed to know. Michael was especially close
+to our mother. He'll need time to recover.''
+
+``And what about you?'' Harry's eyes were steady and compassionate, even
+as they were also filled with too many shadows of things that no one
+should ever have to see. ``I'll understand if you want to time to
+recover without fighting at my side, or if you want to be released from
+your oath.''
+
+Owen shook his head. He was---
+
+He was hurt.
+
+But not mortally wounded. Voldemort had intended him to be when he heard
+this news, and that only made Owen all the more determined to ignore and
+defeat the snake-faced bastard's intentions for him.
+
+He gripped Harry's arm, and felt his oath scar burn, crackling and
+humming with energy like a real lightning bolt. ``I am in this for life,
+my lord,'' he said. ``It will take more than this to make me release my
+oath.''
+
+Harry stared at him intently. Owen held back the shiver that wanted to
+overcome him, and willed Harry to see his soul, his seriousness, his
+determination. He owed Harry his life for being freed from the torment
+of Durmstrang, and he owed him his life because he had freely given it
+over. Not even his mother and sister perishing could induce him to break
+his oath, even if his twin ran. Owen had a separate existence from his
+twin, one that combined family honor and personal honor.
+
+At last, Harry appeared to believe him, and nodded. ``If you change your
+mind and wish to be free, you have only to say so,'' he reminded Owen.
+
+``I know,'' Owen said, and quashed the temptation to say that he would
+never wish to be free. Now was not the time for that. Given Harry's loud
+objections against the idea of someone surrendering his free will
+entirely, even if he did it of his own free will, it might never be time
+to say that.
+
+SSSSSSSS
+
+Connor leaned against the doors to the entrance hall, shading his eyes
+with one hand as he watched his brother walk out on the lawn of
+Hogwarts. It was mid-morning now, and Harry had called all the reporters
+who would heed and hear him---mostly ones from the \emph{Daily
+Prophet}--- so that he could say something they needed to hear. Most
+people had heard something about the attack on Malfoy Manor now, though
+hardly anyone knew all the details. If nothing else, the arrival of
+fifteen maimed people in St. Mungo's would have been cause for comment.
+
+Connor knew the details only because Draco had told them to him, with
+Harry's permission. Harry seemed determined to protect Connor from them.
+And, Connor thought, with a newfound cynicism, he seemed to believe that
+Connor shouldn't know he'd witnessed them in a vision.
+
+Harry had come to a halt, his face set and calm. Cameras flashed, and
+voices called for a statement. Harry inclined his head back to them, but
+didn't speak until the voices had quieted. Until then, he looked out
+over their heads and fixed his gaze on the Forbidden Forest.
+
+Connor couldn't look away. He didn't know what else Harry would say
+besides giving the news of the attack on Malfoy Manor and Voldemort's
+return to full strength. He only knew that Harry seemed to be gathering
+his strength from a source deeper than would be needed merely to confess
+those things.
+
+While he waited, Connor watched the back of his brother's head, and
+remembered their brief, aborted conversation from half an hour ago.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``Make the Switching Potion again.''
+
+Harry had glanced up from a map. Connor had sought him out the moment
+Draco told him the truth, but Harry obviously wasn't expecting him.
+``What?''
+
+``Voldemort can get through your Legilimency again, can't he, since he
+sent you that vision?''
+
+Harry glanced down, lips pursed, and nodded.
+
+``Then brew the Switching Potion again, so that I can take on the
+visions for you.'' Connor thought the solution simple enough, and didn't
+understand why Harry was hesitating. ``You need to get some unbroken
+sleep, Harry, and you need to be relieved of the idea that he's doing
+this just to torment you.''
+
+``That's the major reason he's choosing his victims,'' said Harry, too
+calmly, rolling the map back up. ``I know that. He's told me so himself,
+many times. And he let Honoria and Ignifer go last night, when he could
+have easily killed them with Lucius and Hawthorn. Of course, he's also
+trying to make other people so scared that they never think about
+helping me again.''
+
+Connor snorted. ``It's one thing to know that, Harry, and another thing
+to watch people dying in your head. I want you to brew that Potion so
+that I can take on the visions. We'll trade off, if you insist, with me
+dreaming one night and you another. But---''
+
+``No.''
+
+Connor reached out, grabbed Harry's shoulders, and shook him hard. Harry
+let him do it, eyes deep green and stubborn and so \emph{calm} that
+Connor thought about slapping him, too. Draco was right. No one who had
+witnessed what Harry had last night should be acting this way.
+
+"I'm offering to \emph{help} you, you stubborn prat," Connor said
+through gritted teeth. ``Why is that so hard for you to accept?''
+
+``I don't want anyone else to see that,'' said Harry. "It's bad enough
+that I need to see it. \emph{Someone} needs to bear witness to their
+deaths, but it doesn't have to be you."
+
+``It doesn't always have to be you, either, you know,'' Connor pointed
+out. ``That's probably what Voldemort wants, so that he can wear you
+down further, but why should you oblige him?''
+
+Harry laughed then, and it went too far before it cut off. Harry put a
+hand on the table in front of him to steady himself, and shook his head.
+``You think it will calm me to know that you're seeing those things?''
+he whispered. ``I won't subject someone else to torture in my place. I
+can't spare everyone pain---Voldemort is making me learn that, each and
+every day, over and over again---but I can spare you this.''
+
+``You did it once.''
+
+Harry looked up. ``When I thought that I could wall Voldemort from my
+mind forever. This is different. No, Connor.''
+
+``If you'd just---''
+
+``The answer will never be yes.'' Harry's voice ended the argument. He
+swept up the map and walked out of the room.
+
+Connor hexed the table.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+And now he was standing here, watching his magnificent, stubborn,
+\emph{stupid} brother getting ready to make some announcement. He shook
+his head. ``Stupid prat,'' he muttered.
+
+``On that we agree, Mr. Potter.''
+
+Connor staggered in surprise, and looked up in time to see Snape's lips
+twitch. He considered calling the professor on it, then decided it
+wouldn't do much good. Instead, he looked back towards Harry and shook
+his head again. ``Why does he have to be so stupid?'' he mourned.
+
+``He believes that he must not yield, must not run,'' Snape murmured,
+his own gaze fastened on Harry. "On that count, he is correct. But he
+also believes that allowing someone else to suffer for him, even
+\emph{willingly}, is wrong. He cannot allow it outside of battle. And
+that is a weakness that the Dark Lord will exploit against him again,
+and again, and again. The only way to destroy a Horcrux is for someone
+else to willingly suffer. I wonder if Harry has reconciled himself to
+that yet, even as he claims that he has."
+
+Connor wanted to answer, but Harry started speaking then. His voice was
+quiet, but that didn't seem to matter. Connor guessed he'd bent the air
+so that it would carry his words again.
+
+``Voldemort attacked Malfoy Manor last night. He sent two of his Death
+Eaters to maim everyone they could capture, and caused eighteen
+casualties, of people who died of blood loss before they could be
+rescued. A third servant of his, Oaken Yaxley---who is joined with his
+twin Sylvan thanks to blood magic---raped Medusa Rosier-Henlin and
+destroyed her child Eos in front of her.''
+
+A cascade of whispers sprang up, to be silenced by Rita Skeeter's brassy
+call. Connor had never really learned to like the reporter, even though
+he knew she was (mostly) on Harry's side. "Why were Madam Rosier-Henlin
+and her daughter such particular targets, \emph{vates}?"
+
+``Because she was my goddaughter,'' said Harry, without a flinch in his
+voice that Connor could hear. ``Because I had sworn to protect them.
+Because Voldemort has sworn to destroy everyone I love.''
+
+\emph{Why is he telling them this?} Connor thought frantically.
+\emph{There are enemies of Harry's who will} run \emph{with this.
+Juniper not least of them.} By the look on Snape's face when Connor
+glanced sideways at him, he was thinking much the same thing. Of course,
+it didn't take a lot to make him scowl.
+
+And then Harry's voice soared, and Connor found out why he'd told
+them---including his enemies---this.
+
+"Voldemort wishes to make this war about me. To make me fear so much for
+the lives of those I love that I won't fight him, but will cast myself
+on the earth and plead for him not to hurt them. To wear me down with
+visions, and the people around me with terror. To turn Britain against
+me as an enemy, to make my enemies think they'll be safe if I'm gone, to
+make Dark wizards forget that he will only want more, and more, if his
+desire for my life is gratified.
+
+"That must not happen. He may be fighting this war as one of personal
+enmity, but it must not become that war for other people.
+
+"I urge all around me to remember this: I am only one person. The power
+of magic I have, others have. The inspiration I can provide, others can
+look into their hearts and find.
+
+"Ignifer Pemberley and her partner Honoria were the ones who rescued the
+survivors from Malfoy Manor last night. Freed house elves were the ones
+who most eloquently managed to speak for themselves in the cause of
+their freedom. The Midsummer Battle would have been lost without the
+sacrifices and the struggles of a hundred brave people, including young
+students. The vampire hive queen fell because three wizards, not one, of
+Lord-level power opposed her. I could not have done what I have done
+without Draco Malfoy, my joined partner; Professor Snape, my mentor and
+father; Connor Potter, my brother; Minerva McGonagall, Headmistress of
+the school; Peter Pettigrew, who taught hundreds of students last year
+more about Defense Against the Dark Arts than they've ever known; help
+from the Ministries of France, Portugal, and Spain; and all the other
+people who've vowed to study or teach defensive spells, patrol their
+hometowns, watch for danger, try to persuade reluctant neutrals to our
+side, and do thousands of other minor tasks that are \emph{no less
+important} than what I can provide.
+
+"This is not a war of Lords. I will not let it be. Voldemort wishes to
+make it so, and that would be enough for me to oppose him, but the root
+of my opposition lies in the roots of my own principles. What is
+important is allowing other people the freedom, the chance, the options,
+to help.
+
+"I am asking for help. I am asking that you not think that all of your
+problems can be solved if Voldemort gains what he wants, and I am asking
+that you not hold back on helping because you think your own
+contribution too small to matter. It will take a hundred shoulders to
+turn this wheel, a thousand hands to make sure it rolls, a million wills
+to keep it moving.
+
+``This is not my war. It is ours. I ask for help, and I ask for courage
+and clear eyes to look past the terror. If I fall, which may happen,
+this war cannot be lost, must not be lost.''
+
+He bowed to the people in front of him, and turned back towards the
+school. In the silence that followed, Connor felt his heart beating
+oddly. It was partially the effect of Harry's words, of course, because
+what he said was perfectly true. They should not succumb to Voldemort's
+desires solely because he was \emph{Voldemort}, even if they had no
+other reason.
+
+But he wondered if Harry had even noted the great, glaring hypocrisy at
+the heart of his speech.
+
+He let Harry know about it the moment he came level with the entrance
+doors, and thus with Connor and Snape.
+
+``And what if I want to help you, Harry?'' he asked, stopping his
+brother dead. ``What if I want to help you turn the wheel by bearing
+your dreams sometimes? My gifts are limited to direct battle
+otherwise---my compulsion isn't useful in everyday life. My other great
+talent is stopping you from being a prat.''
+
+Harry hunched his shoulders and might have gone past without replying,
+but Snape spoke, too, his voice a smooth drawl. ``I do believe that you
+should consider what Mr. Potter says, Harry, or stand convicted of
+violating your own principles.''
+
+Harry swung around to stare at them desperately. Connor could see a new
+drop of blood starting in his scar, and wondered if he was aware of it.
+``Not this,'' Harry said. ``Anything else you ask for, Connor, including
+helping with research on the Horcruxes. But not this.''
+
+``Why not?'' Connor demanded. He didn't see what the difference was
+between a sacrifice like this and the others Harry was asking of the
+British wizarding population.
+
+``Has it occurred to you, Harry,'' Snape whispered, ``that the Horcruxes
+will require a willing sacrifice, each one?''
+
+``Of course it has!'' Harry hissed. "But the visions---they're only
+meant to torture \emph{me}. He would hunt and kill people I love no
+matter what, since that's the filthy tactic he's decided on. But no one
+else \emph{has} to watch them die."
+
+``And neither do you.'' Connor stepped forward so fast that Harry
+couldn't get away, and wrapped his arms around his brother. "At least,
+not all the time. Let me take the Switching Potion, Harry, and bear the
+dreams for a few nights. They'll be horrible. I \emph{believe} that,
+from what Draco told me about your dream of Medusa and Eos. But I can
+spare you from them for a short time."
+
+``Connor, stop it, let me go---''
+
+Connor took a deep breath, and forced his arms to release of his
+brother. ``Will you accept that this is something I want to do?'' he
+asked. ``If Voldemort strikes you with the visions again, at least?''
+
+``I accept that it's something you want to do,'' said Harry, eyes gone
+cool. ``That doesn't mean I'll let you do it.''
+
+``Harry---'' Professor Snape began.
+
+Connor blinked as a dark shape began to come into being at Harry's left
+side. It looked like a serpent, but before it could fully form, Harry
+shot out a hand and appeared to strangle it. Then he drew in a deep
+breath and held it, before blinking hard and forcing an expression of
+calm on his face.
+
+``I'm tired of watching people I love die,'' he said, each word
+accompanied by a twitch and crackle of magic that made Connor fight not
+to step back. ``I'm tired of watching them suffer when I know I can
+prevent it. And I don't want to watch you suffer, Connor. Is that really
+so hard to understand?''
+
+Connor chewed his lip. He hadn't thought of it from that perspective, he
+had to admit. And now that he did, he also had to admit that taking the
+Switching Potion would be wasted if Harry did nothing but sit up, watch
+him endure the nightmares, and brood.
+
+\emph{He probably would, too}, he thought, taking one more look at his
+twin's face.
+
+``I appreciate the offer,'' Harry continued, more softly but also more
+intensely now. "I \emph{do}, Connor. That doesn't mean I have to allow
+it to happen."
+
+Connor glanced to Snape for support, but the professor's face had gone
+nearly as cool and quiet as Harry's, and he said nothing. In the end,
+Connor had to nod. ``All right. I'm sorry. If you think it would be
+worse for me to take it and suffer than for you to suffer---''
+
+Harry laughed. Connor didn't like the sound, but he could hardly blame
+Harry. If the sound was exhausted and enraged, well, Harry had reason.
+``Of course it would be, Connor,'' he said, when the laughter ended.
+``I'm used to enduring pain.''
+
+\emph{I wish you weren't.} But Connor was determined not to argue
+further. He'd meant this gesture to support Harry, not to cause him more
+distress, and it seemed he'd unwittingly wound up doing that.
+
+``All right,'' he said.
+
+Harry smiled at him, hugged him, and slipped into the school before
+Connor could say anything more. He stared after him, then looked up at
+Snape. ``What can we do to make this easier for him?'' he whispered.
+
+``I truly do not know, Mr. Potter.'' Abruptly, Snape seemed to realize
+that he was being almost pleasant to Harry's brother. He snorted and
+turned on one heel, adding over his shoulder, "Except continue to do
+what we do best, help him if he asks for the help, and \emph{not} put
+extra burdens on his shoulders."
+
+``You were just as eager to help him as I was a moment ago!'' Connor
+yelled after him.
+
+Another sneer was his only answer. Connor concealed a snarl at his back.
+He got along much better with Draco than he ever could have hoped to a
+few months ago, but Snape was still uninterested in any gestures of
+goodwill.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry expected it when he felt the pain pressing on his neck that night,
+and opened his eyes to find himself swooping along a deserted street in
+London. Above him gleamed the full moon, its light reflecting here and
+there in puddles; Harry supposed it must have rained during the day.
+Beneath him ran Hawthorn in werewolf form, eyes mad and gleaming, her
+inner beast controlled by a touch of Legilimency from Voldemort. She
+could not be turned or stayed from her course of wildness, but she could
+be made to hunt a specific target.
+
+\emph{Look at her,} Voldemort whispered into his ears. \emph{Does it not
+sicken you, Harry, to know what I force her to do? Does it not hurt you
+to know that she will wake to find her hands and her jaws caked with
+gore, and recognize her murdered victim, and hurt because of it?}
+
+Harry said nothing. He lay as if dead beneath the uncompromising, iron
+hold on his mind. He could do nothing right now. He would bide, and wait
+for his chance.
+
+It was torture to watch as Hawthorn splashed through a puddle, froth
+dripping from her jaws, and then dropped to her belly as she heard the
+sound of her prey approaching from around the corner. But after last
+night, Harry was again becoming practiced in enduring torture.
+
+\emph{You can do nothing to prevent it.}
+
+And Harry gave nothing back to Voldemort's taunt but a seemingly
+helpless wail, because if he moved too soon, he would lose his chance.
+
+He had to watch as Hawthorn sprang, her shoulder dashing into Remus's,
+knocking Moony's gray body from its feet. The other members of his pack
+whirled, snapping, trying to gain their bearings and figure out who was
+attacking their alpha in the narrow alley. But Hawthorn had locked her
+jaws in the fur on Remus's foreleg, the snarls nearly as horrible as the
+sounds Medusa had made while Oaken was raping her.
+
+Remus reared and placed his paws on either side of Hawthorn's head,
+biting her firmly on the nose. She let him go with a dance and a jerk,
+and he faced her, already limping. The sight of the blood splashing on
+the pavement made Hawthorn drool, and again she slinked towards him,
+then broke into a charge that hit Remus and carried him spinning into a
+black female werewolf.
+
+The black bit back, and for one moment they were a mass of tumbling legs
+and jaws. Then Hawthorn soared above the pile, ducked her head, and
+ripped sideways. The black werewolf's blood covered her when she backed
+off. She'd ripped the other bitch's throat out, Harry guessed.
+
+Remus faced her with a shake of his coat and a growl that commanded the
+rest of the pack to back away. And then the true battle began.
+
+They were far too evenly matched, Harry saw almost at once. Remus had
+been a werewolf for more than thirty years, while this was only the
+fourth anniversary of Hawthorn's attack, and he had that perfect control
+over the four-legged body that only came to those bitten as children.
+But Hawthorn was not on Wolfsbane, and so had no human instincts and
+reactions to hold her back---and she had no pack members to worry about
+hurting. She could fight without heed for whom she killed or what hurt
+she took herself, so long as she \emph{inflicted} pain.
+
+And though Hawthorn was a bit smaller than Remus, the bite she'd given
+him on his left foreleg equalized matters.
+
+They met in midair, leaping at the same time, and once again dropped to
+the ground, jaws working and clicking furiously, any sounds made muffled
+by thick fur. Fawn hairs gleamed, then gray, and Remus let out an
+undignified yelp as Hawthorn bit him somewhere tender. But then he
+unsheathed his fangs, and Harry knew the balance had tipped, and he was
+going to try his best to kill her.
+
+A new pain pierced him. Since he could see this, the family alliance
+oath counted it as a betrayal that he would let Hawthorn be hurt like
+this, even while she tried to slay someone else.
+
+Voldemort just laughed the harder when he felt that. Harry crouched
+beneath his hold, then drove all his concealed strength up in one
+smooth, coiled motion.
+
+He burst through Voldemort's slackening, surprised grip, and he used his
+one free moment to good advantage. He reached out, lashing his will to
+the Dark Mark that still remained part of Hawthorn, even if buried under
+her fur in her changed state. He envisioned her bouncing back to her
+master, rather as he had once forcibly Apparated Evan Rosier after a
+duel.
+
+\emph{Back! Now!}
+
+She yelped as her legs scrabbled at the ground, and then she was torn
+free and flying. The pain of the oath scar on Harry's left arm died. So
+far as the vow was concerned, he had kept it by removing Hawthorn from
+danger.
+
+Of course, Voldemort closed back in then, and the anger he bore was
+thick and choking.
+
+The pain was unspeakable. Harry rolled through it, since he knew that
+struggling against it would probably mean bursting or weakening his
+heart again. He screamed, the way that Lily had taught him to scream
+under torture, because there was no shame in that. All the while, he
+clutched one vision to himself.
+
+Remus had halted in the dash after the vanishing Hawthorn and stared
+around in shock. His left foreleg was slashed well enough that he would
+limp for some time, but he was not further wounded, and the rest of the
+pack was already closing protectively around their alpha.
+
+They would get him to safety, Harry knew, and then they would howl,
+spreading the warning to other packs. Even if Voldemort returned
+Hawthorn to London, the others would be prepared against her now, and
+she would not find victims as easily as she had found Remus when no one
+suspected.
+
+He had spared the life of one more person he loved. For tonight.
+
+And from the dashing, roiling madness in Voldemort's mind as he pushed
+again and again, forcing pain down Harry's body through their scar
+connection, \emph{that} was unacceptable. Voldemort would not send
+Hawthorn, or one of the other Death Eaters, on a rampage again merely to
+destroy innocents. He was furious that his perfect target had escaped.
+From now on, he would only truly seek to hurt those Harry loved.
+
+And that was his weakness, that personal hatred.
+
+Harry would use it against him.
+
+And he had saved Remus's life. That was worth any amount of pain.
+
+He still thought so even when Voldemort finally dropped him, disgusted,
+like a broken bird from the mouth of a cat, and he fell deeper into
+darkness, the pain slowly, softly melding into the mercy of
+unconsciousness.
+
+\emph{There is hope, so long as he hates me more than I hate him.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 34*: Interlude: Small
+Sacrifices}\label{chapter-34-interlude-small-sacrifices}
+
+\textbf{Interlude: Small Sacrifices}
+
+\emph{The Daily Prophet}
+
+\emph{August 18th, 1997}
+
+{\emph{\textbf{VATES ASKS FOR HELP DEFENDING BRITAIN}}}
+
+\emph{\textbf{Claims that it's not just his war}}
+
+\emph{By: Melinda Honeywhistle}
+
+Harry {vates} made a speech on the grounds outside Hogwarts today,
+defining new goals for the Second War with You-Know-Who. He made some
+rather surprising points, given that so far he has rarely worked with
+ordinary wizards and witches on anything but a local level. He believes
+that You-Know-Who is hunting him personally, and that if he dies, it
+might mean the end of the war for some people---but that it should not.
+He used the metaphor of a wheel that many people must keep pushing in
+order to symbolize the war's success.
+
+Reactions to the speech were mixed.
+
+``It's an admirable gesture, of course, but one gets the feeling of `too
+little, too late,'\,'' one witch on the street told this reporter. ``If
+You-Know-Who really wants Harry, then he'll hunt him. The rest of us
+can't do anything to help.''
+
+"The {vates} is trying to reassure people in the best way he knows how,
+by showing respect for their freedom and their ability to help the
+larger war effort by doing small things," Acting Minister Juniper said.
+``It's an admirable effort, but so long as he divides Britain the way
+he's doing now---acting separately from the Ministry, calling on foreign
+countries to become involved in a struggle that's not theirs to fight,
+and refusing his duty according to the prophecy---then he'll only
+convince people they should be taking up extra duties. Those duties
+aren't theirs. Only a Lord-level wizard can face a Lord-level wizard.''
+The Acting Minister did not respond to questions about his opinion on
+the presence of two Ladies in the country.
+
+Among those people who have been saved by Harry's training or allies,
+however, the reaction was markedly different.
+
+"We {can} make a difference, and I wonder that I never thought of that
+before," said Cedric Diggory, a young wizard who left Hogwarts a few
+years ago and is now Reserve Seeker for the Falmouth Falcons. ``When
+Harry trained us in dueling spells in Hogwarts, it seemed separate from
+what happened outside it. A game. But the battle's come now, and it's
+not a game. Everyone has to help.'' Diggory went on to follow his
+interview with an announcement that he intends to leave the Falcons in
+order to help the war effort.
+
+"Well, {I} certainly intend to do all I can." So says May Morris, a
+Muggleborn mother of three who lives in London. ``You-Know-Who has
+vampires and Dark wizards and God knows what else in his train, and he
+just shouldn't be able to have all the advantages, that's all. I have a
+brother who specializes in making ward-stones. It's a small enough
+sacrifice to bind a shard of myself to one and send it to Hogwarts to
+become a tireless guardian.''
+
+Members of the Wizengamot mostly remained silent, or were not available
+to comment.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+\emph{The Vox Populi: Voice of the People}
+
+\emph{August 19th, 1997}
+
+{\emph{\textbf{PROPHECY OF FAILURE:}}}
+
+\emph{\textbf{If the Ministry acts against the vates, they will lose}}
+
+We're all familiar, by now, with the running dispute between our {vates}
+and the British Ministry. That clown who goes by the name of Acting
+Minister Erasmus Juniper believes that Harry must `fulfill his duty' by
+fulfilling the prophecy and killing Voldemort, and, not incidentally,
+obeying the Ministry.
+
+But there's only one prophecy abroad in the land, and who does it point
+to as the wizard we need to listen to and trust in? Not Erasmus Juniper.
+Harry {vates}, once called Potter.
+
+He's right that he can't do this alone. He's even more right that he
+can't do this if people sit back and wait for him to rescue them.
+
+And who's the biggest proponent of telling others to sit back and wait
+for him to rescue them? That's right. The Ministry, under {Acting}
+Minister Erasmus Juniper, willing to take the prophecy all too
+literally. ``Because Harry is supposed to defeat You-Know-Who, he
+will,'' they pipe like stirred-up fairies. ``He doesn't need any help.''
+
+Except that prophecies are never that clear, and of course Harry himself
+has asked for help.
+
+This is the {Vox Populi} urging anyone and everyone who reads this
+article to contribute to the war effort, and turn against the Ministry.
+If you work for those bastards, don't go into work today. Send Howlers
+to the Acting Minister to let him know how much you disapprove of his
+coarse, crude actions. Take money that you were going to spend on one of
+those futile protective amulets the government pretends to sell and send
+it towards the war effort instead.
+
+It's much better than waiting around for the Ministry to {seize} your
+properties and your vaults, isn't it? That's what's been happening to
+some pureblood families the Acting Minister doesn't like the looks of.
+
+Stand up. {Fight!} And let both the Acting Minister and Voldemort know
+that you don't intend to lose the war by lying back and letting the
+powerful fight it for you. They're bastards, the both of them. And
+bastards don't deserve either to win your support {or} to win a war.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+\emph{The Daily Prophet}
+
+\emph{August 21st, 1997}
+
+{\emph{\textbf{ACTING MINISTER ANNOUNCES `CAUSE FOR HOPE'}}}
+
+\emph{\textbf{Cause has to remain `secret for now'}}
+
+\emph{By: Melinda Honeywhistle}
+
+Acting Minister Erasmus Juniper called for a special press conference
+today in front of the Ministry. He announced that he has secured help
+for the war, and made an important step forward in a ``cause for hope''
+that will ease the burden of those laboring under You-Know-Who's
+depredations and fears of discovery by Muggles all over the country.
+
+``I'm afraid that cause for hope has to remain secret for now,'' he said
+apologetically when several calls for explanation arose. ``It would
+reveal too much of our strategy to You-Know-Who if I simply announced it
+in public. But I can assure you that the Ministry has been very busy
+these past few days insuring that everything flows smoothly when things
+begin to change.''
+
+The Acting Minister called Harry's continuing attempts at both gathering
+help from ordinary wizards and witches and freeing magical creatures
+``admirable but misguided.'' ``If he would accept the help and guidance
+of the Ministry,'' he said, ``I think he'd soon find himself on the
+right road.''
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 35*: A Meeting of
+Ministers}\label{chapter-35-a-meeting-of-ministers}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Twenty-Six: A Meeting of Ministers}
+
+Erasmus checked through the letters with a slight frown on his face. It
+was true that most of the Ministers he had sent owls to had replied to
+him; that part of the cause for hope he had represented to his people
+had not been a lie.
+
+But most of the letters expressed reserved neutrality, even though they
+agreed on the importance of keeping the Statute of Secrecy. Some leaders
+said they could not travel to Britain at the moment, with the country in
+the middle of a war. Others hinted that they had problems of their own
+to deal with regarding Muggles in their communities piercing magical
+barriers and finding them out, and that while they wished Erasmus good
+luck, they could hardly spare him attention. The Ministers of Portugal,
+France, and Spain had never replied at all.
+
+Sternly, Erasmus told himself he had not expected them to. They had sent
+help to Harry, after all. That alone signaled where they stood.
+
+But he \emph{had} hoped that he would manage to arrange a meeting with
+more than one foreign Minister. It seemed that he wouldn't. Evamaria
+Gansweider, the Minister of Magic for Austria, would be joining him in a
+few minutes. She at least was willing to talk about representing his
+cause to the International Confederation of Warlocks---something Erasmus
+couldn't do himself since he was only Acting Minister of Britain, and
+not an actual elected official.
+
+Erasmus closed his eyes and tried to remind himself that this
+compromise, if less hopeful than he had expected or wanted, only had to
+endure a little while. Minister Gansweider could look at what was
+happening in Britain and take much more detailed information back to the
+International Confederation. Once the Ministers heard what was
+happening---from the mouth of one of their own, \emph{not} biased
+newspapers or Harry's equally biased speeches---they would move.
+
+Voldemort was a threat to their world. Erasmus did not doubt that, would
+not deny it. But he was also one they could contain in Britain,
+particularly if the prophecy came true and Harry destroyed him. The
+threat of revealing their world to the Muggles was one that stretched
+beyond the British Isles, and which other countries would have to act on
+hastily to prevent Harry's far-flung Light allies, the Opallines, from
+working at. If one branch of the Opalline family had shown off their
+holdings on the Isle of Man, then, Erasmus was sure, it was happening
+elsewhere. The Old Blood tended to act and think as one.
+
+``Sir?''
+
+Erasmus stood up. An Auror named Hawksbane stood in the doorway,
+unsmiling---of course, he was always unsmiling.
+
+``Minister Gansweider is here, sir.''
+
+Erasmus made sure his official robes were perfect one more time---not
+completely formal robes, of course, because he didn't wish to make a
+claim to status that he didn't have---and that the translation charm was
+in effect. Then he nodded to Hawksbane and followed him into the
+corridor, where three more Aurors fell into place around him. It was a
+small guard for an Acting Minister in times of danger, especially since
+You-Know-Who had shown that he wasn't above political assassination.
+Minister Gansweider would likely have her own guards.
+
+She did, Erasmus saw when Hawksbane escorted him into the meeting room,
+a grand place decorated with stars in the twelve constellations of the
+Zodiac on the ceiling. Indeed, the two tall wizards who had accompanied
+her were so overwhelming that for long moments Erasmus could not see the
+Minister herself. But then they moved aside, and showed her.
+
+She was taller than Erasmus had expected, though, of course, he had only
+seen her once, and that was kneeling down to peer through a Floo
+connection. She rose to her feet on seeing him, and faced him without a
+smile. She was dark-complexioned, dark of hair and eye---though a stray
+gleam of light from the ceiling showed that her eyes might be deep blue
+instead of brown. Her hair was long and thick, and her neck looked
+almost too slender to bear the weight of it.
+
+``Minister Gansweider,'' he said.
+
+``Please, call me Evamaria,'' she said, her voice staccato and sharp. It
+took him a moment to realize that was because she spoke English, without
+bothering to use the translation charm.
+
+Erasmus nodded politely, though he would not think of her that way;
+there was too much potential for disaster in approaching an ally
+informally, especially in these troubling times. ``Evamaria. Please, if
+you will sit down?'' He swept a hand towards the chairs around the
+table, and she sat down as if expecting a trap to spring from the middle
+of one, all the while watching him carefully.
+
+\emph{Of course, I have only proven myself interesting, not trustworthy,
+so far.} Erasmus made himself comfortable in the chair across from
+Minister Gansweider. ``You know that the International Statute of
+Secrecy has been violated several times in Britain in the past few
+months?'' he asked.
+
+``Yes.'' Minister Gansweider leaned forward. ``And I do not understand
+why you do not take a simple solution. In my country, we have a Dark
+Lady, but so long as we give her honor and humor her whims when the
+occasion requires, she works with us---or leaves us alone. I do not
+understand why the same effort has not been made to propitiate your
+Lord.''
+
+\emph{So she does want to talk about the war. Very well.} Gracefully,
+Erasmus switched the focus of his thoughts. ``With You-Know-Who, that
+would be impossible, I'm afraid,'' he said smoothly. ``He wants the
+destruction of many Light wizards, or their submission to him, and the
+complete exile of all Muggleborns from the wizarding world. We cannot
+give in to him.''
+
+Minister Gansweider's frown grew more pronounced. "I did not mean the
+barking dog, Lord Riddle. I meant Harry \emph{vates.}"
+
+She spoke the title as if it were a natural part of Harry's name. Of
+course, that would be the way that many people saw it, Erasmus
+reflected, and he had done little to keep that impression from
+persisting. ``He is only a child,'' he replied, ``too young to
+understand what he wants. And he believes in unfortunate, undesirable
+things. Exposing our world to the Muggles, for example.''
+
+Minister Gansweider ignored his subtle attempt to steer her back to the
+topic of conversation they'd actually come together to talk about. ``He
+is seventeen, I had thought.''
+
+``He is,'' said Erasmus, wondering what that had to do with the
+statement he'd made.
+
+``Legally an adult, then,'' said Gansweider, and her stare seemed to go
+right through him. ``Unless I have mistaken the British laws, in which
+case I must apologize most dearly.''
+
+``He is legally of age,'' Erasmus said. "But he is still a child in mind
+and beliefs, prone to be idealistic, and trying to do many things that
+do not involve the fighting of You-Know-Who. That is what I meant by
+child. And, of course, the beliefs that he \emph{does} have are ones he
+conflicts with the Ministry on."
+
+``I believe a more useful course would be compromise,'' Gansweider
+persisted.
+
+Erasmus was unable to keep a frown from staining his face. ``We have
+offered him several, Minister,'' he said. At least he was able to keep
+his voice from sounding short. ``He continues to reject them. He would
+not, for example, agree that we had the right to hold several of his
+close allies under suspicion because they bear the Dark Mark---the Mark
+of Death Eaters, You-Know-Who's sworn companions---and because one of
+them had actually tried to kill the Headmistress of Hogwarts. He will
+not work with the Ministry in our attempts to rid Britain of Dark magic.
+He has offered shelter and refuge to those who break the law. He has had
+an active part in politics ever since he became fourteen, in fact,'' he
+added, thinking of the way that Harry had managed to depose Fudge.
+Erasmus would be the first to admit that Cornelius was not the
+\emph{best} Minister they had ever had---Scrimgeour had been far
+better---but that a child so young should have played such a decisive
+part in his retreat galled Erasmus. There was a reason that politics in
+Britain was a pursuit for older wizards. Only they were able to
+appreciate how much was put in danger by meddling. ``We know that our
+beliefs and his lie too far apart for reasonable compromise.''
+
+Minister Gansweider rapped her fingers on the table. Erasmus could
+almost feel her weighing whether or not to say something.
+
+``Feel free to speak your mind,'' he urged her. He wanted her to feel
+comfortable and able to be honest here. After all, he was hoping she
+would be the same way when explaining Britain's condition to the
+International Confederation.
+
+``You seem to have approached him as a child each time,'' said the
+Minister. ``With his youth in mind, and no other factor. Have you not
+tried approaching him as a powerful wizard? That is what we have done
+with our Lady for years. She was nineteen when her powers built to full
+strength, and we would not have arrived at a satisfactory resolution
+with her if we had thought of her only as a young woman, not one of the
+most dangerous and powerful witches alive.''
+
+Erasmus sighed. ``But your Lady Monika is a bit more reasonable, I
+trust? I have tried reason with Harry. It does not work. He does not
+understand the necessities of war. He continues to trust in unreasonable
+ideals even when it would be best to give them up.'' He leaned forward.
+``He has already visited the Muggle Prime Minister of Britain, even
+though the problem of You-Know-Who's depredations is not one that
+Muggles can solve.''
+
+``Why did he wish to visit him, then?'' Erasmus was at least pleased to
+hear the same bewilderment in Minister Gansweider's voice that he had
+felt himself on hearing of Harry's visit to Blair.
+
+``Those unreasonable ideals,'' Erasmus replied instantly. "The ones that
+do not allow him compromise. He said the Muggles should know the truth
+behind the war, and then they would be less likely to react
+irrationally. But how \emph{else} could Muggles be expected to react
+when confronted with the magical world? It was madness to go to them,
+but Harry did it because he thought he should. He did not think about
+the fact that it was wartime. He did not think about our long history of
+separation from their world, and the \emph{excellent} reasons that such
+separation was enforced in the first place. He simply did it because he
+believed his principles demanded it."
+
+Gansweider bowed her head as if in thought. Then she stood and said
+firmly, ``I would like to examine a detailed history of every violation
+of the International Statute of Secrecy in the last several months,
+Erasmus. It is, after all, what I came here to do.''
+
+Erasmus stood, smiling, and feeling warm inside again. \emph{I have a
+champion, even if it is only one in the whole of Europe.} ``Follow me,
+Evamaria.'' He was just in time to catch himself before he said the
+title.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``Do you think that all Dark magic will be gone from Britain forever if
+we win this war?''
+
+Aurora concentrated on her reply to Augusta Longbottom, who had once
+again written requesting a special dispensation for half-human wizards
+and witches whose conditions were not harmful to the ``average viewer''
+to go without glamours in normal society, and tried to ignore Cupressus.
+She could always pretend that she hadn't heard the question, after all.
+They were working in the most important room in the Ministry at the
+moment, the one that collated information on the breaching of barriers
+between the Muggle world and the magical world, as well as on wizards
+and witches whose demands might lead to such breaches. Every hour or so,
+frantic shouts rang out as someone discovered another breach, and the
+murmur of conversations and the scratch of quills was always loud. Not
+hearing someone was a perfectly legitimate excuse for avoiding
+conversation.
+
+She did not understand the Apollonis patriarch of late, though when they
+first swore to the Order of the Firebird and began their rise to power
+she thought she had understood him very well. He worked with Juniper
+because he was fanatical for the Light himself and because Scrimgeour
+and Harry had personally insulted him.
+
+And now---
+
+Now he asked too many questions.
+
+It had begun when he asked hard question after hard question about
+Juniper's anti-Dark legislation. He had asked which spells would be
+affected, and how well they could enforce the new law. It had come to
+the point where Aurora actively dreaded seeing him open his mouth.
+
+And then he had started asking questions of other people. How likely was
+the Order of the Firebird to accomplish meaningful actions, and how
+likely to remain an empty oath? Why weren't they out fighting in the
+field against Voldemort? Harry might think himself limited to a
+defensive war, but that did not mean \emph{they} were. When would the
+Ministry turn its attention to Ireland, where Death Eater activity was
+quietly but unmistakably increasing? Why had so many Light families
+turned to Harry as if he, and not Erasmus, was their last best hope?
+
+On and on it went. Aurora didn't like his questions, because she didn't
+know what they implied. How could Cupressus's loyalty be wavering? He
+was not the kind of wizard who changed his mind.
+
+And yet, sometimes, he spoke like someone on the brink of doing so.
+
+``I asked you a question, Aurora.'' His haughty manner when he believed
+himself ignored had not changed, at least, she thought, and dug the
+quill into the parchment again. ``Do you believe that all Dark magic
+will be gone from Britain forever if we win this war?''
+
+Aurora sighed, scanned the letter to Mrs. Longbottom one more time, and
+decided there was nothing she could add but her signature. The reasons
+against removing the glamours in public were simple. The British
+wizarding population didn't need another source of shock and stress. And
+they didn't need to decide that many of the people they accounted human
+were in fact half-breeds, and therefore likely to act in the interests
+of strange and foreign powers, rather than pulling together with
+ordinary wizards and witches. Mrs. Longbottom understood that perfectly
+well, Aurora was sure, and only persisted in her deafness because she
+was on Harry's side. As long as she was polite, however, and from a
+fairly old, proud, noble Light family, then Aurora had to reply to her
+with the same politeness.
+
+``I do not believe it will, Cupressus,'' she said, turning to the
+Apollonis patriarch. As usual, he sat over a map of Ireland, picking out
+hiding places and ambush spots for both the Death Eaters and those
+forces they might send to oppose the Death Eaters. "After all, there
+will be Dark wizards from other countries who wish to sneak in and sell
+forbidden goods to our people. And there is always \emph{someone} who
+thinks that using blood magic is more convenient and easier than finding
+a difficult, expensive Light spell that does the same thing."
+
+Cupressus stared reflectively over her head for a moment, then said,
+``You know that I am more than sixty years old, Aurora.''
+
+\emph{He is beginning a speech without a question?} The shock undid her,
+and left her to flounder, looking stupid, for a moment. Then she coughed
+and said, ``I was aware of your age, yes.''
+
+Usually, he might have thought that an insult, and replied with a
+keen-eyed glance and a stinging retort. Now, he just went on staring at
+the wall. Aurora had to keep herself from turning around and seeing if
+there was anything particularly fascinating about it.
+
+``I have seen the Dark rise and fall in Britain over my lifetime,''
+Cupressus continued in a musing voice. ``And in Ireland, too, of course.
+We had rumors of Grindelwald---and then suddenly they were more than
+rumors, they were fact, with Lightning Guard members in the Wizengamot,
+arranging to hand our country over to Grindelwald and those Muggles he
+worked with. And then our own Light Lord killed the Dark one. Those were
+grand times. Grand ones.'' For a moment, a smile flickered across his
+lips. "We were all so sure that Dark was stamped out forever in the
+Isles, then. The plot the Wizengamot members had made was awful. Not
+only Muggles but wizards would have been sacrificed in a series of blood
+magic rituals to make certain key British Muggle defenses fail. And,
+well, we had a Light Lord and a hero. Why would anyone turn to the Dark?
+
+"But the Dark pureblood families remained, even if they dwindled in
+prestige and power, even if they worked to disassociate themselves from
+Grindelwald and his mad plan of controlling the Muggle world.
+
+``And then Lord Voldemort arose. You remember that awful series of
+killings twenty years ago, the ones that made people afraid to say his
+name?'' Cupressus cocked an eyebrow, and Aurora found herself nodding
+against her will. The \emph{Daily Prophet} had carried for one day,
+before it was censored, the image of a young witch floating with a
+distended belly full of snakes that continually gorged on her flesh,
+regenerated it, and feasted on it again, all because she had read
+Voldemort's name aloud. And that had been one of the milder attacks.
+"And the building Darkness, the horrible rumors that became fact. But it
+was still all right, because we had a Light Lord to face the Dark one,
+and then a child sent the Dark one away---forever, we thought. It was
+like something out of a history song.
+
+``But the Dark pureblood families remained, even if they lost some of
+the power they'd raised back up since Grindelwald, and even if they had
+to resort to feeble excuses to explain away the Dark Marks on their
+arms.'' Cupressus grimaced as if he'd swallowed a lemon. ``And the
+Ministry accepted the excuses, and released many of them back into
+proper society, as if they had any right to the name of wizard.''
+
+He lowered his eyes and sat in silence for a moment.
+
+``And, Cupressus?'' Aurora asked after a moment, forcing her voice into
+boredom. This was history she already knew, and even if his manner of
+telling it was rather compelling, she hated what it hinted at. Was
+Cupressus Apollonis feeling sympathetic for the Dark?
+
+\emph{Surely not.}
+
+``Things have changed,'' said the Apollonis patriarch to his desk.
+``There is no Light Lord. There is a Dark Lord, and a Light Ministry,
+and a boy who refuses to join either.''
+
+``Of course there is,'' said Aurora. "We \emph{knew} that. But one of
+Harry's problems is that he will not Declare, nor bend his pride enough
+to make any other gesture that would reassure a nervous and frightened
+people. He could heal the rift between him and the Ministry if he
+Declared for Light, but he won't."
+
+``Do you not see?'' Cupressus's eyes rose back to hers, so intent that
+Aurora felt another ripple of unease travel up her spine. ``Before,
+there were always two paths, between a Dark so awful that one must
+resist it, and an imperfect Light that one could strive to make better.
+There was little choice in such things. A Light family must of course
+walk the Light road.''
+
+``I thought that was what you were doing now, Cupressus. When you swore
+to the Order of the Firebird---''
+
+``Before,'' Cupressus continued, as if he hadn't heard her interruption,
+``there were always two paths. Now, there are three.''
+
+And then he turned away and began working on the map of Ireland again,
+as if nothing had happened.
+
+Aurora stared at the back of his neck, with the hairs rising on hers.
+Then she shook her head sharply and turned to find an owl to carry the
+letter she'd finished writing to Augusta Longbottom. After that, she had
+another meeting arranged with Feldspar Yaxley, who had promised to tell
+her something of great moment and importance.
+
+She would not think about what Cupressus had said. Despite his
+eccentricities, he would not---could not---abandon the allegiance that
+had guided his whole life, she knew, and his oaths to the Order of the
+Firebird were likewise irrevocable. Most likely, he simply wanted more
+attention, more power in the decision-making process of the Acting
+Minister's loyal ranks.
+
+\emph{That sounds like the Cupressus I know.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry quickly slid the book beneath the library table as he heard the
+footsteps behind him, and buried his nose in a book about Unassailable
+Curses instead. A moment later, Snape cleared his throat in a pointed
+manner. Harry looked up and blinked at him. He hoped the true weariness
+behind the gesture would hide the overly innocent part, and clear Snape
+of any desire to read his mind.
+
+``How many hours have you slept since the night of the attack on
+Lupin?'' Snape asked.
+
+Harry shot a quick glance around, but they were alone in the library,
+without even Madam Pince nearby. Harry relaxed a bit. ``Three hours a
+night,'' he said.
+
+``You have tried---''
+
+``Dreamless Sleep Potion, yes.'' Harry made himself shrug. "It doesn't
+work. The visions are stronger now that he's returned to full power, and
+now that he controls them and \emph{wants} to force me to have them,
+which wasn't the case in fifth year. They can break through any
+Occlumency barrier I raise. I checked," he added, in a deliberately
+bland tone.
+
+Snape said nothing, but took a vial from his robe pocket. Harry studied
+the thick blue potion in it, and allowed his eyebrows to rise in
+curiosity. He didn't know the potion by either scent or color, which was
+unusual.
+
+``This is a stronger version of Dreamless Sleep,'' said Snape.
+``Thickened with both a Calming Draught and a Lucid Dreaming potion.''
+
+Harry frowned. ``But the Dreamless Sleep and the Lucid Dreaming potions
+should work against each other,'' he murmured. ``Unless---''
+
+Snape nodded. ``The Lucid Dreaming permits dreams to happen, but the
+Dreamless Sleep prevents ordinary ones from breaking through,'' he said
+calmly. ``And the Lucid Dreaming one gives you a degree of control. If
+this potion works as I think it should, then you have only to decide to
+dream about a certain thing as you fall asleep, and you will have those
+dreams instead of the visions.''
+
+Harry hesitated. ``What about aftereffects?'' he asked. ``Would it
+permit me to wake, should I need to in a hurry? And will it leave me
+dazed the next morning?'' That last was the reason he hated the
+Dreamless Sleep potion. The effect only seemed to grow more pronounced
+as he got older.
+
+``It will insure that you have a full night's sleep, eight or nine
+hours,'' said Snape. ``So, yes, it would be hard to wake you. As for the
+other, I believe the Lucid Dreaming addition should counteract that.''
+
+Harry shifted. ``If there's a crisis in the middle of the night---''
+
+"\emph{Finite Incantatem.}"
+
+Harry jumped at the words, less because they had startled him than
+because Snape's voice was so sharp. The spell made his glamour vanish. A
+moment later, Snape was tilting his chin up, and Harry was trying not to
+fidget as dark eyes stared into his own.
+
+``You are a mess, Harry,'' said Snape. ``Your eyes are bloodshot, you
+look as if you haven't eaten in several days, and your reactions are
+already becoming slower and duller than normal.''
+
+Harry stifled a flash of resentment. He had been about to take care of
+that; he'd found a solution in the book on his lap. But it wasn't a
+solution that he could explain to either Draco or Snape. They would have
+disapproved, and absolutely forbidden him to use it.
+
+He knew he should trust them more. They had both said that to him enough
+times in the last few days. But still---if he had found a solution that
+would work, even if it \emph{were} dangerous, did he have time to argue
+it over with them? It was no more danger than he faced every time he
+went to sleep and Voldemort hovered in his head, anyway. Voldemort's
+latest trick was forcing Harry to share the mental space of his captured
+Death Eaters. Being in Hawthorn's mind for most of last night, feeling
+her helpless paralysis and sharing her despair, had increased Harry's
+determination to do something that would not only end the visions but
+turn the trick on Voldemort.
+
+``Do you have a true objection to drinking the potion?'' Snape asked,
+his eyes so steady that Harry had to look away. "Or are you merely
+resentful that I found a solution---that I \emph{helped} you, when your
+instinct is still to shun help that you did not have a hand in making or
+winning, directly?"
+
+Harry spread one hand in a helpless gesture. ``I'm trying to learn
+better about that,'' he whispered. "I'm \emph{trying}. Why do you think
+I made that speech? And it worked." More people were pouring into
+Hogwarts to learn defensive spells, and a few people with specialized
+skills, especially Healers, had come to ask what they could do. Harry
+would like to place one Healer in every wizarding community of every
+size in Britain and Ireland, if he could.
+
+``But you have made a point of not asking me and Draco and your brother
+for help in the past few days, either,'' Snape pointed out.
+
+``I just---'' Harry swallowed. ``You do so much. I don't want to put
+extra burdens on you.''
+
+``And you do not wish to share reactions with us that you think we will
+disapprove of,'' said Snape, his voice without inflection.
+
+Harry looked away.
+
+He stiffened in shock as a pair of arms came around him, and Snape's
+voice whispered fiercely in his ear, "You will have my support in
+whatever you do from now on, Harry. The mistake I made the night you
+went to Cornwall was one I never should have made. You should have been
+able to come to me when James and Lily were murdered, when the darkness
+within you first made you wary of yourself, when you were afraid of
+failure. I \emph{wish} to take up those burdens, as you call them. Will
+you trust me? Will you remember that I have said this? Will you come to
+me when you next wish to confess something?"
+
+Harry swallowed, and looked at the vial of blue potion in Snape's hand.
+It had never even occurred to him that Snape might be able to invent a
+potion that would stop the visions. He had stopped himself from asking
+not because the justification about not putting extra burdens on Snape
+was foremost in his mind, but because it had seemed so utterly natural
+to act alone.
+
+\emph{Even if I'm overcoming that with my allies, I suppose I might
+still have to work on it with my closest family.}
+
+``Yes,'' Harry whispered. ``All right.''
+
+``Good,'' Snape said, with no change of expression and without releasing
+his hold on Harry, though Harry knew someone else could come into the
+library at any moment. ``And now, what were you researching to end the
+visions?''
+
+``Sir?''
+
+``I saw you shove the book beneath the table when I approached you,
+Harry.''
+
+Harry ran a hand over his face. ``I should have heard you coming.''
+
+``I told you that your reactions were dulling,'' said Snape mildly.
+``Now, what is the book?''
+
+Silently, Harry pulled it out and showed it to him. \emph{Diverse
+Dreams.} Snape said nothing about the title, only listened as Harry
+haltingly explained his theory. Given that he and Voldemort were
+connected by hatred as well as magic, he had thought he might be able to
+trap Voldemort in the most hate-filled corner of his own mind, and make
+him see what he \emph{wished} to see, even make him think that Harry was
+succumbing to the loathing and would join his side soon.
+
+Snape listened to everything without interrupting. Then he shook his
+head and said, ``There is one thing you have failed to consider,
+Harry.''
+
+It was said so gently that Harry couldn't even take offense to it.
+``What is that?'' he asked.
+
+``Every other time we have fooled the Dark Lord like this,'' Snape said,
+"in your second year when I wove the shields around your box while Tom
+Riddle was trapped inside it to content his lust for pain, and in your
+fifth year when we created a deception to make him think he \emph{must}
+attack Hogwarts on Midsummer Day, it barely succeeded. It required
+Legilimency, the will to domination that he wields so well and you do
+not. And the Dark Lord---this shard of him---has experience with that
+tactic now. If he sees something in your mind that pleases him, he is
+much less likely to simply believe it. He will probe and poke at you
+until he has the physical evidence and the glimpses into your emotions
+that he requires. False visions could not hold him for long."
+
+Harry shut his eyes. ``I didn't think of that,'' he muttered. ``You're
+right.''
+
+``You will take the potion, then?'' Snape asked, again without judgment,
+without accusation.
+
+And that was all Harry had wanted, and thought it most likely that he
+wouldn't get---advice without chiding, showing him a better way while
+not telling him, constantly, that what he felt was wrong. He had
+dismissed it as a childish fantasy. Snape hated his parents too much not
+to make some comment about his grief for them. Snape believed him too
+strongly of the Light not to dismiss the darkness Harry harbored. Snape
+would sneer over Harry's attempts to keep the visions at bay, not try to
+understand why he wanted to do it this way.
+
+And none of it was true. Harry could have the support he wanted, if he
+would reach for it.
+
+It was nearly enough to make him cry. He convinced himself that was
+because of his weariness and not his weakness, and nodded.
+
+``I'll try it,'' he said quietly.
+
+Snape's arms tightened around him, and Harry would have believed that he
+felt something like a hug in them, if he dared to hope that far.
+
+But the only thing his guardian said was, ``Good.''
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 36*: Star of Hope}\label{chapter-36-star-of-hope}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Twenty-Seven: Star of Hope}
+
+Harry opened his eyes slowly. He didn't think the odd sight in front of
+him had anything to do with the blue potion that Snape had given him. At
+least, he \emph{hoped} it didn't, or he would refuse to take it again,
+because the thought of going through the rest of his life while seeing
+blue sparks was too annoying to contemplate.
+
+A soft voice, skirled with music, said, "Harry? \emph{Vates}?"
+
+Harry sat up slowly. Draco mumbled and rolled over, which made Harry
+wonder if he couldn't hear the voice, if it was directed to his ears
+alone. ``Dobby?'' he asked. Dobby was who the voice \emph{sounded} like,
+but he had never taken this particular manifestation: a swirl of blue
+sparks like smoke from a fire, a dancing constellation that ran all over
+the air in front of Harry and braided back on itself like a ribbon.
+
+``Not Dobby,'' said the voice, and it gleamed and caught fire along its
+closest edge. Harry had to steel himself not to jerk back from it. ``But
+one like him. You may call me---'' It paused, then said, ``I like
+Miranda.''
+
+``Miranda?''
+
+``Miranda,'' said the light and the voice, and then they wove together
+into the shape of a small, darting green lizard with an enormous
+crystalline fan on its back, which scurried up the blankets towards
+Harry and sat there, flicking its long tongue at him. ``I was the one
+who would have been a house elf that night you freed my mother, but when
+you cut our web, she managed to free both of us.''
+
+Harry nodded, remembering now. Dobby had fetched him to the side of a
+birthing bed; a house elf named Jiv whose owner had given up on the
+claim to ownership was struggling to birth her child, and might easily
+have died with him. Harry had cut part of the web, freeing Jiv's magic,
+which enabled her to save her own life and completely destroy the web
+waiting to take her child.
+
+``Why have you come?'' Harry asked, though he knew the answer might be
+any number of things. House elves were free beyond the imagination of
+wizards, at least in their proper forms. Miranda could have come to
+observe, to have fun, or to do something else that would only make sense
+to an immortal shapeshifter.
+
+``To help you.''
+
+Harry blinked and leaned forward. He had not expected that answer.
+``Help me in the war?'' he asked.
+
+The lizard tilted its head to the side and flicked its tongue again, as
+if thinking. ``Help you with defending,'' it said. ``You need someone to
+help with the safehouses, don't you? Someone trustworthy. Someone who
+can defend with more than wind, someone who won't go flying off at every
+second moment.''
+
+``Kanerva will help, but she isn't dependable,'' Harry murmured.
+
+``And I am.'' Miranda stamped her small feet and inflated the fan on her
+back until it gleamed like quartz. ``I am very dependable! I want to
+help! Will you accept my help? Or will you send me away?''
+
+``I would never reject anyone who wishes to help and has good
+intentions,'' said Harry, still a little shocked. ``But I---well, most
+house elves would have no reason to want to help wizards, since so many
+of us still enslave you.''
+
+``But I have never been enslaved,'' said Miranda. ``And I have walked
+many paths already, and been in many shadows, and around many realms of
+bronze. There is no reason not to come back and want to help you, after
+that.''
+
+Harry tried desperately to look as if he had some idea what she was
+talking about. ``Very---well,'' he said slowly. ``If you're sure that
+you want to do this, that it wouldn't be a source of constraint for
+you.''
+
+``I'm sure,'' said Miranda, and scuttled closer, putting one foot on his
+hand. It was soft and sticky, like half-melted butter. Harry hesitantly
+touched her head. Her scales were green, he saw, flecked with gold,
+rather like the sight of his own soul that he'd had sometimes, the
+colors of Dark magic and Light. ``I have never defended anyone before. I
+have been too busy learning. This will be new. And one cannot have too
+much newness.''
+
+Harry found himself smiling. ``There are many people who would not agree
+with you.''
+
+``I do not expect them to agree with me.'' Miranda's mouth fell open as
+she yawned, and then she curled close to Harry. ``I wish to sleep here.
+Is there anyone who will object to me doing that?''
+
+"\emph{Me.}"
+
+Harry jumped and glanced up. Argutus had his head curled over the top of
+the bed, and was glaring at Miranda. The Omen snake so rarely spent
+nights with him anymore---he preferred to wander the castle and
+concentrate on learning runes and what little he could of the English
+alphabet---that Harry had not even thought he was present, much less
+that he would be able to understand their conversation.
+
+``I thought we were speaking English,'' said Harry, with a glance at
+Miranda.
+
+``Oh, I thought it would be more realistic if we spoke in
+Parseltongue,'' said Miranda, ``since I am a lizard. So I translated.
+Was that wrong?'' She looked back and forth between Harry and
+Argutus---not anxiously, but alertly, as if she were interested in
+learning more about this strange new set of manners.
+
+Harry toyed with the idea of telling her that she was a lizard and not a
+snake, and lizards didn't speak Parseltongue, but decided against it.
+Argutus was hissing, anyway, complaining that she couldn't sleep in his
+place.
+
+"Why don't \emph{both} of you sleep in the bed?" Harry suggested at
+last. ``Argutus on my chest, Miranda curled next to my side?''
+
+Argutus turned his head from side to side, as if examining substandard
+prey offered to him. "\emph{It will do,}" he said at last. "\emph{As
+long as I am able to crawl up and curl into position first.}"
+
+``Why wouldn't I let you?'' Miranda asked.
+
+As stiffly as a serpent could, the Omen snake flowed up the bed,
+glimmering folds of scales lapping over Harry's chest and shoulders.
+Harry stroked his spine, and wondered thoughtfully if Argutus had been
+ruffled about being ignored. He had said nothing, and so Harry had
+simply assumed that he didn't mind. Of course, he hadn't sought him out
+and asked, either.
+
+\emph{So much of the war occupies my time and attention. If I have a
+choice between normal life and war, I seem to choose the war without
+faltering. I wonder if there is any way to alter that, to make myself
+remember and value the people---and snakes---around me more. Trusting
+Snape and Draco enough to tell them what I'm thinking is a good first
+step, but not enough.}
+
+Miranda followed Argutus, curling so close that Harry could barely
+distinguish her from the blankets and the warm drape of the Omen snake's
+tail---until the fan on her back poked him in the side. He yelped, and
+Draco stirred, blinking open eyes that had gone hazy with sleep.
+
+``Harry?'' he whispered.
+
+``It's all right.'' Harry stroked his back. ``Just Argutus.''
+
+Draco hummed in response, and moved closer, arranging his arm so that it
+draped over Harry's chest but didn't brush against Argutus. Harry
+blinked at nothing for a long moment, then let his senses casually
+extend in several directions, so that he could feel everything around
+him.
+
+Nothing but warmth, cradling him so close that his eyelids drooped of
+their own accord, and he barely remembered to think of sunlight so that
+would be what he dreamed of, instead of having visions. He shifted a
+bit, or tried, but his muscles seemed to be puddles of mush, and he felt
+so \emph{good} that the thought of moving too much hurt.
+
+He was asleep more deeply and swiftly than he had managed in the past
+several months, enraptured in a warm pile of snake, lover, and
+transformed house elf.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``And you think we can trust her?''
+
+``It's not a matter of trusting me,'' said Miranda, who clung to Harry's
+arm, before he could respond. ``It's a matter of what I want to do. And
+I want to help.'' She flicked her tongue out, and the fan on her back
+inflated, glittering in the midst of the sunlight that poured through
+the windows of the Great Hall. ``I assure you, house elf magic is harder
+to pierce and drain and detect than ordinary wizarding spells.''
+
+Harry could feel dubious glances coming their way. Well, he couldn't
+entirely blame them.
+
+He and Miranda had decided to make their announcement in full view of
+all the refugees living in Hogwarts, just after breakfast. Since so many
+people were caught between fear and fear---not wanting to stay in the
+school in case Voldemort attacked it searching for Harry, but also not
+wanting to go to a safehouse after what had happened to Malfoy
+Manor---Harry thought it would help them make up their minds.
+
+But the glances were glassy, and the murmurs thick, and Harry knew that
+most of the refugees were probably wondering how exactly a \emph{lizard}
+could help them.
+
+``Miranda?'' he asked.
+
+She looked up at him and flicked her tongue.
+
+``Could you transform?'' he asked, making sure to speak in Parseltongue.
+``Become something else? Not a house elf, because they wouldn't
+attribute much strength to that form either, but something that would
+strike them as beautiful and powerful and capable. They don't think of
+lizards that way.''
+
+Miranda lifted and flexed one foot in surprise. ``They don't?''
+
+Harry shook his head.
+
+``Very well,'' said Miranda, though she still sounded painfully shocked,
+and then lifted her head. The fan on her back began to glow with
+captured sunlight. Harry fought the impulse to shade his eyes, even
+though several people in the crowd were doing so. He didn't want to seem
+as if he doubted her power, or would look away from her at the very
+moment she was gathering her strength.
+
+The sunlight expanded and fanned out into a star-shape. Miranda still
+floated in the middle of it, a pair of large green-gold eyes that
+reminded Harry of Dobby's, but the shadow of her body was losing its
+form, expanding to become the edges of the star, while her limbs folded
+inward and melted. In moments, the star drifted towards the top of the
+Hall and hung just under the enchanted ceiling, solemnly beaming. Its
+colors were green and gold and crystal, a combination of Miranda's
+scales and the fan on her back.
+
+A current of wind and magic blew out of the star just then, and Harry
+inhaled the scents of jasmine and thyme. He felt as if the light were
+tugging his spirits up with it, forcefully making him remember there was
+such a thing as hope in the world, even in the middle of the Second War
+with Voldemort.
+
+"She \emph{is} a house elf," said someone in an awed voice.
+
+``And she'll help us protect the safehouses,'' said Harry quietly, his
+head still tilted back. Green and gold spots filtered through the light
+like the spots on a peacock's tail, opening as eyes did, and then
+shutting again---winking at him, he thought. ``She came back because she
+wanted to help.''
+
+He shot a glance at the refugees, trying to see how many of them could
+read the message inherent in that. Faces grew thoughtful, at least where
+they managed to look away from the awe-inspiring sight that Miranda made
+and pay attention to what he was saying. Harry smiled. \emph{Well, if I
+have to choose between their paying attention to me and their paying
+attention to her, I know what I'll take.}
+
+He held out his hand. ``Can you show us how you'll protect the
+safehouses, Miranda?'' he asked.
+
+Her light grew brighter, and then a curve of it detached itself from the
+edge of the star and descended like a great scythe. Harry made himself
+keep his arm out, though his skin crawled and he had to shove away
+memories of Bellatrix's blade coming down and cutting off his left hand.
+
+The scythe traveled just overhead, parting his hair, and then rushed
+back the other way. Now it resembled the great pendulum that Harry had
+once met in the Room of Requirement, the night that he changed himself
+and admitted that he hated his parents. Again, memories went back into
+the mire at the back of his mind, not permitted to rise, and he kept his
+gaze and his pose steady.
+
+The pendulum traveled back and forth several times, and Harry realized
+that Miranda was stirring up magic, gathering it to herself. But she
+wasn't drawing on Hogwarts's wards, nor draining the power of those in
+the room, the way that Voldemort or Harry would have had to do. She made
+the wind move instead, and inspired the movement with magic, and took it
+to herself.
+
+The scents of jasmine and thyme grew thicker, and Harry closed his eyes
+briefly to prevent the tears from welling up. He could sense nothing
+malicious in that power. Perhaps it came from Miranda never having been
+imprisoned the way that Dobby and her mother had been, but it seemed
+that she had no notion of evil. She certainly had the power to do evil
+if she wanted, but why would she want to? Every turn of the pendulum,
+every pulse of light, asked that question, asked what use evil and
+ugliness were.
+
+The scythe coiled back, now a flying whip of white and green and blue,
+and blended with the air itself. Then it seemed to pause. Harry craned
+his neck, trying to make out what the whip had wrapped itself around.
+
+It turned out to be a fist of crystalline light, coming into existence
+to answer the whip. The fist relaxed into a hand shape, and then spread
+flat, growing into a white version of Miranda's star.
+
+Harry felt the hand and the whip twirl past his head, and then Miranda
+reached casually into his head for the location of one of the
+safehouses---on the Hebrides, near the MacFusty dragon sanctuary.
+
+A vision of the islands appeared before them. Harry shivered at the
+forbidding image of the stones and the leaping foam, and the cold that
+gripped and frosted them all year long.
+
+Miranda's hand and whip traveled into the image, and then spread
+glittering husks of warmth around the isles, and the small
+building---larger inside than outside---that Harry had chosen for the
+haven. For a moment, the house elf magic flared so strongly that Harry
+feared Voldemort would sense it. But then it calmed, and wound itself
+into rock and water and air in a way that no wizard magic, with its
+insistence on distinguishing itself from its surroundings, ever could.
+When Harry blinked, he couldn't make out a trace of it.
+
+``That is the way I will defend that one safehouse,'' said Miranda
+comfortably. ``Others must be protected in different ways. But this will
+help. Won't it?'' she added, as if wondering if this were a mistake,
+like her belief that humans would be impressed by the lizard form.
+
+``It will do very well,'' said Harry, and shot her a smile that made the
+star-form dance back and forth in midair.
+
+Harry turned to face the refugees again, and said, ``I understand that
+it may be some time before you wish to leave Hogwarts for the
+safehouses, even now. Or you may wish to visit them and test the
+protections for yourself. But with Miranda's help, they will be more
+well-defended than ever before.''
+
+``Are you willing to wager our lives on that?'' asked someone from the
+back of the crowd in a doubtful tone.
+
+``More than that,'' said Harry. ``My own.'' He looked at the vision of
+the safehouse, and then back at Miranda. ``Can you keep that open while
+I walk through to the isles, Miranda?'' he asked.
+
+``I can,'' said Miranda.
+
+Harry smiled slightly, hearing the teasing tone in her voice. ``And will
+you?''
+
+She bobbed from side to side in affirmation.
+
+Harry stepped through.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+He had to catch his breath, or try, as the wind whipped through him. He
+supposed that it was warmer now than it would be in the middle of
+September or December, but that wasn't much of a consolation. He took a
+stumbling step forward, wondering if he should cast a warming charm.
+
+And then he was in the middle of a roaring heat as great as a fire.
+Harry blinked and looked up.
+
+Above him floated a thin golden canopy, made of what looked like
+strained sunlight. It was house elf magic, he was certain, the blanket
+of Miranda's power that surrounded the safehouse. When he turned around
+and stepped back through the curtain, though, he couldn't feel or see
+any trace of it, and the cold wind continued whipping past him unabated.
+
+Harry smiled, and it felt---good. Unless Voldemort managed to steal the
+location from Harry's mind, or a traitor within the safehouse let him
+know where it was, only great ill fortune would reveal
+house-elf-protected refuges to him. Harry supposed he might do well to
+set up Secret-Keepers and Fidelius Charms on the safehouses, too, to
+restrict the chance of a traitor letting Voldemort know where they were.
+
+\emph{If I can find people I trust to be Secret-Keepers, and some way to
+smuggle food in without using house elves.}
+
+The safehouse itself looked like an ordinary boulder now, until Harry
+actually touched the door. When he moved inside, he nodded to find rooms
+filled with thicker, warmer blankets than he had left them with,
+uncomfortable beds shifted into comfortable ones, and---a touch of
+Miranda's whimsy, he supposed---silver trees laden with amber fruit
+standing in several corners. The inside of the safehouse smoldered with
+summer heat, but it eased immediately with a cool breeze when Harry
+thought distractedly that it was becoming too hot. He suspected Miranda
+of a spell or a weave of magic that would respond to wizards' thoughts
+about things like the temperature.
+
+\emph{And this is what we can expect when we leave house elves to their
+own devices,} he thought, tilting his head back to gaze out the window
+at the edges of the storm-lashed island, \emph{and let them return to
+help us as they wish, without coercion.}
+
+A spark of light caught on the rocks, and Harry turned his head in that
+direction, wondering---because it had become instinctive, by now---what
+malevolence this was, and if Voldemort had managed to slip past
+Miranda's protections after all.
+
+And then he was reminded that house elves were not the only freed
+magical creatures who might be inclined to repay kindness with kindness.
+
+A unicorn was standing on the point of the island. Foam leaped around it
+and then fell back, a duller color than its coat. The horn sticking up
+from its head looked more like a corkscrew than any Harry could
+remember, and also shone with more of a warm, milky, pure inner light.
+It turned its head and briefly glanced at him from an eye that he
+couldn't catch the color of.
+
+Then it turned and sprang out across the sea.
+
+Harry watched it run, the light spreading from its hooves and rippling
+across the waves, and felt his heart lift in answer. There might well be
+other unicorns tearing along the streets of Muggle cities, or the length
+and breadth of the British Isles right now, and managing to spread as
+much or greater joy than this lone unicorn had managed to give him in a
+matter of moments.
+
+He turned and strode back out of the safehouse and through Miranda's
+gate to Hogwarts, feeling more confident and relaxed than he had in a
+long time.
+
+SSSSSSSSSS
+
+Snape eyed the blue potion once more, and then flicked his hand, burying
+the owl feather quill that had been used for three days in the center of
+the cauldron. A corner of the liquid wrapped around it, drowning it, and
+the edges of the plume wavered briefly as it sank, looking as if it had
+been coated by tar.
+
+The potion gave a shushing sound more time, and then settled. Snape
+relaxed. That was the amount of potion Harry needed for one night
+brewed, and now he could think about something else.
+
+In particular, what it would take to move this war onto an offensive
+basis.
+
+No one else seemed to be thinking of it, which meant that he must.
+Harry, of course, was focused on defense to the exclusion of nearly all
+else. He did not even spend as much time researching Horcruxes as he did
+healing spells that would save lives, ways to make the safehouses
+impenetrable to attack, and dueling spells that would mean wizarding
+villages had a better than average chance of protecting themselves
+against Death Eaters, as long as enough of the people living in the
+village learned the incantations. Others were pursuing their small parts
+in the war---Rhangnara and Jing-Xi still researching the Horcruxes,
+Draco training to become better in battle with more skills than simply
+his possession gift, Regulus sorting through the Black artifacts to find
+some that might make a difference the next time Voldemort and Harry
+closed.
+
+Snape could invent potions, but now that the most urgent one, to insure
+that Harry got rest, had been brewed, he would turn his attention to the
+purposes of offense.
+
+Of course, the very best offensive tactic would be to destroy the
+Horcruxes. They knew where two of them were, now, and after hearing
+Rhangnara's rambling about the blood of Slytherin, Snape believed they
+knew the way that they could break the Unassailable Curse shielding the
+Peverell ring. The wand was beyond their reach for the moment, until
+they knew spells sufficient to remove it from Thornhall, where Indigena
+Yaxley had almost certainly taken it; Neville Longbottom was apparently
+working on those, a combination of actual spells and Advanced Herbology.
+The cup was also beyond their reach unless they managed to lure Evan
+Rosier close.
+
+Snape knew the truth. If the Horcruxes had simply required a blood
+sacrifice to break their Unassailable Curses, he would have done his
+best to capture several of the Death Eaters and shed their blood on the
+ring and the Sword of Gryffindor. Or he would have controlled them with
+Imperius and had one walk onto the sword, the other commit suicide in
+front of the ring when they retrieved it.
+
+Unfortunately, the Imperius Curse could not be used to get around the
+Unassailable Curses, which would be able to tell the difference between
+true love of Harry or desire to destroy a Horcrux, and feigned emotion
+grown in a victim's heart on command. There was also the small matter of
+Harry not forgiving him if he had found out Snape used the Imperius, but
+Snape was not worried about that. Harry would never have known. Besides,
+since he could not use the Unforgivable in any case, he would not be
+capturing Death Eaters.
+
+\emph{Unless\ldots{}}
+
+Snape cocked his head thoughtfully and began to pace back and forth in
+his office. That was another offensive tactic, of course, though sharply
+limited by the fact that they did not know where the Dark Lord and his
+Death Eaters were at the moment. Destroy the strongest parts of his
+gathering army, and he would not only suffer a disproportionate loss,
+given how few his servants were, but other Dark wizards might be
+discouraged from joining him.
+
+But how was Snape to reach them? He had no idea of their location, and
+few would come to Hogwarts unless they were guaranteed to remain beyond
+the wards.
+
+Then Snape paused and snorted at himself. \emph{What is the one thing
+all Death Eaters have in common, besides a talent for Dark wizardry and
+some usefulness to the Dark Lord? Of course.} He pulled up his own
+sleeve and glared at the faded snake and skull on his left forearm.
+
+\emph{He used it as a weapon against us. With any luck, it can become a
+weapon against him.}
+
+Snape turned and strode rapidly to the fireplace, casting a handful of
+Floo powder in as he knelt down. ``Silver-Mirror!'' he snapped, to
+establish the connection, and hoped that Regulus did not have it shut.
+
+He didn't, and he must have had a ward with a silent alarm ready to
+summon him when someone looked through, since he didn't have a house
+elf. He appeared with black, seamed marks on the side of his face that
+were not mere soot or dirt, and which made Snape narrow his eyes,
+forgetting his question for a moment.
+
+"What gave you \emph{burns}?" he snapped.
+
+``A warded door where the wards were rather stronger than usual, and not
+spelled to open to the Black heir,'' said Regulus lightly. "It \emph{is}
+mostly grime, and not burns. See?" He pushed at his hair above his
+temple, and flakes of ash fell out.
+
+``Idiot,'' Snape muttered, and then pushed ahead into the subject he had
+come about, refusing to let himself be distracted. ``I need to know what
+happened when your Dark Mark was healed, Regulus.''
+
+Regulus lifted his eyebrows in curious question. "The first painting I
+went into, you mean? You know I can't tell you much about that, Severus.
+The secrets are to be kept between the Black heir and \emph{his} heir.
+Spells will start to choke me if I do more than vaguely hint about it."
+
+``I know,'' said Snape. "I wish to know what you \emph{can} tell me. Did
+the healing remove a trace of the Dark Lord himself, or only flesh and
+skin and corrupt Dark magic? Did it cross the barrier separating body
+and soul, or was it a purely physical process? How long did the healing
+take?"
+
+``I don't know how long the healing took in real-world terms,'' Regulus
+admitted. ``At a guess, a week or a little more. And it wasn't purely
+physical, and it did have to dig out a shard of Voldemort himself. Not a
+soul-shard,'' he added hastily, presumably when he saw Snape's face
+darken. ``It wasn't a Horcrux. But he had put a fragment of himself in
+it, the same way that you put a part of yourself in a ward based on
+blood. It's what allows him to track us, control us, infect---''
+
+He broke off, coughing, his face turning so pale that the ashes on his
+temples stood out like bruises. He shook his head. ``I can't talk about
+it any more,'' he muttered. ``I'm already treading close to what the
+Black inheritance will let me reveal as it is.''
+
+``Very well,'' said Snape, as calmly as he could. The potion he would
+need to poison a Death Eater through the Dark Mark would not be easy; no
+potion that needed to cross the boundary between body and soul ever was.
+And if he had to work directly against the magic of the Dark Lord
+himself, he would need Harry's help.
+
+He told himself that he had not expected it to be easy. And it was at
+least easier than destroying the Horcruxes, the only other effective
+offensive strike they could make.
+
+\emph{Though even that would be easy if Harry were not afraid to ask
+people to die for him.}
+
+Snape put the thought aside for now. Plans that depended on Harry
+changing his nature would not come to fruition. Enough of his enemies
+had learned that over the years that Snape would not balance his own
+hopes for success on it.
+
+``Severus?''
+
+Snape looked up, cocking an eyebrow. Regulus had wiped more ash away
+from his forehead, and now looked almost like a normal human being
+again.
+
+``I don't suppose that you'd care to come to Silver-Mirror this evening,
+and share dinner with me?''
+
+Snape blinked. He had thought it was early for dinner, but a discreet
+\emph{Tempus} charm revealed that he had in fact missed it, too caught
+up first in brewing and then his thoughts about what he must do to aid
+the war effort.
+
+He should refuse, he thought. A poison that could affect Death Eaters
+would not brew itself. He needed to read and study before he could
+begin. And he needed to ask Harry questions, and figure out some way of
+experimenting on his own Dark Mark---and Peter's---that would not alert
+Voldemort to what they were doing.
+
+But Regulus was looking directly at him, with that earnest gaze, as if
+friendship were real, that he had affected sometimes when they were both
+Death Eaters, and an hour's, or a few hours', delay would not make much
+difference to the ultimate progress of the potion. And relaxation was
+necessary to keep the senses alert and the mind functioning at the level
+a Potions Master required. Surely, his observations of Harry in the past
+few days had proven that.
+
+``Very well,'' Snape agreed mildly, and used another handful of Floo
+powder to step through the fire.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 37*: Her Triumph}\label{chapter-37-her-triumph}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Twenty-Eight: Her Triumph}
+
+``You will like this better, Parvati, you'll see,'' her mother
+whispered, her hands smoothing gently up and down her back. ``You'll
+have private tutors for this last year of schooling, and there are many,
+many careers in Britain and abroad that accept NEWTs taken privately,
+not in a magical school. It's certainly better than going back to a
+place so dangerous when there's a war on.''
+
+Parvati dared to roll her eyes, because her mother had her head buried
+in her shoulder and couldn't see her face. ``Of course, Mother. It must
+have been habit that made me pack.'' She glanced at the neatly packed
+trunk that sat at the foot of her bed. She knew that one exactly like it
+sat in her sister's room. Padma was as determined to make her own
+decisions and go back to her girlfriend as Parvati was determined to go
+back to her boyfriend.
+
+``Of course. Well, that's understandable. I know that you were looking
+forward to your seventh year at Hogwarts.'' Sita Patil pulled back and
+gave Parvati a fond smile, caressing her cheek now. ``But you know that
+your father and I just couldn't bear it if one of you girls died in an
+attack on the school?''
+
+Parvati spent a long moment staring into her mother's eyes, looking for
+some sign or glimmer of understanding. They were seventeen, now, she and
+Padma. Her mother must have been seventeen once. She would understand
+the currents of love and the desire to be courageous and dare many
+things that older wizards and witches would never do, wouldn't she?
+
+But there was no such understanding in her mother's eyes. Reluctantly,
+Parvati told herself that it was time she stopped looking for it. Sita
+had already been out of school when the First War with Voldemort had
+become terrible, with a choice about whether or not to fight, and
+certainly with the option to remain quietly and peacefully within her
+home if she wanted. Her husband's family had been neutral in the war,
+courted by both sides, and her parents had left Britain for a time, so
+she hadn't felt a true connection to anyone in the larger world.
+
+Parvati did, though. And she was not about to leave them to fight the
+war alone while she had private schooling behind expensive and obscure
+wards.
+
+``I know that,'' she said. ``I know that you and Father love us, and I
+love you.'' She kissed her mother's cheek.
+
+``I'm glad that you see it that way, Parvati.'' Sita stepped back from
+her with a little smile. ``Your father and I were certain that you were
+going to break our hearts someday when you were Sorted into Gryffindor.
+But I'm glad that you've decided to be a sensible girl like your
+sister.''
+
+Parvati gave her mother a dazzling smile, while silently reflecting that
+neither Sita nor Rama, their father, knew Padma at all. ``I'll unpack,''
+she said, and turned towards her trunk.
+
+Her mother trusted her, and left the room, shutting the door. Parvati at
+once dropped the lid of her trunk and glanced around, looking for
+anything she'd forgotten to take.
+
+The only thing remaining that she'd really wanted to find room for and
+couldn't make fit, though, was her full-length mirror, which stretched
+not only from floor to ceiling but also from one wall to another,
+showing the entire expanse of the quiet wooden bedroom where Parvati had
+spent most of her holidays for the last six years (she and Padma had
+both come back from their first year Hogwarts insisting on separate
+rooms). She couldn't be sure of carrying the mirror unbroken to
+Hogwarts, unfortunately, and trying to arrange for shipping would surely
+have alerted her mother that something was going on. She did go and
+trail her fingers over the mirror in farewell, making it wake up and
+purr its pleasure.
+
+Someone knocked on her door, as her mother had just a few minutes ago,
+but this time the light knock was immediately followed by three heavy
+ones. Parvati relaxed and skipped across the room, opening the door to
+reveal her twin sister's face.
+
+Padma had her trunk in the pocket of her robe already, with spells that
+Parvati wished she could perform as neatly, and a few textbooks in her
+arms with their covers Transfigured to look like those awful
+nineteenth-century romances that their mother read. Parvati rolled her
+eyes. Trust Padma to have had trouble fitting \emph{books} into her
+trunk.
+
+``Are you ready?''
+
+Padma's eyes were huge and brown, like her own, but right now they were
+bigger than normal. Parvati supposed that was only to be expected, like
+the books. Padma was a Ravenclaw. She was brave---she'd trained in
+dueling with the rest of them, and helped to guard Harry when the rest
+of her House went mad in fifth year, and stood up against the people who
+thought she was mad for dating Luna---but she always would hesitate
+before she broke a rule, even a rule that deserved to be broken because
+it was so stupid.
+
+``I am.'' Parvati shrank her trunk and tucked it into her pocket,
+glanced one more time at the mirror, which mewed after her, and then
+turned around and nodded at Padma. ``Let's leave.''
+
+Predictably, of course, Padma hesitated then. ``Are you sure that we
+shouldn't negotiate with Mother and Father one more time?'' she
+whispered. ``They're going to miss us. You know they are---''
+
+``And we've tried that,'' said Parvati. ``Both your negotiation and
+mine.'' Padma's had involved legal documents showing that, since they
+were seventeen now, and adults in the wizarding world, they could do
+what they liked. Parvati's had involved loud screams and thrown vases.
+Neither had worked. "They don't \emph{accept} it, Padma. Circumstances
+were different when they were young. And that's fine for them, but it's
+wrong for us. We have to do something different. Unless you're backing
+out now?" She tossed her long braid of black hair over her shoulder and
+fixed her eyes on Padma's face.
+
+``Of course not,'' said Padma, her voice softening. ``I want to see Luna
+again.''
+
+Parvati just nodded. She would never understand what her sister saw in
+the Lovegood girl---Merlin, she didn't know why her sister wanted to
+date \emph{girls} at all---but Padma was her sister, and Parvati loved
+her, and if Padma had wanted to stay behind or run off to Hogwarts all
+on her own, Parvati would still have supported her. That was what
+sisters did.
+
+She reached out, and Padma entwined her fingers with hers. They both
+pulled their wands from their pockets and walked down the hallway
+together, then down the stairs towards the fireplace and their house's
+Floo connection.
+
+Today was September first, and normally they would be at King's Cross
+already---Sita liked to arrive early so as to spend more time fussing
+over her daughters---and on the Hogwarts Express. But since their
+parents wouldn't take them and neither Parvati nor Padma could Apparate
+yet, they were taking the Floo into Hogwarts's hospital wing.
+
+Parvati stood behind Padma as she tossed the Floo powder in and started
+the flames flaring green.
+
+``Daughters? Where are you going?''
+
+That was their father, Rama, who'd just emerged from his indoor garden
+behind the stairs. Parvati pointed her wand at him, and felt only a
+faint stirring of regret at the shock on his face.
+
+``Daughters?'' he whispered.
+
+``We love you, Father,'' said Parvati. ``But we're going to Hogwarts
+this year.''
+
+Surprisingly, her father smiled, but Parvati found out the reason a
+moment later. ``They'll send you back,'' he said confidently. ``If a
+parent objects and doesn't want his son or daughter to attend, then the
+Headmistress is legally obligated to pull the student out of school.''
+
+``Oh, dear,'' Parvati murmured. ``Padma, do you want to tell him, or
+should I?''
+
+``I didn't manage to do it last time,'' said Padma distractedly, who was
+trying to find some way to hold her books so they wouldn't bang her
+chest when they whirled through the Floo connection. ``You try.''
+
+Parvati nodded, never taking her eyes from their father's face. She
+\emph{did} love him, really she did, but he just didn't
+\emph{understand.} ``When the student is seventeen,'' said Parvati,
+``and files the right legal paperwork, then he or she can stay in
+school. And we're seventeen, and Padma's already filed the paperwork.
+She did try to tell you she'd do that if you said no, but you kept
+thinking of us as little children, and underestimated her.'' She leaned
+against her sister's back, eyes alert in case their father reached for
+his wand. After the intensive dueling training she'd undergone, Parvati
+was sure she'd be quick enough to blast it out of his hand with an
+\emph{Expelliarmus.}
+
+``What have we done?'' Rama whispered, his voice full of mourning and
+his eyes full of tears. ``Where did we fail you, that you thought you
+had to run away?''
+
+``You didn't fail us,'' said Parvati. She was actually glad their father
+had caught them, now. She had wanted to say this, but she couldn't have
+done it during the arguments without alerting their parents to their
+plans. ``You just didn't have to make the choices we did. So now we've
+made those choices. And we'll see you again someday.'' She paused, and
+then Gryffindor honesty compelled her to add, ``Probably.''
+
+Rama lunged forward.
+
+But Padma had finally figured out how she wanted to arrange her books,
+and she grabbed Parvati's hand, while shouting out, ``Hogwarts hospital
+wing!''
+
+They got whirled through the intense, dizzying motion that always made
+Parvati feel sick to her stomach, and left her on her knees when they
+tumbled out on the floor of the hospital wing, with soot all over her
+robes. She climbed back to her feet, coughing, while Padma rushed over
+to a shocked-looking Madam Pomfrey, already drawing out their copy of
+the paperwork they'd filed.
+
+``Madam Pomfrey,'' she said, words tumbling over each other, ``Parvati
+and I are seventeen, and we ask for sanctuary---''
+
+Parvati rolled out of the way when her father came through the Floo
+connection then, and reacted as she'd been trained before she even
+thought about what she was doing. Her father sprawled on the floor in a
+Body-Bind, unable even to blink, and certainly unable to interfere as
+Madam Pomfrey, who counted as a teacher of the school for the purposes
+of this legal discussion, slowly listened to and then accepted Padma's
+plea for sanctuary.
+
+Parvati smugly let her father go. Rama rubbed his jaw, which he'd hit on
+the floor, with a wince, and then shook his head.
+
+``What am I going to tell your mother?'' he murmured.
+
+``The truth,'' said Parvati, and kissed him on the cheek. ``We're doing
+this for love. I hope we can visit you over Christmas holidays, Father.
+Farewell.''
+
+She followed Padma out of the hospital wing. Madam Pomfrey would carry
+their paperwork to the Headmistress, so they didn't have to see her.
+Parvati was glad. She had someone she wanted to find.
+
+Even before she could use the \emph{Point Me} spell, though, a familiar
+voice called, ``Parvati?'' The tone was one of both surprise and joy.
+
+She smiled, and looked up, and then flung herself headlong into Connor's
+arms, clinging fiercely to him.
+
+\emph{My parents made their choice, and we made ours.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Minerva shook her head, but in amusement, as she studied the Patil
+twins' request for sanctuary and to attend the school that term. It was
+the fifth one she'd received, the third one from the children of a Light
+pureblood family. \emph{Strange that so many children are less afraid
+than their parents are.}
+
+``Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Poppy,'' she said, with a
+firm nod, and then put the parchment on her desk. Poppy hovered instead
+of leaving, however, and Minerva glanced at her, wondering what she
+wanted.
+
+``Minerva,'' Poppy began in the voice that made her sound most like an
+interfering busybody, ``have you been performing those spells I talked
+about, and taking the period of relaxation I mandated each day?''
+
+\emph{Not this again.} ``I assure you,'' said Minerva, her voice much
+cooler because she couldn't help it, "my heart was only temporarily
+weakened as a result of Severus's unfortunate possession accident. I am
+\emph{not} an invalid. Nor am I someone who needs to watch her heart,
+Poppy. I am only in my seventies. I could easily live eighty years
+more."
+
+``You had a weak heart even before this,'' the interfering matron
+insisted. "I \emph{know} you did, Minerva. I've seen the records from
+that time in your fifth year when you collapsed after stopping those
+Slytherin boys from torturing that Hufflepuff girl---"
+
+Minerva snorted. ``I was overexcited, and I'd cast twenty spells in
+swift succession. I think I'm excused some exhaustion.'' \emph{And if
+I'd managed to figure out that those boys were under Tom Riddle's
+control at the time, then certain mysteries might have been solved much
+more easily.} She hadn't had the chance to figure it out, though,
+because she'd spent the next week in bed under Madam Balmbane's care,
+forced to endure spell after spell to heal her ``weak heart.''
+\emph{There} had been a busybody.
+
+Poppy refused to back down. ``You're not as young as you used to be, and
+the students need you. I want you to promise me that you'll use those
+spells and take some time to relax each day, Minerva, or I swear to
+Merlin, you'll be sleeping in the hospital wing until you do.''
+
+Minerva leveled her best glare at Poppy. The other woman glared back,
+which Minerva had to admit impressed her more than a little. Her best
+stare had been known to stop Severus in full bark.
+
+``I'll use them, then,'' she said. ``But I still don't think there's
+anything wrong.'' That was as conciliating as she could be. She had
+tremendous sympathy for her Gryffindors, and Harry, who'd spent more
+than their fair share of time in the hospital wing under Poppy's
+tyranny. There were always more \emph{important} things to be done than
+this endless worrying over one's health. Some worrying was good, of
+course, but it should not be incessant.
+
+Poppy eyed her once, then nodded and left. Minerva defiantly changed
+into a cat and padded over to the wall of her office, staring up at the
+glass case that contained the Sword of Gryffindor.
+
+They hadn't moved the Horcrux, and nothing had happened concerning it.
+When Minerva had handled it, it didn't burn her, and she felt nothing
+more than a faint tingle from the hilt, a tingle that told of immense
+magic---but that could have come from the age of the Sword. And of
+course they hadn't yet decided what they were going to do about it.
+
+``I hate that he corrupted one of my mementoes,'' muttered a voice
+behind her.
+
+Minerva lashed her tail in acknowledgment of Godric's presence, but
+didn't turn around. Sometimes she thought that she could melt the Sword
+to slag by the sheer force of her stare. It was worth a try, at least.
+
+``Of course, it was either the Sword or the Sorting Hat,'' the shade of
+the Gryffindor Founder went on in a thoughtful voice, taking a seat on
+the edge of the desk. ``Those are the only possessions of mine that
+survive. And, all things considered, I'd rather it was the Sword, which
+almost no one handles, than the Hat, which peers into thousands of
+impressionable young minds.''
+
+Minerva turned about, her head cocked. Though she couldn't speak aloud
+in this form, the connection between the Headmistress and the shades of
+the Founders ran deep, and Godric sensed what she wanted to ask without
+words.
+
+``I think it's relics of the Founders that he wanted to corrupt,'' said
+Godric. He put out a hand in invitation, and Minerva bounded up, landing
+on the desk beside him. His hand felt like a cool breeze as it moved
+along her spine, just enough to tickle. ``My Sword, Salazar's
+locket---and a ring that belongs to his descendants, too---and Helga's
+cup. And I would wager anything I still own, which admittedly isn't
+much, that the wand was Rowena's.''
+
+Minerva purred in consideration. It did make sense, though the diary
+that Harry had destroyed in his second year didn't fit the pattern. But
+possibly the diary had meant something to Tom in his childhood years.
+
+``And Poppy's right, you know,'' Godric continued, so smoothly that
+Minerva actually arched her back against his hand before she realized
+what he was talking about. She drew back and stared at him in betrayal,
+but it seemed that her stare was losing its effectiveness all around.
+``You need to be more careful of your heart. Leading from the back isn't
+a bad thing, Minerva, as Rowena has told me on more than one occasion.
+You can still use your brains, even as you protect your body.''
+
+Minerva lashed her tail, and gave him another stare to convey what she
+thought of that. She was a Gryffindor. They were \emph{made} to fight
+from the front. It was certainly what she'd done during the First War.
+
+Godric chuckled and scooped her into his lap, concentrating hard to
+solidify his arms and legs so that he could. ``But this is the Second
+War, and this is different,'' he whispered into her ear. ``It's all
+right, Minerva, to admit that you have weaknesses and that you're human,
+too, you know.''
+
+\emph{Possible, but annoying.} Minerva dug in her claws and leaped off
+the desk and his lap, landing on the floor. Then she changed back to her
+normal self, and folded her arms. ``I kept the school open against the
+pressure of the governors and the Ministry wanting me to close it.''
+
+``You did,'' said Godric, a curious expression on his face, as if he
+didn't know where she was going.
+
+``I've stood up for my students when Voldemort came, when Albus turned
+out to be a disgrace to the name of Gryffindor and the name of Light
+wizard, and when other students acted in a disgusting manner towards
+them.''
+
+``Of course you have.''
+
+``And you want me to back down and lead from behind now?'' Minerva shook
+her head, unable to explain why this was so important to her, but
+knowing that it \emph{was.} "When that works better, I may do it, but I
+won't do it all the time, merely to preserve my health. My health is
+\emph{fine}." And it was. The war had given her back a sense of purpose
+and restlessness that kept her better-prepared to go forward than the
+apathy that she saw gripping many in the Ministry and general
+population.
+
+Godric looked at her with soft eyes and a faint smile. Minerva found the
+expression on his face familiar, but she couldn't place it.
+
+``Very well, Minerva,'' he said quietly. ``As you need to.''
+
+It was only later, as she walked down the stairs towards the Great Hall
+with the Sorting Hat tucked firmly under her arm, snorting and mumbling
+as it tried out its new songs, that she realized it was the same
+expression that she had often worn when she looked at her more impetuous
+and rule-breaking Gryffindors.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Hermione looked down the table and rolled her eyes. Parvati and Connor
+hadn't stopped \emph{snogging} since they entered the Great Hall. And of
+course that was all right, that was even to be expected since Connor
+hadn't seen her most of the summer, but really, more than a minute with
+tongue was as much as anyone needed. And now there were children
+present, the straggling group of first-years lined up expectantly before
+the Sorting Hat.
+
+Never mind that there were only sixteen first-years there, since most of
+their parents were too frightened to send them to the school. That only
+made it all the more imperative, in Hermione's eyes, not to frighten
+them off now, or make them think the older students did nothing but
+snog. Their eyes were already wide, darting from every corner of the
+room back to the tables and the enchanted ceiling, and they kept
+swallowing as if to keep their mouths dry. Hermione smiled a little
+wistfully, remembering how she'd felt when she came here for the first
+time.
+
+She'd been nervous, a bit, but she'd read all the books already, and she
+\emph{knew} what Hogwarts was like. The biggest challenge had been
+arguing with the Sorting Hat, which wanted her to go into Ravenclaw,
+when Hermione had \emph{known} she wanted to go into Gryffindor. The Hat
+had finally given up and put her where she wanted to go rather than
+where, it had insisted, she belonged. Hermione was not about to listen
+to a hat, though. Books were far smarter, and the way the books
+described Gryffindor House had made her know it was the one for her.
+
+``They look frightened,'' a voice murmured from behind her, and Hermione
+leaned back into Zacharias's arms.
+
+``They're young,'' she said.
+
+Zacharias sat down next to her, one arm securely around her shoulders.
+``I was never that nervous.''
+
+Hermione had to shrug. ``Neither was I.''
+
+Zacharias gave her a smug glance from the corner of his eye. ``No
+competition in this group, then.''
+
+And \emph{that} was so ridiculous that Hermione just had to laugh, which
+made Professor Snape glare at her as he led the first first-year, whose
+name Hermione thought was Amanda Bailey, up to the Sorting Hat. ``I
+think we can find other people to be superior to besides a group of
+first-years, Zach,'' she whispered, using the nickname she knew he
+hated.
+
+He drew back from her, nostrils flaring, but his attempt to say
+something was cut short by the Hat's shout of, ``SLYTHERIN!''
+
+Hermione turned back around, eyebrows raised, as the tiny Bailey girl
+pulled the Hat off her head and tottered towards the Slytherin table.
+The small group of older students sitting there welcomed her
+enthusiastically, even if the loudest clapping was Harry and Draco's.
+Bailey, Hermione knew, was not a pureblood name. The girl was either
+Muggleborn, or, at best, the daughter of a pureblood witch who'd married
+a Muggle.
+
+From the look on Harry's face, he did realize that, and he was going to
+fight for Amanda Bailey's right to be treated like an equal if he had
+to.
+
+The first-year after that, a boy named Gerald, went to the Ravenclaw
+table, and then came Lionel, who, appropriately enough, became a
+Gryffindor. Then Hufflepuff acquired two new Housemates, and there were
+two first-year Gryffindor girls, whom Hermione smiled welcomingly at as
+they sat down at the very end of the table.
+
+The rest of the first-years went to Slytherin.
+
+Hermione knew her own eyes were wide, but she had never heard of
+Slytherin dominating such a large share of the Sorting before. Of
+course, it was a small Sorting, but Slytherin was the smallest of the
+Houses. Many students in recent years had heard of the House's dark
+reputation and fought with the Hat if it wanted to put them there. Not
+to mention that the qualities necessary for Slytherin were less likely
+to exist in eleven-year-olds than in older children, Hermione thought,
+unless the children were purebloods.
+
+And now---
+
+Now that seemed to have changed.
+
+Hermione wasn't deaf, and she'd cast a few listening charms out of
+curiosity. Two of the younger girls on whom the Hat wavered, unsure
+whether to put them in Slytherin or another House, begged to be Sorted
+into Slytherin. So did a boy Hermione was almost sure was Muggleborn,
+and one of the Hufflepuff boys was almost in tears when the Hat decided
+on that House, though he tried to smile bravely as the others welcomed
+him in with loud clapping.
+
+Hermione looked at Professor Snape's face. It shone like the sun, at
+least if one knew the signs to look for. Hermione did, having seen him
+look like that over Harry, and sometimes when a Slytherin completed a
+potion in his class perfectly.
+
+\emph{The tide's turned,} Hermione thought. \emph{Slytherin looks better
+now, its reputation is rising, and there might even be people out there
+who are trying to emulate its qualities, or who are teaching their
+children to do that. They've had at least a few years now, from the time
+that they found out about Dumbledore's child abuse and Harry started
+becoming famous. And then there's the Grand Unified Theory, saying that
+families don't have to keep apart because of silly blood laws anymore.}
+
+She was sure that was what was happening. From the look on Draco's face,
+he'd decided the same thing, and he hunched over a few of the
+first-years like a dragon smugly brooding on eggs. Hermione was sure she
+detected some coolness in his manner towards the Muggleborn students,
+but not nearly as much as there would have been a very short time ago.
+
+\emph{So many things are changing,} Hermione thought in wonder. \emph{If
+we survive the War, if Voldemort doesn't win, then the wizarding world
+is going to change} so much. \emph{For house elves, but for Muggleborns,
+too.}
+
+``Hermione?''
+
+``Hmmm?'' Hermione turned from her contemplations to find Zacharias
+leaning forward, his eyes fastened intently on her face.
+
+``My mother sent me with a message for you,'' said Zacharias solemnly,
+and then drew out a wooden case from his robes and handed it over to her
+with a little bow. Hermione accepted it and uncapped it, rolling out the
+scroll that had been cooped up inside. When she studied it, she felt a
+sudden prickling at the back of her eyes that felt too much like tears
+for comfort.
+
+\emph{September 1st, 1997}
+
+\emph{Dear Hermione:}
+
+\emph{I beg you to forgive a stubborn old woman for taking too long to
+see the truth. I raised my son. I should have known that his choice
+would not alight on an unworthy partner, however surprising she was at
+first glance. Zacharias has told me of your courage and your
+determination to make a difference at Hogwarts this summer, and I have
+heard other tales from the wider wizarding world. The wizards and
+witches who join the war effort and forsake the foolish things that the
+Ministry asks of them are as likely to be Muggleborn as pureblood. In
+fact, to my shame and sorrow, they are} more \emph{likely to be
+Muggleborn than pureblood, because they do not see themselves as bound
+to an old and outworn definition of Light.}
+
+\emph{You are a fit partner for my son, in intelligence and in courage.
+If I still wish for a different family background for you, it must come
+from my own personal dreams for Zacharias and not because of a
+deficiency in you. Welcome to our family, Hermione, whenever you decide
+to join it.}
+
+\emph{Yours,}
+
+\emph{Miriam Smith.}
+
+Hermione tried to say something, and had to swallow first. ``When she
+decides to apologize, she doesn't do it halfway, does she?'' she
+murmured, leaning against Zacharias's chest.
+
+``Does that mean that you accept the apology?'' Zacharias asked,
+stroking her shoulders.
+
+``Yes,'' Hermione whispered.
+
+``Good,'' said Zacharias, and his voice grew pompous. ``You'll need to
+write out the acceptance, though. That's the proper way to do such
+things.''
+
+Hermione punched him in the shoulder, and then turned to face the head
+table as McGonagall rose to her feet. Her face was stern, but she could
+not help sneaking glances at the Slytherin table, either, and Hermione
+could make out the pride and satisfaction in her eyes.
+
+``Welcome to another year at Hogwarts, new students and old, professors
+and staff,'' said McGonagall. ``We are in the middle of a war now, and
+that will mean some changes. For example, stronger wards than normal
+have been established around the House common rooms. No student in first
+or second year is to go anywhere alone, and there are wards denying
+anyone but a few select people access to the Forbidden Forest.'' Her
+gaze touched Harry, then, and not by accident, Hermione thought. ``In
+addition, defensive techniques will be taught in most classes, not
+simply Defense Against the Dark Arts, and all students are encouraged to
+learn the school's geography as soon as possible.''
+
+She leaned forward and put her hands on the table, drawing all attention
+irrevocably to her.
+
+``We will win this war,'' she said. ``And not solely for the sake of
+what will happen should we not. Because we must not allow fear to
+control our lives.'' She drew back and revealed that her wand had been
+lying under her palm. "\emph{Animales advoco!}"
+
+A stream of colored sparks sped out across the hall, touching the walls
+and rebounding from them, crisscrossing in midair and falling back
+together. Hermione gasped as she saw them forming into the shape of four
+beasts: a lion and badger walking side by side, a snake coiling around
+their feet and rearing upwards, an eagle descending from above to meet
+them. When they met, they opened their mouths and uttered a soundless
+cry before bleeding back into a storm of sparks that raced to the
+torches lighting the Great Hall and made them flare wildly.
+
+``This war shall not strip our lives from us,'' said Headmistress
+McGonagall, her eyes narrow and her face shining with readiness to meet
+battle. At that moment, Hermione would have followed her into that
+battle. ``Neither the more complex pleasures of House unity, nor---''
+she smiled ``---the simpler ones of eating.'' She raised one hand, and
+the plates filled with food.
+
+Hermione set about Transfiguring her own, noticing that Connor and
+Parvati, and, of course, Harry, were doing the same thing. Draco gave
+Harry's conjured food a few thoughtful glances, chewing solemnly on his,
+but didn't yet offer to forsake the services of house elves.
+
+Hermione actually had to take a few calming breaths before she could
+eat. The excitement was twisting her stomach into a knot.
+
+\emph{We're going to live. We're going to fight on a basis that
+Voldemort can't even comprehend.}
+
+\emph{And we're going to win.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 38*: Intermission: In the Shadow of His
+Power}\label{chapter-38-intermission-in-the-shadow-of-his-power}
+
+Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter!
+
+\textbf{Intermission: In the Shadow of His Power}
+
+``And what is your main conclusion from your visit?''
+
+``Acting Minister Juniper is an idiot.''
+
+Monika had long since learned to control her face. She was often
+grateful for that skill, but this was one of the most violent bouts of
+gratitude she'd had in some time. Otherwise, she would have laughed at
+Evamaria's statement, and that would not have suited the grave image she
+needed to present.
+
+As it was, she inclined her head slowly, and did not even shift the
+position of the one hand that rested on the table in the Minister's
+office. Evamaria stood at the window with her back to the Dark Lady,
+examining the enchanted view of dark forests and a glacier-fed lake.
+Only a slight tension in her shoulders showed how nervous Monika's magic
+made her. Evamaria made Monika more content than any of her servants had
+in some time. She struck the right balance between serving their country
+abroad and being Monika's servant at home.
+
+``He is, my Lady.'' Evamaria turned around and shook her head. Her neck
+looked slender enough to snap like a twig, but Monika knew many people
+who had thought that about dear Evamaria. They'd been roundly disabused
+of what they should already have known, every one, when they tangled
+with her. It sounded as though Juniper had allowed himself to be taken
+in completely, however. "He treated me like a child when I questioned
+him. He claims to want the International Confederation's help to protect
+his country from the discovery of Muggles, but he rejects the most
+common-sense measures, such as to concentrate on the largest disruptions
+and leave the small ones alone, or work with the Muggle government to
+provide what plausible excuses they can for some breaches in the wall.
+He wants nothing less than complete Obliviation of \emph{all} Muggles
+who have seen something suspicious in the last few months." Evamaria let
+out an exasperated breath and writhed her fingers into a knot, then
+rested the knot on the back of her neck. ``All or nothing. And he wants
+the same thing of Harry.''
+
+Monika nodded. In truth, she was more interested in what Evamaria would
+say of Harry than of the Acting Minister. But she had not sent her
+servant to Britain with only that purpose---Evamaria might mistake her
+Lady's interest for fear---so she could not look more excited about one
+piece of news than the other. "And what is your impression of Harry
+\emph{vates}?"
+
+``I did not meet him, of course.'' Evamaria shifted restlessly, as if
+that were a failure on her part. Monika understood that the Acting
+Minister's invited friend would hardly have been welcome at Hogwarts,
+though, and nodded her understanding. When her servants made their best
+effort, she could forgive them their shortcomings. ``But from the
+impression I had of him through the Acting Minister, he is a competent,
+powerful wizard hampered more by others' perceptions of him and the Dark
+Lord's personal enmity than by his age or the difficulties Juniper
+wanted to ascribe to him. I am sure he has faults. I could not come at
+them based on what his enemies said about him, however.''
+
+Monika nodded again. That was not truly unusual for a Lord or Lady.
+Those who had never met her said very contradictory things of her, too.
+
+But what did it mean?
+
+She knew what it meant for her own purposes, and that was really all
+that mattered.
+
+``Thank you, Evamaria,'' she said, rising to her feet. ``I will contact
+you again when I need you.''
+
+Evamaria bowed deeply as she Apparated away from the room. The Ministers
+of Austria had not always been such good friends to Monika, but she had
+taught the ones who were not, often removing them from office. Evamaria
+took her natural submission to Monika's power in good part.
+
+Monika reappeared next to her home, and held up a hand as the
+\emph{avis-serpens} came coiling down to her. She had not decided how
+many legs it should have yet, two like its bird parent or none like its
+snake parent, and so for the moment, it had one as a compromise. It
+perched on her wrist, shifting awkwardly back and forth, using the tail
+to compensate for its balance.
+
+She stroked the sharp scale-feathers, and smiled into the distance.
+
+\emph{There is a young Lord, heir to the most powerful wizard in the
+world, battling foes on all sides. He will survive, according to the
+prophecy, and inherit that power. But he will be reeling, off-guard
+after such a large battle, and he will receive no legal protection from
+his own Ministry than might make a case of interference problematic.}
+
+\emph{I will wait until after that battle, and claim the magic that no
+child should be carrying then.}
+
+That decided, she went to check on the progress of the mating she'd
+arranged that morning, between one of her tentacled sheep and dear
+Liane's sister. Liane had failed her most spectacularly, and such things
+had to be punished.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Indigena did not recognize the pattern sketched on the floor.
+
+She recognized the material it was made of, of course. Since the failed
+attempt to kill Remus Lupin, her Lord seemed to be obsessed with growing
+ever stronger. He had sent Sylvan and Oaken to capture what straying
+wizards they could, and a few other Death Eaters who had more knowledge
+of the Muggle world to snare those Muggleborn children too young to be
+missed. They were brought back to him. Voldemort drained their magic,
+and his power grew stronger still, a brooding shadow that spread around
+him like a pair of constantly-flared eagles' wings.
+
+Then they were left with the bodies of the new Squibs. Voldemort gave
+them to Sylvan and Oaken, with very specific instructions. And the
+bodies came back out as rendered flesh and blood, poured as thick liquid
+into the design that Voldemort wanted, and then dried and frozen and
+enchanted to stay in place. The victims' own pain and suffering probably
+also helped with that, Indigena thought. Though willing sacrifice was
+stronger, even unwilling sacrifice---blood magic---had power.
+
+The design was not yet complete, but its outer form was a huge circle.
+In the middle, innumerable knots and stars and lines crossed to form a
+pattern that Indigena could not penetrate or understand. Sometimes she
+saw darting shapes in it, a bird, a lizard, a snake, but those were more
+likely her eyes trying to make sense of the changeable, she thought,
+like the shapes one saw when peering into a fire.
+
+So her Lord's ultimate purpose, other than gaining more magic, remained
+mysterious, but this evening Indigena had noticed a new thing. As her
+Lord stood in front of the pattern, something joined him.
+
+It was a glint, a glimmer of shadow at first. Then it resolved, and
+Indigena made out a black stone woman carrying her head under her arm.
+The head writhed with snakes. Indigena quickly looked aside, making sure
+not to meet that head's eyes.
+
+Of course, more dangerous than the possible Medusa magic of that head
+was the sense of might that lurked around it. And by the chaos that
+accompanied it, clawing at the burrow walls and making streams of dirt
+fall from them, Indigena knew what this creature of Dark magic really
+was: a cover for the wild Dark.
+
+It walked around the pattern with Voldemort, and, when it reached a
+certain point in the outer ring that corresponded to a blank place in
+the center, it vanished. Her Lord gave no sign that he had noticed.
+
+Indigena bowed her head. \emph{If he is calling upon the wild Dark, and
+draining magic at the same time, what can he be planning?}
+
+She decided that he was unlikely to tell her if he had not so far, and
+in any case, it was not her task to prevent that. Her eyes focused
+across the room, where Sylvan and Oaken were dragging in another victim.
+
+\emph{There is my task.}
+
+She turned and left the burrow. Her Lord had gone deep into
+contemplation, and was unlikely to call her back. She mounted the steps
+to the surface, and then cast a complicated spell on one of the stones
+in the tumble-down wall also woven with anti-Apparition spells and dense
+wards.
+
+Little by little, she was altering the stone to have a heartbeat, and
+sing. It caused an immense amount of magic to leak above the wards, if
+one knew what to look for. Indigena had chosen it as the spell most
+likely to work as a summons and not attract attention. If her Lord
+asked, Indigena knew at least two uses the spell could be put to on
+prisoners, and could say she was practicing for those, trying to get
+over her squeamishness about torture.
+
+But its main purpose was as a call.
+
+And, tonight, it finally worked.
+
+Indigena caught a glimpse of movement that resembled the wild Dark's,
+and looked up at once. Evan Rosier stood not far beyond the wall,
+staring at her, clutching the Hufflepuff cup in one hand.
+
+Indigena cocked an eyebrow and murmured. At Evan's feet, a tendril rose,
+uncurled, and laid a message at his boots.
+
+Now it remained to be seen if he would read it or not.
+
+But Indigena could not stay to see. Her Mark was burning. She turned and
+went below.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 39*: Look to the
+Future}\label{chapter-39-look-to-the-future}
+
+Warning: Slash in the first scene, if you want to skip that.
+
+\textbf{Chapter Twenty-Nine: Look to the Future}
+
+Harry slid carefully into the room. There was always the chance that
+Draco would notice him, of course, and---
+
+"\emph{Expelliarmus!}"
+
+And he had noticed Harry \emph{much more quickly} than he had last time.
+Harry ducked, spinning to the floor. He was impressed. It really wasn't
+Draco's fault that that spell didn't work against him, since he didn't
+use a wand much anymore. It would have worked on a Death Eater who
+thought that Draco was thoroughly distracted casting against the wooden,
+wizard-shaped target on the far side of the dueling room.
+
+Draco snorted when he saw it was Harry, but didn't let up on the curses
+he was casting. "\emph{Dolor immoderatus! Aere alieno demersus! Caligo
+auriculam!}"
+
+Harry dodged, in order, a pain curse, a hex that would transfer any life
+debt he owed another wizard to Draco, and one that would unbalance him
+by causing intense dizziness in his inner ear. He couldn't catch his
+breath, but what little he could spare was given to laughter. Draco was
+\emph{wonderful.}
+
+``Hold still, will you?'' Draco muttered, and paused a moment to catch
+his breath.
+
+Harry raised an eyebrow and made him pay for that, hauling him into the
+air by one heel with \emph{Levicorpus.} Unlike last time, however, Draco
+remained calm, and cast \emph{Finite Incantatem}, even though that came
+near dropping him on his head. He let out a little \emph{oomph} as his
+shoulders were bruised.
+
+Harry didn't know how he got a grip on his wand, rolling on the floor
+like that, but it was obvious he'd used a non-verbal spell when Harry
+felt a tightness like a vine growing along and up his legs. He
+concentrated, willing the vine to wither away from him and collapse to
+the floor, and then Draco cast the Ear-Dazzle Curse again and made him
+reel, crashing down.
+
+``In a real battle, you would have been dead,'' Draco gloated from
+somewhere above him.
+
+``Not dead, but inconvenienced,'' Harry muttered, and did what he should
+have done in the first place, casting a nonverbal \emph{Finite
+Incantatem} to end both spells. He smiled at Draco. ``I got caught up in
+finishing them in some flashy way, and allowed you to get a hit in. Well
+done.''
+
+Draco's chest was moving fast, and his eyes practically sparked with
+passion. Harry wasn't surprised when he leaned forward and took his
+mouth in a hungry kiss. He returned it for a moment, then drew back with
+a shake of his head.
+
+``I came to test you, yes, but also to fetch you for dinner---'' he
+began.
+
+Draco, who was kneeling down in front of him, didn't seem inclined to
+listen. His half-smile wasn't an expression Harry had seen before. He
+unbuckled Harry's trousers without listening to him.
+
+``Draco?''
+
+``Were you saying something?'' Draco braced his legs on the floor and
+kicked hard, and Harry found himself on his back with Draco on top of
+him. ``Was it important?'' Draco added, and then lowered his head
+towards that horrible, evil spot on the side of Harry's neck.
+
+``Draco Malfoy, you had better not bite---''
+
+Draco didn't listen to him, and did. Harry arched his neck, panting. The
+unlocked door and dinner not far away were thoughts drifting somewhere
+in the back of his mind, but they couldn't make it to the front, not
+when Draco was rather insistently dragging his trousers off and reaching
+into his pants.
+
+``Defeating me excites you?'' Harry managed to mutter.
+
+"\emph{Excitement} excites me," Draco corrected, and then bent down and
+took Harry's cock in his mouth.
+
+Harry started; even with the bite on his neck and Draco's obvious
+intentions, he had anticipated a little more foreplay. But the warmth
+and the wetness and the way Draco sucked at him wildly, fiercely, the
+same way he had gone into battle, melted his objections soon enough.
+
+He tired to protest, which was the valiant thing to do. Someone could
+come in at any moment. They really needed to eat, and then go back to
+their bedroom, and then he needed to research the Horcruxes some more,
+because he didn't think they could put off going after the ring for much
+longer---
+
+And then Draco's tongue curled in a way that made shivers run through
+his body, and brought currents of laughter streaming up from his soul.
+Harry felt the same giddy excitement grip his mind that usually took
+over for him during sex. He kept his hips on the floor by main force of
+effort.
+
+``Come on, Harry,'' Draco muttered, and somehow breathed out air and
+sucked inward at the same time.
+
+Harry knew what Draco was asking for---for him to stop holding back, and
+let his body do what it wanted---and hesitated only a moment longer
+before giving in. His hips bucked a few more times, and Harry didn't try
+to keep them still. He felt the pleasure rushing through his body,
+building far too quickly for most of their encounters, but this was
+spontaneous and unplanned, and that was the point.
+
+And then it felt too good, and he \emph{couldn't}, and he came with an
+embarrassing combination of grunt and sigh. He could feel Draco's
+smugness radiating off him like summer sunlight.
+
+Draco pulled away a moment later, and cast a locking spell in the
+direction of the door. He then took off his shirt, never removing his
+eyes from Harry's face.
+
+Harry smiled and lunged up, kissing him fiercely. \emph{Dinner can
+wait.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSS
+
+``Harry, if you would come with me, please.''
+
+Harry stopped in surprise as McGonagall gave him the invitation. She
+never looked at him as she swept past, her robes billowing behind her,
+and kept walking as if she expected him to follow her to her office.
+Harry glanced at Draco, whose face simply firmed with determination to
+come with him in turn.
+
+Harry shrugged, and trailed McGonagall to the gargoyle. When the
+Headmistress turned and saw Draco with him, she paused, but then tilted
+her chin down and murmured something that sounded like, ``In any
+discussion that concerns your future, I suppose Mr. Malfoy has a right
+to be present.''
+
+\emph{Has she decided against continuing her support of me?} The
+pressure from the Ministry and parents might have become too much, Harry
+thought, and squared his shoulders. It would be hard to be deprived of
+the protection of Hogwarts, but he could make Silver-Mirror his
+stronghold if he must. He \emph{was} sure that McGonagall would never
+turn out the students and the refugees who had come to her, no matter
+what she might have to do to Harry.
+
+They reached the office, and McGonagall sat behind the desk, with one
+glance at the Sword of Gryffindor. Harry took one of the chairs in front
+of the desk, giving a substantial glare of his own at the Horcrux. He
+still did not know whom they would find to walk onto the sword.
+
+\emph{Besides me.}
+
+Harry knew he had the will and the courage to do such a thing, if worst
+came to worst. He didn't \emph{want} to, and at the moment it seemed
+unlikely he would be the sacrifice, because he was needed to fight the
+shards of soul and drain the magic of the other Horcruxes. But he could
+do it if he needed to.
+
+``Harry.''
+
+He paid attention to McGonagall, who had a sheaf of paper in her hands
+and her glasses pushed up on her nose. She studied the parchment in
+front of her for a moment, then directed his attention to him.
+
+``Have you thought about what you're going to do after Hogwarts?'' she
+asked briskly.
+
+Harry felt his mouth sag open. ``What?'' he asked.
+
+Draco nudged him with an elbow. ``She's asking what you want to do after
+the war, idiot,'' he said.
+
+"I \emph{know} that," said Harry, though he wasn't sure he had; his mind
+was still too blank with surprise to make up a good excuse. "I
+just---you know what it's going to be like, Madam. Working as a
+\emph{vates.} Trying to repair the ravages that I'm sure this war will
+inflict on Britain, and the ravages it's already inflicted. Making peace
+with the Ministry, and the new Minister I hope is in place after
+Juniper. What else would it be like?"
+
+``In truth, Harry, I did not wish to see you confined.'' McGonagall laid
+down the parchment and leaned forward. ``If that is truly what you want
+to spend the rest of your life doing, I honor you. But is it? Are there
+other ambitions that you would like to achieve, and what are they? I
+feel that I may be able to give you some advice on those.''
+
+Draco's arm hooked around his waist. ``He'll be living with me, of
+course,'' he said. ``I always intend to be part of Harry's life.''
+
+Harry felt his face flush. Expressing physical affection like this was
+one thing in private, or in front of someone who knew all about it
+already, like Snape. But Draco's reply to the Headmistress could be seen
+as cheek.
+
+McGonagall didn't appear to have taken it as that, this time. She simply
+nodded. ``That is quite clear by now, Mr. Malfoy,'' she murmured. ``If I
+am not mistaken, your seventh joining ritual will occur on Halloween,
+and after that, no one else can intervene to court one of you, or part
+you.''
+
+``The magic will make them sorry if they do.'' Draco was smirking fit to
+tear the world apart.
+
+Harry felt his flush deepen. \emph{Does everyone have to know all these
+details about us?} But he said, ``Of course I'll be living with Draco.
+But---there's nothing else I want, Madam. Nothing else I can think of. I
+appreciate your talking to me about this, but I already know what the
+rest of my life is going to be like.'' He still couldn't quite contain
+his bewilderment. Why wouldn't Snape have been the one to say these
+things, if anyone was going to? And was McGonagall seriously suggesting
+that he could simply settle into a quiet job somewhere in England and
+live that way? It was ridiculous. His magic would always mark him out,
+and so would his compulsion to help other people as long as he could.
+Harry hoped that need would continue to exist for a good portion of time
+after his battle with Voldemort.
+
+McGonagall smiled at him as if he had said something at once wise and
+amusing. ``No one knows what the rest of her life is going to be like,
+Harry. Do not dismiss some other choices so quickly.'' She pushed the
+parchment she'd been holding across the desk to him. ``This is a list of
+requirements for becoming an Auror---or a spell inventor---in other
+countries, as well as some other careers that require both immense magic
+and a flexible mind. If any of them strike your fancy, Harry, do let me
+know, and I can procure you more information on them.''
+
+Harry slowly took the list. \emph{This is so strange. I'll be grateful
+just to survive the war, and she wants me to be---what?}
+
+``Why, Madam?'' he asked quietly, eyes on her.
+
+``I wanted to be sure that you were looking to the future and thinking
+about surviving it,'' said McGonagall serenely. "It seems that you are.
+And if you do change your mind, or wish to know what else you can be
+beyond a \emph{vates}, there is the list." She nodded to it. ``Do not be
+mistaken, Harry. What you are, what you plan to be, is wonderful. But
+chaining yourself to one duty for the rest of your life is problematic,
+a reflection of what your parents tried to persuade you into when they
+trained you to serve Connor. I would not see that happen again.''
+
+``It won't,'' said Draco, his voice strong as a windstorm. ``I promise,
+Headmistress.''
+
+``I am glad that he has you, Mr. Malfoy,'' said McGonagall---McGonagall,
+who usually showed distaste or dislike for Draco.
+
+Harry let himself be pulled into a hug from Draco, but his surprise
+still soaked him so much that he couldn't truly respond. \emph{What is
+going on? Did everyone decide to play a grand joke, and no one told me?}
+
+\emph{I just---I would expect concern like this from Snape or Regulus or
+even Peter, but not McGonagall. She didn't need to.}
+
+``Thank you, Madam,'' he said, because there didn't seem to be anything
+else to say, and left the office in a daze of confusion. Draco had to
+steady him so that he didn't take a headlong dive down the moving
+staircase. He was busy trying to figure out why McGonagall would care,
+would make such an effort.
+
+\emph{Isn't what I'm going to become obvious, an extension of what I
+already am?}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Connor gave the door to the Slytherin common room the password that
+Harry had told him yesterday, and ignored the shocked glances of several
+people inside when he stepped through. He had the Marauder's Map firmly
+in hand. While some of the secret passages on it were unusable---too
+dangerous, or too far from the House common rooms---others would serve
+well as escape tunnels from the school, should they ever need them.
+
+He paused when he reached the door of the bedroom Draco and Harry
+shared. For one thing, the handle glimmered with a powerful locking
+spell. For another, there were loud, if muffled, moans coming from
+inside.
+
+\emph{Hmmm.} Connor doubted he would have time to come back later, since
+his Defense Against the Dark Arts homework was already enough to keep
+him occupied half the night. Besides, the looks on the Slytherins' faces
+made him think that they'd probably change the password after he left.
+And, finally, he wanted to see his brother. He hadn't had the chance to
+talk to him in several days.
+
+He pulled out his wand and murmured a \emph{Finite}, though he had to
+repeat it several times before the charm sparked and faded into
+nothingness. Connor smiled triumphantly. It was Draco's spell, then, and
+not Harry's, or he doubted he could get through it.
+
+He opened the door, one hand in front of his eyes, and called out,
+"Shield yourselves! There are some things I \emph{don't} want to see."
+
+He heard two yelps, or perhaps it was one yelp and one grunt as someone
+got kicked in a sensitive place. Connor grinned behind his hand, and
+waited until the sounds of scrambling and rustling cloth stopped.
+
+"\emph{Potter}," said Draco, in a tone of high disgust.
+
+``Malfoy,'' Connor retorted, lowering his hand. To his relief, Harry was
+dressed, and trying to lean casually against the bed while very red in
+the face. Draco lay under the sheets. Connor didn't know, and didn't
+care to, how naked he was under them. ``Harry, I wanted to talk to you
+about the tunnels that we discussed, the ones that will be necessary if
+Voldemort ever attacks the school.''
+
+Harry's face cleared, and he nodded. "Do you mind, Draco?' he murmured.
+
+``It doesn't really matter if I do or not, does it?'' Draco muttered,
+burying his head beneath the blankets. "The mood's entirely
+\emph{broken}, and you're about to run away with your brother anyway. I
+know that look."
+
+``Don't pout,'' said Harry, with crispness Connor couldn't have imagined
+hearing from him a year ago, and kissed Draco on the cheek. ``Go to
+sleep, if you want, or start on the Defense homework. I'll be back
+shortly.''
+
+Draco sulked, and gave Connor a decidedly evil look behind Harry's back
+as Harry crossed to the door. Connor pondered sticking out his tongue.
+
+``Stop glaring at him, Draco,'' Harry said, without turning around.
+``And leave him alone, Connor.'' Gently, he shut the bedroom door behind
+them, and then shook his head. ``You're just lucky that he's had one
+orgasm today already, or he would have cursed you,'' he said.
+
+Connor felt his face turn red. ``I didn't need to know that, Harry.''
+
+``Remember that the next time you burst in on us.'' Harry folded his
+arms. ``Now, was the map just an excuse?''
+
+``I need an excuse to spend time with you?'' Connor clenched his hand on
+the map, interested in Harry's answer.
+
+Harry blinked, and then his expression softened. ``Of course not,
+Connor. But it also doesn't seem that urgent that you'd come bursting
+through the locking spell when you knew what had to be happening behind
+it.''
+
+``I think they might change the password on me,'' Connor said, with a
+glance over his shoulder at the Slytherin common room. ``Besides, I
+already made the trek down to the dungeons.'' He gave his brother a
+winsome smile. ``And I promise, I did want to spend time with you.''
+
+Harry smiled, and sat down on the top stair before the bedroom door,
+taking the Map. ``Which tunnels were you thinking of using?''
+
+``Not the one behind the statue of the humpbacked witch,'' said Connor
+at once. He'd spent a few days studying the Map, now, and felt himself
+rather an expert on it. ``It goes out into Hogsmeade, and that would be
+as dangerous as Hogwarts if Voldemort was attacking, probably. And not
+the one on the second floor that winds up behind Hagrid's hut, for the
+same reason.''
+
+``I hear tunnels we can't use, not ones we can.'' Harry rustled the Map
+impatiently, watching as numerous tiny dots moved back and forth.
+Connor, looking down, accidentally caught a glimpse of two dots called
+\emph{Zacharias} and \emph{Hermione} moving towards the Hufflepuff
+common room. He looked away hastily.
+
+``That's why I figured out these tunnels,'' he said, and then flicked
+his fingers over the Map, touching five of them. One each was located in
+Gryffindor and Ravenclaw Towers, one near Hufflepuff, and two under
+Slytherin. "They're not often used, because there are much shorter
+routes out onto the grounds. I don't think even the Marauders went into
+them more than once or twice. And of course they wouldn't want to walk
+all the way down from Gryffindor Tower only to go under the Slytherin
+dungeons and \emph{then} find their way out in the opposite direction of
+the Forbidden Forest."
+
+Harry frowned. Connor suspected that was because the tunnels ran beyond
+the limits of the Map, and he couldn't see where they went. ``What is
+their destination?''
+
+``Parvati sent a conjured light of hers to find out,'' said Connor.
+``And---well, it's not nearby, we know that much.'' He pulled out a
+Pensieve from his robe pocket and tapped it so that it came back to
+normal size. A single memory shimmered in the bottom, a dollop of
+silvery liquid. ``This is what the light showed to her, and then she put
+the memory in here.''
+
+Harry bent and put his head into the memory, and Connor followed, even
+though he'd already seen it. It was an incredible journey, he had to
+admit that much, and he didn't think that wanting to see it again was a
+crime.
+
+The ball of conjured light hovered next to the hidden entrance to the
+tunnel in Gryffindor Tower, a small crack between the stones. When
+Parvati's hand came briefly into sight and tugged at the crack, the wall
+opened. The light darted through and danced up and down for a moment, to
+show that the room just beyond the door was still big enough for a
+human.
+
+Then it flew.
+
+Connor kept down a whoop with an effort. This was rather like swooping
+on a Firebolt along a dizzying maze of tunnels, down and over and
+around. Sometimes the light took stairs, but not often. For the most
+part, the tunnel simply led steadily down, looping through the thick
+stone walls of the castle, and only once crossing with another---the
+corridor that led from Ravenclaw Tower.
+
+Deeper and deeper they dived, and then the ball of light emerged into a
+dungeon corridor. Harry made a startled little noise. ``I never knew
+there was an entrance to a tunnel there,'' he whispered.
+
+``Not many people did,'' Connor said. ``Now watch. This is the most
+vulnerable part of the journey, I think, because we'd have to cross from
+one tunnel to another, and emerge into full sight, which is a problem if
+there are Death Eaters running around the school.''
+
+The light sped fleetly across the floor and to another tiny crack in the
+stones. Connor knew the crack could tug open to become a door the same
+way that the original one had. He wondered if it was a coincidence, or
+maybe a good omen, that the holes were both shaped like lightning bolts
+if he squinted.
+
+Down and over and around again, but this time the tunnel was damper and
+dived even more deeply than before, over stones that gleamed with
+wetness and thick burrows of mingled rock and earth that reminded Connor
+of ancient wizards' dwellings he'd seen in his History of Magic
+textbook. At times the ceiling dropped alarmingly low, but there was
+always room to crawl. Connor didn't look forward to having to urge
+claustrophobic people through those places if they ever used this as an
+escape route, though.
+
+Then the sight of the tunnel gave way to a waterfall, a place where the
+lake had broken through the ceiling.
+
+Harry started. ``How are we supposed to pass that?'' he demanded.
+
+``It's an illusion,'' said Connor, smiling fondly as Parvati's ball of
+light shot through the curtain of water, sending small drops scattering
+out to spray behind it. For a moment, blue and light closed them round,
+and then they were out on the other side, in a tunnel that, if not
+perfectly dry, was at least no more wet than before. ``Think about it,
+Harry. If there was a breach that large in Hogwarts's foundations, the
+school would have suffered trouble before now, wouldn't it?''
+
+Harry nodded reluctantly. Then he leaned forward as the ball of light
+sank into a pit. ``Is there a ladder?''
+
+``On the wall.'' Connor pointed to the side of the memory, almost behind
+their heads, where the ball's gleams showed glimpses of crude handholds
+carved into the stone long before.
+
+Harry remained tense and silent, watching, as the pit expanded into
+another tunnel, and then an almost perfect ramp straight up. Soon it
+acquired the tendrils of climbing vines, and ducked past a massive
+influx of roots, and washed up into darkness and cold air.
+
+``Where---''
+
+``Beyond the Forbidden Forest,'' Connor said. ``And Hogwarts's
+anti-Apparition wards, too. If we ever need to escape that way, we can
+Apparate to the safehouses once we're out of it.''
+
+Harry shook his head in wonder. Then his face hardened. ``That kind of
+territory is natural habitat for Indigena's more dangerous plants,'' he
+muttered. ``I'll ask Neville to plant those lilies he's been developing
+along the tunnel, so that if she tries to strike at us while we're
+running, she can be turned.''
+
+``And you'll fill the corridor with traps and tricks?'' Connor asked
+hopefully. This was the part he wanted to help with. Since it seemed
+disloyal to play pranks on anyone in the school anymore, he wanted to
+play them on the Death Eaters. He was sure the Weasley twins would also
+be glad to help.
+
+``Of course,'' said Harry. ``But they'll have to be calculated so that
+they won't hinder our escape.''
+
+Connor grinned. ``For one thing,'' he said, as they tugged their heads
+out of the silvery liquid, because the memory had ended save for the
+light's flight back to Hogwarts, ``we could have traps armed mostly to
+allow the passage of a large group of people, and then strike after a
+certain period of time at anyone who came after them. And I'm sure Fred
+and George can work with time-delayed charms and the direction of the
+tunnel and the House crests on Hogwarts robes.''
+
+He reveled in the grateful look Harry gave him. It did seem that he had
+little enough time to spend with his brother after their parents'
+funeral, even though he saw Harry at least once every few days, and more
+often than that now that classes had started again.
+
+For a moment, Connor contemplated the fact that if their lives were
+different, they'd be worried mostly about NEWTs this year, and House
+rivalry, and Quidditch, and woes with their girlfriend and boyfriend. It
+sounded like a prosaic set of worries, and, in certain lights, Connor
+supposed, attractive.
+
+But everything would have to be different for that to happen. Neither of
+them could be the Boy-Who-Lived. Harry couldn't be as powerful as he was
+magically. Voldemort would have to be dead already, because Connor was
+quite sure that they wouldn't be able to leave the war up to Neville or
+whoever else might be destined to defeat him. This was everyone's war,
+and as long as it existed, those ordinary teenage concerns were a long
+way from his mind, and Harry's.
+
+Connor wouldn't have it any other way, though. Perhaps it was the
+Gryffindor in him. Perhaps, after thinking he was the Boy-Who-Lived for
+twelve years, he craved having attention focused on him. Perhaps he
+simply hated the idea of anything being ordinary for long. But he wanted
+to fight as much as he wanted to play pranks, and he wanted to be
+helping Harry when he could.
+
+"I'm sure Fred and George \emph{can} think of other things," Harry said,
+drawing Connor's attention back to their conversation. ``But I can't,
+not right now. I'll speak to Neville and examine the tunnel tomorrow.''
+He folded the Map and passed it back to Connor. ``Don't worry about
+anyone changing the password. If they do, I'll just give you the new
+one---though I'm sure you could use your Gryffindor deviousness to lurk
+around until you hear it.'' He gave Connor a smile to let him know he
+was teasing. ``Don't undo any locking spells on our door anymore,
+though.''
+
+Connor wasn't sure what made him regard his brother thoughtfully instead
+of simply accepting the Map and bouncing off. But he did, and he did ask
+the question that had started weighing, quietly, on him all throughout
+August. ``Harry?''
+
+``Hmmm?'' About to open his bedroom door again, Harry paused and looked
+back at him.
+
+``Why didn't you come and talk to me about what you felt when Lily and
+James died?'' No dancing around the subject and beating about the bush
+for him, Connor had already decided. He was a Gryffindor. He could be as
+blunt and honest as he wanted, and that was only what people would
+expect of him.
+
+Harry froze, and the cheerfulness died out of his face. Then he shook
+his head once. ``Because you needed comfort then,'' he said.
+``Obviously. And I felt as though you were my only family member left. I
+wanted to protect you, not burden you.''
+
+"I \emph{am} your only blood family left." Connor leaned forward. ``And
+once I started recovering and stopped hating myself for my grief over
+them? Then why didn't you come and talk to me, Harry?''
+
+``August was rather busy,'' said Harry dryly.
+
+``Would you ever have?''
+
+``No.'' Harry's mouth tightened.
+
+``Why not?''
+
+``I didn't want to.''
+
+``Why not?''
+
+Harry looked away from him. "Because it was \emph{mine}," he said lowly.
+``I just---I still haven't told Draco and Snape in detail, because I
+don't want them to judge me for the grief I displayed.''
+
+Connor made an exasperated noise, and kept himself from throwing up his
+hands only because he knew that someone from the Slytherin common room
+might be watching them. "And that was \emph{exactly} why you comforted
+me, Harry, because I hated my grief and you had to tell me that it was
+all right for me to feel it. Why didn't you let me comfort you and tell
+you the same thing?"
+
+``I had other things to do,'' said Harry, shifting restlessly. ``The
+funeral to arrange. People to contact. Condolences to express for those
+other people who lost family members in the attack.''
+
+Connor stood and came up behind him. Harry turned to face him rather
+than let Connor approach his back, his arms folded and his face set and
+his eyes cold. He \emph{did} do forbidding well, Connor thought.
+
+But he didn't try words to break through that mask, because it was
+obvious that wouldn't work. He put his arms around Harry and hugged him
+instead. Harry only stood there, as if the embrace meant nothing to him,
+but Connor could feel the wary shifting in his muscles, and knew it took
+his brother a good deal of effort to keep from simply bolting back into
+the bedroom.
+
+``I'm your brother, too,'' Connor murmured into his ear. "I know that
+you're my elder brother and my guardian and the tower of strength for me
+when I need you to be, Harry, but---I'm \emph{also} your brother, you
+know? I can return the favor. It's a relationship between two of us, not
+just you doing things for me. I know Snape and Draco have finally
+managed to convince you to have a relationship like that with them,
+mostly. I want one like that with you, too."
+
+``I assume you don't want the potions-brewing part of the one or the
+sexual part of the other,'' Harry muttered.
+
+Connor burst out laughing before he could help himself, even though he
+recognized this as another tactic that Harry used to keep people from
+prying. ``No,'' he said, when he calmed down. ``But I want to talk to
+you more often than I do, and not just about me or about defensive
+techniques either, Harry. I know you might not do it right away, but I'm
+still here, and I'll talk to you sometimes.''
+
+He gave him one more squeeze, then broke away and walked back towards
+the door out of the Slytherin common room.
+
+Harry could be as distant and resentful as he liked. It didn't matter.
+Connor would always be there to open the doors he kept himself behind,
+locking spells or not.
+
+\emph{Though I sincerely hope not many sights as traumatic as Draco and
+him shagging are behind those doors.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 40*: A Nasty
+Surprise}\label{chapter-40-a-nasty-surprise}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Thirty: A Nasty Surprise}
+
+Harry stared at the ceiling of their bed, stroking Draco's back as he
+waited for him to wake up. It had become his habit to do this in the
+past few days. There was no other time when he could guarantee that he
+would think uninterrupted, even by such welcome interruptions as a kiss
+or a question from one of the younger Slytherin students about what it
+had been like to live in the House when he first came to Hogwarts.
+
+He didn't know the cause of Voldemort's silence in the last half a
+month. He had been too grateful for the rest to question it at first;
+besides, he'd been sure that an attack would come at any moment. But now
+he feared it meant only that he was preparing some great, savage strike.
+
+\emph{Before he can do that, we need to destroy a Horcrux.}
+
+Harry stirred restlessly, and then lay still again when Draco murmured.
+He drifted near the surface of sleep now, but he didn't need to wake
+yet, and Harry wanted him to remain quiet for as long as he could. He'd
+been exhausting himself with training lately. He deserved all the rest
+he could get.
+
+\emph{Nothing will really incapacitate Voldemort but destroying the
+Horcruxes. I know that. I can do all the defensive planning that I want,
+or even all the offensive planning, if I could locate him and his Death
+Eaters, and yet that won't make him die or stop coming until the
+Horcruxes are destroyed. I have to.}
+
+\emph{I still haven't found a way around the Unassailable Curse. I don't
+think that Thomas and Jing-Xi will find a way around the one on the
+Sword, either.} They still hadn't managed to identify the spells that
+Voldemort had used by name, though they had found ones that did similar
+things. \emph{And so, no matter how much I hate the thought of someone
+dying for me, or in my name, I have to face that it's going to happen.}
+
+Harry closed his eyes. Draco had stirred towards wakefulness again as he
+felt Harry shaking, but only uttered a sleepy little murmur and burrowed
+into his chest. Harry looked down at him and stroked his fingers through
+soft blond hair, his mind a torrent of conflicting emotions.
+
+He didn't want to cry, though, not unless he was so deeply alone that he
+knew no one would intrude. So he forced the tears down and made himself
+smile in case Draco's eyes chose that moment to flutter open.
+
+\emph{I want to live. And Merlin knows that Draco wants me to live. He
+would probably say it was selfish to want to die, in fact, when I have
+so many commitments that require me to live.}
+
+\emph{But it's also selfish to ask my allies to do things that I won't
+do. How can I ask someone else to destroy the Horcruxes through the
+willing sacrifice of life unless I'm willing to die myself?}
+
+\emph{But I can't kill myself, because I need to be alive to insure that
+all the magic and the pieces of soul from the Horcruxes are destroyed.}
+
+\emph{But it's still a price that I should be willing to pay.}
+
+His hand must have stroked a little too hard, because Draco suddenly
+looked up at him. ``Harry? What's wrong?'' His voice was still thick
+with sleep.
+
+``Nothing,'' Harry lied easily, raising the cheerful mask that had
+become second nature to him in the last few days, as his worry over
+Voldemort's inexplicable quietude grew stronger and stronger. Everyone
+else appeared to value the gap between attacks, and he should, too. If
+nothing else, it meant less death. ``Are you almost ready to go to
+breakfast?''
+
+``Hm. Have to?''
+
+``No. A few more minutes yet.''
+
+``Give me them.'' One of Draco's arms, which had been curled across his
+chest, shifted and wrapped around Harry. ``Want to have as much as I
+can,'' he muttered.
+
+``Typical selfish Slytherin,'' Harry whispered into his neck, but the
+emotion tightening his heart was anything but irritation. \emph{He
+deserves to have as much as he can. Everyone does, but especially
+Draco---of life, of love, of magic, of time to lie in bed in the morning
+and wallow in warmth.}
+
+\emph{I don't know what I can do to both give him that and give our
+world the safety it needs, though.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco slowly leaned towards Harry. If he did it too suddenly, then Harry
+would notice and cover up the sheet of parchment he'd been scribbling
+on. Whatever it was, it wasn't Arithmancy equations. Harry had never
+been that urgent in Arithmancy, an art that usually required more
+concentration than he could give it and a way of thinking in numbers
+that Harry hated on instinct.
+
+He caught a glimpse of the word \emph{ring} before Professor Vector
+swirled past with a murmur of, ``Attend to your own paper please, Mr.
+Malfoy.''
+
+Draco sat back and paid attention to his paper, but now he thought he
+knew what Harry was writing. It would be a list of the remaining
+Horcruxes, and the costs of destroying them.
+
+Draco could feel his stomach brewing like an anxious potion. He'd
+\emph{known} that Harry had something on his mind when he woke that
+morning, but it seemed best to let it go when Harry denied it. Draco was
+trying to be open, to show Harry that he could trust him while not
+\emph{pushing} him to do so.
+
+This, though, was too serious to be left alone. If Harry was even
+thinking about going after the Horcruxes without help, then he needed to
+be confronted and talked out of that rabidly stupid idea.
+
+Accordingly, Draco snared his bag with one hand after class as Harry
+distractedly shoved his books into it. ``Harry?'' he whispered. ``Walk
+with me towards Ancient Runes?''
+
+Harry nodded agreeably. Draco suspected he knew way. They would pass the
+library on the way to that class, and Harry could easily double back and
+towards research he had probably convinced himself he needed, or to
+visit Rhangnara and Jing-Xi.
+
+They passed out of the usual flood of people that emerged from the
+class---except among a few people, like Draco, who had a natural talent
+for it, Professor Vector's subject wasn't that popular, and used mostly
+for career advancement---and into a side corridor. Draco had chosen it
+on purpose, so that he could talk to Harry without being overheard.
+
+``Is something wrong?''
+
+Harry's eyes shone anxiously when Draco glanced sideways at him. He
+sighed. \emph{I suppose I'm not the only one who can read someone and
+divine the secrets he's holding back. Or some of the secrets, at least.}
+
+He faced Harry and put a hand on his shoulder. ``I want to know why you
+were writing about a ring,'' he said.
+
+Harry swallowed, but didn't back down and didn't look away, to Draco's
+secret relief. He would have been sure that Harry already had a plan to
+take off on his own if he'd done either of those. ``It was a list of the
+Horcruxes,'' he murmured. ``Where they are, what we know about them, and
+what it'll take to capture them. The ring is going to be the easiest for
+us right now. The wand and the cup are still beyond our reach, unless
+someone knows an easy Rosier-attracting spell they haven't told me. And
+we know what it takes to remove the Sword, and it's a cost I'm unwilling
+to pay.''
+
+``It's a cost that you'll have to pay,'' Draco said, his hand cupping
+Harry's jaw. ``You know that.''
+
+``I know!'' Harry hissed, and jerked away from his touch. \emph{When did
+it become more comfortable for him to avoid that?} Draco wondered, still
+staring into his eyes. ``I know,'' Harry repeated more calmly, ``but
+it's still harder to destroy the Sword than the ring. So I'll hunt the
+ring.''
+
+``Just you?''
+
+Harry gave him an odd look. ``Of course not. I wouldn't go in without
+protection, especially considering that my blood is needed to break the
+Unassailable Curse guarding the ring, and I might bleed to death. I
+would need someone to give me a Blood-Replenishing Potion, at least, and
+someone to face the traps in the house with me, and people to guard my
+back.''
+
+Draco relaxed. At least Harry's madness hadn't taken the track of
+convincing him he needed to act by himself.
+
+``I'm here, Harry,'' he said, daring to duck his head and rub his cheek
+against Harry's, since they were alone. Predictably, Harry tensed up and
+took a tiny step back from him. Draco hid his sadness with a slight
+smile. ``And I'm sure that your sworn companions would be more than
+happy to back you up, and of course Professor Snape won't let you go
+anywhere without him, and Rhangnara and Jing-Xi should be there, since
+they're practically Horcrux experts by now.''
+
+Harry nodded. ``I was thinking of asking all of you to come with me.
+Perhaps also Regulus, since, after all, he does have the most direct
+experience of Horcruxes, and he might be able to note a sign that we'd
+all miss.''
+
+``Good,'' said Draco. ``This weekend, then?'' It was the earliest time
+they could reasonably get away, unless they wanted to stop attending
+class, and it didn't seem that Harry did. He was determined to keep one
+part of his life ordinary, and Draco had encouraged that, fearing he
+would get lost in esoterica otherwise.
+
+``Yes.'' Harry nodded again, with a faint smile. ``Thank you, Draco.''
+
+Draco followed him down the hall, smile plastered on, heart aching. They
+separated near the library, now that Harry was no longer pretending what
+he was studying. Harry gave him another nod that seemed to confirm that,
+yes, they \emph{would} go to the Gaunt shack this weekend, and he would
+make all the necessary arrangements.
+
+Draco watched him go in silence. He had appreciated that Harry would
+need some time to come to terms with his grief for his parents, and with
+the inner darkness he'd inadvertently shown Draco the night Medusa and
+Eos died, and with the trauma of those deaths, and with the knowledge
+about the Horcruxes. He had thought Harry would start trusting him
+again, start confiding in him, soon.
+
+And now it seemed as if Harry were not only not doing that, he'd started
+to hide other things, things that didn't need to be hidden.
+
+And Draco had no idea how to stop it.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``Sit down, Harry.'' Jing-Xi gave him a bright smile and turned back to
+the stack of parchment in front of her, which bore magical terms Harry
+didn't even know the meaning of. ``Thomas and I were just speaking of
+what the best method would be to approach the ring, now that we know
+what guards it.''
+
+Harry let out a little breath of relief and sat down. He had been
+afraid, at first, that Jing-Xi would try to talk him out of going, but
+she spoke as if she had always known that he would approach her and ask
+her about the subject on this day. He studied the motions of her hair in
+the wavering currents of wind and waited until Thomas glanced up and
+noticed him.
+
+His face brightened at once. Harry felt a small pulse of quiet
+satisfaction. Though Thomas still obviously mourned Priscilla, he was
+recovering much faster now that he had a project to immerse himself in.
+
+``Harry,'' Thomas said. ``If I'm right, then we can destroy the ring
+this weekend.''
+
+Harry blinked, and felt a little catch come to his throat.
+``You---you've found some way around the Unassailable Curse that demands
+a willing sacrifice?'' he whispered.
+
+``What?'' Thomas frowned as if at a distant noise, then shook his head.
+``Oh. No.'' Harry swallowed. ``But I can almost guarantee that your
+blood will break the curse that needs the blood of Slytherin to work,
+and once inside we can get past most defensive spells.'' His finger
+traced the edge of some writing on the parchment in front of him, and
+his grin had turned smug. ``We found the spell Voldemort used to require
+sacrifices at last, you see.''
+
+Harry leaned forward. Thomas all but shoved the document into his hand,
+and waited impatiently while he read.
+
+\emph{The Chant of Sacrifice,} the elegant letters at the top said, and
+below that Thomas had written in a moral natural style, copying the
+words out.
+
+\emph{This Unassailable Curse will lock one's possession beyond a ward
+that demands a living sacrifice to break it. Nor can the sacrifice be
+unwilling. The blood of the dead will not work to part this curse, nor
+will a former death that is ``dedicated'' later. The sacrifice must die
+either for love of the person who intends to destroy the possession or
+believing passionately that destroying the possession is the right thing
+to do.}
+
+\emph{The Chant of Sacrifice limits the defensive spells that can be
+used to protect the item; it is such a powerful spell that close
+proximity to it wears down and destroys most lesser magic. Blood-based
+wards are the most common, followed by other Unassailable Curses.
+Attempts to physically destroy the object will not succeed as long as
+the Chant of Sacrifice has not been undone, but, on the other hand,
+defensive spells that rely on common destructive techniques---fire,
+pain, and mental control---cannot be placed in the same room with the
+guarded possession. Therefore, those who use the Chant of Sacrifice are
+best off studying other Unassailable Curses first, or managing to hide
+their possessions in plain sight.}
+
+``That doesn't give him many choices, does it?'' Harry said slowly,
+lifting his head. ``Blood-based wards---but my tie to the blood of
+Slytherin should get us past those. And other Unassailable Curses. I
+suppose there could be more of them in the shack, but---''
+
+``We won't know that there are until we reach the ring,'' said Jing-Xi,
+hair wavering around her faster than normal. Harry noted with quiet
+amusement that her magic had transformed the table almost entirely into
+a construction of amber and pearl, with here and there a gleaming
+rhinestone embedded in it. ``And at least we know that we will not be
+facing compulsive wards, or guardian beasts.''
+
+``It also explains why he just left the Sword of Gryffindor hanging in
+plain sight,'' Thomas broke in. Harry thought he was physically
+incapable of keeping silent any longer. ``We found that spell, too, by
+the way, a variant of the Chant of Sacrifice that can only be undone by
+the object piercing the victim's heart,'' he added as an aside, then
+leaped back to his original topic. ``And the other Horcruxes---well, we
+don't know about the cup, but the wand was hidden in an obscure place
+where no one would think to look for it unless they knew Tom Riddle's
+personal history. Their best protection, though, was the fact that no
+one knew Voldemort had made Horcruxes at all.'' Thomas's teeth gleamed
+as he smiled. ``And we took that away. We're going to destroy him,
+Harry. I promise we will.''
+
+\emph{If someone dies each time.}
+
+Harry rattled the document with the information on the Chant of
+Sacrifice. ``So you're absolutely sure that there's no way around a
+willing sacrificial death as a requirement for destroying each one?''
+
+Thomas hesitated. Jing-Xi leaned forward and whispered in his ear, to
+which he listened, nodding. Then he faced Harry and said, ``We haven't
+found one. And Jing-Xi wants to speak with you for a moment.''
+
+``Of course,'' said Harry, even as his heart began to pound. Thomas
+picked up a book that looked to weigh at least half as much as he did
+and retreated with it into the library shelves. Harry faced Jing-Xi.
+
+He was disturbed to see a ripple of anxiety on her face. Usually, she
+gave the impression that she'd seen the worst the world had to throw at
+her before, and she could control and predict what followed. Now she
+regarded him with that anxiety, and with pity right above it, like light
+dancing on water.
+
+``Harry,'' said Jing-Xi quietly. ``You know that the sooner we destroy
+the Horcruxes, the sooner we can win the war.''
+
+``Yes,'' said Harry, his voice gone hollow. ``Of course.''
+
+``And you know that there are people alive who love you very much,''
+Jing-Xi said, her voice dipping even lower. ``And even more people who
+hate Voldemort, who've lost their homes and families to him. They would
+be willing to die as sacrifices. If not for love of you, to know that
+they're destroying something that would rid the world of him. Ask, and
+you shall receive help from them.''
+
+Harry squeezed his eyes shut.
+
+``It must be done,'' said Jing-Xi, as if she were talking about a nasty
+potion to be taken.
+
+"I \emph{know}," said Harry, and tried to control the impulse to snap
+and flail. He'd \emph{known} about this, he had, and there was no way
+around the Chant of Sacrifice. He was sure that Jing-Xi and Thomas would
+have found it if there was one. What did that leave but giving in and at
+least retrieving the Horcruxes?
+
+There was the worry over whether he could ask someone to give up his or
+her life and not be willing to do it himself, of course, but that would
+sound silly and selfish in the face of simple reality. They needed to
+have the Horcruxes, and they needed to face the consequences and the
+difficulties of destroying them.
+
+\emph{It's Voldemort's fault,} Harry tried to reassure himself.
+\emph{It's his cruelty and his obsession with immortality that caused
+this, not the requirements of my ethics.} He opened his eyes and shook
+his head, focusing on Jing-Xi again. ``I want to try and retrieve the
+ring this weekend, if we can,'' he said.
+
+``Good.'' Jing-Xi gently touched the parchment in front of her. ``Both
+Thomas and I will go with you. We have found ways to counter many common
+and small Unassailable Curses, the ones that Voldemort might have used
+to defend his property. You will allow that?''
+
+``Of course,'' said Harry. He meant it, just as he had when Draco had
+asked him the same thing. "I wouldn't dream of going alone, not when I
+\emph{know} I'll need help and something might happen to me when I break
+the curse that depends on the blood of Slytherin."
+
+``Good,'' Jing-Xi repeated. Then she leaned forward and looked into his
+eyes. Puzzled, Harry let her do it. He knew she wasn't a Legilimens. If
+she were looking for signs of wavering, she wouldn't find them. Harry
+didn't intend to dash off on his own, and in the end he would allow the
+sacrifices to destroy the Horcruxes, because he had to. He had chided so
+many other people in his time for failing to live up to reality; how
+could he break his own standards?
+
+Perhaps she was looking for something else. Harry was confident she
+wouldn't find it. He was as committed to this war as he was to his
+\emph{vates} path, and the worries were hidden away with his grief about
+his parents---not suppressed, because he had promised Henrietta he
+wouldn't suppress them, but private and his.
+
+At last, the Light Lady shook her head and sat back. "Do remember that
+you can come and talk to me about anything that you might \emph{want} to
+talk to me about, Harry," she said, with a slight emphasis on the verb.
+
+``Of course,'' Harry said, still puzzled. ``Thank you for helping us
+with this. You didn't have to.''
+
+Jing-Xi's smile was sorrowful. ``What the other Lords and Ladies forget,
+most of the time, is that we all live in one world,'' she said, ``even
+though that is the very concept of the Pact. A successful Dark Lord in
+Britain will affect the balance of power in Australia, in Mexico, in
+China, in Senegal. We should use our superior knowledge of the magical
+world and our power to help prevent such problems, not handle them when
+it's too late.''
+
+Harry smiled. ``I think I see why we get along so well, my lady.'' He
+kissed her hand and took his leave, to contact his sworn companions and
+confirm their journey this weekend.
+
+SSSSSSSSSS
+
+``But I want to come.''
+
+``No.''
+
+Ever since he had taken the Switching Potion, Connor thought, folding
+his arms, his sole contribution to the war effort seemed to be offering
+help that Harry rejected. Harry at least didn't seem as dismissive of
+Connor's offer to come to the Gaunt shack with him as he had of Connor's
+offer to take the Switching Potion and bear his visions. He was looking
+steadily at Connor, not a piece of parchment, and his eyes were calm,
+even sorrowful. But his face was set, too.
+
+\emph{It shouldn't have to be,} Connor thought. \emph{If Draco is going,
+why can't I go? I want to be there in case there's an Unassailable Curse
+that needs twins to break it.}
+
+That wasn't the whole reason, of course. Mostly, he wanted to spend time
+with his brother, share his danger and his concerns. But Harry didn't
+seem to consider that a good enough reason, so Connor wouldn't offer it.
+
+``Please, Harry?'' he murmured, and tried to keep his voice to the
+mixture of patience and dignity that he imagined Padma had used when she
+was pleading with Parvati's parents. ``It makes sense that I be there. I
+don't have as much direct battle experience as the others, but this is a
+dangerous situation that's not exactly a battle. The perfect way for me
+to become stronger, don't you think, and more acclimated to the war? And
+then you'll know that I can defend myself next time, and you won't be so
+eager to leave me behind.''
+
+``That's not the point, Connor,'' Harry replied calmly. ``The people I'm
+taking along have a special reason to accompany me. I'm not taking along
+Henrietta simply because she's here and wants to help. It's about
+including the people I need, not excluding the ones I don't.''
+
+Connor tossed his head. He couldn't help it. This was just---this was so
+\emph{Harry}, to leave people behind to protect them, even if they
+wanted to come more than anything else in the world. And he thought
+Harry was forgetting that Connor was his brother again, not a child to
+be protected. \emph{I'm fifteen minutes younger than he is, not fifteen
+years.} ``And you don't think you'll need me?''
+
+``Not in this capacity.'' Harry twisted his head to the side for a
+moment. ``Do you think of yourself as not my equal, Connor?''
+
+``What?'' \emph{Trust Harry to derail the argument with a nonsensical
+question.}
+
+``Do you think less of yourself because you can't absorb magic?'' Harry
+continued relentlessly. ``Do you think that you should be able to talk
+to snakes? Or meet with Lords and Ladies from different countries, and
+try to convince them to give help to Britain?''
+
+``Of course not,'' said Connor, growing more and more befuddled. "The
+only thing I've ever \emph{envied} you over is Quidditch. The rest of
+the time, I was either taking you for granted, angry at you, or the wise
+and dignified pillar of maturity I've been since fourth year. The wise
+and dignified \emph{twin} that you're trying to leave at home," he added
+significantly.
+
+``Exactly,'' said Harry, not grasping the hint. ``You can't help me on
+this journey, Connor, but everyone else involved can. They have
+specialized knowledge, or they've sworn oaths to defend me. But that
+doesn't mean I dislike you, or that I don't want you with me. Just that
+your place in the war is different.''
+
+``Tell me when you find it, will you?'' Connor scowled at him.
+
+Harry's face remained entirely, serenely serious. "\emph{You} have to
+find it, Connor," he said. ``Do you want to be a fighter? Train harder
+in defensive magic, and pay attention to the way it's incorporated into
+all our classes now, not just Peter's. Do you want to be someone who
+flies around outside of battles rescuing people? Practice picking up
+more than just the Snitch on your broom. Do you want to be a Healer?
+Study medical magic.''
+
+``I know what I want to do,'' said Connor, wondering why Harry hadn't
+phrased it that way from the beginning. He would have understood much
+more quickly.
+
+``What?'' Harry prompted.
+
+``Be a spy and a fighter both,'' Connor said. ``Watch the land for you,
+scout during battles, and fight when it comes to that.'' He paused.
+``And I think I should learn to master my Animagus form, first of all,''
+he added.
+
+Harry laughed in delight. ``I don't think the Death Eaters will
+anticipate a spying boar,'' he said. ``And, so far as they know, we only
+have three Animagi on our side, since so many people saw my lynx
+transformation in the Great Hall that day. They'll have no reason to
+suspect you.''
+
+``Good.'' Connor stood up straight. ``But you'll let me come with you
+when I've demonstrated that I can help?''
+
+``Yes. Of course. That's the major reason I'm letting Draco come with
+me. He's trained so hard in defensive magic that he's the equal of Bill
+and Charlie now, and he'll be as good as Owen soon if he keeps on at
+this current pace.''
+
+Connor snickered. Harry blinked at him. Connor debated leaving him in
+suspense, and decided that wouldn't be \emph{exactly} fair. ``You look
+so soppy when you talk about Draco,'' he said. ``Your face gets all
+soft, and your eyes go all dreamy.''
+
+Harry promptly flushed. Connor decided he would accept that as adequate
+punishment for leaving him behind. This time.
+
+\emph{And he's only leaving me behind until I become better able to
+defend myself, and him.}
+
+SSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry waited patiently until Owen reappeared in front of them, with a
+slight nod. ``All's quiet around the shack,'' he said. ``And Bill and
+Charlie are under cover now, ready to ambush anyone who tries to ambush
+them.''
+
+``Good,'' said Harry, and reached for Draco's arm. Draco stepped back
+from him with a raised eyebrow. Harry blinked at him.
+
+``I've been practicing Apparition along with curses,'' Draco said, with
+a slight toss of his head. "I could transport \emph{you} there, Harry,
+if I wanted to."
+
+Harry snorted, but didn't do anything to diminish the glow of pride that
+came to his face. Draco deserved to see it. ``Then picture the shack,''
+he said, and glanced at the others with him---Thomas, Jing-Xi, Regulus,
+Snape, and Syrinx. Owen had already Apparated back to the shack to cover
+them as they came in. ``The house, rather than the slope around it. The
+last time we were there, it was a different season, and I doubt it looks
+that way now.''
+
+``The day I need Apparition advice from my son is the day that I will
+give up Apparating,'' Snape said darkly, shutting his eyes.
+
+Harry rolled his own, and then followed the advice, picturing the
+tumbledown shack, and not what had happened the last time they were
+there---Rosier's capture and torture of Draco. Bill and Charlie would
+sound the alarm the moment someone unexpected showed up, and they would
+cast curses where Harry hesitated. It was the whole reason he had had
+them travel ahead.
+
+But no alarms sounded, and the darkness of Apparition swallowed him and
+then cast him out again without a pause. When he looked around, he found
+that their most unexpected company was absolutely huge drifts of leaves,
+which seemed to have blown from up the slope. The trees around the
+dilapidated house were mostly dead. Now, Harry thought he knew why.
+
+Thomas appeared behind him, and then Regulus, and they both turned their
+heads towards the same part of the house. Harry gave a small nod. That
+was the Unassailable Curse that could only be broken by the blood of
+Slytherin. He drew a small knife from his pocket, and looked to Thomas.
+``The wrist, or the arm?''
+
+``The wrist,'' said Jing-Xi, appearing without even a pop and striding
+forward with her magic flaring around her like a floating tapestry. ``It
+will incapacitate you less than a wound on the arm if we need to
+fight.''
+
+Harry nodded, and bent down next to the curse. He felt the others tense,
+and Draco's hand settled on his shoulder and rested there. A moment
+later, Snape's hand did the same thing on his other shoulder. Harry
+fought the impulse to shrug them off. They were doing it to reassure
+him, and themselves. He could put up with being touched by two people
+for that short period of time.
+
+He made a small cut across his left wrist, and then he aimed the wound
+at the knot of the curse. At the same time, he felt Jing-Xi's magic
+rising around him, wrapping the rest of the magic on the shack in a
+soft, cushiony cloud. There would be few defenses but the Chant of
+Sacrifice on the Horcrux itself, but Voldemort had impregnated the walls
+of the shack with many dark spells.
+
+For the moment, of course, it remained to be seen if the Unassailable
+Curse could even be broken.
+
+Harry's blood gleamed, six rich drops, on the dark coil of the curse. A
+moment later, Harry saw a snake flicker into being, its neck arched and
+its eyes slit and its tongue extended---a mimicry of the snake that
+formed the Slytherin crest in Hogwarts. The shape of the serpent drank
+the blood and seemed to consider, head tilted to one side as if
+evaluating the taste. Harry held his breath.
+
+And then the curse fell apart, and the rest of the spells on the house
+came to life, lashing out furiously, trying to destroy the intruders.
+
+Jing-Xi's magic met them, and shielded the people around her. Harry
+could feel her adding more and more substance to the cloud as the
+minutes wore on. Voldemort might not have anticipated that many people
+approaching the house would be Lord-level wizards, but he had known
+about Dumbledore, and the curses were braided and bound on each other to
+such depths that they reinforced each other's effects. Bursts of black
+flame and gouts of lavender lightning leaped at Jing-Xi and were forced
+back, but it took her far more of an effort than it had seemed it would
+at first.
+
+He could help. Harry stepped up beside her, sparing a small
+\emph{Integro} to heal the wound on his wrist, and began to drink the
+magic of the spells. He grimaced as he did---it was Dark Arts---but it
+wasn't as inherently foul as the magic from Voldemort and Death Eaters
+that he had swallowed before. And as he drank, his own magic closed
+around the swallowed power and began to purify and drain it, breaking it
+down like stomach acids, making sure it dwelt more comfortably in his
+body. Harry supposed he was learning how to wield the \emph{absorbere}
+gift, in a way he didn't when he automatically slid the magic into
+another person or a defensive spell.
+
+The final sparks coalesced and died. Jing-Xi stood still, her senses
+extending along with the waving of her hair towards the shack.
+
+``There are no other defensive spells present,'' she said, opening her
+eyes.
+
+Harry let out a relieved breath and started to step forward, but Owen
+and Syrinx got in the way. ``Let us, sir,'' Syrinx murmured, her golden
+hair gleaming as she ducked into the shack.
+
+Harry opened his mouth to protest, then shut it, hard. They were sworn
+companions, and they were doing what a sworn companion was supposed to
+do. It would be hypocritical to protest now. Draco and Snape had moved
+up at his shoulders again, and Draco's hand brushed his back now and
+then, regular as the motion of a pendulum. Reminding him that his life
+was important to more people than just his sworn companions, Harry
+supposed.
+
+He hoped no one would notice the dull flush on his face. Outside battle
+situations, where he could see the necessity of protection, he still
+found this many people focused on his safety uncomfortable.
+
+Syrinx came back out after several interminable moments; Owen had
+remained inside to check for more traps, Harry knew. ``It's perfectly
+safe, sir,'' she said, with a small bow of her head. ``Would you care to
+enter?''
+
+Harry had to bite his tongue again at the formality, and he went inside,
+with Draco and Snape close behind him, Regulus at Snape's shoulder, and
+Thomas and Jing-Xi behind Regulus in turn.
+
+The shack inside was a pair of small rooms, with so much dirt smeared
+into the floor and the walls that it seemed to hover like a living
+presence in the air. Draco promptly began sneezing and muttering a
+complaint about dirt getting on his hair and clothing. Snape was
+impassive, but Harry heard the faint creak as his hand tightened around
+his wand.
+
+And both of them showed no inclination to move away from his shoulders.
+Harry shook his head and looked around the room.
+
+A faint shimmer in a corner caught his attention. When he looked closely
+at it, it didn't quite match the rest of the room---a bend in the wall
+where there shouldn't be one, a shadow where no shadows should fall.
+Harry took a step forward and closed his eyes. Yes, there was magic
+there, though deliberately low-key, nothing to compare to the former
+formidable defenses on the shack.
+
+Harry, remembering what the document had said about only certain
+defensive spells being useful around a Horcrux, opened the wound on his
+wrist with another flick of his knife, and tossed the drops in the
+direction of the shimmer.
+
+There was a loud and long hiss, like a hot iron rod being plunged into
+water, and the illusion vanished. Harry nodded. \emph{It was a
+blood-based ward.}
+
+Beyond it, absurdly beautiful for such a gloomy place, a sapphire-blue
+stone appeared, sitting on the floor. Embedded in it was a heavy golden
+ring. Harry took a few steps closer, being cautious, and made out the
+black stone in the center, carved with a deep line that appeared to be
+the outside of a coat-of-arms. He relaxed. Thomas had said the Peverell
+ring would look like that.
+
+He took another step closer.
+
+A figure appeared between him and the ring.
+
+Harry slammed to a stop. The figure was no ghost, but looked like a
+living wizard, other than a slight transparency. He was small, but
+stolid, with long green robes and a twisting gray beard. His face
+resembled a monkey's in more than one sense. His hands clutched a wand
+and a thick staff twined, like a caduceus, with two serpents facing each
+other.
+
+Harry knew who he was. He'd seen a statue of him before, after all.
+
+``Slytherin,'' he breathed.
+
+The shade of Salazar Slytherin gave him a slow, lazy smile, and moved
+both the wand and staff so that they pointed at him. ``My descendant did
+say that I might have to face intruders someday. I did not know that
+they would manage to break the blood-wards. That you did is interesting.
+Very interesting.'' His voice reminded Harry of Thomas's, but drained of
+all human passion. Where Thomas wanted knowledge for innocent purposes,
+Harry could well imagine Slytherin getting up to dangerous experiments
+for the sake of the knowledge he could gain from them, without caring
+whom he hurt.
+
+``I am, in a sense, your descendant,'' said Harry, the beat of his heart
+increasing. He didn't want to fight Slytherin if he could help it.
+Besides being a Parselmouth, Slytherin had been a dangerous Dark wizard,
+and if the blue stone holding the ring was a ward-stone---as Harry now
+suspected---then he would be at least as strong as the shades of Godric,
+Rowena, and Helga inside Hogwarts. ``My blood could break the ward and
+the curse on the house because of the connection between me and Tom
+Riddle.''
+
+Slytherin laughed. "I'm not a ward, you know, a mindless piece of magic
+that allows you through because of a technicality. I \emph{know} who my
+heir is, and there is only one man in the world that fits that
+description. And he wishes to live forever, to keep my bloodline alive
+in the world forever. I see nothing wrong with that." He hissed
+something, a word that Harry had never heard before, and the snakes
+twined around the staff turned their heads. Beams of blue light broke
+from their eyes, one pair aimed at Draco, the other at Snape.
+
+\emph{He can cast spells in Parseltongue, and not just to command
+basilisks}, Harry thought, reaching out with his \emph{absorbere} gift
+to swallow the blue magic. \emph{I didn't even know that was possible.
+Shit.}
+
+He swallowed the magic, but it was unfamiliar, and sharp, like
+swallowing broken glass. He closed his eyes, ill, and in that moment
+Slytherin hissed something else, and the whole shack seemed to writhe.
+
+``Harry!'' Owen cried out---not in fear, Harry thought, but startlement.
+
+He opened his eyes to see the wooden walls bulging into serpents, with
+short slim bodies and mouths that seemed all fang. He took a step
+forward, and then bent over, shuddering as he cried out. The
+Parseltongue magic he'd swallowed was boiling like poison in his gut,
+rapidly spreading out through the rest of his magic with the heat of
+infection.
+
+``You really should look at what you put in your mouth, instead of
+eating it trustingly,'' Slytherin remarked, a tone of light
+condescension in his voice.
+
+Harry didn't respond. The heat was getting worse, and now it seemed to
+be corroding his magic, breaking it down like some serpent venoms broke
+down the internal organs. The first of the wooden snakes was drawing
+near Syrinx. She chanted the Blasting Curse, and that broke off some of
+the teeth, but not enough, and the teeth flew as splinters, coming close
+to impaling Owen and Regulus.
+
+\emph{I have to expel the magic.}
+
+Harry forced himself to concentrate on that, and not on the danger his
+friends were in. He had to trust them to protect themselves for a
+moment. He picked out the heat of the poison and \emph{spat}, vomiting
+the tainted magic back in Slytherin's general direction.
+
+The shadow flickered and disappeared just as the dark blue light passed
+through it. Harry narrowed his eyes. \emph{So he can be hurt by his own
+magic as transformed by my magic. Perhaps.}
+
+He hissed a command to stop at the snakes, but they ignored him. Harry
+had to disintegrate them instead, which resulted in more splinters, and
+huge puffs of dust, and gaping holes in the walls of the shack. He
+couldn't imagine that Voldemort didn't know about their intrusion by
+now. If he had wards on the shack, they would be clanging like Muggle
+sirens.
+
+Slytherin gave another casual hiss, and Harry felt his legs shifting,
+scales swelling under his skin, his arms slamming close to his sides to
+be swallowed by smoothness. He was being forcibly Transfigured into a
+snake.
+
+Harry leaped in his mind instead, reaching for his Animagus form. The
+well-known lynx shape settled around him, forcing the coils away. Harry
+charged the shade and scraped a paw through him, but Slytherin went
+transparent, and Harry's paw moved through the air where he had been
+without stopping.
+
+Slytherin spat. Harry ducked his head. He felt the burn and spatter of
+what seemed acid on the back of his neck. He shuddered to think of what
+would have happened if he'd been looking Slytherin in the eyes when that
+venom flew.
+
+He estimated the condition of his allies with a quick glance. Minor
+bleeding wounds covered every one of them, and Slytherin could turn his
+attention to them at any moment. Harry was unsure that McGonagall or
+Henrietta could Transfigure someone else back from snake shape if they
+were changed with Parseltongue magic.
+
+\emph{We need to retreat. We know that we can access the shack, now, and
+I speak Parseltongue, so I can learn this magic, if I study it. And I
+suppose there can't be alarm wards, can there, since I drank them when
+Jing-Xi invaded the shack?}
+
+He did pause a moment, to see if Jing-Xi knew something that might
+defeat the Parseltongue, but when her light advanced, Slytherin
+addressed a few annoyed words to it, and it not only stopped but
+vanished altogether.
+
+\emph{Voldemort would have appeared by now to defend his property, I
+think. We'll have another chance. And, in any case, I'm not about to
+have my people killed or hopelessly wounded in a battle that I know we
+can fight another day.}
+
+Harry tried to ignore the little squirm of happiness in his stomach at
+the thought of not losing anyone as a sacrifice to the Horcrux yet, and
+transformed back to human, calling out, ``Apparate!''
+
+They didn't question him, thank Merlin, but simply did it, other than
+Draco. \emph{Of course.} Harry snatched his arm and narrowed his eyes at
+Slytherin, hissing a threat in Parseltongue as they vanished.
+
+He was pleased to see a brief look of shock on the shade's face.
+Slytherin must not have heard him when he tried to command the wooden
+serpents. It seemed to surprise him that Harry was a Parselmouth.
+
+\emph{And I look forward to surprising him even more.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+The world was laughter.
+
+He had known the moment battle was joined at the house that held the
+ring, of course, and had watched from a distance. In fact, it had been a
+simple matter to summon a vision of the shack in the Grand Design of
+pounded blood and flesh on the floor of his burrow. He had the power to
+do that now.
+
+He had seen no reason to interfere. The nasty surprise of Slytherin's
+waiting shade meant that Harry could not fight his way to the ring yet.
+And the defenses on the shack were set to repair themselves when the
+danger was gone. Yes, few defensive spells could be used around a
+Horcrux protected with the Chant of Sacrifice, but blood-based ones were
+permitted, and the blood of Slytherin---the \emph{true} blood of
+Slytherin, not the debased and unnatural connection Harry had with
+him---maintained the ward-stone and would defend its own.
+
+No need to let Harry think he knew about the intrusion. Not yet. Harry
+would come back, doubtless with Parseltongue magic on his own lips.
+
+And Lord Voldemort, the only true Lord Britain would ever know, would be
+waiting to meet him when he did.
+
+His gaze slid sideways, to the Death Eater who crouched next to him,
+silent and obedient as a dog.
+
+\emph{In very good company.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 41*:
+Transportation}\label{chapter-41-transportation}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Thirty-One: Transportation}
+
+Harry closed his eyes. He could picture the incantation in his head, the
+shapes of both the letters and the way his mouth would have to move when
+making the sounds. He held them there firmly, and then said,
+"\emph{Lumos.}"
+
+The word came out in Parseltongue. Harry opened his eyes in triumph and
+watched as a small, bobbing light showed up unsteadily in front of him.
+It only danced for a few moments before winking out, but given that it
+was the first result he had to show after five days of effort, Harry
+thought he was allowed to be proud anyway.
+
+Parseltongue magic was complicated and difficult to learn, and when
+Harry had turned up information on it, he saw why most wizards, even
+Parselmouths, rarely bothered with it. One had to move from the
+instinctive way in which the human mouth formed spells to the ways in
+which the serpentine tongue would form the same incantations---and since
+most spell words didn't have natural Parseltongue equivalents, this
+involved mental and magical effort as well as physical strain. It took a
+long time to work up to the more powerful spells even then.
+
+Harry knew that they didn't have that time. His main purpose was to
+accustom his body to the feeling, sound, sense, and taste of
+Parseltongue magic so that he could swallow it without harm the next
+time he faced Slytherin's shade. More research had convinced him that
+Parseltongue magic was not naturally poisonous to someone with an
+\emph{absorbere} gift; it was only the strangeness of it that had made
+him choke. He could build up a tolerance.
+
+"\emph{Someone comes,}" Argutus, who had been alternately complimenting
+him on and complaining about his pronunciation, said abruptly.
+
+Harry turned and walked up beside the Omen snake, facing the door of the
+classroom he'd chosen. He knew this was a person Argutus didn't like, or
+he would have hissed a greeting. Instead, his body coiled back on itself
+and his tail lashed, an impressive sight now that he had reached more
+than six feet. Harry stroked the milky-mirrored scales to calm him.
+
+The door opened, and Michael slipped in.
+
+Harry frowned. He hadn't had wards up to protect the room, because he
+knew he wouldn't advance into dangerous spells and someone else needed
+to be able to fetch him quickly if an attack happened, but it still
+showed a lamentable lack of caution on Michael's part that he'd simply
+entered without at least knocking or calling out first, or testing for
+guard spells.
+
+``What is it?'' Harry asked.
+
+``I wanted to talk to you.''
+
+Harry concealed his feeling that this was wasting time, and nodded. One
+more stroke served to calm Argutus down, or at least make him feel as if
+there was something interesting on the other side of the room he should
+look at. Harry nodded to one of the two chairs he'd intended to practice
+minor hexes on, if he managed to progress that far. ``Sit down.''
+
+``I'll stand, thanks.'' Michael crossed his arms and stood a distance
+from him, staring. Harry breathed in and out, and reminded himself that
+he had no right to feel irritated. Michael had lost his mother and baby
+sister because he'd trusted to Harry's promises to protect them,
+promises he hadn't been able to keep. He would still be grieving. It was
+only a little more than a month since Medusa and Eos had died.
+
+Harry himself still felt the wound, but he had no time to dwell on it.
+Sometimes he wondered if there was an injury deep inside him, like the
+mark a dragon's claw would make across a tree, and if it grew worse
+every time he heard about a death. He hoped not. A wound deep enough in
+a tree eventually made it fall.
+
+``What did you want to speak with me about?'' he asked, when it seemed
+that Michael wouldn't volunteer the information on his own.
+
+``The fact that you still haven't made me a sworn companion and accepted
+my oath back,'' said Michael lowly.
+
+``Part of that has to do with your attack on Liane's family, you know,''
+Harry pointed out.
+
+Whatever else Michael might have expected out of him, it, too obviously,
+hadn't been that. He blinked and stepped backwards. ``You think I
+attacked them because I hated them?'' he asked.
+
+``What was the reason?''
+
+``I was trying to protect you,'' Michael snapped. ``To show that I
+wouldn't let your attackers go unpunished. But obviously you valued
+their lives more than you valued the lives of my mother and sister,
+since you protected them better.''
+
+Harry controlled his impulse to snap. \emph{This war isn't all about
+you, remember? Your efforts aren't the only thing that will end it, and
+other people's grief is no less than your own.} ``I am sorry for what
+happened,'' he said.
+
+``Sorry won't bring them back.''
+
+``Neither will your becoming a sworn companion.''
+
+Michael's eyes glittered. ``That's true,'' he said. ``But I could at
+least be a voice of conscience, warning you against mistakes that might
+cost other lives.'' He leaned forward and studied Harry for a moment.
+``You've lost too many so far, haven't you? Mr. Bulstrode. My---my
+mother and my sister.'' He choked on the words, but didn't let them
+delay him long. ``Your parents. Not to mention those who've disappeared
+in the past few weeks.''
+
+Harry nodded tightly. They had finally noticed a pattern of
+disappearances in both the magical and the Muggle worlds that
+undoubtedly connected to Voldemort seizing victims. They simply
+vanished, however, and Harry had not been able to discover their fates,
+even the one night he deliberately went without the potion that would
+suppress the visions. Voldemort had simply ignored the opportunity to
+strike at him. That told Harry he was preparing some great plan.
+
+\emph{Drain them of their magic, and---what?}
+
+``You can't protect all of them,'' said Michael, in a patronizing tone.
+"My brother keeps telling you that. But you can protect more of them
+than you have so far. I could be the one who reminds you to do that.
+Owen and the others are too caught up in what you are, and their notion
+of how much you've suffered, to talk to you that way. \emph{I'm} not.
+I'm a living representative of the suffering."
+
+``If that is true,'' said Harry, trying not to show how much those words
+affected him, ``then why did you want to attack Liane's family and
+continue the suffering? They had lost a child.''
+
+``Much as I may dislike you,'' Michael said, "you are still our best
+chance for winning this war. People who cause their own suffering
+\emph{just} to get at you are not people I wish to resemble."
+
+``And does that mean you wouldn't do what I ask of you, if I did make
+you a sworn companion again?'' Harry asked. ``That you would attack
+people I asked you to spare? That's worse than useless, for both of us.
+You would have no loyalty to anything but your own cause, the way you do
+now. I don't see why placing a scar on your arm would be a good thing.''
+
+``It would remind others of my closeness to you,'' said Michael, his
+voice clipped. ``It would give me something back in common with my twin.
+It would confer a sense of legitimacy on my reminders to you of your
+duty, which I don't have as long as others simply see me as an
+interfering busybody. It would ease my pain and help prevent it in the
+future, but I can completely see why you don't wish to place the scar
+there. After all, that would disturb your attention from your intense
+focus on your self-pity.'' He whirled and strode towards the door.
+
+Harry opened his mouth to call him back, but Argutus hissed, attracting
+his attention. "\emph{I don't like the way you smell when you're with
+him.}" The Omen snake's tail was lashing back and forth hard enough to
+hit the wall. "\emph{You smell guilty and self-loathing and glad to
+hurt. Don't talk to him.}" He flowed over to Harry and up his body,
+coiling over his chest and draping his head on the side of Harry's neck,
+flicking out his tongue to taste his skin. "\emph{You already smell too
+guilty and self-loathing and glad to hurt.}"
+
+``But that would be what could change,'' Harry told Argutus quietly,
+stroking his neck as he watched the closing door. ``He could tell me
+when I'm feeling too much that way, and pull me back to reality.''
+
+He wheezed a bit as Argutus's coils tightened, showing just a hint of
+the immense strength that would crush his enemies, and did crush his
+prey. "\emph{I would do that,"} said Argutus insistently. "\emph{Draco
+would do that. The potions-smelling one would do that. Don't rely on
+him. We will all do it, and hurt you less.}"
+
+Harry considered that for a moment, then nodded. If it was true that he
+couldn't forget about the war and what it cost other people, then it was
+also true that he couldn't do stupid things just to indulge one person.
+And associating with Michael would get them both hurt in the end,
+fueling Michael's admitted dislike and his own liking for censure and
+blame. It could easily become the situation with the monitoring board
+all over again, with Harry using Michael as an excuse to cage himself
+up.
+
+\emph{I can't afford that. The limits I put on myself have to be ones
+that I put there because they're necessary, not to please other people.
+I'm giving both Draco and Snape some space from my more unusual emotions
+and sparing myself pain because I know they'd argue against them, for
+example, but it would be wrong if I was doing it just because I thought
+that was what they'd like best.}
+
+He shook his head and turned back to practice the Parseltongue magic
+again, but had to pause as a second person knocked on the door. His
+astonishment increased when a silver-haired woman entered, one he didn't
+recognize, with a girl he vaguely did by her side.
+
+``Adrienne?'' he asked, studying the girl. He thought this was the same
+Veela representative, cousin of Millicent's husband-to-be Pierre, who
+had come to visit him in Woodhouse and tell him the Veela Council mostly
+supported him.
+
+``Yes. You recognized me.'' She gave him a dazzling smile and strode
+across the floor to take his hand, seemingly refusing to be disconcerted
+by the enormous snake twined around him. Harry, in turn, tried to ignore
+the shimmer of the webs that bound her. She willingly went under those
+webs, Adrienne had told him once, when she traveled abroad. ``I am glad.
+This is my cousin Roxane.'' She turned and nodded to the woman just
+behind her. ``She only speaks French, but we have cast a translation
+spell.''
+
+``Hello,'' said Roxane, whose eyes were intent and searching his
+for---Harry didn't know what. They seemed to find it, however, and after
+a moment she relaxed.
+
+``What can I do for the Veela Council?'' Harry asked, wondering how he
+would balance whatever they might want of him among his other duties.
+But he would have to do it, whatever it was. That was the way he
+\emph{needed} to proceed in this war, lest he become too much of a
+\emph{vates} or too much of a killer.
+
+``We have come to offer you help,'' said Adrienne gently, ``not the
+other way around. We are sure that you must have too many people asking
+you for help as it is, and of course your first allegiance must be to
+Britain. Roxane can tell you more, however, as she is the official
+representative of the Council, and thus jealous of her prerogative.''
+She bowed her head and stepped aside.
+
+Roxane had a small frown on her face, as if she didn't approve of
+Adrienne's teasing, but she started explaining as soon as Harry looked
+at her. ``We will offer transportation out of the country to those
+humans or magical creatures who cannot stay and fight the war, or who
+wish to flee. We can describe Apparition locations in France to human
+wizards, and homes willing to receive them. For the magical creatures,
+we will have ships waiting in the Channel.''
+
+Harry stared in spite of himself, then shook his head. ``And the French
+Ministry approves of this?'' he whispered.
+
+``The ships are our own.'' Roxane folded her arms. ``They have nothing
+to do with them, approving them or disapproving of them. But yes, they
+have agreed to shelter those English wizards who may come to them and
+have no relative or friend to stay with.''
+
+"\emph{Thank} you," Harry breathed, feeling his chest go tight.
+
+Adrienne smiled at him. ``When Millicent summoned Pierre, we knew things
+were growing bad in the Islands,'' she said. ``And now we learn what you
+face, and that makes the notion of escape more urgent, not less. We will
+transport anyone who asks for it, Harry. We ask only that you spread the
+message.''
+
+Harry hesitated a moment, wondering if he should involve the Ministry.
+On the one hand, they needed to spread the message so that people would
+know they stood a chance of fleeing; on the other hand, they didn't want
+Voldemort to discover enough information to interfere and strike at the
+helpless ships.
+
+In the end, he decided, reluctantly, that he would have to approach the
+Ministry. There were people who would listen to them if they spoke about
+this, people who would think Harry was lying. And the Light purebloods
+or frightened citizens, as much as the ones who followed him, deserved
+to know about the opportunity of sanctuary.
+
+Of course, that didn't mean he had to talk to Juniper directly.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Aurora stared at the owl in front of her. The owl stared back, and then
+hooted softly, as if to say that she didn't appreciate the stare, and
+someone had \emph{better} remove the message from her leg soon.
+
+Aurora did, though she kept a careful eye on the great white bird's
+enormous talons. This was Harry's personal bird. She wouldn't put it
+past him to have told the owl to claw her.
+
+The owl simply shook her feathers as the letter was taken off her foot,
+though, and then waited. Aurora opened the envelope.
+
+\emph{September 22nd, 1997}
+
+\emph{Dear Madam Whitestag:}
+
+\emph{We have never been the best of friends, but that does not mean we
+stand on opposite sides of the fence. You once aspired to be my
+conscience when I asked you to, and then accepted that you could not be
+and retreated when I asked for that. You know something about voluntary
+limitations. I cannot believe that you follow even Juniper blindly. You
+are too smart for that.}
+
+\emph{I wanted to tell you that the Veela Council has offered sanctuary
+for magical creatures and humans who wish to flee to France. They will
+have ships waiting for the magical creatures, and people who can
+describe Apparition locations for the wizards. Of course, if too much
+detail is given out, Voldemort may attack, but I think the message is
+still worth passing. My main concern is that if only I announce it,
+there will be people who need the sanctuary and don't flee because they
+don't believe me.}
+
+\emph{Please announce this. You may tell Acting Minister Juniper that
+you heard of this directly from the Veela Council themselves, if you
+think that will work. They can send a representative to meet with you,
+and that will both strengthen the lie and make it seem as if the Veela
+are willing to work with the British Ministry.}
+
+\emph{If you do nothing, then I will approach someone else in the
+Ministry. I sent this letter to you first not because everything depends
+on you, but because I believed you the most reasonable and moderate
+member of the Order of the Firebird.}
+
+\emph{Yours,}
+
+\emph{Harry} vates.
+
+Aurora laid the letter slowly on the desk, and stared at the snowy owl.
+``I suppose he wants an answer?'' she whispered.
+
+The owl bobbed her head, golden eyes bright, and held out a leg as if
+she thought that Aurora had one right then. Aurora sat back, though, and
+then turned to face the wall. It was easier if she didn't have to look
+at the parchment or the bird, both of which seemed to expect things of
+her that she wasn't sure she could give.
+
+``What can I do?''
+
+And then she closed her eyes, because, no matter where her allegiances
+might lie or what oaths she might have sworn, she knew there was only
+one right thing to do. She would have to tell Erasmus that the Veela
+Council was willing to offer transportation, and offer whatever flattery
+or polite lies might make him think that his own diplomatic brilliance
+had won their cooperation. He would reject the idea of the announcement
+out of hand if he thought this came from Harry.
+
+\emph{Our people deserve to know about this chance, no matter if they
+trust Erasmus or Harry. He's right about that.}
+
+But it told on her, it wore on her, it ate at her, that it would have to
+be a lie, and that there was no chance of telling Erasmus that the
+\emph{vates} had a good idea. Aurora had ideals of fairness too strong
+for her own good, sometimes. People should know the truth, whether it
+was good or evil, and someone heroic should earn credit for his actions.
+She had wanted everyone to know that Harry had killed her children when
+that was the most important factor, when they would have forgotten about
+it and honored him as the hero of the Battle of Hogwarts otherwise, and
+she would want everyone to know that Harry had earned the Veela
+Council's support now.
+
+But she had grown used, in the last few months, to accepting that what
+she \emph{wanted} to happen rarely happened, and it could not be allowed
+to stand in the way of a greater good.
+
+\emph{And if you think that a greater good sometimes isn't one? What
+happens if you change your mind later?}
+
+That was what had happened to her and some of Erasmus's ideas. She had
+supported the legislation against Dark magic, because she \emph{had} to.
+She had let it pass, hadn't she? That meant she had to support it, had
+to believe in it.
+
+But in the last week or so, she had changed her mind conclusively about
+that. It was a bad idea to ban the Dark Arts in the middle of the war
+and send a substantial portion of the population fleeing into the arms
+of their enemy. Not every Dark wizard would trust Harry to protect their
+interests, since he also used Light magic and served Light wizards. So
+they had gone to Voldemort. Or some of them had, anyway, according to
+rumor, and some was still too many.
+
+She had a chance to make up for that, she hoped, at least a little, if
+she convinced Erasmus to make Harry's announcement.
+
+In the end, she turned around, wrote a letter assuring Harry that she
+would get Erasmus to announce this one way or the other, and sent it
+back with the snowy owl. The bird flew off eagerly, as if she didn't
+want to stay in the Ministry one moment longer than necessary. Aurora
+snorted in spite of herself. She understood the feeling.
+
+``That was the owl of a friend of ours, wasn't it?''
+
+Aurora spun, her heart loud and insistent in her throat. She couldn't
+believe that she hadn't heard the door to her office open, or the
+approach of the wizard who stood there now, evaluating her with calm
+eyes. Cupressus Apollonis smiled and leaned against the doorframe.
+Aurora locked eyes with him, waiting for him to call out for the Acting
+Minister and get her damned for cooperation with the \emph{vates.}
+
+``I asked you a question,'' said Cupressus at last.
+
+Aurora stiffened her shoulders, a surge of nervous, angry defiance
+striking up her spine. \emph{If he wants to condemn me, at least he can
+do it for something I actually did.} ``Yes, it was,'' she said.
+
+And Cupressus smiled, and closed the door behind him.
+
+Aurora stared at it for long moments. Cupressus Apollonis was currently
+the most confusing person in her immediate vicinity.
+
+\emph{Although I come close myself,} she thought, and tried to calm her
+conflicting feelings, and stood to take the message to Erasmus. She
+would do what she could to honor the principles she believed in, but
+surely, by now, it was too late to completely change her allegiance.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Narcissa picked up the heavy stone cup and studied it intently. If she
+could not locate the writing she believed to be on it, then she was
+inclined to agree with Regulus; it would make a good gift for Harry, as
+it automatically purified whatever drink or food rested in it from
+poison.
+
+But then she saw the letters incised near the bottom of the cup, and
+shook her head, handing it back to Regulus. ``This is another of those
+treasures that can be used only by someone of Black blood,'' she said.
+``We may send it to Draco, but Harry's legal heir status is not enough
+to protect him. Otherwise, the drink or food set in the cup will turn to
+poison instead.''
+
+Her cousin scowled, his face reminding Narcissa forcefully of a time
+when he'd been seven years old and just discovered that he wasn't
+allowed to tag along with his older brother and play the games that
+Sirius did. ``Damn,'' he muttered, reluctantly taking the cup. "If only
+our ancestors hadn't been so insistent that \emph{blood} was the true
+measure of someone's worth, instead of magic or character\ldots{}"
+
+Narcissa concealed a smirk as she stepped away from Regulus. He knew as
+well as she did that most of the ancient pureblood families had been the
+same way. If they discovered relatively few treasures that could help
+Harry, it was more the fault of a common perception in the wizarding
+world than the Blacks themselves.
+
+Regulus mournfully set the cup down among the large pile of objects they
+would have to hesitate about using, and then paused before he turned to
+the next one he'd retrieved and needed to evaluate, a gold-framed
+mirror. ``Narcissa?'' he asked softly.
+
+She blinked. That tone in his voice meant something more than a question
+about whether or not she remembered this Black treasure from her
+childhood. ``Yes?''
+
+He twisted around to face her. And, to her astonishment, she realized
+that it was \emph{concern} in his eyes, not a need for reassurance.
+``How are you doing?'' he asked. ``With the loss of Lucius, with the
+fact that your son will be a major target for the Death Eaters, since
+he's Harry's lover? Can you bear it?''
+
+Narcissa looked down at her clasped hands. She had hoped no one would
+ask her this question, even Harry, even her son. Knowing that someone
+else had noticed her problems made her more likely to break and confess
+them.
+
+But, after a moment, the surge of prickling tears behind her eyelids
+went away, and she took a deep breath and lifted her head. ``I am a
+Black and a Malfoy,'' she said. "I bear them because I must, because I
+know that worse things will come of not carrying them. I might hesitate
+when I see Lucius across the battlefield, for example, and believe so
+strongly that he can be redeemed that I let him hurt others. That is
+what happened to Harry when Voldemort brought him along to Malfoy Manor.
+And I might begin to believe that my son \emph{will} die, instead of its
+simply being likely. I might forget that he has the protection and love
+of the second strongest wizard in Britain. I would not want to forget
+those things. I live in reality, Regulus, not in a misty dream-world.
+And so I simply live with the horrible things."
+
+Regulus studied her a moment, eyes brooding. Then he said, ``I never
+planned to have children, you know.''
+
+Narcissa said nothing. She had not known what ran through Regulus's mind
+when he joined the Death Eaters. She had assumed he did it mostly to
+please his parents, Capella and Canopus, whom he feared would disown him
+otherwise. He had not been exceptionally brave, then, Regulus. He had
+been the spoiled Slytherin scion of a Dark pureblood family, and even if
+he was gentler and more humorous than most people would have been in
+that position, he could not escape the shadow of his upbringing.
+
+``But I never planned to spend more than a decade as a dog, either.''
+For a moment, Regulus's lips curled in a bitter smile, but it was gone
+so quickly that Narcissa, as ever, was unsure how much his long
+imprisonment and torture had affected him. ``And now I find myself with
+a son, a legal heir, who has a high chance of not surviving the war.''
+
+He focused on her again, and his smile turned melancholy. ``I suppose I
+was looking for some advice on having a child in a dangerous world.
+That's all.''
+
+Narcissa's shoulders relaxed. She could deal with this better than she
+could with someone asking her, specifically, how she was.
+
+``One lives with it,'' she said simply. ``Thinks about other things when
+possible, and grows used to the knowledge that part of oneself is out in
+the world, enduring danger, perhaps to be burned. Rather like being
+unable to extract your hand from a cup of boiling water, when I think of
+it.''
+
+Regulus studied her for a moment longer, and then nodded. ``Thank you,''
+he said, though Narcissa wasn't sure what, if anything, in her words had
+managed to comfort him. He turned and picked up the mirror. ``And do you
+remember anything about this particular piece from our loving
+childhood?''
+
+Narcissa applied herself to answer, grateful that he wouldn't be
+pursuing the subject any further.
+
+Yes, it was like having her hand in a cup of water which might begin to
+boil at any moment. Draco was in danger every moment he breathed, now,
+when a Death Eater might kill him on Voldemort's orders or for a taste
+of glory. And of course he had been in keener danger before this, when
+he suffered at Voldemort's hands, or the hands of Evan Rosier.
+
+But Narcissa had fought Lucius and her own protective tendencies and the
+weight of all the pureblood dances and Harry's enemies for Draco to have
+the right to make his own choices. She could not rail against the
+consequences now simply because his choices involved some danger.
+
+\emph{One bows one's head. One endures.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 42*: Whose Whole Life's Love Goes
+Down}\label{chapter-42-whose-whole-lifes-love-goes-down}
+
+This chapter is titled after a line from what is probably the grandest
+(and saddest) of Swinburne's poems, ``The Triumph of Time'': ``I will
+say no word that a man might say/ Whose whole life's love goes down in a
+day.''
+
+Also, \textbf{big freaking honking cliffhanger warning.}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Thirty-Two: Whose Whole Life's Love Goes Down In a Day}
+
+Harry lay back on their bed, smiling slightly as he stroked Argutus.
+Draco had fallen asleep, exhausted after yet another day of hard
+training. Their soft hissing didn't tend to wake him up when he was
+snoring like that, though Harry knew better than to move; Draco would
+move after him and drape an arm across his chest again, until they
+finally fell off the bed.
+
+"\emph{So we go to the den tomorrow,}" said Argutus, and curled closer
+to Harry. Ever since he had learned that another wizard who spoke
+Parseltongue lived there, he had refused to call it a ``house,'' though
+he could; he'd insisted that where a snake-speaker lived must be a den.
+"\emph{And you will win because you have me with you.}"
+
+``Smug one,'' Harry responded, running one finger under the Omen snake's
+chin and down his throat as far as he could reach. Argutus let out a
+hiss that left his tongue fluttering in the air for a long moment. Harry
+liked to think of it as his version of a purr. "\emph{Such} a smug one."
+
+"\emph{I will make the difference,}" said Argutus, and laid his head
+down, turning so that his mouth was buried in his coils. "\emph{You
+would have won the first time if you had had me with you.}"
+
+Harry chose to shut his eyes instead of replying. He knew that tomorrow
+would be hard. Just because he could swallow Parseltongue magic now
+didn't mean that he expected Slytherin to give up and accept it tamely.
+And he knew that Voldemort might come. That he hadn't appeared the first
+time to defend his property gave Harry hope, but also made him
+suspicious. Surely, even if his wards had been so thoroughly disrupted
+that first time that he hadn't sensed the intrusion, Slytherin would
+still have repaired the breach and told him.
+
+\emph{Not that it matters,} Harry thought, as sleep gripped him and
+began to tow him out to sea with warm hands. \emph{We'll still do battle
+in the shack, because we have to. And I may yet surprise Tom.}
+
+As well as the Parseltongue magic, he'd been practicing with his
+\emph{absorbere} gift. Voldemort probably knew the tricks he had
+discovered, but he didn't know that Harry knew them.
+
+\emph{And if comes near me with his stolen magic, then I am going to
+steal it away from him in turn.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry studied the group of people who waited behind him carefully. They
+were eight: his four sworn companions, Draco, Snape, Regulus, and
+Narcissa, who, this time, didn't seem content to sit back while her son
+went into danger she might be able to help with. Thomas was busy, once
+again, researching ways they might be able to destroy the Horcrux
+without a willing sacrifice once they had captured it, and Jing-Xi had
+again been called back to China. Harry could hardly blame her. She was a
+\emph{true} Lady, one who cared for her people, and when they needed
+her, she went to them. It was incredibly generous of her to give him as
+much time as she did.
+
+Connor had begged hard to come, and so, oddly, had Michael. Harry had
+turned them both down, Michael for the obvious reason and Connor because
+he hadn't yet achieved his Animagus form. His twin's face had gone
+stubborn when Harry said that, and he'd hurried out of the room. Harry
+hoped he was on his way to study.
+
+Michael had sneered and stomped off. Harry hoped he wasn't causing more
+problems between him and his twin, but until and unless Owen complained,
+he would just have to assume that he wasn't. He simply had too much to
+do to worry about \emph{potential} problems.
+
+``Stay back, all of you,'' he cautioned them. ``Argutus and I---'' he
+touched the head of the Omen snake, who was twined around his body in
+looping coils "---have to be the ones to fight Slytherin. If you can
+help, then take an opportunity to do so, and of course you can defend
+yourself from any spells he casts. But don't interfere thinking that
+you'll help us if you do. I can almost guarantee that you \emph{won't}
+help us."
+
+``Yes, Harry,'' said Draco, with a meekness in his tone that Harry
+didn't believe for a moment.
+
+Snape merely snorted, his dark eyes reflecting that he'd interfere
+whenever he damn well pleased. Likewise, Regulus and Narcissa looked
+unimpressed. Harry concealed a sigh, and hoped they'd let him do when he
+needed to do.
+
+``Let's go,'' he said, turning forward.
+
+Once again, Bill and Charlie Apparated in before them, and both Owen and
+Syrinx went to scout this time. Harry waited, quietly poised. He
+half-expected a warning that Voldemort was there, and half-expected them
+not to come back at all.
+
+It was odd, how calmly he could think of that. Perhaps it was the
+hurrying of his heart in his ears over \emph{everything}, Harry thought.
+He was thinking now of what would happen when they captured the Horcrux,
+how the end of that was not the end, of how they would need to sacrifice
+someone to destroy it. Compared to that, a death he did not truly expect
+to happen seemed a small thing.
+
+He was tense, coiled, floating, not quite there. The closer they came to
+capturing the ring, the closer they came to---
+
+To something that Harry truly wondered if he had the strength to step
+aside and let happen.
+
+``Nothing there,'' said Owen quietly, appearing with a muted
+\emph{crack} in front of them. ``Come ahead.''
+
+Harry nodded and closed his eyes. He heard Argutus's smooth hiss of
+delight as they Apparated. The Omen snake had grown to like it, though
+perhaps only because he experienced it so rarely. Unlike the other time
+he had come along when they approached the shack---the time that Evan
+Rosier had managed to seize Draco---he did not slither off into the
+underbrush to investigate, though Harry saw from his wildly flicking
+tongue that he would have liked to. He stayed wound around Harry's body,
+and Harry turned to face the shack.
+
+He saw at once that the Unassailable Curse that depended on the blood of
+Slytherin had not been repaired, and neither had the dark curses that
+had prevented simple entrance to the house last time. Harry smirked
+slightly. Either Voldemort truly did not know, or Slytherin had tried to
+repair them and failed. This \emph{could} be a trap, of course, but it
+was an extremely risky one, given that Voldemort was taking the chance
+of losing one of the Horcruxes that guaranteed his immortality. And no
+matter how Harry stretched his senses, he could not sense the presence
+of a single ward. \emph{Yes, he is taking a chance, thinking that he'll
+simply know when we appear, and be able to anticipate it and leave
+whatever he's doing at the time.}
+
+Of course, true common sense would have required Voldemort to move the
+Horcrux once he realized they had figured out the secret of Slytherin's
+guardianship. But Voldemort had never been that practical. Once he chose
+something---whether it was a hiding place or a symbolic day of attack or
+a vessel for a Horcrux---he tended to root himself there and cling to
+it. Harry was grateful for it. It made him much easier to defeat.
+
+``Follow me,'' he said, and slipped into the house, holding the door
+open as the others followed him.
+
+He frowned as he watched their shadows ripple across the floor, and then
+realized what the strangeness came from. Narcissa, Snape, and Draco all
+had regular, human shadows, but the one that followed Regulus was still
+a Grim. It made it seem as if Death herself were following them into the
+house, but Harry knew the cause. He had no reason to feel so nervous.
+
+\emph{Except that one}, he thought, as he focused on the ring planted in
+what he now realized was an anchor-stone, to bind a shade, not a
+ward-stone. Merlin alone knew where Voldemort had found one. The ones
+binding the shades of the Founders had been placed in Hogwarts's roots
+before they became so rare, but this sapphire was a treasure, whether
+Voldemort had discovered it in an ancient tomb or some place more
+prosaic.
+
+There was no blood-ward in front of it, either. Harry took a deep
+breath, the possibility that this might be a trap surging to the front
+of his mind.
+
+But he could not forsake the pursuit of this Horcrux now. He simply had
+to take his chances and do what he could to outface it and outfight it.
+
+He felt Argutus squeeze reassuringly around him. Harry hissed out a
+greeting to Slytherin and Voldemort both, if he was listening, and then
+took a step forward.
+
+Instantly, the shade was between him and the ring. Slytherin's eyes
+darted over Argutus, and he smiled, once, in contempt.
+
+``A Light snake, boy?'' he asked. ``Even if you can speak the proper
+language of a Dark wizard, such a serpent will not help you.'' He aimed
+his wand and staff again, and hissed the same command that he'd used
+before, which Harry could now vaguely understand as ``Light eyes.'' The
+serpents began to aim their heads at Harry's friends, and he could see
+their eyes glowing blue.
+
+Harry opened up his \emph{absorbere} gift.
+
+This time, he did not merely make it a flexible gullet leading back into
+his own magic, the way he had all the other times he'd used it. He
+envisioned a pack of hungry mouths all around him, and they took form,
+wide-stretched jaws with the misty bodies of serpents trailing back from
+them. They swarmed Slytherin, mouths opening and closing with a metallic
+sound, pulling eagerly at the Parseltongue magic. A snake could consume
+it without trouble.
+
+Slytherin made a loud, startled sound, which disrupted his blue light
+spell. Harry moved forward, and the battle was joined in earnest.
+
+Slytherin hissed another incantation, and the floor at his feet became a
+pit, from which vipers began to flow. Harry's snakes swung and closed in
+on them. Fangs snapped and tore, ripping heads from slender red bodies.
+The vipers tried to bite and poison Harry's serpents, but they were
+magical, and their existence depended on the whim of his will. When
+Harry imagined them flickering out of danger and then firming
+again---their steel teeth were the only things that couldn't vanish,
+since he needed the open mouths to absorb Slytherin's magic---they did
+so, and the vipers were left swaying in midair and looking foolish in
+the moment before they were decapitated.
+
+Harry felt the magic flooding him, rich and dark as soil swarming with
+worms underground. He understood, now, after some study, why
+Parseltongue was considered such a Dark gift. It bespoke vague memories
+of a time when Parselmouths like Slytherin had wielded magic that no one
+else could---always Dark. Speaking to snakes in and of itself was almost
+a neutral gift. What that gift allowed its owners to do was not.
+
+Jing-Xi's magic had stopped short of working against Slytherin for an
+excellent reason. Nothing Light could touch that power.
+
+Harry had suspected that Argutus would not be able to help him during
+the battle itself, and so it proved. Every darting strike he made
+resulted, at best, in a viper dodging out of the way and coming in
+behind him. At last, Argutus simply clung to Harry's neck and torso and
+reflected spells that would otherwise be invisible in his scales.
+
+"\emph{He's calling up a spell that looks like a cobra behind you!}" he
+called authoritatively, when Harry's attention was so fixed on the shade
+he hadn't looked around in some time. "\emph{And now there's a boa
+dancing down the wall, aiming for Draco. Tell him to lift his wand and
+fend it off with a Dark shield. They won't respect it otherwise.}"
+
+Harry tossed his head back and called out the message to Draco, hoping
+like hell it was in English, then fixed on Slytherin again. The man had
+finally run out of serpents, and though he had tried some of the same
+spells he had when he first faced Harry, including spitting the
+acid-venom at his eyes, none of them had worked. Now Harry's snakes
+faced him, jaws champing up and down, hungry to swallow more magic, and
+Harry's own power had grown, swelling until it almost filled the front
+room of the small shack. Slytherin was watching him with a look of
+absolute hatred.
+
+``You cannot take this ring from me,'' he breathed. "My blood
+\emph{owns} it. And you are not of my blood. You cannot replace my
+descendant if you kill him."
+
+``At this point,'' Harry said, ``I don't really care.'' He didn't know
+if they were conversing in English or Parseltongue, and he didn't care
+about that, either. He wanted the ring. Slytherin was in the way. ``You
+can, I suppose, step aside and survive that way. I won't destroy the
+anchor-stone. But I will have the ring.''
+
+"\emph{No.}"
+
+Harry shrugged slightly. ``Suit yourself.''
+
+And he sent the swarm of serpents forward, eating greedily at the magic
+that surrounded the shade---including the magic that maintained
+Slytherin in this form. Argutus let out a hiss that sounded like a
+cheer.
+
+Slytherin did not die easily. He stamped on and crushed the heads of
+many of the little snakes, and many of his spells attained half-life,
+sparking and spitting over the heads of Harry's creations. But though he
+was an accomplished Dark wizard and a Parselmouth, he was not an
+\emph{absorbere}. That gift must have entered the Gaunt line---the
+Slytherin line---after his time.
+
+Harry swallowed. For the first time that he could remember, he didn't
+feel guilty about doing so. He consumed the magic as if it were food
+offered at a feast, and remembered that the shade of Slytherin would
+have destroyed him if he could have. His snakes took chunk after chunk
+of magic, and it flowed through their bodies and came to him, and he ate
+it and grew stronger, and that enabled him, in turn, to send stronger
+serpents forward.
+
+Slytherin let out a noise that sounded like a scream of frustration.
+Then he clasped his hands together and fell into a long chant, ugly with
+twining sounds like mating rattlesnakes.
+
+Harry made two of the snakes climb his legs and tear into the intangible
+flesh of him. His legs vanished, and the snakes fell back to the floor,
+but the damage was done, the spell disrupted. Slytherin's eyes snapped
+open, and he stared at where his limbs had been, before lifting his head
+and staring at Harry with an expression that, for the first time, showed
+true fear.
+
+``You would destroy the last bit of me,'' he whispered. ``The last
+remnant of me.''
+
+Harry didn't bother answering as two more of his serpents grew flaps of
+skin like kites around their heads. They soared upward in dizzying
+spirals and locked their fangs on either side of Slytherin's face. A
+bite inward, and another bite inward, and they scooped out the flesh of
+his cheeks. He screamed. Harry scooped up the magic that came to him,
+Dark, but not tainted as so much of what Voldemort's power was.
+
+``Does it not matter to you that you are of my House?'' Slytherin
+demanded abruptly. ``Does it not matter to you that you carry my gift,
+however illegitimately you obtained it? Does it---''
+
+And his words went garbled, as the serpents twined around him and ate
+his tongue, and he fell beneath the swarm. Harry swallowed the last
+parts of it, shuddering slightly. This magic was nearly a thousand years
+old, and, like fine wine, the age affected the taste.
+
+And then it was done, Slytherin was gone, and the road to the ring was
+open. Harry could feel shock and silence like a heartbeat behind him,
+moving in muffled knocks against the shack's walls.
+
+He took a step forward, and bent over the ring. This close, he could see
+a faint strip of silver running around the top, separating the stone
+from the gold, and he could make out the dark, intense shimmer of power
+that had marked both the diary and the locket. He started to reach down
+to it.
+
+And then \emph{power} spoke, from the door of the shack, and Harry
+turned to see Voldemort there, with his magic flaring around him, and
+Lucius crouched next to him like a dog.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+There was too much magic.
+
+Narcissa had not ever imagined she would say that. She was, after all,
+the daughter of a pureblood family who had made a hobby of collecting
+magic and carrying it back home again, and of creating or fitting
+magical items to the heirs of their line. Always unspoken, in the back
+of her ancestors' minds, Narcissa knew, had been the hope that one of
+their descendants would manage to become a Dark Lord or Lady by
+possession of artifacts alone.
+
+But this magic was too much. It spread around the shack like a choking
+cloud, sinking into her lungs, stabbing her brain, making her drop to
+the floor despite her desire not to bow before such a creature. Tiny
+spots of blood welled to the surface all along her arms. Her brain
+stuttered to a stop, dragged into and bound within a world of sludge and
+dark crystal.
+
+She saw her husband kneeling beside the Dark Lord, and met his eyes in
+comradeship. At the moment, she could not be angry at him for succumbing
+to the hold that Voldemort still had over him and running away. There
+was nothing but this magic in the world, dominating her, dominating
+everyone who came in contact with it. She saw almost everyone around the
+room bow, one by one.
+
+There were two exceptions. One was Harry, who still stooped over the
+blue stone that held the ring and glared at Voldemort.
+
+And the other was Draco. Looking up through the flickering miasma that
+obscured her vision, Narcissa saw a net of silvery strands swirling out
+from Harry and aiming for Draco. In the face of such a crushing will as
+this, Harry reached first to protect his lover, lending such strength as
+would enable him to keep his feet.
+
+Whether Draco knew that net of will was there or not, Narcissa didn't
+know. But he made the best use of it he could, drawing his wand and
+pointing it at Voldemort. A curse blasted from the tip, aimed straight
+at the Dark Lord.
+
+``Lucius,'' said Voldemort lazily.
+
+Her husband moved in between them and took the curse, which opened a
+long, bloody cut down his right arm. And the expression on Draco's face
+when he saw what he'd done to his father---a traitor and the man who had
+hurt both him and her, but still, his father---made Narcissa's heart
+vibrate like a struck bell.
+
+It also seemed to weaken Draco's resolve to remain standing. He wavered,
+and nearly knelt. Harry hissed. The power flowing from him grew
+steadier, and Draco climbed back to his feet.
+
+``It does not matter, Harry,'' said Voldemort, and the magic that
+surrounded him \emph{made} his words truth. ``What does it matter? You
+know that you will never leave this room with all of them alive. I can
+take Severus through his Dark Mark. I will break your adoptive Black.
+Your Weasleys, outside the house, are already mine, choking moment by
+moment on the thick air. Your little Light witch and your small Dark
+wizard cannot effectively fight me.'' He flashed Narcissa a smile that
+made the air burn and red afterimages burst in front of her eyes. ``As
+for Mrs. Malfoy, I will have her husband rape her. It is a fitting end
+to such love as they once bore.''
+
+Harry breathed out, ``And Draco?''
+
+``Draco.'' The snake around his waist pivoted that way, and Voldemort
+gave a smile. It was wrong, Narcissa thought, a torture for any mother
+to have to see her son eyed in such a way. ``He shall die inch by inch,
+Harry, and his magic will be mine. Meanwhile, his mind will be broken
+and twisted by the Imperius Curse until he knows nothing but pain and
+suffering.'' A delicate pause. ``Of course, yield and come with me now,
+and you may spare him that fate, not to mention all those whom you
+love.''
+
+\emph{It is a trap,} Narcissa thought, fighting to move her hand and
+close it around her wand. \emph{Do not listen to him, Harry.}
+
+And it seemed that Harry was not going to. He snarled, a noise that did
+not sound human, and his snakes appeared around the Dark Lord, attacking
+him with steel fangs and wide-distended jaws.
+
+``These are the pets that you used to defeat my ancestor's shade?''
+Voldemort asked. ``Impressive. But not impressive enough, I am afraid.''
+
+Narcissa felt him sweep the snakes from existence, swallowing Harry's
+magic. Harry staggered. Voldemort gave a low laugh, his snake's gaze
+fixed on his heir. Harry gritted his teeth and lifted a hand to his
+forehead, where his scar had begun to bleed.
+
+Narcissa felt the pressure on her mind ease a little. Once again, she
+tried to move her hand towards her wand.
+
+She quickly saw that she wasn't the only one who had decided to use the
+Dark Lord's distraction against him. Draco lifted his head slightly, and
+his eyes fluttered closed, in the slack expression that Narcissa knew
+meant he was trying to use his possession gift.
+
+Voldemort stiffened, and then let out a shriek. He whirled around,
+however, and the rage burning on his face told Narcissa that he was not
+under Draco's control.
+
+Draco choked as invisible fingers gripped his throat and urged his head
+backward. So fast did it tilt that for a moment, the worst moment of her
+life, Narcissa feared his neck was broken.
+
+But then she realized it was not, because Draco's eyes still focused and
+still blazed defiance, and Voldemort whispered, ``You will pay for that,
+child, pay with your blood and your sanity. But your magic, first of
+all.'' And Narcissa felt the gullet of his gift opening, preparing to
+swallow the power Draco had been born with and worked so hard to
+develop.
+
+Harry snatched the ring from the anchor-stone with a yank, a yell, and a
+terrific flash of light. Voldemort turned towards him, snarling.
+
+Narcissa knew the distraction was only minor. The Dark Lord would
+recover himself in a moment, and Harry would give up the ring to save
+Draco. Her son was more important to him than a piece of metal. It was
+entirely possible that Draco was more important to him than the fate of
+the world.
+
+\emph{As it should be.}
+
+Narcissa studied Harry's face in that moment that seemed to go on
+forever, as Voldemort held Harry's lover and Harry held Voldemort's
+Horcrux, and green eyes and serpentine eyes regarded one another. She
+saw the fierce, the drowning love in Harry's expression, the rage and
+hatred he only felt towards those who might hurt Draco, and knew that if
+anyone could guarantee her son protection and a happy life after this
+moment, it would be Harry.
+
+But after this moment, the balance would tilt, and Voldemort would win,
+because none of them had been able to guess how powerful he would be,
+that there was this level of magic in the world.
+
+And in this moment, he was distracted, and his hold had lifted from
+Narcissa's heart and mind and hand.
+
+She turned and fixed her eyes on her son as she drew her wand. Even
+choking, Draco looked more alive than Lucius did at that moment. His
+face shone with fury, and he was working furiously, throat and eyes
+alike, obviously trying to get past whatever barrier the Dark Lord had
+put in place and use his possession gift again.
+
+Narcissa felt a deep peace moving through her. If she tried to interfere
+and free Draco, she would not succeed, and Voldemort would probably kill
+her.
+
+But there was one thing she could do, one thing that would change this
+horrific balance, and, hopefully, make Harry react faster to the sudden
+change than Voldemort would.
+
+She loved Draco, because he was her son. She loved Harry, for making
+Draco so happy. She fixed her mind on that, on the shining star of that,
+and not on the suspicion whispering in the back of her mind, that
+perhaps this was the vengeance of the broken threefold oath she had
+sworn. She had said she would bring Bellatrix to death, and she had not.
+
+But she would never know the truth of that, and she did not wish to
+think of it now.
+
+Warmth, affection, devotion spread through her, and to those rippling
+emotions she dedicated her death, the willing sacrifice.
+
+"\emph{Avada Kedavra,}" she whispered.
+
+The Killing Curse rose from her wand and struck her. She was aware of
+figures moving, lunging, whirling, and of at least one voice calling her
+name. She did not look up at them, but faced death calmly, eyes open,
+and met it as it came.
+
+Narcissa Malfoy died loving.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Lucius saw his wife commit suicide.
+
+And his outraged love rose, roaring, screaming, a whirling flood that
+bore the last chains of his hatred aside.
+
+He was free.
+
+He rolled over, painfully, well-aware that the bloodied curse wound on
+his upper arm would keep him from using the limb effectively, and tossed
+his wand to his other hand. Quickly, knowing what he had to do, and not
+listening to the voice that screamed in the back of his head, he aimed
+at the snake around the Dark Lord's waist, the one that allowed him to
+see.
+
+He whispered the Severing Curse, and the snake flew apart in bloody
+chunks and died. Meanwhile, the screaming in the back of his head
+continued.
+
+\emph{Narcissa, Narcissa, Narcissa.}
+
+Awkwardly, he planted his knees beneath him and struggled to his feet.
+Voldemort was screaming in a high-pitched voice, half-yell and
+half-hiss, and it would not be long before he reoriented himself and
+decided what he had to do. But Lucius again knew what \emph{he} had to
+do, and would not let the moment escape.
+
+He came to his wife's body, and gathered her up, her blonde hair
+tumbling loose about her neck, her face slack and peaceful. Her wand
+fell from her hand. Lucius hesitated a moment, then gathered it up with
+a muttered Levitation Spell, at the same time as he cast a Lightening
+Charm on Narcissa's corpse.
+
+And all the while the voice sang in the back of his mind.
+
+\emph{Narcissa, Narcissa, Narcissa.}
+
+Bitterness was flooding through him like corroding acid or poison, that
+it had taken him \emph{this} long to awaken and realize his love was
+stronger than his hatred, that he had faced his wife and son in battle
+and seen her die before he could rend himself free. But he knew that he
+was beyond the clutch of Voldemort's slavery ever again. He hated even
+the Dark Lord less than he loved his wife.
+
+\emph{Had} loved her, for she was beyond his reach now.
+
+He held her close, and turned to see what would happen, what miracle she
+had bought with her death.
+
+\emph{Narcissa, Narcissa, Narcissa.}
+
+The room filled with sweet thunder.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry heard Draco scream Narcissa's name, and a moment later he saw the
+green light flash, heard the calm curse, even as he had more than three
+years ago when Sirius committed suicide in the same way and for the same
+reason.
+
+Death out of love. A willing sacrifice.
+
+The soft buzz of the Unassailable Curse around the Horcrux in his hand
+vanished.
+
+Harry saw Voldemort's snake cleft apart in the next instant, and the
+Dark Lord was maddened, turning, trying to find a way to see, his magic
+rearing and lashing back and forth like trees in a storm, without
+direction.
+
+Harry could not listen to his own pain. There was no time. He knelt,
+clutching the ring close, remembering what Regulus had said he needed to
+do once the willing sacrifice was accomplished. Drain the Horcrux's
+magic, drain the bit of Voldemort's soul inside it, as he had swallowed
+Tom Riddle and unraveled the shard lurking inside the locket. He gripped
+the Peverell ring firmly, and drove his \emph{absorbere} ability like a
+knife into the stone, striking it and splitting it apart.
+
+The ring foamed and crackled with dark lightning. Harry was preparing
+himself for the same blast of foulness that he remembered from the
+Chamber of Secrets and the Shrieking Shack, and was unprepared for the
+burst of pain that filled his hand instead.
+
+He stared down through eyes gone suddenly blurry. The strip of silver
+that separated the stone of the ring from the gold had unfolded,
+revealing itself as a tiny serpent, and the serpent had bitten his right
+hand on the web of skin between his thumb and forefinger.
+
+A ripple of poison spread from the bite, moving upwards, turning the
+skin black and spongy as it did so, seaming it with cracks that leaked
+white and green fluids. One moment, and it was solely located on the web
+of skin; the next, it had spread to cover the whole of the back of his
+hand.
+
+Only then did Harry feel the sweet thunder of the prophecy in the room,
+and remember the second verse of the chant Trelawney had given him.
+
+\emph{The first thing is the smallest thing,}
+
+\emph{But the center of many hearts still.}
+
+\emph{But, oh, savior, watch for the sting,}
+
+\emph{For the smallest things may kill.}
+
+His vision whirled, and darkened, and then expanded in odd ways. Harry
+found himself standing on a flat plain of black sand beneath an arching
+gray sky. Behind him were the glittering silver pools of his Occlumency,
+the foliage of his emotions, the steel skeleton of his rebuilt mind.
+
+In front of him, regarding him with burning eyes, was Tom Riddle,
+looking a few months older than the memory Harry had seen in the diary,
+and far madder and more dangerous.
+
+``Your body is going to be mine,'' he hissed, and then he leaped
+forward, and so the battle began.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 43*: The Angels of Our Better
+Natures}\label{chapter-43-the-angels-of-our-better-natures}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Thirty-Three: The Angels of Our Better Natures}
+
+Snape saw Harry fall.
+
+The wave of blackness traveling up his right arm commanded his attention
+next, and he had to watch as the skin seamed with cracks, as liquids
+leaked down them, as Harry began to die of a particularly virulent
+poison that must be the mix of several different kinds of venom. Snape
+knew from the movement, at least, that the poison was making for his
+shoulder, and from there it would turn for his heart. If it reached his
+heart, then he was dead and the matter done with.
+
+He saw the Dark Lord whirling in place, having felt the destruction of
+his Horcrux, and having not the slightest idea what to do next.
+
+Snape made the decision he had to, and, instead of rushing at once to
+his son's side and cradling him in his arms, he drew his wand the way
+Lucius had and cast the one spell that would do the most good then. When
+the Dark Lord was in a mood such as this, balanced between one emotion
+and the next, a push in one direction or the other could send him into
+the desired action. Snape had used this delicate balance to his
+advantage several times when he was still a Death Eater and wanted to
+get one of his rivals in trouble.
+
+He cast a spell that allowed him to imitate another's voice, and called
+out in the unmistakable tones of Mad-Eye Moody, ``Harry! Are you in
+here, lad? We've got the ward-stones that you asked for, the pieces of
+the Stone that are immune to magic!''
+
+Voldemort snarled silently, and Snape caught a glimpse of his ruined
+eyes. He waited tensely. It was possible that he had sent Voldemort into
+rage instead of caution, and that the Dark Lord would attack now. If he
+did, they were all dead, but that had been true from the moment he
+entered the Gaunt house.
+
+But he fell from the horns of his dilemma into cautious fear, as Snape
+had hoped he would. He spread his arms and half-bowed his head, and
+vanished with a crackle of magic so deep it wasn't the crack of
+Apparition.
+
+Snape let out a harsh breath, and then permitted himself to rush to
+Harry's side, only to find that Regulus had already rushed there and
+taken him up, being careful not to jostle his right arm. Currently, he
+was prying at Harry's right hand, trying to make him let go of the
+Peverell ring he clutched.
+
+"Do \emph{not}," Snape said harshly, and tapped Regulus's hand with his
+wand, making him snatch it away and glare. ``Otherwise it shall poison
+you, too, and I don't fancy having two patients to treat.''
+
+Regulus's eyes widened with just the slightest bit of hope. ``Do you
+think you can cure him, then?''
+
+Snape's mouth twisted in a dark curve, but he could hardly keep the
+sarcasm out of his voice. ``Why else did I become a Potions Master, if
+not to brew antivenin for recklessly careless boys on the edge of
+death?'' He turned away from the argument that Regulus would have made
+at that, and scanned the room. His gaze alighted first on Rosier-Henlin
+and Gloryflower, hovering near the back of the room and clutching their
+left arms. Their lightning bolt scars would hurt, he knew, telling them
+too late, futilely, that Harry was in danger.
+
+``Go collect the Weasleys,'' he snapped, and they scurried out the door,
+seeming happy for the task.
+
+He looked then at the Malfoys. Lucius stood with Narcissa in his arms,
+her long hair draping his shoulders and extending almost to the floor in
+a curtain of gold. Snape stared into his eyes, using a swift Legilimency
+probe, and managed to satisfy himself that this was not another plant of
+the Dark Lord's. Even if Voldemort had told Lucius to rejoin their side
+on the incredible chance of Narcissa's suicide, he would not have wanted
+to encourage such a thing, Snape thought, not when a suicide like this
+meant the possible destruction of a Horcrux. He would have commanded
+Lucius to stop her, first.
+
+Draco stood next to his father, the back of one hand laid on his
+mother's cheek, his face older than Snape had ever seen it. He would
+have thought the chisel of this pain had chipped away the final part of
+the boy's childhood, did he not think Draco still had an immense amount
+of childishness to lose.
+
+``We are going to Hogwarts,'' Snape said, and the sound of his voice,
+like a dry branch snapping, made Lucius look up at him. Snape made sure
+to hold his eyes as he continued. ``We will be Apparating to the
+Hogsmeade road and going straight to the hospital wing, with both Harry
+and your wife. Do you understand, Lucius?''
+
+Lucius, to his credit, simply nodded instead of protesting. Draco opened
+his mouth as if he would do it for his father, but Snape didn't care,
+didn't have the time to attend to the devastation in Draco's eyes and on
+his face. He was already whirling and striding through the door of the
+shack, Regulus following closely behind him with Harry clutched in his
+arms.
+
+They could return to Hogwarts, but while the rest of them went to the
+hospital wing, Snape would go to his lab, there to brew the potion that
+would have to race against time and the blackness creeping up Harry's
+right arm, and save his son's life.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry floated just beneath the surface of the silver Occlumency pool,
+and listened to Tom Riddle's footsteps coming nearer and nearer.
+
+``Come out, come out, Harry,'' the older boy called, giving away both
+his impatience and his position through his voice. Harry would have
+smiled if he had considered the battle as anything but intolerably
+serious. ``You know that mine is the stronger magic, and mine is the
+possession gift. I promise you that I can kill quickly when I want to,
+though. Come to me, and I'll give you one of those quick deaths.''
+
+Harry stayed where he was. He didn't have to breathe in this world,
+something he didn't think Tom Riddle had yet realized; he was still
+treating the mental battlefield more as if it were a physical one. Well,
+and why not? He couldn't have had much contact with other minds for the
+last few decades he'd been cooped up in the Peverell ring.
+
+A shadow passed above Harry, a leg reaching out to stride over the pool.
+He gathered his strength, forced away thoughts of what was happening to
+Draco right now and how his body was probably dying from the bite of the
+snake on the ring, and exploded upward.
+
+Tom swore in startlement as Harry grabbed him and threw him down, his
+magic writhing around him at the same time to form chains out of the
+ground around the pool. The chains had jade links and metal cuffs at the
+end, two of which Harry managed to snap into place around Tom's ankles
+before he reacted.
+
+He extended one hand in front of him and snarled a single word Harry
+didn't recognize, with a lot of \emph{r} sounds in it. Harry bent double
+as someone invisible punched him in the solar plexus, and he had to roll
+away from Tom, hearing the other boy's laughter ringing in his ears.
+
+``This is a nice body that you have here, Harry,'' the bastard said, his
+voice flavored with glee. ``I rather like it. I'll enjoy possessing it
+when you're gone. I wonder how long I should leave it before I tell them
+who I really am? I can counter the poison that's killing you, of course,
+and reclaim the use of my right arm, but I can't do that too obviously.
+Hmmm.''
+
+Harry forced himself to ignore the pain. This was the kind of battle
+he'd trained for under Lily, in some ways; at least, he had the
+experience to know he shouldn't do things like waste his breath in
+talking. And no matter how confident Tom was, he was chained now, and he
+didn't have enough control of Harry's mind yet to imagine his bonds
+unraveling with a thought.
+
+Harry scrambled back to one knee and imagined an attack coming from
+above, as he had come from beneath a moment ago. A flight of birds, all
+of them toothed and lizard-tailed as was the bird that symbolized the
+connection between them, swooped down towards Tom, shrieking.
+
+He flung out a hand, hissing another spell, and the birds turned to
+floating masses of charred flesh and feathers.
+
+This time, Harry called on his memory of Indigena's vines that had held
+him helpless in the graveyard almost two Midwinters ago, asking them to
+writhe up and coil around Tom's wrists, binding his magic and keeping
+him from using it against the next weapons that Harry might lift. They
+came out, but Tom charred them in turn. Harry snarled in frustration.
+
+The beetle-black eyes fixed on his, smiling. Or maybe they weren't
+beetle-black, Harry thought, but bottle-green, a slightly darker shade
+of his own. They shared so much else, why not this? ``Did you think that
+you could fight me, Harry?'' Tom whispered. ``We are much the same, you
+and I. And I am more determined than you will ever be, Darker. You
+cannot fight the Dark with Light, Harry, but that's what you're trying
+to do. No wonder it isn't working!''
+
+He reached out and drew a line in the air with his finger, laughing.
+Harry felt a burning wound open on his forehead, parallel to the
+lightning bolt scar, and knew it would continue down, severing his
+eyelid, blinding him in his right eye, and carving his face apart. Tom
+could call on things like that, wounds that were fatal or disfiguring,
+and Harry couldn't.
+
+Or, rather, he wasn't doing it right now.
+
+He plunged his face into the cool dirt that formed the ``ground'' of his
+mind, and rubbed out the pain and the spell. Tom made a disappointed
+cluck like a mother hen who'd lost a chick. Harry, meanwhile, was
+considering what he now suspected to be the truth, at least if Tom was
+telling it.
+
+\emph{Why should he? You know he's a liar. He's always been.}
+
+\emph{Except when he gloats,} he thought then, remembering back to when
+Voldemort had happily told him the truth about cutting off his hand in
+the graveyard, and actually kept his word about the thirteen days he
+would wait before attacking Hogwarts on Midsummer. Voldemort lied when
+he had need of it, but he preferred to tell the truth when he thought
+that would cause despair in his enemies.
+
+And Tom Riddle thought this would cause despair in Harry. He hadn't had
+the chance to get to know Harry very well yet, certainly not as well as
+the elder Voldemort, and so he didn't know, couldn't know, that Harry
+had the weapon to make his taunt a reality.
+
+\emph{If I dare to use it.}
+
+Harry did not want to, any more than he wanted to imagine a gruesome
+death for an intruder in his mind. It was not the way his thoughts ran,
+not the way his imagination worked. It---he did not wish to use his
+magic that way.
+
+And then a wound opened on his back, and hands dug in with the seeming
+intention of taking out his internal organs, and Harry realized he might
+have to change his mind---and quickly.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco followed his father to the hospital wing, but, once there, it was
+too hard watching Madam Pomfrey attend to Harry and ignore Narcissa. Of
+course, he knew it was only right and proper, and he was frantically
+worried for Harry, too---the double emotional wounds felt as if they
+were draining him of any chance of happiness---but it just reinforced
+the impression that his mother was dead, and didn't allow him to escape
+from it.
+
+He stood there, head hanging, unable to muster any will to move past the
+pain. Narcissa had always been part of his life. Every time he thought
+of what he should do next, it included an orientation towards her, if
+only assuming that she would be there somewhere, and he could call on
+her if he needed her help. Knowing she wasn't there, now, was like
+hitting a wall with his head over and over again.
+
+``Draco.''
+
+Draco turned, blinking, and saw his father standing there. His gaze was
+steady, but compelling, and Draco knew what he was asking.
+Reconciliation, shared grief, a talk of \emph{some} kind. Or to go to a
+room where Madam Pomfrey, and even Regulus, wouldn't stare at him as if
+he were a Death Eater come again.
+
+Slowly, Draco decided that he could do this. He nodded, and moved past
+Lucius, motioning for him to follow.
+
+Narcissa did not follow them.
+
+Draco glanced back at her once, and saw her still face, and her rippled
+hair, a bit darker than sunshine, and then resolutely faced forward and
+decided that he wasn't going to look again.
+
+He led Lucius to one of the classrooms that usually served as a place to
+practice dueling spells. It wasn't occupied today, thank Merlin, and
+Draco turned around to face his father when they'd shut the door behind
+him.
+
+``I don't know what you want,'' Draco said bluntly. "I don't know what
+you expect of me. But you should know one thing. We're going to have a
+\emph{proper} funeral for Mother. She's going to be buried with all the
+honor that befits a death like that. And if you say otherwise, I'll kill
+you where you stand."
+
+He honestly felt as if he could do it, too. The magical strength he'd
+honed and sharpened in preparation, as he thought, for defending Harry
+while he retrieved the Horcruxes was swimming to the surface now,
+focusing on Lucius. He could open his mouth, and the words \emph{Avada
+Kedavra} would come forth, and he could slay his father. He almost
+thought it would be better that way. It would solve the wretched
+question of what to do with Lucius, at any rate.
+
+``She always wanted a Malfoy funeral,'' Lucius said calmly. ``To be
+buried like one of us, not burned as a Black. Unless you think that
+would not do enough honor to her and her death.''
+
+He wasn't fighting, Draco realized then, dimly. He wasn't saying that
+Draco couldn't have the funeral he wanted for his mother. He was
+agreeing. He was---he was honoring Narcissa the way that a loving
+husband would have done.
+
+Draco took a staggering step backwards, barely remembering to flick his
+wand so that he could conjure a chair in time to meet his sudden impulse
+to sit. He sank into it and tilted his head back, harsh laughter
+bubbling past his lips. He felt Lucius staring at him. He didn't care.
+
+``Draco,'' his father said sharply. ``Stop. You are growing
+hysterical.''
+
+``I don't fucking care,'' Draco pointed out, and leaned his forehead on
+his hand. "I just---\emph{damn you, damn you, damn you!} You loved her,
+and you could never tell her that while she was \emph{alive}, could you?
+It was only when she died that you broke free, a few moments too late to
+tell her that, oh, by the way, you actually have a loving husband,
+Narcissa. Everything's too late with you, Father, isn't it? Curdled,
+half-baked, half-arsed."
+
+``Draco, I will not---''
+
+Draco slammed his hand down on the chair's arm and leaned forward,
+glaring at his father. "Tell me why I should let you have \emph{any} say
+in Mother's funeral, dear father," he whispered. ``Tell me why, for that
+matter, we should let you back into the Alliance of Sun and Shadow, when
+you've caused enough trouble for any seven wizards. Explain to me why
+you tore free from your chains when you know what's going to happen now.
+Honoria Pemberley could demand a severed leg in return for the one you
+cut off her, and she would be within her rights. Tell me why I should
+treat you like a father, Lucius, and the husband of my mother, and not
+like an enemy combatant.''
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Snape held the smells of the poison leaking from Harry's arm in his mind
+as he tossed a handful of powdered moonstone into the cauldron.
+
+\emph{It smells of almonds. There is cyanide within it, but diluted, so
+that it will not kill in the first few moments. And there is arsenic,
+too. That smell, I know.}
+
+A handful of powdered bicorn horn followed the moonstone, and then
+pounded heal-all leaves, and then crushed violet petals. Snape worked on
+the level of instinct, not questioning what his hands added, or how
+much. He knew the amounts and the ingredients would have to be perfect.
+The venom was advancing up Harry's arm towards his heart in a wave of
+blackness. When it reached his heart, then the heart would stop, and the
+chance to save his son would be gone. The damage was slowing as it
+spread, because it had more skin to cover, but it was advancing even
+still, even now.
+
+He spun to the left, snatched a vial of healing potion off his prepared
+shelves, and tossed it into the cauldron with the rest. He heard a spark
+behind him, and a soft hiss, but he smelled no released, poisonous
+fumes. That was good. He did not have time to deal with them.
+
+Water went in next, enough water to fill the cauldron nearly to
+overflowing, and Snape chanted a purification spell only after it had
+thoroughly mixed with the other ingredients, so that it would add no
+contamination of its own. He dived among his stores, searching for the
+bottle he had created more than ten years ago.
+
+\emph{Yes. Yes, there it is.}
+
+In a glass vial hung a single sparkling hair, found in the Forbidden
+Forest, caught on a branch---a hair from the tail of a unicorn. If he
+had taken it by force from the beast, he would not have dared to add it.
+It would have increased the effectiveness of the poison, instead of
+healing Harry. Just as there was a cost to drinking unicorns' blood,
+there was a cost to using other pieces of the wondrous creatures stolen
+from them, instead of picked up from the careless or the dead ones.
+
+He broke the vial and drifted the hair into the cauldron. It settled
+with a faint glow of light, and for just a moment, the noise of bells
+and a sensation of perfect peace came to Snape.
+
+``Lie there,'' he told it, knowing he sounded ridiculous addressing a
+potion ingredient and not caring, ``and heal the man who freed you, all
+of you.''
+
+One more whirl and a stride back to the shelves, and he found the final
+thing he was looking for, the thing his instincts, not presenting their
+reasoning to the higher brain, told him to add. A bright, battered
+feather, a phoenix feather, the very same one Dumbledore had given him
+decades ago when he welcomed an embittered, exhausted young Severus
+Snape into the Order of the Phoenix.
+
+The feather came to rest on the top of the water. At once, it burst into
+shimmering white fire, fighting the liquid and boiling some of it away.
+Snape scooped up a handful of water and dumped it over the plume, and
+the flames subsided with a little hiss. But they had served to boil some
+of the potion and mix the individual ingredients in it more closely,
+which was, so far as Snape could tell, what they were supposed to do.
+
+Doubts tried to creep in---doubts and rationality---but Snape did not
+let them. He seized a glass stirring rod and dipped it into the
+cauldron, beginning to brew. He had his mind fixed on the result---a
+potion that could save Harry from the poison killing him---and he did
+not care how he got there.
+
+His hands took over, the knowledge spreading out from his arms and not
+his thoughts. Snape let them do so.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry rolled over, stealing the victory from the brass-clawed creature
+Tom had conjured to plague him, and stifled the temptation to burst into
+phoenix song. If Tom was right, then he couldn't fight him with Light
+magic. He knew where he had to go, knew what he had to do.
+
+Of course, it was hard, knowing that he might defeat the madman trying
+to possess his body only to unleash a worse darkness on the world.
+
+But he had to try. Draco needed him to come out of this mental
+landscape, this battle, alive, so that he could comfort him.
+
+Harry dug his hands into the rich soil and snapped his fingers around
+the clods of earth he held. The ground quivered, and then sank away
+beneath Tom, dumping him on his arse. Harry heard his cry, more startled
+and indignant than hurt.
+
+At the same time, Harry melted the chains that held him, and scrambled
+to his feet.
+
+It would have to be a race. He would have to convince Tom that he was so
+frightened he was simply fleeing from him, without looking where he was
+going, and make him incensed enough to follow along without trying to
+get ahead of Harry. Dumping him on his arse should do that, Harry hoped.
+Voldemort had never been at his most rational when he was feeling
+laughed at.
+
+Sure enough, there came a surge of darkness and wind after him, letting
+Harry know Tom was on his trail.
+
+He ran, then. He flickered among the soft landscape of the Occlumency
+pools, dancing over their surfaces, feeling, now and then, a drowned
+emotion rising towards the surface, asking if he needed it, but
+dismissing the feeling each time. He leaped from branch to branch of the
+mighty tree that had the steel skeleton as its spine, and then ducked
+into the leaves while Tom cried in frustration behind him. He climbed
+higher and higher, and saw the rustling foliage part ahead of him,
+baring the way to the part of his mind he knew so little of and hated so
+much.
+
+He turned the hatred into fear and sent it flowing behind him like a
+wind, and he felt Tom laughing, his confidence restored.
+
+``I told you, Harry,'' he called, while he scrambled up a branch Harry
+had passed several minutes ago. ``If you come to me, I'll give you a
+quick death, and you can be assured that I'll use your body well. It
+won't be as quick as it would have been if you had just surrendered the
+first time I asked, but it will still be swift. And then you won't be
+alive to see what I do with your boyfriend.'' Another snort of laughter,
+turning colder and higher-pitched as it went, as if the exercise were
+moving this shard of Tom Riddle closer and closer to his future self.
+
+Harry closed his eyes for a moment. \emph{Draco.}
+
+But he did not have to listen, and so he did not. He ran, and the leaves
+beneath his feet firmed and flattened and changed into rocks. Now he was
+pelting across flagstones, heading for the wide fence that reared at the
+very end of this plain.
+
+A thought, and the fence expanded, blocking his way, though in reality
+Harry could slip past it and into another part of his mind if he wanted.
+He projected panic, though, and ran back and forth along the fence as if
+it were a barrier he didn't know how to get past.
+
+``There you are, Harry.''
+
+He whirled. Tom Riddle was not far behind him, and coming fast, a sly
+smile on his face that didn't work well with the dirt smudged there.
+Harry held back the impulse to laugh. He knew well enough that if he
+started now, he wouldn't stop. The emotions about Narcissa's death and
+Draco's grief were fighting under the surface, trying to emerge any way
+they could.
+
+Harry stamped on them, and then shrank back against the fence as Tom
+Riddle came closer and closer.
+
+``No place left to run?'' the other wizard whispered mockingly. ``No way
+left to fight me? Well, I'm pleased to see that you recognize your own
+helplessness after all, and your fitting end as a vessel for me.''
+
+Harry panted, and then let the breath out as a sharp whine. It masked
+the sounds gathering behind him.
+
+Tom Riddle came closer and closer, and finally halted in front of him.
+His eyes were dark and expressive, and deep green after all, if one
+looked closely enough. His face shone with enjoyment.
+
+``I'll make you more powerful than you've ever been, Harry, I promise,''
+he whispered, and reached out as if to caress Harry's cheek.
+
+Harry seized his hand, pulling him close, and then reached out and
+wrapped his other arm around Tom's torso. The other boy, startled,
+struggled against him, but he didn't have enough of a purchase to
+resist. Harry made the fence vanish, and then he threw them both
+forward, aiming for where the fence had been.
+
+They sank into black water, into the part of his mind where Harry kept
+the darkest part of himself. He whistled.
+
+And the part of him that desired nothing more than to rend and tear and
+dominate came to him.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``I have changed,'' Lucius said.
+
+``Really.'' Draco felt incredulity, and then indignation, go through him
+like a spear of glass. ``And I should believe that?'' His father nodded
+slightly, never taking his eyes from his face. Draco laughed again, but
+managed to cut it off this time. ``Why?''
+
+``Because I have been a slave for the past four months,'' said Lucius,
+and his voice sharpened with an emotion Draco could believe out of him:
+bitterness. ``I have seen what it cost me not to have enough---love---to
+resist my hatred.'' At least he still grimaced when saying the word,
+Draco thought. He would have been convinced this was not Lucius if he
+didn't. ``And though I came too late to let Narcissa know what she meant
+to me, that does not mean I need to live my life in regret. I would
+rather do something else with it.''
+
+``And what is that?'' One wrong word, Draco promised himself,
+\emph{one}, and he would kill him. This was the man who had tried
+desperately to control Draco's own life, to prevent his wife from
+leaving him when she'd had enough, to imprison Hawthorn Parkinson and
+then to wreck Harry's rebellion. Draco could not trust his promises, and
+he certainly did not trust Lucius's own apparent need to make up for his
+crimes.
+
+``Make up for what happened.''
+
+Draco snorted.
+
+``I can,'' said Lucius, not wavering, either in his stare or in his
+body. ``I can do this, if you will permit it, Draco.''
+
+Draco rubbed his hands against his legs. He had never thought he would
+receive submission from his father, not in his wildest dreams. It
+felt---wrong. But, he reminded himself, he was the head of the Malfoy
+line now, and he was dealing with an erring member of his family.
+
+That told him how to act. He lifted his head, and recalled what he'd
+learned of the pureblood rituals for this in his mad rush, during the
+summer after his third year and later, to educate himself in what should
+have been his heritage so that he could catch up with Harry. ``And what
+will you do, in the name of the Dark?'' he asked, his voice already
+firmer than it had been.
+
+Lucius recognized the formula. His eyes flashed once, but Draco thought
+it was with satisfaction rather than anger.
+
+And then he knelt, but with one knee only, which was the posture of
+qualified submission, rather than the absolute, dog-like one he'd taken
+at Voldemort's side. He spread his arms, bowing his head so that his
+curtain of long blond hair partially shielded his face. He murmured,
+``Is it to be up to me to name the penances for my crimes?''
+
+Draco considered rising to his feet, but decided that he liked sitting.
+It increased the chair's resemblance to a throne, and, he hoped,
+impressed Lucius with how much he needed to make up for. ``It is,'' he
+said. ``I will not name penances that would not go deep enough, would
+not make you truly sorry.''
+
+Lucius nodded. ``Very well. Then, for the crime of not acknowledging
+your own adulthood, I will live on your sufferance. Whatever food I eat,
+whatever bed I sleep in, whatever breath I draw, comes from you and you
+alone. Should you require my life from me, I will give it, without
+hesitation or question.''
+
+Draco hissed between his teeth, nearly amused in spite of himself. It
+was a contract that tied him as deeply to Lucius as it tied Lucius to
+him. While Lucius would have to beg if his son declared it so, it also
+meant that if he starved or suffered, it would be Draco's fault.
+
+But it was also the utmost price he could pay for lacking respect for
+his son, and therefore Draco could only ask a lesser one, if he
+challenged it. ``That will be acceptable,'' said Draco. ``And for your
+crimes against Hawthorn Parkinson, an ally who had never done you
+harm?''
+
+``I will get her back from the Dark Lord.''
+
+Draco narrowed his eyes. He knew how many sources of hatred tied the
+werewolf to her new service: Lucius, of course, but also, from what
+Harry had told him, Indigena Yaxley, and the Aurors she had helped to
+torture and kill in the raid on Tullianum. Draco did not see how it was
+possible for her to return.
+
+``You truly think you can manage that?'' he murmured. The one making
+reparations, as Lucius was, was not allowed to choose a task he knew he
+would fail at.
+
+``Of course, or I would not have offered,'' said Lucius, tilting his
+head to the side to look at Draco again through his curtain of hair.
+
+\emph{If he can do it, then Harry would value it more than any other
+price he could name.} ``That will be acceptable,'' Draco repeated. He
+felt Lucius relax. \emph{He must really think he can do it, strange as
+that seems.} ``And what about your crimes against Harry?''
+
+``My fortune and my magic are his to command,'' said Lucius, without a
+blink. ``I shall become a Squib if he so desires it.''
+
+Draco narrowed his eyes. That threw the decision back on Harry, but he
+could hardly dispute it, because that was the punishment Harry had said
+he would offer someone who broke the oaths of the Alliance of Sun and
+Shadow in the first place. ``Bastard,'' he accused.
+
+``The son of a bastard, perhaps, if my father was truly born of a
+Mudblood woman,'' said Lucius, his voice inexpressibly calm. ``But in
+and of myself? I think not. My parents were wed.''
+
+Draco gritted his teeth, and did not respond to that. ``You are his,
+then? As much as you are mine?''
+
+``Secondary only to your claims are his claims on me,'' Lucius said, his
+voice polished and perfect.
+
+Draco sat back, thinking. He could not truly think of anything else that
+Lucius needed to atone for, since his other crimes had been committed
+under Voldemort's command. If Narcissa had still been alive, she would
+have the right to claim her share from him, but---
+
+\emph{If Narcissa were alive, many things would be different.}
+
+``Stand,'' said Draco abruptly. ``For my part, you are accepted back
+into the Malfoy line. But I don't know that Harry will let you live, let
+alone accept you back into his alliance.''
+
+``I serve at his pleasure,'' Lucius said quietly, and climbed to his
+feet.
+
+Draco leaned back in his chair and gave in to his curiosity, since if he
+didn't, he feared the tears lurking at the back of his eyes would rush
+him. ``Why would you? You said that you spent four months in slavery.
+Are you really all that eager to spend more months in service to us, to
+make up for what you've done?''
+
+``I chose this,'' Lucius answered. ``That makes it different.'' He
+cocked his head, his face altering. ``And now, Draco, you should
+mourn.''
+
+``Excuse me?''
+
+``You know what your mother was,'' Lucius said in a hiss. "Far more than
+the woman who bore you. The finest witch I ever knew. The woman who had
+the strength and courage to give up her life for a \emph{reason}, not
+thrashing in a futile fight against old age or stabbed from behind in
+battle. She lived and she died like a Dark pureblood, Draco, and it is
+not fitting that her son's face is free of tears when he thinks of her."
+
+Draco turned his head away and closed his eyes, but it was too late; the
+sobs were already welling up. He stood, prepared to leave the room. He
+could not show such weakness in front of Lucius.
+
+And then he realized that Lucius, too, wept, but silently, the tears
+falling down his face like drops melting off an icicle, his eyes wide
+and frozen and staring between them. Draco hesitated for a long moment
+between his father and the door.
+
+Then he turned around, and clasped Lucius's hand with a rough motion.
+
+Lucius drew him close, and held him there, not exactly as a father held
+a son---not yet, they had not come back to that yet---but as a man might
+hold another while they mourned for a woman they had both loved.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+The water sloshed nearly to the rim of the cauldron, and then fell back
+again. It was now purple, now blue, now green, all deep and jeweled
+colors. Certainly, it was the most \emph{beautiful} potion Snape had
+ever brewed.
+
+He did not attempt to stop the thoughts, or sink them into his
+Occlumency pools, even though he could have. He was in full flight
+through the creative part of his brain that usually helped him brew
+potions, but here, he was making it work at high speed, the way it
+usually did only when offering theories.
+
+His hands flew, now stirring counterclockwise, now flicking his wand to
+add a heating or a cooling or a stabilizing spell that his mind told him
+was needed just then, now bending to add a puff of his breath or a
+strand of hair to the potion. He did not question his instincts. He did
+not try to stop, or slow down. He trusted his intuition to bear him
+along, and it did, steady beneath him as a galloping horse, guiding him
+over the jumps he could not have taken alone.
+
+The notions of what he had to do swung around a different path, and
+Snape dipped off a good portion of the potion in a ladle and then let it
+drop back. The liquid puffed and turned red.
+
+Red as blood, red as the blood that would have to spill if Harry died
+from the poison creeping up his arm\ldots{}
+
+And then he was over that, past it, soaring beyond it, forcing himself
+to concentrate on the potion, and not whether it would work or whether
+Harry would live or die. His hand moved in a smooth arc, dropping the
+first new ingredient for some time, a quetzal feather, into the potion.
+
+The liquid shuddered as if in delight, and then stilled, and became
+utterly calm, glass-like, smooth. Snape knew what was next. The potion
+was ready. It would heal the corruption, drive back the venom, because
+it had to and that was what it was made for.
+
+He Levitated the cauldron with a flick of his wand, and then guided it
+out the door of his lab and towards the hospital wing. He did not let
+the surface so much as tremble. It would not do to let that happen, no.
+So it was not going to happen. His gaze fixed on the potion, and by
+sheer force he did not let the cauldron even bob so as to jostle it.
+
+He entered the hospital wing, and his focused silence was enough to make
+Madam Pomfrey and Regulus, both still crowded around Harry's bed, move
+aside. Snape set the cauldron floating above Harry's head, and then
+said, in a voice that he made sure would not ripple across the surface,
+``Open his mouth.''
+
+Regulus scrambled to do so. One moment he might have bumped the
+cauldron, but Snape lifted it higher, and then lowered it again once
+Regulus was out of the way. Snape then tipped the potion.
+
+It flowed over Harry, splashing in his hair, flowing into his mouth,
+soaking his corrupted arm, which was now black and spongy flesh almost
+to the shoulder. The liquids soaking from the cracks in the skin hissed
+mightily, and a cloud of steam surged up. Luckily, Snape didn't need to
+tell Madam Pomfrey to contain the fumes; her wand was already moving up
+and down and sideways in order to do so. And Regulus reached out through
+the flood of blood-like potion and massaged Harry's throat, making sure
+that he swallowed what got into his mouth. On and on the cascade went,
+until Harry was drenched.
+
+Snape sat back when it was done, and made the surface of his mind serene
+and unrippled in and of itself with the help of his Occlumency pools.
+Now came the time to use them, when without them he would panic.
+
+``What happens now?'' Regulus whispered.
+
+``Now?'' Snape lifted an eyebrow, never taking his eyes from his son,
+who had started to shiver slightly. ``Now, we wait.''
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry rolled, half-tossing Tom forward in the dark water, and then
+loosing him. He felt the creature that dwelt in the blackness, the
+\emph{will} of that blackness, reach forward and grasp him.
+
+Then Harry struck for the surface. He heaved himself out on the stones
+next to the pool, already thinking that he should return to his body as
+soon as possible. He had to find out where Draco had gone, what had
+happened to him. Draco would need him now, he knew.
+
+A splash from the pool attracted his attention, and Harry swung sharply
+around. Tom Riddle was already almost back onto the shore, soaking with
+the water as if with tar, but still alive and with a horrible expression
+on his face.
+
+\emph{What's the matter?} Harry thought frantically. \emph{I know the
+darkness can destroy him. That's what it likes to do. Why isn't it---}
+
+And then he remembered. When he had used this darkness against
+Voldemort, his own will had still had to direct it. Without him, it was
+nothing but a collection of all the foulness and the sadistic impulses
+present in him.
+
+He choked back a sob, lunged forward, and grabbed Tom around the throat,
+squeezing firmly, bearing him back into the darkness.
+
+Tom's eyes widened almost comically, and his hands flailed, trying to
+reach up and stop Harry. Harry concentrated, though, and a tentacle
+coiled around his waist from beneath the water.
+
+Tom tried to speak, but he'd lost his breath. He choked. The darkness
+tugged on him, slowly eating him alive. Now and then he shuddered and
+screamed, and Harry surmised that came from the darkness getting a
+particularly good bite in.
+
+He had to hold him there. He had to want to watch Tom Riddle in pain. He
+had to want to watch him die.
+
+Harry hesitated, and Tom surged back up again, nearly climbing out again
+as the darkness lost its strength. Harry swallowed another sob, and
+reminded himself that this desire to kill was him, too, part of him, and
+pressed down with all his strength, hearing his knuckles creak as his
+fingers tightened on the skin.
+
+It was horrible, to watch Tom's face go blue, to hear the muffled
+screams he tried to make, and to watch more and more of his body slowly
+eaten alive by the creeping lake. Harry knew that, although he could not
+see the teeth rising and falling down there, he commanded them. They did
+what they did because he wanted them to do it.
+
+And it was wonderful.
+
+Harry couldn't deny the curl of dark satisfaction in his belly as he
+watched one of his enemies die so \emph{easily.} No dancing around, no
+games of persuasion, no elaborate traps. Just the death, the chewing,
+and the absorption of the shard of soul into himself. He could drown the
+Darkness within his own Light if he wished, but what if he didn't want
+to? He could let it shine forth like a black diamond instead. It would
+hardly frighten away his allies, and many of those who opposed him
+already thought of him as a Dark wizard. They would hardly blink at
+having their opinions confirmed.
+
+He leaned forward and strained, bearing Tom down.
+
+And then he was gone, sliding violently beneath the surface, as the
+darkness ate him and then tried to swarm out further, and take over
+Harry's brain.
+
+Harry reared like a wild horse, fighting back the darkness. Yes, it
+would feel good to let it go, and stop caring so \emph{much} about the
+consequences of his actions, and only love a few people, like Draco did,
+instead of everyone.
+
+\emph{Draco.}
+
+And Harry remembered who was at the center of his thoughts, the sanity
+of them, and clung to the image of his lover, using it to pull himself
+back from the selfish desire to give in. Draco had lost one of the few
+people in the world he loved. What he must be feeling now would be
+shattering. He needed Harry to come back and comfort him.
+
+Darkness pivoted and turned all around him, and Harry blasted through
+it, and opened his eyes with a gasp.
+
+He heard a \emph{clang} as his clenched fingers opened and the
+ring---harmless now, a drained and cracked Horcrux---fell to the floor.
+And then he caught a glimpse of Snape's face, in the moment before he
+was wrapped tight in his guardian's arms and held.
+
+``The poison stopped,'' Snape whispered.
+
+Harry tried to answer, he really did, but his right arm hurt like unholy
+fire, and he could only manage a choked cry. He glanced sideways, and
+grimaced. From shoulder to hand, his skin was black, spongy and soft,
+cracked, though the liquids were no longer leaking out of it as they had
+been.
+
+Snape sat back, carefully. ``We can save your arm,'' he told Harry,
+following his gaze. ``But I don't know how long it will be until you
+have the full functioning of it back again.''
+
+``I got used to using only my right hand before,'' said Harry. ``I'll
+get used to using just my left. Thank you for saving my life, sir.'' He
+held Snape's eyes in a moment so intense that Snape leaned away from
+him, looking shaken. Harry sat up, and ignored the screaming drag of his
+arm over the blankets. ``Where's Draco?''
+
+``With his father.'' Snape tried to press him back into the pillows.
+``Harry, you need to rest---''
+
+``He needs me,'' said Harry, and waved his left hand, causing the
+blankets to rise and wrap around his right arm. It would do for a
+bandage until he had time to slow down and look for a proper one. ``He
+just saw his mother die in front of him.''
+
+Snape's eyes fired with irritation. ``And you just fought Tom Riddle in
+your mind, and---''
+
+"And I'm \emph{fine}," Harry pointed out. It wasn't as though any of
+them would ever know about the darkness he carried. He would have told
+them, just as he would have told them about so many things, if he could
+be sure they would listen in silence. But they would argue, he knew,
+just as they had argued after the strike at Cornwall, and arguments
+about his emotions wearied him to the bone. Besides, Draco needed his
+strength far more right now than Harry needed to lie back and
+contemplate, just as Connor had needed it after their parents were
+killed. "\emph{Point Me} Draco Malfoy," he added to the silver ring on
+his left hand, the one that Draco had given him for their first joining
+ritual.
+
+The ring vibrated, and then tugged his hand in the direction of the
+hallway. Harry nodded, and climbed out of his bed.
+
+"\emph{Harry}---"
+
+"\emph{Thank you, sir}," Harry said, to make it clear that he didn't
+want to be ungrateful about Snape saving his life, he just had more
+important things to do right now, and then strode out the door. His arm
+hurt furiously. \emph{Well, let it.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco lifted his head when the door opened. As long as Lucius was
+showing grief, he could, too, but he didn't want to do it in front of
+someone else.
+
+Then he realized Harry stood there, and then Harry crossed the room and
+caught him close with both arms, and then he knew that he didn't have to
+put up the strong façade anymore. He caught Harry's left arm and drew it
+more firmly around him, letting his head fall back on his shoulder. He
+knew this mood of Harry's because he'd seen it with Connor after Lily
+and James died. Harry would kill to defend him. Right at the moment,
+nothing in the whole world was more important to him than Draco was, and
+that, \emph{that}, was the balm Draco needed after seeing his mother
+die.
+
+``I'm here, Draco,'' Harry whispered. ``Whatever you need, whatever you
+want from me, I'm here to provide it.''
+
+``Don't kill Lucius right now,'' Draco whispered back. ``Just send him
+away. And take me some place I can weep, Harry, and don't ever let me
+go.''
+
+``You have it,'' Harry said, and then he was being escorted away, down a
+hall that he knew would end in the Slytherin common room, where Harry
+would shield him from stares and whispers, and then their bedroom.
+
+And then, there, he finally gave in and let himself truly weep, feeling
+Harry's fingers combing through his hair, hearing his voice whisper
+constantly into his ear.
+
+``I'm so sorry, Draco. Whatever you need from me, you'll have it.''
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 44*: Intermission: All Honor to the
+Brave}\label{chapter-44-intermission-all-honor-to-the-brave}
+
+\textbf{Intermission: All Honor to the Brave}
+
+Her Lord had already started creating another snake, brewing the flesh
+of his latest victims in a burrow beneath the burrow rather than adding
+it to his great pattern. Indigena stood waiting for a time, but, though
+he was blind again, he did not need her now; his magic worked through
+his other senses to let him know what to do, and his grim determination
+and the newly swallowed power would be the reasons he accomplished this.
+
+Thus, she slipped quietly away and up to the surface, to the section of
+ground she'd begun to cultivate. Nowhere she lived was home without a
+garden.
+
+The soil was thick with spells that she'd cast to hold back the October
+chill and the frosts and make the flowers bloom. She was using mostly
+magical plants, but even they were more responsive to the natural
+conditions around them than most wizards and witches realized. She so
+far had three rows of the vines that bound wandless magic, a few roses
+like the ones around her wrist whose thorns would send forth deadly
+poison, a cutting from her grandmother's bell-bush that would, focused
+well enough, eventually tell them the state of Harry's health and power,
+and another bush, her special child.
+
+Indigena knelt down next to that one and ran her hand over the shiny
+green leaves, small and triangular. They unfolded with a rustle and
+swayed towards her. Indigena smiled, well-aware that tears were burning
+in her eyes and she did not know why.
+
+\emph{No. That is not true. You know why you weep. But you also know
+that it is not the reason that you} should \emph{weep, because Lucius is
+gone from your master's side and one Horcrux is destroyed and that makes
+his defeat more certain.}
+
+She ignored the thoughts, and held her palm over the center of the bush,
+where the stem whirled up into a flat expanse of wood. The bush danced
+as much as it could when rooted and with no wind, eager to do her
+bidding.
+
+Indigena let out her breath. This would be the first test for her little
+one, and she wished she had been able to do it under less serious
+circumstances, because she wanted this to be perfect.
+
+She called up images of white flowers, of water, of lovely women, and
+gave them all to the bush in a concentrated burst of thought.
+
+The bush swayed back and forth, slowly at first, and then faster.
+Indigena felt it drawing on her magic, the leaves curling beneath her
+skin and connecting with the tendrils there. She petted the little one
+with her free hand, shutting her eyes as the communion grew deeper,
+richer, and flooded the world behind her skull with green. This was the
+kind of magic that most Dark wizards and witches would have disdained.
+But Indigena was perfectly capable of caring---just about plants rather
+than people, usually---and she was also capable of interchange.
+
+When she opened her eyes, that tiny, flat expanse of wood had blossomed
+into a white flower. Give her little one time to grow, and it should be
+able to produce any flower, or any potion ingredient, that she asked it
+to and could clearly envision.
+
+Carefully, Indigena plucked the flower, and held it up before her eyes.
+It was white, and drooped as though the weight of its own head was too
+much for it. It was a narcissus, supposedly born from a beautiful,
+shallow boy who fell in love with his own reflection in a pool of water
+and always bent down to see it.
+
+But this narcissus was named for a woman who had not done that, who had
+sacrificed her life for her husband and son, and who had had no Mark to
+turn like a traitor from. She had been free to follow her own heart. And
+she had still done the honorable thing.
+
+Indigena could not help but honor that in turn, enemy or not.
+
+She held the narcissus to her mouth and blew on the stem. She longed to
+speak the words in her mouth aloud, but if her Lord should hear them, he
+would never understand.
+
+\emph{May this flower ease the grief of her passing, if such can be
+done. May it help her loved ones to remember that she died with honor, a
+chosen death, and that even the Dark can recognize such grace.}
+
+She held her hand flat again, and a wind not of her own making caught up
+the narcissus, whirling it around to show it to the world and demand
+that they admire its beauty, and then bore it away across the fields.
+Indigena watched it go, before she bowed her head and stood again. Her
+Mark was burning.
+
+She was needed below.
+
+The narcissus danced in the wind a moment longer, but vanished from
+sight before she did.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 45*: Until the World is
+Changed}\label{chapter-45-until-the-world-is-changed}
+
+The title of this chapter comes from Tolkien, \emph{The Return of the
+King}, specifically the description of Arwen's grave in Appendix A:
+``There at last when the mallorn-leaves were falling, but spring had not
+yet come, she laid herself to rest upon Cerin Amroth; and there is her
+green grave, until the world is changed, and all the days of her life
+are utterly forgotten by men that come after, and elanor and niphredil
+bloom no longer east of the sea.''
+
+\textbf{Chapter Thirty-Four: Until the World is Changed}
+
+Snape knocked firmly on the door of Harry and Draco's bedroom. He
+understood the need for Harry to retreat with his partner, but they had
+been there for most of a day, with Harry appearing only briefly to fetch
+a few pillows from the Slytherin common room. Snape's other students had
+told him they thought Harry was Transfiguring the pillows into food.
+
+``Harry?'' he called, when only silence answered his knock. ``Harry,
+open this door.''
+
+He did, but Snape almost wished he hadn't, once he saw him. The look in
+his eyes was deep, fierce, and quiet. He stood between Snape and a sight
+of the bed as if he intended to kill anyone who so much as crossed the
+threshold.
+
+Snape let out a sigh. He was not---good---with grief. He could try to
+comfort his son, but almost surely, the words he offered would not be
+enough, and not what Harry needed to hear, and certainly not ones that
+would make him abandon the vigil he'd taken up over Draco.
+
+``Lucius would like to see his son,'' he tried.
+
+The sides of the doorway turned to ice.
+
+Snape shook his head. \emph{Draco must want to stay here. If he wished
+to leave, I can't believe Harry would be keeping him a prisoner. Perhaps
+using Lucius's name is not the best tactic, however.}
+
+``He intends to invoke full Malfoy funeral rites,'' he told Harry, while
+trying to get a glimpse of his right arm. The potion he'd invented
+should make curing that arm possible, in a way that simple use of a
+bezoar would not have. But since Harry had it wrapped in blankets, Snape
+was not sure what the damage looked like now. ``For that, he needs
+Draco's presence.''
+
+Harry went on staring at him, not blinking once.
+
+And then Draco's voice, hoarse and filled with a sound of tears, called,
+``Let him in, Harry. If it concerns Narcissa, then I want to hear about
+it.''
+
+Harry at once stepped out of the way, arms folded. Snape didn't miss the
+wince he gave when his right limb crossed the left, and took the
+opportunity to ask, ``How is the pain from your wound?''
+
+``Tolerable.'' Harry's tone said he wasn't welcome to ask more. He
+watched Snape as if Snape were an intruder, someone who would hurt
+Draco---or, perhaps more accurately, someone who \emph{might} hurt
+Draco. It was the same expression he had worn around his brother when
+Lily and James paid the overdue toll of their lives. Draco was his whole
+world right now, and a threat would produce swift and immediate violence
+in retaliation, Snape could well believe.
+
+``Will you let me look at it? After?''
+
+``After the funeral? Yes. If Draco does not need my attention as much as
+he does now.''
+
+Snape was about to say that he'd meant after he was done speaking with
+Draco, but the boy pushed his head through the curtains of the bed just
+then, and Snape blinked and shut his mouth. Pain was still written in
+every corner of his face, and shimmered as tears in his eyes, but he
+\emph{did} look better. Wrapped in a cocoon of privacy and Harry's
+attention, it seemed he'd had the chance to do some healing.
+
+``Full Malfoy funeral rites?'' Draco whispered. "Are you \emph{sure}
+that's what he said, Professor Snape? Those words and no others?"
+
+``Exactly those,'' said Snape, a bit startled. He hadn't thought that
+Lucius would do anything less for Narcissa, but it seemed that there was
+a significance to those words that he hadn't noticed, or known about.
+Draco looked to be deep in thought, at least, biting his lip and running
+one hand up and down his arm as though he were caressing a non-existent
+Dark Mark.
+
+``Draco?''
+
+Snape had to close his eyes, Harry's voice was that full of concern and
+tenderness. That was the way he wished he could speak to his son, and
+which he knew he would never be able to.
+
+``I want to see him,'' said Draco abruptly, standing. ``I don't know
+how---but yes, I suppose that's possible, if he chooses that combination
+of time and mourners. I just never knew---'' He was silent again. Then
+he said, in the wondering tone of someone discovering something
+wonderful and long forgotten, ``He must have really loved her.''
+
+``He did, Draco,'' Harry said, moving behind him and draping his arms
+over his shoulders. His eyes were fierce behind the tenderness, Snape
+thought, the eyes of a mother gryphon stooping over her chick. ``He
+loves her even now. You want to see him?''
+
+Draco nodded.
+
+"\emph{Point Me} Lucius Malfoy," Harry whispered, and the ring on his
+hand vibrated and tugged him in the desired direction.
+
+Snape stood aside, because there seemed to be nothing else to do, and
+watched them go. Harry leaned confidingly close to Draco, at once
+guiding him and listening for more instructions. He seemed to be the
+taller, though really, Snape knew, they were of a height. Draco asked a
+question, and Harry responded at once, voice so low and soothing that
+Snape felt a shudder run down his spine.
+
+It made a lovely picture, or at least it would have, if Harry's right
+arm were not still black and packed with corrupt flesh.
+
+\emph{If he would only let me look at it.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``Harry?''
+
+``What?''
+
+Draco loved that. He only had to ask a question, and it was answered at
+once, Harry \emph{hearing} him at once, because he was never more than a
+few inches from Draco at any point during this awful day.
+
+``Do you think that full Malfoy funeral rites are the proper way to
+honor my mother?'' They were outside the room where Harry's spell had
+said Lucius was now, and Draco wanted to delay just a moment before
+going inside. If nothing else, he would have to tell Harry to drop the
+arm wrapped warmly around his shoulders, because that would make him
+look weak in front of his father, and he didn't want to, not yet. He
+buried his head against Harry's shoulder.
+
+``I don't know, Draco.'' Harry's voice practically crooned, and he was
+running a hand through Draco's hair, the way he knew Draco looked. ``I
+don't know what the full rites entail.''
+
+``Oh.'' Sometimes Draco thought he had explained everything about his
+family to Harry, and that made it all the more surprising when they
+bumped up against a barrier of ignorance. ``It involves burying her like
+someone born into the Malfoy family, instead of someone who married into
+it. Usually, the only people who get that treatment are heirs, or else,
+back when the family was bigger, cousins who were also spouses.''
+
+``I see.'' And Harry's voice was just as deep and just as serene as if
+he really had known about this all along, instead of only now learning
+it. Draco could love him for that, too, he thought, sleepily. Harry's
+presence over the last day had made his grief so much easier to bear.
+``Then, yes, Draco, I think it's appropriate. She made a sacrifice that
+any Malfoy should be proud to make, a sacrifice for the love of family
+and honor and her own principles. She died as she had lived. I think
+she's worthy to be laid with anyone you choose to lay her with, Malfoy
+or Black or any other pureblood family. None of them could be grander
+than she was.''
+
+``Thank you,'' Draco whispered, and nuzzled his cheek against Harry's
+hand. ``Stand a little apart from me. I don't think my father should see
+that I'm as affected by this as I am.''
+
+Harry at once dropped his arm and stepped away. Draco shivered, then
+convinced himself he couldn't feel cold, since Harry hadn't been
+touching his whole body, just his upper body. Then he took a deep
+breath, and nerved himself, and knocked on the door.
+
+``Enter,'' said Lucius's cold voice, and so they entered.
+
+SSSSSSSSS
+
+Lucius had learned the depth of his wrongness about many things: how
+much he hated, how much he loved, and how much he had loved his wife.
+But he had one more doubt left to unlearn, and he never knew it until he
+saw his son and his son-in-law enter the room the Headmistress had
+turned over to him and stand before him.
+
+Draco walked unsteadily, but he was still walking. His cheeks had two
+spots of color on them that told Lucius how hard this was for him,
+still. His eyes had the unmistakable marks of weeping. Of course, Lucius
+could hardly hold him in contempt for that, when he was the one who had
+told his son to weep.
+
+Harry's magic was everywhere around him, like a wheeling flock of cold
+birds. His gaze met Lucius's and locked, taking in, Lucius guessed,
+every possible way that he could be a threat to Draco. And the answering
+threat in those green eyes was very real. Make a move that could be
+interpreted as hurting his son, say the wrong thing, and Harry would
+tear him apart with no remorse.
+
+And Lucius blinked a little, as one last piece of the puzzle fell into
+place.
+
+He had thought his son too submissive at one point, and despised him for
+it. He had thought he should have a dynamic with Harry---if he
+\emph{must} choose a halfblood as a partner---more like the dynamic
+Lucius had with Narcissa, committed to hurting each other if necessary
+in order to prove a point. Harry carried too much of the strength in
+that partnership.
+
+And now he saw that it did not matter who had the greater strength, if
+the other person had the power of command. Draco did. He could ask
+anything of Harry, and it would be done. That might not be true
+\emph{all} the time, but it was true now, and whenever else Draco truly
+needed it to be. Harry was not a dominating Lord taking the lead because
+of his magical power, but a guardian close and loyal to his lover, ready
+to defend or destroy or tear apart because someone else \emph{asked} him
+to.
+
+\emph{They are no more submissive to each other,} Lucius realized at
+that moment, \emph{than Lady Stormborn and her Venture were.} Lady
+Stormborn had been a Light Lady who could not use her magic for killing.
+Venture, her lover and strong right hand, had done it for her instead,
+and she had been so effective that it was said more people feared her
+than Lady Stormborn, though the Lady was the stronger.
+
+\emph{Such strength runs behind and before the Malfoy family, and will
+serve to shelter my son when I am gone.}
+
+``Father?'' Draco's voice was anxious, and Lucius realized he had been
+silent too long. Draco leaned forward, staring at him. Harry bristled
+intangibly, magic sliding out like hedgehog quills. ``Is there something
+wrong? Did you not intend to invoke the full funeral rites for Mother
+after all?''
+
+Harry's magic grew worse, and colder. Lucius heard the distinctive howl
+of a winter storm.
+
+``No,'' he said quietly. ``She deserves them, son, and she shall have
+them. I was---lost in thought. Now, come, sit with me, and make sure we
+have the list of guests we shall need to invite correct.''
+
+Draco came and sat with him. After a moment, he glanced up and asked
+Harry to come stand at his right shoulder. Harry did, leaning his left
+arm on Draco's shoulder at his next direction. His right arm was still
+shrouded in blankets, and Lucius could not see what it looked like. From
+the gaze that Harry trained on him, vigilant as a hawk's, he hardly
+cared, next to what he thought Lucius might do to Draco.
+
+\emph{I need not worry for my son when I am gone. He will be sheltered,
+protected, and loved as every Malfoy deserves to be. And that he could
+win such love for himself speaks of hidden depths in him I have never
+known.}
+
+``Father?''
+
+Lucius shook his head, and told himself to stop drifting off into dreams
+of a future that might never be, if not all of them survived this war.
+He knew Harry still had reason to hate him, and in this mood, he might
+well strike first and think later if Draco was unduly distressed. He
+reached out, grasped the list of people who would attend the funeral,
+and slid it in front of Draco. ``Here is the initial list of guests. Can
+you think of anyone who is missing?''
+
+He soaked up Harry's power through his other senses, feeling the press
+of pain around his skull like a crown, since he didn't quite dare to
+look at the silent Lord-level wizard again.
+
+\emph{Get past this war, and the Malfoy family has a fine future waiting
+for it. We shall indeed rise again.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSS
+
+Narcissa's funeral began on a day like the sea, when the sky was so
+thick with clouds that it seemed impossible light could find its way
+through, and yet it did. Harry watched the light dripping through the
+holes in the clouds, staining their undersides the way that sunlight
+would stain the surface of the rolling water, and felt a slow, deep
+sense of satisfaction. This was the way that it should be, neither
+entirely Light nor entirely Dark, the way that Narcissa had been. Oh,
+she had been a Dark witch, but she had died out of love and selflessness
+and honor and all those other conceptions that so many Light wizards
+believed Dark wizards could not understand.
+
+He lowered his chin to Draco's shoulder and squeezed his arms firmly
+around him. He let out a little gasp when the material of Draco's robes
+shifted past his right arm, and tried to conceal his wince. Every
+movement against the black skin hurt as if someone were roasting him
+with dragonfire. But he was determined not to show that. This was a day
+for Draco's grief, as the past few days had been, and intruding on it
+seemed little short of obscene to Harry.
+
+Draco faced him with a small frown, though, obviously having noted the
+gasp. ``Are you all right?''
+
+Harry fixed his eyes on Draco's face. His gray eyes were unclouded, as
+they had been since he heard about this funeral, wearing an expression
+of grim pride. His blond hair had been combed within an inch of its
+life, until one more tug of the comb would have brought strands out; it
+didn't shift as the wind swirled past them. His robes were dark, but
+trimmed with both blue-gray, the color of the old Malfoy family crest,
+and silver, one of the colors of the Blacks. Harry thought he looked
+magnificent, and let his admiration shine through his eyes. Draco
+flushed a bit and looked away.
+
+``Perfectly all right,'' Harry whispered. ``I'm here with you. Where
+else would I wish to be?''
+
+Draco's hand found and squeezed his, hard. Harry was glad that it was
+the left one. The right one was still a crabbed claw after the hard
+clutch he'd maintained on the Peverell ring. But he got by. At least he
+had his magic. Most other people damaged after a battle like the one
+that had destroyed the Horcrux and the shard of Tom Riddle weren't as
+lucky.
+
+``Thanks, Harry,'' Draco said softly, and then lifted his head as the
+distant sound of a bell rang out across the field. ``That's it,'' he
+whispered. ``That's where we're supposed to go. Follow.'' He took a step
+forward.
+
+Harry followed closely, at his left shoulder. The space at Draco's right
+shoulder had to be left open for any Malfoy ghosts who wanted to walk
+with him. It felt unnatural to be on the other side---Harry didn't think
+he could shield Draco as well against attacks from here---but it was a
+requirement of the rites, and Draco had wanted these rites with all his
+heart. Harry could certainly put his own discomfort aside. Anything that
+Draco needed from him, he would have.
+
+They were on the ground in front of Malfoy Manor, which shimmered now
+with fully restored blood wards, since no one was about to use it as a
+safehouse again. The ground looked flat and as gray as the sky, though
+crossed, like it, with lines of glimmering sunlight. Harry remembered
+the first time he had ever seen the Manor from this angle, the Christmas
+holiday that he had come from Hogwarts with Draco, and remembered the
+way that Narcissa had promised him safe sanctuary in the house. She had
+kept that promise, though Lucius had not.
+
+Harry shook the thoughts from his head. He did not want to remember bad
+things about the past. He wanted to remember the woman they had come to
+honor, and the husband who had loved her enough to organize this for
+her.
+
+He and Draco went in silent procession along the front of the house.
+When they reached the far corner, Snape joined them. He held a narcissus
+in his hand, and wore fine robes that Harry hadn't known he owned; he
+thought that they might have been a gift from Lucius. For whatever
+reason, along with Narcissa's blood relatives and the man---Harry---who
+had been adopted into the family, there could be one invited guest at
+this funeral, and Lucius had invited Snape. Harry thought it might have
+been because he had been there to see her die.
+
+Draco bowed deeply on sighting Snape, and took out a narcissus of his
+own from his sleeve. ``Well met, fellow traveler on the roads of
+death,'' he said. ``Who have you come to honor?''
+
+``A fallen woman,'' said Snape, his pure, polished tones perfectly
+fitted, Harry thought, to the role he was meant to play, as companion to
+Narcissa's soul. ``A fallen Malfoy wife and mother. When I heard she was
+dead, I did not wait, but hastened here to see her go.''
+
+Draco considered Snape in silence for some moments. Harry almost
+wondered if he should prompt him to remember the ritual words, then
+scolded himself. Of course Draco would remember them, but it was a
+disgrace to Narcissa's spirit if he didn't take the proper amount of
+time to judge the guest.
+
+``Be here, and be welcome,'' said Draco abruptly. ``It is Narcissa
+Malfoy who has died, and it is fitting that you should come when you
+heard the news. A mighty wizard such as yourself is always welcome.''
+Harry breathed a bit more easily. Magical power was about the most
+neutral thing Draco could have judged Snape on, and so he was glad that
+Draco had chosen it. ``What gift do you bring her?''
+
+Snape reached up and removed a slender silver chain from around his
+neck, offering a vial of crystalline glass. This, Harry was less certain
+Lucius had given him; Snape might well have such a thing in his stores
+for capturing his more expensive Potions ingredients. ``A petal from an
+amaranth,'' he answered.
+
+Harry started, and looked more closely at the petal in the glass. Yes;
+it was purple-red, and shone with a faint, flickering flame, rather like
+the one that might surround a phoenix feather. Where Snape had found a
+sprig of the immortal flower, and why he had chosen to give up this
+petal to Narcissa, Harry had no idea. Amaranths were more rarely seen
+even than phoenixes were.
+
+``Be once, and twice, and thrice welcome, then,'' said Draco, and
+reached back to put his hand on Harry's shoulder. Harry felt himself
+come alive under the touch. ``Do you acknowledge your connection to the
+man who would have been Narcissa Malfoy's son-in-law, had she lived?''
+
+Snape looked directly into Harry's eyes, and sent a bolt of reassuring
+Legilimency. Harry wished he could scowl. He didn't need reassurance,
+Draco did.
+
+``I recognize it,'' Snape said. ``It is part of the reason I am here.''
+He looked back at Draco. ``But the greater part is that I wished to
+honor her, brave and gracious woman that she was, a Malfoy wife and
+mother.''
+
+Draco caught his breath, and then nodded. Harry thought he was probably
+more affected by the ritual words than he'd admit. ``You are welcome,
+Professor Snape,'' he said. ``A mighty wizard, and a gift that speaks of
+immortality. Be four times welcome.'' He turned and began to walk the
+path they'd been instructed to tread again, along the house and towards
+the Malfoy vaults at the back. Harry followed, still at his left
+shoulder, and Snape trailed behind them both.
+
+Harry wished the funeral rites hadn't called for Snape to walk there. He
+had eyes that were far too keen for the role of follower, for one thing,
+and for another, Harry could feel those eyes boring into his shoulder
+blades. Snape had an obsession with his health over the past few days.
+
+They met up with Regulus when they were halfway through the immense,
+circular track that Lucius had described to them, and which they had to
+walk, to tell all the Malfoy estates that someone beloved was gone from
+them. He wore dark robes with the Black crest prominent above his heart,
+and he carried a black rose. Its petals were edged with silver.
+
+``Who comes?'' Draco asked, his voice appropriately grave and
+reverential. ``For you are not of Malfoy blood, sir, by your
+countenance, and it is a Malfoy woman we have come to honor.''
+
+Regulus nodded. Harry had not thought he could look so solemn. Of
+course, the loss of Narcissa had struck him harder than just the loss of
+a cousin, Harry thought. They'd spent much time together in the last
+little while, as Regulus identified Black artifacts that might be of use
+in the war, and Narcissa helped him remember which were deadly outside
+of the family and which ones were not. They'd had the time to talk, to
+exchange memories, and to know each other as adults, outside the
+childhood Harry thought was half-twisted, given what he knew of the way
+Sirius and Bellatrix had grown up. Harry decided he would need to attend
+to Regulus's grief as soon as Draco's need for him lessened. He didn't
+know if Regulus was talking to anyone about it, even Snape, and everyone
+should have someone to talk to.
+
+``She was Malfoy, but born of the Black line, and I am the heir of
+Black.'' Regulus held up the black rose. ``I bring a flower in the
+colors of her birth, one that is bred of magic and not from nature. She
+was a creature of magic, as well, and too perfect to simply grow without
+careful tending and shaping and sculpting, all of which she did
+herself.''
+
+Draco bowed. ``Be welcome, heir of Black, for the legacy you bear that
+resulted in Narcissa Malfoy,'' he said. ``Be twice welcome, for your
+understanding of her. Be thrice welcome, for your sobriety and quietness
+in joining us on the roads of death. Will you walk with us?''
+
+``I will.''
+
+Regulus turned to accompany them, walking parallel to Draco but a short
+distance away. The rose in his hands remained steady. Harry studied his
+face surreptitiously, though, and surprised a trace of tears there.
+
+\emph{Yes, I will have to talk to him.}
+
+Almost at the end, near the Malfoy crypts, they met Andromeda and Tonks.
+Tonks's hair was dark, and her eyes gray. Harry thought she might be
+wearing her true face, or perhaps she had simply moved her features
+closer to Black for the role that she was supposed to play in the full
+funeral rites. Andromeda looked much as she had the last time Harry had
+seen her, when they sent letters to the other Ministries, but more
+thoughtful. Tonks held a narcissus, Andromeda a flower that Harry didn't
+recognize.
+
+``These women are also of the Black line,'' said Regulus, introducing
+them, as was proper for the representative of an alien bloodline, Harry
+knew. ``They are under my protection. One was a woman who shared her
+childhood with Narcissa Malfoy, and the other is of her body.''
+
+``What gifts do you bring for the deceased?'' Draco asked. His voice was
+breaking now. Harry let his left arm brush undetectably against his side
+in support, since they couldn't touch openly at this point in the
+ceremony.
+
+``I bring a narcissus,'' Tonks answered, her voice hesitant and hoarse,
+``for her name. I did not know her well enough to do otherwise, and a
+gift that presumes is a gift with its purpose undone.''
+
+Draco nodded, and turned to look at Andromeda.
+
+``I was her sister,'' said Andromeda, and held out her hand. Harry took
+the chance to study the flower more closely. It looked like a narcissus,
+actually, but a dark blue-purple, and its center was a deep blue, the
+color of Narcissa's eyes. ``This is a blossom of the bush that flowered
+the day she was born, and the day she first learned to walk, and the day
+she married, and the day she died. No time else. It does not have a
+name. That knowledge died with my mother.''
+
+``Be welcome,'' Draco whispered, ``you who come in humility. Be twice
+welcome, you who shared your childhood and can tell us things about
+Narcissa Malfoy we never knew.'' Harry could see him fighting the urge
+to reach out and touch the strange flower. ``Be thrice welcome, you who
+saw her born and are here to see her lowered.'' He nodded. ``Walk with
+us on the roads of death.''
+
+Andromeda and Tonks took their places at Regulus's shoulders, and on
+they went. Harry was still trying to ignore Snape's stare.
+
+At least that became easier when they reached the grave itself. It was
+not, strictly speaking, a grave, but an open entrance into the white
+Malfoy mausoleum, which Harry had never seen before; Draco told him it
+only became visible when one of the family had died. The air hummed with
+ancient magic. The coffin stood ready in front of the open tomb, with
+Lucius beside it and the top lifted to show Narcissa's face. \emph{Too
+peaceful,} Harry thought, as he gazed at her. \emph{There is no thinking
+that she died as anything but a willing sacrifice.}
+
+He banished the thoughts that tried to follow that. It had been a
+willing death, indeed, and he could not allow his own grief to intrude,
+not now. There were better things to do, like moving forward to Draco's
+side as they all halted, just in case he should fall.
+
+``Who comes?'' Lucius asked, drawing his wand, as if he would defend his
+wife's body. That was more formality than anything, Harry knew, left
+over from the days when rival pureblood families would sometimes attack
+during funerals, given that all their enemies were gathered in one
+place. ``Who comes to disturb the peace of the newly dead, Narcissa
+Malfoy, a Malfoy wife and mother?''
+
+``We do not disturb it, Father, defender,'' said Draco, head bowed.
+``These are the man who would have been her son-in-law---'' for a
+moment, his hand brushed hard against Harry's ribs, returning the
+gesture from before ``---a guest met on the road who bears a token of
+immortality, the heir of the line into which she was born, a sister who
+shared her childhood, and the child of that sister's body. They bring
+flowers, as is proper, those symbols of beauty that live and die, and
+shall live and die until the world is changed and flowers bloom no more.
+Some honor her name, some her character, some her life. They are not
+intruders, but proper and respectful mourners of the greatness that is
+gone.'' He paused, then added softly, ``We shall not see her like
+again.''
+
+Lucius nodded sharply, then said, ``Lay your flowers down.''
+
+They stepped forward, in reverse order, so that the purple flower
+Andromeda held was laid first, under Narcissa's left hand, and the
+narcissus Harry held came last. He peered down at Narcissa for a moment,
+wondering about the best place to put it---he could not place it between
+her breasts; that was for Lucius alone---and at last lifted her hair and
+settled it under the long golden fall.
+
+Lucius opened his mouth, and then snapped it shut and stared. Harry
+turned his head.
+
+Another narcissus was whirling up the wind, as though hastened along by
+someone who was both invisible and late. It tucked itself into the
+coffin, near the place where the lid would close down and conceal
+Narcissa's face. The moment it fell limp, it lost all hint of magic.
+
+Harry looked sideways at Draco and mouthed, \emph{Was that supposed to
+happen?}
+
+Eyes wide, Draco shook his head.
+
+Lucius recovered quickly, though. ``We all have our gifts,'' he said.
+``And even the world mourns her.'' Harry saw Draco stand a little
+straighter at that, and silently blessed whoever had sent the narcissus;
+it had eased Draco's grief, a little. ``But it is time for my gift, the
+gift of the one who married her and brought her into the Malfoy family,
+and sired her son upon her.'' His voice softened, and Harry had the
+feeling the next words were not in the rites. ``The man who loved her,
+though too little and too late.''
+
+He leaned forward and laid a tempered blade between Narcissa's breasts.
+Harry did not think he had ever seen a knife so beautiful. Its steel
+rippled like a wave, and was silver with touches of white, as though
+someone had captured the glint of diamonds under the surface. The hilt
+was set with diamonds itself, in the shape of a narcissus.
+
+``She was a tempered blade,'' said Lucius, ``and our relationship was
+ever on a knife's edge. May rust never touch her.''
+
+He stepped back and raised his wand. The coffin's lid shut slowly.
+
+Draco gave a choked sob at his side. Harry stepped forward and wrapped
+his left arm around him, turning his head to nuzzle at his neck. He
+could do that, now that the gravest part of the ceremony was past. Draco
+turned and clutched at him, eyes tightly shut. Harry couldn't blame him.
+One of the most wonderful women he had ever known was going where no one
+would ever look upon her face again.
+
+\emph{Farewell, Narcissa,} he thought, tendering his own goodbye when it
+would not be improper for him to do so. She had cared a great deal about
+propriety, he knew. \emph{The first true mother I ever knew.}
+
+The coffin shut, and Lucius levitated it into the tomb. The door shut
+with a shimmer, and a moment later, the whole mausoleum vanished,
+sealing itself beyond sight until it should be needed again.
+
+Lucius tilted back his head, and screamed.
+
+Harry shivered. He had known this was coming, of course---the Wailing
+was part of many Dark pureblood funerals, not only the Malfoys'---but it
+was still a shock to hear it. Lucius gave vent to the tearing pain in
+his heart, and, appropriately, the sound tore the air, and made the
+birds wheeling overhead flee.
+
+Lucius cried again. This time, Draco joined his voice to his father's,
+and Harry heard the tears he had, even now, kept back. He shook his head
+and tightened his hold. How did one rise, knowing a loving parent had
+been there every day, and get used to living without them?
+
+A third time Lucius wailed, and a second time Draco wailed, and now it
+was permitted for the rest of them to become the chorus. Harry took a
+deep breath, then loosed it in a ringing scream.
+
+He listened as the sounds rode the wind, and hoped that anyone who might
+think of harming Draco would hear his cry for the warning it was, and
+stay away.
+
+And he hoped, too, if she still had ears to hear, that Narcissa would
+listen, and know that the son she had died for was well taken care of.
+
+Harry closed his eyes, and drew Draco close, and set himself to endure.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 46*: Changeable}\label{chapter-46-changeable}
+
+Thanks for the reviews on the last chapters!
+
+\textbf{Chapter Thirty-Five: Changeable}
+
+Harry leaned forward, staring steadily at Regulus. ``I know that you
+miss her,'' he said, which made Regulus freeze over the tea he was
+preparing. He had his back turned to Harry, the position he'd been in
+since almost the moment Harry came through the Floo connection to
+Silver-Mirror. ``You don't have to pretend around me, Regulus. You
+became close in these last few months. She was your cousin, and your
+memories of that are much nearer the surface than hers because you
+didn't physically age. You can tell me that you grieve for Narcissa.''
+
+Regulus turned around with two cups of tea in his hands and an
+expression of unnatural calm on his face. ``Of course I do.''
+
+Harry Summoned one of the cups of tea, gently enough not to spill a
+drop, and narrowed his eyes as he set it down on the arm of his chair.
+``Then why are you acting as if you don't? I don't think anyone expects
+this kind of stoic act outside the funeral.''
+
+``I did not wish to burden you further,'' said Regulus quietly, and
+sipped at his tea. Harry could see the signs of a coming rupture in the
+sides of his face, but he was willing to wait for it to arrive. ``You
+had enough to do with destroying the Horcrux and taking care of Draco.''
+
+``I still noticed,'' Harry whispered. "I would have come to you the
+moment the funeral was over, if Draco hadn't needed a little more
+reassurance. But this time, even though he wanted me to stay there a bit
+longer, I refused. I can tell when he truly \emph{needs} me there, the
+way he did the past few days, and when he only wants to stay in bed to
+skive off."
+
+Regulus almost smiled. Then he blinked and said, ``Doesn't this mean
+that you're missing classes, Harry?''
+
+``You're more important.''
+
+Regulus took a deep breath and licked his lips. Harry waited. Regulus
+had been more often cast in the role of comforter than comforted these
+past few months, unless one counted his nightmares of Death's country.
+And Harry was not only younger than he was, but someone Regulus thought
+of as his child, his heir, in need of protection. Of course it would
+feel odd to confess this.
+
+``She was the one who taught me what it was like,'' Regulus began
+softly, ``to have a child in danger, in the midst of battle, and still
+fight on. She didn't let her concern for Draco dominate her entire life,
+though of course it was always there. She concentrated on the Black
+artifacts, on her missing husband, on the news of the battles and your
+international connections flowing in. I do get obsessed with one concern
+if I don't watch myself. She taught me how to act on more than one
+level.''
+
+``Good,'' Harry whispered.
+
+Regulus shot him a small smile. ``It didn't help that I'd known her as a
+little hellion, you know---by the standards of the Black family---the
+most outgoing of her sisters, and now she was this poised and perfect
+woman.'' He shook his head in wonder. ``Marriage to Lucius Malfoy was
+good for her, and I wouldn't have said that it would be when they got
+married.''
+
+``Why not?'' Harry asked. From what Narcissa herself had told him about
+their courtship, she had always known that she wanted to marry Lucius,
+and everything after their seventh year at Hogwarts had been a mere
+settling of formalities.
+
+``Lucius Malfoy was colder at a deeper level than she was,'' Regulus
+answered. ``They complemented each other, of course, but there's a
+difference between that and one partner preying on the other. I could
+see perfectly how she would melt a bit of Lucius's coldness, how he
+would get what he needed from her. I couldn't see how she would get what
+she needed from him. She already had strength of her own, and when she
+needed human warmth, he'd have none.''
+
+``I think it was more than that.'' Harry poked cautiously at his
+thoughts of Narcissa. They felt like a loose tooth, even now. ``She got
+something else that she needed from him, something more important than
+warmth.''
+
+``And that probably proves only that I don't understand them, and never
+did.'' Regulus gave a wry smile and shrugged. "And the woman I grieve
+for is more the woman of these last few months \emph{and} the cousin I
+knew as a child, not all the women she was in between."
+
+``She'd understand that,'' said Harry. ``You weren't there, and it
+wasn't your fault. Everyone believed you were dead.'' The spell
+Dumbledore had used to make it seem as if Sirius were the heir of Black
+and to make everyone forget Regulus's existence still angered him if he
+thought of it. "Why do you think you should grieve for everything she
+was?'
+
+Regulus bit his lip, making him look very young. ``Because she was such
+a wonderful woman,'' he said finally. ``It seems a blasphemy not to
+mourn her as fully as she should be mourned.''
+
+``She'll receive that,'' said Harry. ``From Lucius. From Draco. But
+mourn what she was to you, Regulus. I'm fairly sure she never was that
+to anyone else. Dark pureblood witches don't tend to take parenting
+advice from each other.''
+
+``I've noticed,'' said Regulus dryly. ``Narcissa's mother never could
+tell my mother how to raise me and Sirius, though she tried---and
+Sirius, at least, would have been better off if our mother had
+listened.'' He hesitated again. Then he said, ``Would you be adverse to
+spending next weekend in my company, Harry? There are a few secrets of
+the Black estate that you don't know even now, and that you should.''
+
+Harry smiled. ``I'd like to.'' That way, he would get to see more of
+Regulus, and make sure he was dealing well with his grief. Though it
+seemed quiet and peaceful right now, with no noisy storms of tears, he
+might be persuaded to shed them as more time passed since the funeral.
+
+They talked of other things, then, with Regulus determinedly changing
+the subject, and Harry letting him. He'd opened a road. Regulus wouldn't
+enclose himself behind walls of bone or ice and pretend nothing was
+wrong. Harry knew how disastrous that would be.
+
+They talked about the other Horcruxes, methods of destroying them once
+they had them and once, in a fit of Regulus's drollery, on ways to lure
+Evan Rosier close. Harry only smiled through that part. The Hufflepuff
+cup would be the last Horcrux he tried to obtain, he thought. Though
+Rosier's magic might be less formidable than the defenses that had
+guarded the ring, he moved around, and there was next to no way of being
+sure where he would go next.
+
+At last, Regulus sighed and said, ``As much as I've enjoyed your
+company, Harry, Severus will be wondering where you went.''
+
+``I suppose so,'' Harry said. He'd missed Potions. He stood, making sure
+to keep his gaze on Regulus, and keep it calm and assessing. ``I will
+see you next weekend? No sudden excuses otherwise?''
+
+``Not unless I wake up with a sore throat and a cold you shouldn't be
+within a hundred miles of.''
+
+Harry smiled, and then ducked back through the Floo connection into the
+hospital wing. Draco was waiting for him, and Harry lifted his head
+anxiously, his instincts from the past few days stirring. Had something
+happened while he was gone? Did Draco's waiting for him mean he should
+have returned earlier?
+
+``Harry!'' Draco reached out and, probably only because it was closer to
+him than the other, he caught Harry's right arm.
+
+The pain was instant, like a hot drill, and Harry fainted.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco stared, and then knelt swiftly beside Harry. He'd only meant to
+tell him how spectacular a bad mood Snape had been in that morning when
+he realized Harry wasn't in Potions, even though Draco was. He hadn't
+thought his mere touch could make him fall.
+
+Then he caught a glimpse of blackness above the bandages that shrouded
+Harry's right arm, and froze.
+
+\emph{I didn't---he never showed me his arm in the past few days. I just
+assumed the damage had been cured.} Draco squinted, finding the
+blackness hard to look at even now. \emph{And he was using Notice-Me-Not
+charms to make sure that I didn't look too closely. Damn him!}
+
+He quickly undid the bandages, and hissed. Harry's arm was shedding
+black, crispy flakes like toast cooked too well. The flesh underneath
+felt spongy to Draco's touch, and his hand was a black-red crab's claw.
+
+And then Harry was awake and gasping from the pain of being touched, and
+Draco put accusations and blame aside. He would yell later. Right now,
+what mattered was healing Harry's arm, as much as that could be done.
+
+``Come on,'' he said quietly, and pulled on Harry's left arm until he
+sat up. ``Do you want to go to Madam Pomfrey for this, or to Professor
+Snape?''
+
+Harry froze for a moment, then seemed to realize he wouldn't get out of
+it. He shook his head slightly. ``I've talked to Madam Pomfrey before,''
+he said. ``She'd confine me to bed, but not do anything else. It would
+be too much fussing. Take me to Snape.'' He hissed under his breath as
+he stood. Draco glanced over to make sure that his robe wasn't brushing
+against Harry's right arm, and frowned when he saw that it wasn't.
+
+``Does your arm hurt all the time?'' he asked.
+
+``When air brushes against it.'' Harry shrugged, and stared at the
+bandages Draco had dropped to the ground. They reassembled themselves
+around his right arm. This time, Draco could see that there was a narrow
+layer of air in between the cloth and the skin. ``But that hurts less
+than something else touching it.''
+
+Draco narrowed his eyes. Certainty had just settled like a stone in his
+stomach. "The \emph{only} reason you're wearing those bandages is to
+keep people from staring," he said. ``They don't actually do anything to
+help you.''
+
+Harry returned the frown. ``Of course they do. I told you, air is less
+painful, and this means that, most of the time, nothing but air touches
+it.''
+
+``You didn't tell me about this. Why?'' Draco longed to touch Harry's
+shoulder in reassurance, but he didn't fancy being the one to send Harry
+crumbling to the floor. He steered him out of the hospital wing and
+towards the dungeons instead. Harry followed with only a small amount of
+stiffness in his spine. Draco's puzzlement increased. He could tell that
+Harry didn't want to see Snape, but not why.
+
+``Are you mad, Draco?''
+
+``Mad on account of what? What did I do?'' This was one of the few times
+in their relationship Draco had ever found Harry utterly bewildering.
+
+``I didn't tell you about it,'' said Harry, as if speaking to a very
+small child, "because I \emph{knew} that you were suffering a wound I
+can't even imagine. You love so few people, Draco, and one of them is
+gone." He turned to the side, and Draco suddenly found himself the one
+who was the recipient of the concerned gaze. Harry shrugged his left arm
+free, and ran his hand gently up and down Draco's cheek. ``Are you ready
+to do this? I can take myself to Snape, you know.''
+
+There were two moments during which Draco just blinked, in the middle of
+a pure white haze of confusion.
+
+Then the confusion became rage, and he would have punched Harry if not
+for that fragile right arm. As it was, he stepped behind Harry and
+propelled him down the corridor. Harry cocked his head to stare back at
+him.
+
+``You idiot,'' Draco hissed. "Did you really think I'd be invalid from
+my mother's death for months? Did you think I had to stop caring about
+you because \emph{I} was hurting? Didn't it occur to you that this might
+give me something to do \emph{besides} brood?"
+
+"I wouldn't have \emph{minded} if you were an invalid for months,
+because of what you've suffered," Harry corrected. He was shaking his
+head now, and trying to halt, but Draco kept his feet moving, so that he
+couldn't do something stupid like stop and argue. ``If you recovered
+before then, that would be wonderful. But you should have what you need,
+Draco, and---''
+
+``And part of that involves you whole and healthy.'' Harry tried to
+catch a corner in the hallway to stop them. Draco expertly steered him
+past that and down the stairs beyond. "I'm not the only one who
+suffered, Harry. I'm not the only one who lost. Am I going to care about
+some random person I never knew who dies in a werewolf attack or a Death
+Eater raid? No. But I \emph{do} care about you, and just because my
+mother is dead doesn't mean that I've lost all ability to love or look
+beyond myself. That you would think I had is insulting."
+
+Abruptly, Harry bowed his head and stepped to the side in a neat
+dancer's movement, leaving Draco to push empty air. His eyes were
+narrow, but it was the quietude of his face that made Draco break off,
+not his gaze. This was Harry in the midst of a dangerous rage.
+
+"\emph{That's} why I haven't been talking to you or Snape," Harry
+snapped. "\emph{That's} why I thought that you shouldn't know what I was
+thinking about, even before your grief made it dangerous for you---"
+
+``Dangerous my pureblood arse---''
+
+"It \emph{is!}" Harry shouted. ``It was a devastating loss, and the
+attention I gave you was no less than what you needed or deserved,
+Draco.'' He was breathing hard, and Draco thought he saw the sheen of
+tears on his cheeks, but in a moment they were gone, dried by his
+magic---or perhaps not having existed at all. "But that's not what we
+were arguing about. We were arguing about what I think about you. No, I
+never thought you were selfish. No, I never thought that you'd lost all
+ability to love because one person whom you did love is dead. \emph{Stop
+putting words in my mouth that were never there.} I haven't told you or
+Snape anything I've been thinking or feeling because I don't trust you
+not to scold me for it!"
+
+The words made the corridor ring. Draco blinked, and then stepped
+forward with his hand outstretched. Harry was bristling, intangible
+icicles extending from him. Draco knew he wouldn't be hurt, though. He
+never was. Harry never hurt him magically.
+
+``Harry,'' he breathed. ``It's all right. I promise, both of us only
+want to help you. If you tell us not to scold, we won't.''
+
+Harry gave him a smile so bitter it stopped Draco in his tracks.
+``That's the problem, Draco,'' he answered. "I don't trust you not to do
+it. It'll start innocently, under the pretense of comfort, such as
+telling me that I really shouldn't regret my parents' deaths, they were
+quicker than they deserved and at least it wasn't someone closer to me.
+And that will lead to an argument. And the one thing I \emph{cannot}
+afford right now is an argument with you, or Snape, or Connor, about my
+emotions. I think I could bear everything else. But not that. It's too
+exhausting."
+
+\emph{Well, yes, that does hurt, that he doesn't trust us.} Draco sidled
+another step closer. Harry took a step back. Already, Draco could see,
+he was trying to smooth it over, trying to pretend this hadn't happened,
+and swallow back the anger, grief, and other emotions he was
+experiencing.
+
+``I'm sorry,'' Harry said at last, opening his eyes. They were
+unnaturally bright, Draco thought in alarm. ``That shouldn't have
+happened, not when you're grieving and not when we have more important
+things to worry about. I'll still see Snape about my arm. I agree, it's
+time. The pain isn't getting better, though the blackness hasn't
+advanced.''
+
+``Harry,'' Draco whispered, unable to believe, now, that he hadn't
+thought of this earlier. ``You loved my mother, too.''
+
+``We aren't talking about that,'' Harry snapped, and then turned and
+walked towards the dungeons again.
+
+``You did love her,'' Draco said, following him. "I know it. Please. I
+can't imagine that you're feeling anything about her that I would
+\emph{want} to scold you for. Or Snape either, for that matter. Please
+talk to me about it?"
+
+``I can imagine it,'' Harry muttered darkly, and then fixed him with a
+calm stare. ``Look---Draco, I appreciate everything you've done for me.
+I love you more than I can express in words, or with magic, or with
+actions. Everything together would still fall short. Whatever you need
+of me, you can have. But this you don't need, and you can't have. Leave
+it alone.''
+
+Draco fell silent, biting his lip. No matter what he thought or felt, he
+was enough of an expert in Harry-speak to know that he wouldn't get what
+he wanted by pushing, not right now.
+
+\emph{Maybe Snape can make an impression on him. I hope so.}
+
+SSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry spent the walk to the dungeons reinforcing his barriers. Snape
+would no doubt react to the sight of his arm much as Draco had, and he
+wanted to be prepared for that. This breakdown should never have
+happened. It was much easier if Draco and Snape---and Connor, for that
+matter, though he'd kept a respectful distance since Narcissa's
+death---never suspected he was hiding anything. Then he wouldn't get the
+admonishments for not talking to someone.
+
+An enormous weariness rose up in Harry at the thought of those
+admonishments. What had happened the moment Draco found out about his
+arm? Yes. Of course. Scolding. It seemed that nothing Harry did was
+right. Keep it secret and keep it silent, and that was wrong. Share it,
+and that was wrong.
+
+He knew what they would say about his parents, about the darkness he
+carried inside him, about his feelings for Narcissa's death.
+
+\emph{They deserved it, Harry. How can you grieve for them?}
+
+\emph{You're not really that dark, Harry. You would never do anything
+like Voldemort did.}
+
+\emph{She died as a sacrifice, Harry. She wanted to die.}
+
+All of them were well-meant. All of them were designed to scold him out
+of how he felt and into a more acceptable frame of mind. All of them
+were wrong.
+
+\emph{If I reacted that badly to Draco's reaction to my arm, Merlin
+knows what would happen if I said anything to Snape about the fact that
+part of me likes hurting people, likes taking revenge on my enemies. He
+wouldn't just listen. He's incapable of that. He'd try to convince me
+that part of me doesn't exist, when I know it does, or that it's all
+right, when I know it isn't because it violates my own principles.}
+
+There was no perfect solution to the problem. What there was, was the
+partial solution Harry had constructed. They didn't ask, because they
+had no idea what was missing, and he held the feelings to himself and
+brooded in private and worked through them on his own.
+
+Besides, it wasn't as though they didn't have enough matters of their
+own to concern them in the real world. Draco had just lost his mother.
+Snape had classes to teach, and his friendship with Regulus was growing
+again. Connor was currently involved in helping Parvati fight several
+obscure legal maneuvers her parents were trying to get her back. All of
+them had their own lives. None of them needed access to his inner
+emotions to be complete.
+
+\emph{I can just keep those emotions silent. They can be mine. It's a
+thousand times better than being scolded.}
+
+SSSSSSSSS
+
+Snape simply stared at the blackened arm for a long moment. Then he
+reached out and ran one finger down it. Harry closed his eyes and shook
+at the pain.
+
+``Idiot boy,'' Snape whispered.
+
+Too late, he saw Draco's furiously shaking head, and caught a glimpse of
+dark satisfaction in Harry's eyes when he opened them. It wasn't that he
+was pleased with the state of his arm, Snape thought, staring at him and
+using Legilimency to capture what he could of Harry's surface thoughts.
+It was more the cynical pleasure Snape himself sometimes felt when
+people did things his belief in their stupidity had predicted they would
+do.
+
+Snape did not enjoy being evaluated as stupid.
+
+Before he could object, Harry said, ``Yes, I'm an idiot, I should have
+come to you long since, et cetera. All the things that are a regular
+part of the way you relate to me. I could recite them all back to you by
+heart. Can we get on with healing my arm now?'' His eyes were
+half-lidded, and a dangerous fire shimmered behind them that Snape
+didn't recognize.
+
+On the other hand, Harry's words did let him understand what was wrong.
+
+\emph{What I have done in the past is no longer effective. Perhaps it
+never was. I cannot scold Harry into taking care of himself, and threats
+only work when Harry feels guilt. And Merlin knows I do not wish to
+encourage that guilt. He needs something else from me now.}
+
+\emph{What is it?}
+
+For now, since he didn't know, Snape would settle for neutrality and see
+where that brought them. ``The poison's advance has stopped,'' he said.
+``What needs to happen is the purging of the corrupt flesh, so that new,
+healthy muscle and skin can grow underneath it.'' Harry nodded. Snape
+looked him in the eye. ``There is a potion that will make the arm slough
+such skin. It was designed for use with burn victims, to try and heal
+their wounds. Of course, it was not completely effective; it draws on
+the magic of the victim, and tends to change very weak wizards and
+witches into Squibs.''
+
+Harry snorted. ``That will not be a problem, at least.''
+
+Draco opened his mouth as if to say something, then snapped it shut.
+Snape approved. Since Draco seemed to be caught in the same dilemma he
+was---what to say to Harry that he wouldn't take the wrong way---it was
+probably best if he remained silent for now. ``It is also exquisitely
+painful.''
+
+Harry looked him directly in the face. ``That will not be a problem,
+either.''
+
+``It may be,'' said Snape quietly. ``I know you can bear pain, Harry,
+but not on this level. You will be confined to bed for a few days, and
+it is necessary to keep you unconscious as much as possible during this
+time, so that the pain does not overwhelm your reason.''
+
+Harry's nostrils flared, and his teeth clenched. Then he nodded, once.
+``If that's what must be done, that's what must be done,'' he said.
+
+Snape hated the resignation in his tone, and the indifference that
+backed it, as if the only reason Harry was doing this was that he was
+made to. He still, at bottom, didn't care about himself as Snape wished
+he would.
+
+For the first time, however, Snape was coming to accept that Harry could
+not be talked into that caring. He needed something else.
+
+\emph{What}?
+
+``If you go to Madam Pomfrey, Harry, and tell her the situation, I will
+brew the potion and bring it up,'' Snape said calmly. ``It does not take
+long to make. Tell her to give you Dreamless Sleep in the meanwhile, so
+that you are unconscious by the time I finish brewing.''
+
+Draco moved as if he would accompany Harry, but Harry shot him a cool
+glance, said, ``I think I can find my own way to the hospital wing,
+thanks,'' and left.
+
+Snape turned at once to Draco when the door had shut. That earlier and
+sudden silencing had left him sure that Draco knew more than he let on.
+``What is the matter with him?'' he demanded.
+
+``He said he couldn't take being chided.'' Draco's brow was furrowed as
+he stared at the door, and for the first time in a week, Snape saw
+something in his face other than grief for his mother. ``He doesn't want
+to tell us anything about what he feels---and that includes pain, I
+suppose---for fear that we'll misunderstand it. He said he couldn't take
+the arguments.'' He looked up at Snape. ``And I think he's right. You
+saw the way he was just now, unable to hide his emotions. Until I
+actually confronted him, and scolded him, he was pulling that same
+`I'm-perfectly-fine-and-focused-on-others' act that he kept up without a
+break this past week. He doesn't want to think about what he's feeling,
+and he doesn't want to talk about it.''
+
+``And do you know what the sources of those emotions are?'' Snape asked
+softly, though he could think of at least two: the deaths of Lily and
+James, and the death of Narcissa.
+
+``There are at least three, I think,'' said Draco. ``My mother, his
+parents, and the darkness in him I saw the night Medusa and Eos
+Rosier-Henlin died. Actually, that's probably a fourth source of trauma
+right there, since he saw it happen, and he won't talk about it.'' Draco
+took a deep breath and leaned his forehead on his hand. Snape could hear
+him fighting to get the words out---less, he thought, because Draco had
+true difficulty in saying them than because he was attempting to phrase
+the concept for the first time. ``He thinks we won't spend time
+comforting him. Instead, what we really care about---according to
+him---is persuading him to see things our way. He believes that's more
+important to us than what he's really thinking and feeling. And, sir?''
+He looked up, biting his lip. ``I think he's right. At least
+sometimes.''
+
+Snape opened his mouth to refute that. He had indeed comforted Harry
+without words and without demands, such as after he lost Fawkes---
+
+And he had tried to persuade him that what he felt was wrong, as well,
+such as when he brought the Potters to trial.
+
+He shut his mouth, then exhaled slowly.
+
+``I suspect, Mr. Malfoy,'' he murmured, "that we have not been thinking
+of him as a fully healed person even now. I, at least, have been content
+to trace most of his reactions back to abuse, or to his sacrificial
+instincts, or to his damnable need to spare other people the
+\emph{burden} of his feelings. I thought he had been hiding behind you
+for the past week, using your grief as an excuse not to deal with his
+own. But perhaps we should trust what he says, instead of looking for
+hidden motives behind it. He simply does not want to be treated like a
+child who needs to learn a lesson. I think we can accommodate that."
+
+Draco's face shone like the moon. ``I can do that, sir.'' Then he
+paused, and his expression dimmed a bit. ``But how are we going to
+persuade him to trust us again? That's really the root of it, really,
+that he doesn't trust us.''
+
+``We are going to have to take risks.'' Snape could feel his mouth
+curling at the thought, but if there was any person he should be willing
+to take risks for, it was Harry. ``Approach him and offer to listen
+while knowing he may snap at us. There's no guaranteed way of dealing
+with Harry. We may have become too used to assuming that there is, that
+we understand his every reaction because we know his past. But that is
+no longer true. I do not think it ever completely was.''
+
+Draco nodded, his expression on fire with determination. ``I'll go to
+the hospital wing and sit with him, sir.'' He paused when he reached the
+door. ``Will it really take you only a few minutes to brew the Purging
+Potion?''
+
+``It will,'' said Snape. ``It is a simple draught, indeed; only its
+inconveniences keep it from being used more often.''
+
+Draco nodded again, and left. Snape turned to gather the ingredients he
+would need, while trying to recover from the feeling that a good deal of
+ground had slipped from under his feet.
+
+\emph{So one of the tasks I had assumed would be implacable---being
+Harry's guardian---ends up being more changeable than I imagined.}
+
+\emph{Well.}
+
+\emph{I am not one to give up.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+To Draco's relief, he reached the hospital wing before the Dreamless
+Sleep Potion lulled Harry into slumber. Harry was curled up in a bed,
+eyes drooping, right arm splayed awkwardly over his chest.
+
+He saw Draco coming, and drew himself up. Draco winced at the sight of
+several emotions vanishing behind that emotionless mask.
+
+``How are you feeling, Draco?'' Harry asked quietly.
+
+``Better,'' said Draco, sitting in the chair beside him and taking
+Harry's left hand. ``What about you?''
+
+Harry just watched him. ``Fine,'' he said, after a moment, and now that
+he was listening, Draco could hear the spark of challenge in it, the
+assumption that Draco would insist he was not fine and start an
+argument.
+
+Keeping his eyes on Harry's, Draco reached up and smoothed a lock of
+hair aside from his forehead, baring the lightning bolt scar. Then he
+leaned up and kissed it. Harry's face was an expression of utter
+confusion when he retreated.
+
+Draco didn't make a mention of it. He just squeezed Harry's hand and
+watched as his eyelids fluttered slowly, then drooped shut. His body
+relaxed with a sigh. Draco looked at his corrupted right arm and shook
+his head.
+
+\emph{I may not love many people, but I can protect those I do love. And
+if what Harry needs from me right now is unconditional support, that's
+what he'll have.}
+
+\emph{He won't need it forever.} Draco smiled briefly. \emph{That's
+good, because I can't give it forever. But surely we can alternate in
+giving each other what we need. It shouldn't be all my part, the way it
+so often seemed during those first few years when I was Harry's friend
+and he did everything he could to drive me away, and it shouldn't be all
+him, the way it was for the past week. And it's probably a good idea to
+stop counting debts and settling scores. What matters is that we love
+each other and we're going to be bound together, not who comforted whom
+on a particular day in April two years ago.}
+
+Draco felt an odd melting sensation in the center of his chest. A moment
+later, he was certain he had actually \emph{felt} himself passing
+through another of the numerous gates into adulthood.
+
+\emph{Such a long, long road. But I suppose I'll always be passing
+through them, as long as I live. Trying to insist on just one way of
+dealing with problems only gets you frozen emotionally. Or killed.}
+
+Draco sat calmly then, holding his lover's hand, because Harry needed it
+and because he wanted to and because he could.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 47*: Chapterlette: An Altered
+Man}\label{chapter-47-chapterlette-an-altered-man}
+
+\textbf{Chapterlette: An Altered Man}
+
+Lucius Malfoy knew there were many people who would pity him. He had
+lost the one person in the world he most unconditionally loved, and he
+was dependent on his son's sufferance for everything from daily bread to
+daily breath.
+
+He did not show a sign of it as he strode down the middle of Knockturn
+Alley. That was always the first step, the one that fools who dismissed
+it as a game of masks and proper posture refused to understand. Look as
+though he did not care, and many people would believe he did not. That
+decreased confrontations which would have taxed his energy and perhaps
+let emotions come to the surface that his mask was not ready to bear.
+
+They might say that Malfoys did not know how to mourn. But they had
+never said that they did not know how to survive.
+
+He halted at the entrance of a shop with dust thick around the door.
+Inwardly, he smiled. \emph{So Master Seth has not changed the tricks
+that he uses to discourage all but his special clients,} he thought, and
+swung the door open, the cane he carried along with him clicking as he
+strode across the floor.
+
+Inside, the shop was mostly dark and quiet, but with a few
+carefully-placed torches and lamps that cast a panoply of light. Lucius
+knew the shadows they cast were actually more important. He tugged on
+his gloves and waited.
+
+The door at the back of the shop opened, and a small, cramped man
+scuttled out. He was bow-legged, with a seamed face and cracked yellow
+teeth. He wanted to be sure that he was not accosted on the streets
+daily by people who knew about his mastery. That appearance meant they
+had to look beneath the surface to find his skill, and many wizards and
+witches who considered themselves people of taste couldn't do that.
+
+He stopped when he saw Lucius, and his frog-green eyes widened. Then he
+gave a little nod. His head was like a frog's, too, sunk low on his
+shoulders, and with almost no neck where it disappeared into his torso.
+``Mr. Malfoy,'' he croaked. ``Is there something Seth can do for you?''
+
+``Stop pretending that you are a house elf,'' Lucius muttered, and then
+reached into his sleeve. Seth watched intently, which made Lucius smile.
+The man said he didn't have a wand. Of course, he did. No matter how
+disgusting he might be, the Ministry had never made that a reason to
+deny a wand to anyone.
+
+\emph{Now, if they were able to see beneath the glamour\ldots{}}
+
+He handed over the document which he'd created, an intricate image drawn
+with the help of a spell that would let him picture exactly what he
+imagined; he had little artistic skill to draw on himself. There had
+once been a tradition of teaching each Malfoy heir a small art, such as
+song or poetry or portraiture, but that had died with his father's
+generation.
+
+Seth unrolled the scroll and studied it for long moments. Then he nodded
+and said, ``I can build this, Mr. Malfoy, easily. But---'' He paused for
+another long moment, and Lucius knew he was reading the request at the
+bottom of the page.
+
+When he lifted his head, he looked troubled, but also regretful. ``I am
+afraid that I am only a simple smith, Mr. Malfoy,'' he said. The
+frog-like sound had returned to his voice. ``I do not have the intense
+magic to blend the final ingredient with the chains.'' He tried to
+return the scroll to Lucius.
+
+Lucius didn't accept it. ``Yes, you do.''
+
+Seth only blinked a few more times, eyes seeming to stand out from his
+face more than ever. ``This would require a wizard of exceptional skill,
+Mr. Malfoy,'' he said. ``And I've never claimed to be that. If I were, I
+should have more customers!'' He laughed, a sound like a toad bursting.
+
+Lucius did not join in. Instead, he concentrated on the powerful
+glamour-destroying spell he'd looked up in the Black library, and
+flicked his wand casually in Seth's direction.
+
+The man let out a cry as his disguise splintered, shards of shadow and
+light flying in every direction. And suddenly he was revealed as being
+taller than he had appeared, with clear yellow eyes not that different
+in color from some of the Light pureblood families', and an aura of
+magic that surged through the small shop and nearly brought the ceiling
+down.
+
+Of course, when they saw the rest of his body, most people would
+understand why he hid those features. His spine shimmered with sharp
+black spikes, which his hair grew into. Heavy eye-ridges covered his
+golden eyes, and the blue-black scales ran from his face back into a
+tail that he used to balance like a third leg. Leather wings extended
+from the middle of his back, flapping to make sure he didn't fall over
+from the shock of the glamour breaking. When he hissed at Lucius, a
+forked tongue stabbed past glistening fangs.
+
+Lucius could feel the shadows around the shop bending. He ignored them.
+Yes, Seth could easily destroy him---and, even more than that, the
+creature who lived in the shadows here could destroy him---but that
+didn't mean he had to be afraid. He had a bargaining chip far greater
+than the challenge of forging chains such as he wanted.
+
+``There is another halfling like you,'' he told Seth, just as the
+shadows crept around his ankles.
+
+Seth flung up a hand, and the shadows halted. Lucius saw them coil out
+of the corner of his eye, forming themselves into a mighty snake with no
+head, but several reaching arms and many champing teeth. He nodded
+slightly. Seth's father had been an ordinary wizard, but he had traveled
+between the paths of Dark and Light and sought---or perhaps been taken
+as---a mate by a female of that race of headless creatures who had once
+hunted wizards.
+
+``You are lying,'' Seth breathed.
+
+``I am not,'' said Lucius, without turning a hair. ``You could tell if I
+were lying, Master Shadow-Weaver. She is the daughter of one of the
+Yaxleys. Jacinth is her name, and Lazuli Yaxley is her mother. Her
+father stays near her even as your mother does you.'' He nodded to the
+shadow watching him, and forced himself not to flinch when he felt teeth
+scraping gently along his cheek, shedding a layer of skin off. "She has
+not, of course, announced that she would like to live without a
+glamour---she is not stupid, and her mother knows the temperament of the
+Ministry right now---but her mother is determined to have that freedom
+for her someday, and the \emph{vates} has promised to see that she
+achieves it."
+
+``So he will help halflings?'' Seth breathed. ``Not only magical
+creatures, and not only wizards, but those of us who are both?''
+
+``Yes,'' said Lucius, and this time the emotion he hid was disgust. He
+did not care how much Harry was committed to helping creatures like
+this. They were still reapers of flesh and blood, and their kind had
+been enemies of wizards for generations on generations. To cross one's
+blood with them was worse than merely tolerating their existence. "And I
+will put you in contact with Lazuli Yaxley---\emph{if} you forge me the
+chains that I requested."
+
+Seth looked at him in silence.
+
+``I know that you can blend silver and hatred,'' Lucius said coldly.
+``Your mother's kind hunt between Dark and Light. Your skill is mating
+the impossible. You can do this.''
+
+Seth inclined his head slowly. ``I can,'' he said. Long practice had
+evidently given his tongue the ability to move between those teeth and
+still produce reasonable English. ``May I inquire when you want the
+chains, and for what purpose?''
+
+``No later than the second night of the full moon,'' said Lucius. ``And
+they are to capture and hold a werewolf who hates me.''
+
+No more explanation was needed. He handed over the little payment Seth
+required of him, and left the smith and his strange mother behind. He
+had already resumed his glamour before Lucius left the shop.
+
+Lucius walked away with a faint smile. He had his plans on how to
+matter, how to work his way into people's lives, even now. And putting
+Harry in contact with another halfling would help insure his continued
+importance.
+
+Now he must do what he could to find Hawthorn---the location of the
+burrow had faded in his mind when his service to Voldemort ended, and he
+had never approached it save by Apparating in any case---and taunt her
+so that she would come after him.
+
+He intended to catch and hold her in werewolf form with the chains Seth
+would forge, but in order to get her close enough to catch in the first
+place, he would need to use himself as bait.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 48*: Their
+Sacrifice}\label{chapter-48-their-sacrifice}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Thirty-Six: Their Sacrifice}
+
+Harry opened his eyes slowly. As an immediate improvement, he thought,
+the lack of screaming pain in his right arm was hard to defeat.
+
+He became aware of someone holding his left hand and restricting him
+from moving it when he tried to reach for his glasses. Blearily, he
+turned his head and fixed his eyes on Draco, who sat in a chair next to
+his bed.
+
+``Hello,'' Draco breathed.
+
+Harry stirred for a moment, then lay back against the sheets; even he
+wasn't sure what he would have done or said. The look in Draco's eyes
+had caught him entirely off-guard. It simply said that Draco was glad to
+have him back, and probably glad that his arm no longer hurt him. There
+was none of the scolding Harry had feared, no certainty that he was an
+idiot and Draco was always right, right, right.
+
+\emph{Maybe right now there isn't. Does that mean he isn't going to talk
+to me about my arm?}
+
+Draco dashed that conception to pieces a moment later when he said,
+``How are you feeling?''
+
+``Better than I was.'' Harry deliberately shifted, and though the
+blankets rasped against his skin, it only felt like an itch, not the
+pain of a torch it had before. Taking a deep breath, he looked at it.
+
+The blackness was almost entirely gone, except for a few flakes and
+slivers still embedded in the new, red-rough skin, which reminded Harry
+of a sausage with how shiny and stretched it was. His hand had two
+healthy-looking fingers, the smallest and the thumb, and crisp black in
+between. He stretched them, and hissed, wincing.
+
+``Madam Pomfrey did say the hand would take longer to heal,'' said
+Draco. ``Something about more delicate nerves in the fingertips, I
+think. But the rest of it feels better?''
+
+Harry nodded. ``I don't remember much about the past few days,'' he
+said, and blinked at how hoarse his voice sounded. Well, that told him
+\emph{one} thing about those days, even before Draco murmured it.
+
+``There was a lot of screaming. Professor Snape wasn't kidding about how
+painful that potion was.'' When Harry flicked a glance at him, Draco was
+pale. ``I can see why some people would prefer to die rather than
+undergo it.''
+
+Harry could access hazy memories of true agony, the kind that might
+drive him to the edge of sanity, if he reached for them. He didn't reach
+for them. ``How long was I under the potion's influence?'' he asked.
+
+``This is the second day.'' Draco retrieved his glasses for him then,
+and slid them over his nose, his touch lingering on Harry's cheeks. He
+still hadn't let go of his left hand. ``You've had visitors, but nothing
+that can't wait. Voldemort hasn't made any attacks.'' He grinned,
+abruptly, the kind of grin that reminded Harry his Animagus form was a
+fox. ``And Snape and your brother have both been dancing attendance on
+you like hens with one chick.''
+
+Harry could feel himself flush in embarrassment, but---well, he could
+not blame them. If he'd been screaming as hard as his throat suggested,
+he would have inspired concern.
+
+And---
+
+And Draco was here, too, sitting beside him, notwithstanding the
+argument they'd had before he passed out, apparently. Harry took his lip
+between his teeth and worried it wildly. He could remember Draco coming
+in and sitting with him \emph{before} the potion took hold, too, now
+that he thought of it.
+
+\emph{Does that mean he's not going to scold me?}
+
+The silence between them felt as raw and stretched as the skin on his
+arm to Harry. Draco seemed comfortable with it, but then, he might have
+had a few days to make up his mind what he was going to say.
+
+``Listen, Draco,'' Harry began, deciding he should broach the subject
+first. ``I'm sorry if I caused you distress with---''
+
+He blinked as a finger was laid on his lips. Draco sat back when he'd
+fallen silent and regarded him with a calmness that made tears prick at
+Harry's eyes. It was a moment before he realized why. It reminded him of
+Narcissa. He looked away.
+
+``I'm doing well, Harry,'' Draco said. ``I promise you. I'm not
+completely recovered from her death---'' his breath hitched a little
+``---and I probably never will be. But you had a point. Yelling at you
+for what you've done makes next to no progress between us. I resent you
+for not listening to me, and you resent me for treating you like a
+child.'' Draco cocked his head, face still serene, though Harry thought
+he could see how much effort the mask was taking now. ``So we'll try to
+change the way we speak to each other so as not to include that. It'll
+call for efforts---''
+
+``Sacrifices?'' Harry asked, wondering if Draco really could change
+something that had been intrinsic to the way he spoke to Harry since
+they met. Among the first words they ever exchanged had been Draco
+scolding him for not calling him by his first name just after Harry was
+Sorted into Slytherin.
+
+"\emph{Efforts}," Draco said, emphasizing the word and giving him a
+little glare, "from both of us. This matters, Harry. It matters more
+than anything we've ever done, and I don't intend to let us slip back
+into a silence that hurts \emph{both} of us." His other hand reached
+forward and came to rest over Harry's heart. Harry shifted, feeling
+vulnerable, but Draco didn't move away. "So. Please. I'll listen without
+scolding, and you'll tell me what's wrong. \emph{Please} tell me what's
+wrong."
+
+Harry wanted to pull back and raise the defensive shell he'd perfected
+in the last few months. Surely, if he trusted Draco not to scold, it
+wouldn't work. That was just what \emph{happened}. Harry couldn't ask
+him to change, so the best thing would be to ignore it. Wouldn't this
+effort to change, to force an unnatural bend into their bond with each
+other, end up hurting them both?
+
+But\ldots{}
+
+He \emph{wanted} to trust Draco. And Draco had said he was doing this of
+his own free will, not because he felt compelled by Harry's magic or the
+threat of losing him. Distrusting his intentions now would call for a
+spasm of suspicion on Harry's part that he didn't feel capable of
+making.
+
+And, Merlin, he did want to talk to someone.
+
+\emph{Leaping off this cliff is no different than all the other cliffs
+you've leaped off.}
+
+``All right,'' he said quietly. ``But---I don't think I'll be able to
+talk about everything right away.''
+
+``I wouldn't expect you to.'' Draco's voice had softened to nearly the
+croon Harry had used with him when he was grieving, and he grasped
+Harry's chin and tilted his face back towards him. ``What about talking
+to Snape? Can you do that?''
+
+``The last thing he did was call me an idiot,'' Harry said, feeling that
+old weariness rise up. ``I don't think I can ever change the fact that
+that's what I am in his eyes.''
+
+``He also brewed the potion that healed your arm.'' The \emph{lack} of
+chiding in Draco's voice was what made him flush this time. ``He loves
+you, Harry. No, he doesn't always express it well. And no, I don't think
+it's fair that he calls you an idiot so much of the time and nothing
+else. But that's another set of efforts that both of you will have to
+make. Can you do that?''
+
+``It's not fair,'' said Harry after a moment, ``when you ask things
+instead of demanding them, you know.''
+
+``Why not?''
+
+Harry buried his head against his knees, feeling as though his life had
+just leaped into a dimension he had always wanted to see but never
+believed it possible to walk to. ``Because,'' he muttered, voice muffled
+by the cloth, ``it makes me want to do them.''
+
+Draco's laugh was quiet, and he leaned against Harry in a flush of
+warmth from neck to hip. His hand stroked Harry's hair in that
+possessive gesture he loved to make, but which now struck Harry as less
+a movement of ownership than of love. ``That's good, then,'' he said.
+
+Harry released a shaky breath. ``I'll try.''
+
+``Good.'' Draco pulled back and tilted his head up again, though Harry
+would have preferred to keep it bowed and sheltered. His eyes were
+mercilessly kind, which should have warned Harry what he was going to
+ask, but didn't do it in time. ``Are you going to talk about what you
+felt for my mother's death now?''
+
+Harry blinked and swallowed. ``Do you want to hear---''
+
+"\emph{Yes.}" Draco's voice was fierce. ``I'm not as noble as you are,
+Harry. I don't do things out of duty that often, or just because I think
+someone else needs them. When I ask what you think, I want to hear what
+you think.'' The pressure against Harry's body increased, and then he
+found himself turned around and laid sideways in Draco's arms, so that
+his head was tucked beneath his chin. Draco nestled his head hard into
+Harry's hair and blew it out of the way.
+
+``It would comfort me to know that someone else was grieving her
+openly,'' Draco murmured. ``Most people have stayed out of my way,
+respecting my grief---or your magic, I'm not sure which---and of course
+far be it from Lucius to show emotion more than once.'' Harry heard
+bitterness running under the surface of his voice, but it was gone
+before he could ask about it. ``Now. Tell me.''
+
+Harry swallowed, and swallowed again. If he let himself go now, he
+wasn't sure he could pull back behind the barriers if this didn't work.
+Draco would probably say that was a good thing, but with the war effort
+going on\ldots{}Harry was not as sure.
+
+But sometimes he had to make leaps. Sometimes he had to trust what
+people said, instead of demanding solid proof.
+
+He laid his head back against Draco's chest, closed his eyes, and began
+to speak.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Connor was waiting when Harry came out of the hospital wing, leaning on
+Draco and talking to him in a low voice. Connor frowned when he saw tear
+trails on his brother's cheeks. \emph{What was he crying about? Does his
+arm still hurt that much?}
+
+"\emph{Harry!}" he said, making his presence known, when he thought they
+would both have walked past the alcove where he stood.
+
+Harry turned, and welcomed him with a broad smile. Connor controlled his
+immediate impulse to embrace him, though, given that he wasn't sure his
+arm was completely healed. He settled for dancing around him and
+slapping his back in an awkward manner, then hugging him from the left
+side.
+
+He probably looked ridiculous. But \emph{Merlin}, it was good to see
+Harry back on his feet again and with two normal arms instead of one
+that was made of flesh and bone and one that was made of burned wedding
+cake, at least to the smell.
+
+``How are you, Connor?'' Harry asked, putting out a hand to touch
+Connor's as he drew back from the hug. ``How are matters with Parvati's
+parents?''
+
+Connor snorted. ``Proceeding.'' The Patils had invoked several ancient
+laws that no one paid much attention to any more from the Ministry's
+books, trying to argue that their daughters should be returned to them
+under marriage bonds and the conditions of something called the ``return
+of virgins.'' Parvati had fought that one by sending a very detailed
+description to her parents of what she and Connor had done so far, and
+how even a deep enough kiss made her ineligible for that law. Padma and
+Luna had done even more, apparently, and this had so shocked the Patils
+that they had been silent for the last few days.
+
+``And how's your arm?'' he added quickly, suddenly remembering that one
+of Harry's favorite tactics to get people to stop paying attention to
+him was to mention their own problems.
+
+``I'll live,'' said Harry. ``It feels much better, though it'll take me
+a few weeks to regain full use of my hand. Draco said that you were
+dancing around the bed while I was unconscious.'' He met Connor's eyes
+and held them. ``Thank you.''
+
+Connor waited a moment to see if Harry would say anything about Snape,
+but that appeared to be it. So he could graciously nod, instead of
+stumbling into a hasty explanation. Draco hadn't told Harry, evidently,
+that Connor had earned a detention for hexing Snape. Of course, if they
+had only \emph{told} him about the potion in the first place, instead of
+coming in and dumping it all over Harry's arm without warning and
+sending him into a screaming fit like nothing human, then there would
+have been no need for hexes and no need for detention.
+
+``Did you tell him about the visitors from the Squibs' Association?'' he
+added to Draco.
+
+Harry immediately stood taller, and Draco glared. Connor supposed he'd
+been saving that news, too, until Harry was stronger. He just shrugged
+in the face of his brother-in-law's glare, though. The request that the
+Squibs' Association had for Harry wasn't like any request he'd got from
+anyone else. He should know about it and face it as soon as possible.
+
+In Connor's opinion, there was really only one sound, sane decision to
+be made concerning their offer, but this was Harry. He would find six
+exceptions before breakfast.
+
+``What about them?'' Harry asked, and it was his Savior Voice. Connor
+made a face at him, which caused Harry to blink and cock his head a bit,
+and made him look more human. Connor approved. He wanted his brother to
+be around more often, not the Savior.
+
+"They came to offer \emph{you} help, you know, not request it," Connor
+said. "And I think you should take the offer. You won't \emph{want} to.
+You won't think they can spare it. But they said they want to, and a
+\emph{vates} is all about free will, and so you can't stop people from
+helping you when they want to." He wondered if Harry would admire the
+elegant logic of this argument. Probably not. He was about to come up
+with an exception again, according to the way his face worked.
+
+``I don't know what their offer is,'' Harry said.
+
+\emph{Oh. Well, that changes things.} But Connor was happy to explain.
+Draco's glare just grew more and more murderous, and he was tugging at
+Harry's shoulder as if he would spirit him away up the hall and make him
+stop listening. Therefore, it was on Connor's shoulders to prepare his
+brother.
+
+``Most of the wizards and witches who work with Squibs don't have very
+much magic,'' Connor explained. ``They're the only ones who can work
+closely with them, or otherwise there's just too many jealousies and
+rivalries.'' He felt he knew a great deal about it, after one of the
+visitors had cornered him and talked to him at length.
+
+"That, and full-fledged wizards and witches don't want to associate with
+\emph{Squibs,}" Draco muttered.
+
+Harry frowned at him. Connor said, ``Don't be an arse, Malfoy, though I
+know it's very hard for you,'' and went on, because that was really all
+the notice Draco's comment deserved. "So they've decided, now, that they
+can continue their political work without their magic, which you need
+more. They want you to drink their magic with the \emph{absorbere} gift,
+and become stronger to fight Voldemort."
+
+Harry blinked. Then he blinked again.
+
+Then he blanched, and shook his head.
+
+"\emph{Idiot}," Draco hissed at Connor. ``I was going to take time to
+prepare him, and---''
+
+``No one wants to hear about your sex life, Malfoy,'' Connor pointed
+out, more intent on watching his brother's face. "He needed to hear
+this, and it's better he did before one of them tracks him down. Stop
+shaking your head, Harry. They \emph{want} to offer it, you know."
+
+Draco was spluttering in incoherent rage. Connor thought it was a good
+look for him. If nothing else, it meant he could continue the argument
+with Harry, and Draco couldn't throw in one of his distracting little
+asides.
+
+``I don't want it,'' Harry said stubbornly. "I never---I \emph{can't}. I
+can't make someone into a Squib who hasn't done anything wrong. I've
+always used that as a punishment, not a gift---"
+
+``They want to give it over,'' said Connor. He had decided to keep
+hitting that one point. Harry respected free will. Sooner or later, he
+would have to respect the free will of people willing to sacrifice their
+magic. ``They want to help in the war because otherwise they can't do
+much. The Squibs' Association doesn't have much power or prestige in the
+Ministry right now; they can't help you politically. They won't make a
+difference on the battlefield. They can throw support behind you in the
+newspapers, but few people listen to them because of prejudices like the
+ones Malfoy is spouting.'' Draco was by now almost blue with fury.
+Connor resisted the impulse to stick out his tongue at him. \emph{He}
+was the patient, mature one right now. It was not his fault if Draco
+insisted on acting like a child. "Their magic \emph{can} help you. Are
+you going to deny them the only way they can really participate in the
+war?"
+
+Harry was white-faced and silent. That left Draco room to jump in, which
+Connor regretted.
+
+``He shouldn't have to make a decision like this right now,'' Draco
+snarled, his voice so low that it sounded like some sort of troll
+talking. ``He's barely out of the hospital bed, and they can wait---''
+
+``You only think their cause is less important than others because of
+your idiotic prejudices,'' Connor pointed out. \emph{Calmly, with only
+one insult, and full of good sense. I win this exchange.} ``And I think
+Harry should be able to decide what he wants to face. At least this
+gives him a little time to think about it.''
+
+Harry bowed his head. Then he muttered, ``Yes. I need time to think
+about it.''
+
+He started to break away from Draco, but Draco pulled him back against
+his side, and murmured into his ear. Connor strained to listen, and
+still hardly managed to catch the whispered words. ``You can think in
+our bedroom and in my presence as well as anywhere else, yes? And I
+promise to give you silence if that's what you need, and only offer my
+opinion if you want it.''
+
+Harry hesitated.
+
+``Efforts from both of us,'' Draco said, which Connor didn't understand,
+but which made Harry relax in his grip.
+
+``You're right,'' he said, and nodded to Connor. ``If you talk to one of
+them, let them know I'll have decided by noon tomorrow.''
+
+He and Draco went towards the dungeons then, leaving Connor behind with
+a furrowed brow. He knew he'd won. He knew he'd done the right thing in
+bringing this to Harry's attention now, so he wouldn't suddenly have it
+sprung on him when one of the members of the Squibs' Association managed
+to find him.
+
+And still he felt that Draco had the deeper bond with his brother, had
+won the war if not the battle.
+
+It was infuriating, sometimes.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco had kept his word. Though he longed to tell Harry that he thought
+he should accept the offer of those wizards and witches foolish enough
+to make it---they were barely above Squibs anyway, and they wanted to
+associate with them, so why not give them more in common?---he held his
+tongue and watched as Harry sat on the end of their bed, his fingers
+rapping up and down the blankets.
+
+He wanted to know what Harry was thinking, but Harry hadn't yet offered
+to share. And Draco refused to get into ridiculous complexities of
+thought, thinking about asking about asking. He lay back with his arms
+behind his head and studied the canopy, and thought of Potter's
+ridiculous behavior instead.
+
+He seemed to believe that Draco's closeness to Harry would involve
+exiling him from Harry's side, and he was only totally at ease when
+Harry showed a preference for neither of them or when he was winning.
+Draco snorted. The fool had changed in some ways, but he didn't seem to
+have accepted the fact that they had to deal with what they had, not
+what they wished they had.
+
+\emph{Let us ignore the fact that you didn't acknowledge that yourself
+until a few days ago,} a voice that sounded like Potter's whispered into
+his ear.
+
+\emph{Why, yes, let us ignore it,} Draco thought, and went on with the
+real business of his mind, which didn't include listening to his
+Potter-sounding conscience.
+
+Connor might wish that he could be Harry's perfect match in battle and
+as a twin again, but he couldn't. Things had changed too much from the
+days when Harry served him. And he also seemed to believe that Draco's
+opinions were worth less than his own because he had been raised
+pureblood and of the Dark.
+
+\emph{Fuck that.}
+
+Draco had already decided that he would be the more mature one. The fact
+that Connor had had to resort to insults in their latest competition
+only meant that Draco \emph{was} an adult, and he a child. Draco would
+be the one who made rational arguments, who pointed out the necessities
+of war---which included letting Harry know about the Squibs' Association
+at some point---\emph{and} the necessities of having their leader rested
+and not preoccupied with minor matters---which included giving him some
+time to recover before he was assaulted with more responsibilities.
+
+That had three advantages. First, it would change their relationship,
+and that should, hopefully, force Potter to grow up. Second, it would
+show Harry that his was the more adult voice, the one to be trusted if
+Harry had to make a choice. Third, it would give him immense personal
+satisfaction.
+
+``Draco?''
+
+He sat up at once, and moved down the bed until he sat beside Harry.
+``Yes?'' he asked mildly.
+
+Harry leaned back against one of the bedposts and regarded him in
+silence. Argutus had crawled into his lap as he dithered, or debated,
+with himself, and Harry's left hand absently stroked his scales. Draco
+was pleased to see that the Omen snake was nudging at Harry's clawed
+right hand, his tongue moving in small flickering motions that were
+probably hisses of concern. ``Do you really think it doesn't matter if I
+take their magic?''
+
+Draco raised his eyebrows. ``Absolutely not. Much as I hate to grant him
+any credit at this point, Connor was right when he said they chose to
+give it up of their own free will. It'll make you stronger. It'll mark
+you as someone who lets even the weak help, as much as they can.''
+
+``It could also make the Ministry think that I'm someone who drains any
+magic to become more powerful,'' Harry muttered. ``And Merlin knows how
+Juniper would take that at this point.''
+
+``Let them think that,'' said Draco. He hadn't spent all his time in the
+past two days simply sitting at Harry's side. He'd also taken the time
+to read the newspapers, and he was confident that Harry's public image
+was better than he thought it was. "It won't change the minds of anyone
+who doesn't already want to believe the worst. And you can articulate
+your principles to anyone who's concerned. You take the magic of enemies
+and the magic that's freely offered, and that's \emph{it.}"
+
+Harry's teeth were carving marks in his lip. He didn't reply.
+
+``Can I ask,'' Draco said, ``why you think you---'' He stopped.
+\emph{No, he hasn't said that he thinks he can win the war without
+drinking magic. I won't put words in his mouth, since he was so adamant
+about that last time.} ``Why don't you want to take their magic,
+Harry?'' he asked at last.
+
+``It's another sacrifice,'' Harry snapped at once. ``I'm not adverse to
+making them. I don't want other people to make them.''
+
+``Even when they choose to?''
+
+Narcissa's ghost hung like tangible mist between them. Harry drew
+several deep breaths. ``We knew sacrifices were going to be necessary to
+destroy the Horcruxes,'' he said. ``I can live with that. I don't know
+that I can live with people giving up their magic to me.''
+
+``But you wouldn't mind that much if I were the one who could drink
+it,'' said Draco.
+
+Harry jerked away as if stung, but Draco caught his chin and turned his
+face towards him, as he had in the hospital wing. Harry stopped trying
+to pull away at the look in his eyes, or perhaps the expression on his
+face; it had to be one of the two, Draco thought.
+
+``That's the difference,'' Draco said. This time, he didn't think he was
+putting words in Harry's mouth. He only thought he was right. Truths
+twirled and spun around him like dropping swords, and he was, without
+warning, in the middle of that mental world he'd entered to convince his
+father to make him magical heir, and when he'd achieved his Animagus
+form. "It's not so much the freely chosen sacrifice you mind, or even
+the draining of magic. You don't resent Voldemort for having that
+ability. But \emph{you} don't want the power."
+
+Harry was silent.
+
+``It won't corrupt you.'' Draco reached out and drew his hands up
+Harry's sides, ruffling the cloth of his robes over his ribs. ``I
+promise, Harry. Just because you grow more powerful doesn't mean you'll
+become a Dark Lord.''
+
+``It's more than that,'' Harry whispered. "I don't \emph{want} to be
+more powerful, Draco. I don't want as much magic as I have."
+
+Draco blinked. He couldn't remember Harry expressing the thought in that
+form before. ``And why not?'' he asked, after he had tried to understand
+it several times and couldn't. More power was \emph{always} a good
+thing, if only to prevent one's enemies from accumulating it.
+
+``I don't want it,'' said Harry. ``It's just---I could do many of the
+things that I do now if I were as powerful as Snape, Draco, and no
+stronger, or as strong as Indigena Yaxley. And how I gained it was
+mostly accidental.'' He paused, then pushed forward through a barrier
+Draco could almost feel. ``And I don't want the dark part of myself to
+have access to it.''
+
+Draco leaned forward and kissed him softly. Harry responded, though
+Draco could feel the confusion in the gesture.
+
+When he thought Harry was pleasantly dazed, Draco sat back and said, as
+softly, "I promise, Harry, a small increase of magic at this point won't
+matter. And you'll have both me and Snape---and your brother, and any
+number of allies and friends---watching your back. If we see signs of
+your abusing your magic, be \emph{sure} that you we'll tell you. You
+don't have many meek people around you, you know."
+
+That won him a smile. Then Harry's eyes clouded again. ``And you do
+believe that that darkness exists in me?''
+
+``I felt it the night Voldemort attacked Malfoy Manor.'' Draco ran
+another comforting hand up his side. ``And I'll get to see it more
+closely come our Halloween ritual.'' He raised an eyebrow when he saw
+Harry's blank expression. ``Or did you forget that that ritual is called
+the Casting of Shadows?''
+
+Harry gave a shiver, and then said, ``We'll worry about that when it
+comes.'' He reached out and squeezed Draco's wrist hard enough to hurt,
+but Draco didn't mind. If it meant what he thought it meant, at least.
+
+And it did. Harry said, ``I'll go to them, meet with them, and---make
+sure they're still serious about this. Then, if they are, I'll accept
+that magic.''
+
+SSSSSSS
+
+"Thank you for coming, Mr. Potter---excuse me, \emph{vates}," the old
+witch who'd met him at the door of the Defense Against the Dark Arts
+classroom corrected herself. Harry found himself the object of a
+piercing, blue-eyed gaze that made him fight the impulse to step back,
+even though she was far shorter than he was. ``My name is Theresa
+Keller. If you'll come inside?''
+
+Harry stepped inside, glancing around. It seemed that everyone in the
+room was a weak wizard or witch, and not a Squib. And it made sense that
+they'd chosen the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom; it was the
+most heavily warded room in the school outside the Headmistress's office
+and the House common rooms. If something went wrong, the wards would
+provide protection.
+
+It felt a bit strange to have so many eyes fixed on him, and stranger
+considering what he would do in a few moments. Harry felt a wave of
+reluctance, and nodded to Keller.
+
+``Madam, have you changed your minds---''
+
+"Absolutely not, \emph{vates}." Keller came closer to him, and again
+Harry had to look into her eyes. Merlin, she moved like a queen. Harry
+could only imagine how much she must have practiced that, in a world
+where many people would look down on her for her low level of magic.
+``We discussed this for months before we approached you, since the war
+first began. We want to give you our magic. And we want you to use it
+against the snake-faced murderer and his minions.''
+
+She took out her wand and laid it down on the floor in front of her,
+never removing her gaze from Harry's. The others all copied her. Harry
+could see a few of them sweating, but it seemed that none of them were
+about to back out.
+
+So he couldn't, either.
+
+With a shudder of revulsion pouring down his spine, Harry opened his
+\emph{absorbere} gift and began to drain them.
+
+Keller, too, shuddered as her magic faded, but she shook her head and
+stood straighter afterwards, as if he had actually relieved her of a
+burden. Then others began to do the same. Harry did see tears on the
+cheeks of one woman, and he would have paused if he could, but she
+caught his eye and motioned him onwards with an impatient hand.
+
+Harry did his best not to think about the magic passing into his gullet.
+Most of it was Light, and most of it tasted much better than anything
+else he'd absorbed. Even the Black artifacts tended to have an edge of
+Darkness to them that made them less fully comfortable to hold in his
+stomach.
+
+And he held down the gibbering, mad fear of what he would become now
+with a boot on its neck. He had made the decision. He had said once that
+he would accept whatever someone else did of his or her own free will,
+as long as that action harmed no one else's free will. And this was a
+gift other people were giving not for love of him---which would have
+made it impossible to bear---but for the war.
+
+He had to put some of his more delicate sensibilities aside.
+
+Of course, then he had to wonder if putting them aside meant he was
+forsaking his own principles, bending them for the sake of expediency,
+and that led him to the idea that it would be more selfish \emph{not} to
+have taken the magic, and that made him accuse himself of excusing his
+own selfishness, and that sent him whirling down an endless chain of
+spiral thought, with only one answer at the bottom of it:
+
+\emph{I don't know.}
+
+He finished the draining at last. Keller nodded to him and turned one
+hand over, as if to examine what it looked like without magic.
+
+"Thank you, \emph{vates}," she said. ``Now we can be sure that we are
+part of something greater, and not feel useless.''
+
+A wave of similar thanks rose from the others in the room. Harry nodded
+and smiled as much as he could, and left as soon as he could. He could
+feel the churning in his gut, and knew what would happen in a moment.
+
+He ran to the closest loo, and only just made it before he sank to his
+knees, vomiting. He would not release the magic he'd swallowed, but the
+intense nausea had to come out \emph{somehow}, and so it chose his
+physical stomach.
+
+Harry closed his eyes when he was done, and shivered. He had made what
+he thought was the right decision, after listening to Draco's arguments,
+and Connor's, and the free will of those who wanted to give their magic
+up. He could only hope that this wouldn't prove to be the first step on
+a slippery slope.
+
+He didn't know if it was. He didn't know if it wasn't.
+
+The only thing he was certain of at that moment was that he wished he
+had been born an ordinary wizard, not subject to either such extremes of
+magic or the exhaustion of such decisions.
+
+The burden had to be carried. That didn't mean he always wanted to carry
+it.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 49*: Duramus, All the
+World}\label{chapter-49-duramus-all-the-world}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Thirty-Seven: \emph{Duramus}, All The World}
+
+Harry opened his eyes, and shivered. He felt as though all the skin on
+his body was rising, the way it did when Draco pinched a small fold of
+it, and tugging him towards the door of their bedroom.
+
+Draco sprawled next to him, sleeping soundly, as the small snores made
+clear. He wasn't the source of this. Harry frowned and closed his eyes
+again as the magic traveled up and down, bothering his skin, worrying at
+it. He gnawed his lip several times, and wondered if the effect would go
+away if he continued to ignore it.
+
+It didn't. Instead, it grew worse, with the pinch becoming actual pain.
+Harry hissed between his teeth, but sat up and turned slightly in the
+direction of the door.
+
+Three things happened. The pinch eased off. Draco's arm fell across the
+empty space where he'd been, and he grumbled under his breath. And
+Argutus swarmed up the bed, his scales gleaming dully in the faint light
+Harry'd raised along his arm to see if he recognized the operation of a
+spell.
+
+"\emph{You shouldn't leave without an escort,}" Argutus hissed.
+"\emph{Summon the one who smells like rose petals, and not the one who
+smells like self-pity. I want you properly guarded.}"
+
+Harry shook his head. ``I don't intend to leave the room,'' he said.
+``I---''
+
+The pinch immediately grew worse, tugging at him again. Harry let out a
+hiss that had nothing to do with Parseltongue, and which made Argutus
+curl his tail around his waist and tap him sharply on the hip.
+
+"\emph{You have to leave,}" the Omen snake insisted. "\emph{But take
+someone with you. That's a simple compromise.}" He paused abruptly,
+tilting his head in the direction of the bedroom door, and flicked his
+tongue out. "\emph{The one who smells like rose petals is already on the
+way from his room}," he announced. "\emph{The pain in your head has
+roused him in his arm.}" He sounded fascinated. This wasn't the first
+time he'd displayed that curiosity about the lightning bolt scars of the
+sworn companions, Harry knew, but he had never managed to explain them
+to Argutus's satisfaction.
+
+Owen was coming, then. Harry sighed and held out his left arm so that
+Argutus could coil around it; he doubted his right arm could bear the
+weight right now. Argutus carefully arranged himself so that he didn't
+touch Harry's right arm, either, and wrapped the last fold of his neck
+around Harry's throat. Harry felt enveloped in warmth as he followed the
+pinch, and had to admit that it was better than going to face whatever
+this threat was alone.
+
+Then he blinked and turned back, lifting his left hand and making
+Argutus shift in irritation. "\emph{The one who smells like rose petals
+is waiting,}" he reminded Harry.
+
+``I'm just leaving a message for Draco,'' said Harry absently, and used
+his magic to create letters that would hang in the air and start
+gleaming like fire only when Draco woke, so they wouldn't disturb his
+sleep before then. Harry explained that he'd felt the call of some magic
+that hurt him when he resisted, and he was going to find out what it
+was, but he'd taken Argutus and Owen with him. \emph{There, at least
+that will prevent him from panicking if he wakes.}
+
+He slipped out the door, and found Owen on the stairs. ``What is it?''
+he asked, looking around as if he expected Death Eaters to burst through
+the walls. Given who he was, Harry thought the suspicion less ridiculous
+than it might have been in other circumstances.
+
+``I don't know,'' Harry answered, and then nearly tripped down the
+stairs as the pinch and the pull intensified. ``But whatever it is, it
+wants me out of the Slytherin common room.'' He made his way to the door
+of the common room. Owen's breath was practically stirring the hair at
+his neck, so closely did he follow. Once again, Harry could hardly blame
+him.
+
+In the dungeon corridors, the pull changed to lead him upward. And it
+remained upwards no matter how many stairs they traversed, making Harry
+wonder if they would come out on the Astronomy Tower again.
+
+As it turned out, they did. Then the pinch halted, and the pull ceased,
+and Harry looked around with a small frown. He couldn't see anyone
+waiting for him, and there was no sign of powerful magic or the
+manifestations that usually accompanied it, such as storms. In the
+distance, the Forbidden Forest lay quiet and dark under the slowly
+waxing moon, and the darkness shone with stars. It was a clear night,
+but not wondrous in any way.
+
+No, wait, Harry saw, as he lifted his head and realized that some of the
+stars were vanishing and then reappearing again, as if something flew in
+front of them and blocked out their light briefly. He raised a hand,
+ready to fight if Voldemort had sent a dragon or something else to
+plague him.
+
+The darkness in front of him grew a head, a neck, a long, slender body,
+and then an even more slender tail. Harry found himself faced with a
+manticore, perfect in every line from the human head to the scorpion
+tail.
+
+Save for its color, of course, which was dark green.
+
+Harry lowered his hand slowly. He knew that a manifestation of the wild
+Dark faced him. What he couldn't understand was why. It was a long way
+from Walpurgis, and even twenty days from Halloween, which was the
+counterpart of Walpurgis at this end of the year. Why bring him over the
+walls merely to see a new form?
+
+The manticore stalked back and forth on the battlements, eyes on him all
+the time. Harry made sure to stand still. The wild Dark was changeable,
+everything from a spoiled child to a murderous river in flood. He wasn't
+sure what its mood was at this point, other than that it was
+contemplating him first instead of ordering him around.
+
+Then the manticore lunged forward, tail striking for his shoulder.
+
+Harry rolled out of the way before he even considered that perhaps this
+was a test and he should have let the sting descend. When the tail
+clattered on the stone and the manticore snarled in displeasure,
+however, he decided he'd been right to move.
+
+He rose to one knee, and met the wild Dark eye to eye.
+
+The hatred there astonished him. Then he shrugged angrily. \emph{So
+what? It was on my side at Walpurgis when we defeated Falco, but that
+was mainly because Falco had assumed he could play with it, take what he
+wanted from it without paying the price, and it would never find out. It
+could as easily change its mind and decide that I annoyed it next. I
+wish I knew what I'd done to annoy it, though.}
+
+The manticore abruptly leaped, rising above Harry's head and losing
+substance to spread out as a cloud. Harry prepared a wind to travel
+around him if necessary and whip the cloud away, to keep it from choking
+or poisoning any of the castle's inhabitants.
+
+Instead of doing that, however, the manticore seemed intent on
+constructing an image or illusion. Harry watched in silence as the dark
+green smoke writhed and danced like a tangle of snakes, and then rushed
+together in an explosion, and then spread out again. If it was meant to
+represent something, he didn't recognize it, he decided, his mind
+clearer and colder than he would have thought it could be. The message
+was useless.
+
+Perhaps the wild Dark knew that, because the next moment the cloud
+turned and soared away towards the Forbidden Forest. The sense of
+brooding hostility and power went with it, and Harry was sure that no
+one would pinch his skin now if he wanted to go back down and sleep
+beside Draco.
+
+``What was that?'' Owen whispered behind him.
+
+``The wild Dark is displeased with me, apparently,'' Harry murmured.
+``But I don't know why. The last time it seemed this angry, it was
+because Voldemort and I had caused a great deal of magical damage at
+Midsummer, and it was taking the excuse to behave like a spoiled child
+at Midwinter. But I don't know what I've done this time.''
+
+``What if it's not displeased with you so much as pleased with someone
+else?'' Owen suggested, and his voice had gone tense and tight in a way
+that resembled the tug on Harry's skin. ``Voldemort, perhaps?''
+
+``I can't see it serving him,'' Harry said. ``The wild Dark puts itself
+in service to nothing. And he tried to capture its power once before, at
+Walpurgis. It has good reason to hate him.''
+
+"Then I don't know, my l---\emph{vates}." The eager tone had drained out
+of Owen's voice. ``Do you wish to go back to the Slytherin common
+room?''
+
+``Yes,'' said Harry, after a long moment of lingering and studying the
+sky. ``I don't think there's anything we can learn here.''
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry eyed the Hufflepuff table as he conjured a bowl of cornflakes from
+a tattered pillow. Something had happened in that House overnight, it
+seemed. Several older students sat with their arms around younger ones,
+reassuring them. Others cried, but tried to keep their tears hidden.
+Zacharias Smith's face was like stone.
+
+When McGonagall came in, grave, and clapped her hands to signal an
+announcement, Harry was sure of it. He wondered whether a Death Eater
+had been discovered among them.
+
+Instead, McGonagall said, ``A young Hufflepuff girl, Jessica Farthing,
+has gone missing.'' The babble of whispers and gasps that rose up then
+almost overwhelmed her, but the Headmistress gamely lifted her voice and
+went on. ``So far as we can tell, there has been no breach in the wards,
+and there is no sign that You-Know-Who is involved.''
+
+That terrified rather than reassured them, Harry saw with a single swift
+glance around the room. If it wasn't Voldemort coming through the wards
+to kidnap students, that suggested there was someone else in the school
+taking them, and who could it be and how could they be stopped?
+
+``There are, at this point, no clues as to where she might have
+disappeared,'' McGonagall continued, her face pale and her eyes overly
+bright. ``There were no signs of a struggle, and no sign of blood or
+magic. Jessica's wand remained where she had placed it, and none of her
+possession were taken.'' Harry winced. By the expressions around him, he
+wasn't the only one who had made the connection: whoever had snatched
+Jessica seemed to have little interest in her comfort \emph{or} her
+survival. ``The other girls in the room with her heard nothing. The only
+thing that had changed at all from the evening before was that the
+torches in her room had burned out.''
+
+Harry froze. His mind was filled with a vision of darkness moving in
+slowly from the walls, snuffing the torches, and then wrapping dark
+green claws around Jessica before she could scream.
+
+He shuddered and folded his arms around himself. Immediately, Millicent
+leaned towards him, frowning.
+
+``What is it?'' she whispered, which made Draco turn around, and then
+lean in to rub Harry's back when he saw the state he was in.
+
+``I think I know the reason she disappeared,'' Harry said.
+
+``Well?'' Millicent prompted. "\emph{Tell} us, for Merlin's sake." Her
+eyes had narrowed, and when Harry looked at her, one hand was twitching,
+as though she were trying to control the impulse to hit something.
+
+``The wild Dark,'' said Harry quietly. ``It summoned me to the
+battlements last night. It was angry about something, I don't know what.
+It wore the form of a manticore, and it tried to sting me. And the
+Headmistress said that all the torches in Jessica's room went out. I
+don't think that's a coincidence, as much as I wish it was.''
+
+McGonagall was saying something about people not walking alone now.
+Harry nodded along with the other students, though he had his doubts
+about whether that would work. They could resist Voldemort as long as
+they stayed behind strong enough wards. They could flee him, too; some
+people had already accepted the offer of sanctuary in France. But what
+could they do against the wild Dark? It could pierce the wards whenever
+it wanted, take whoever it liked, and pursue people to other countries
+if it wished.
+
+And Harry didn't know what it \emph{did} wish. Its temperament was so
+unpredictable that it might not steal another child, or it might decide
+to take half the population of Slytherin. He found his heart aching as
+he looked towards the Slytherin first-years. Their House had been so
+proud to receive them, the largest share of the Sorting, the largest
+group of Slytherins they'd had in years. And now they might be more
+vulnerable than anyone else, if the wild Dark decided to extend its
+anger at Harry to his House.
+
+Draco's hand, pinching a nerve on his arm to make him pay attention,
+caused Harry to shake his head and return to himself. Draco's eyes were
+intent. ``I think you should tell the Headmistress,'' he said. ``She's
+ultimately the one responsible for the children of Hogwarts, and so
+she's ultimately the one who needs to decide what to do.''
+
+Harry nodded, acknowledging the truth of that statement, and then stood.
+The Headmistress was making her way out of the room. He and Draco
+followed, and caught her near the doors.
+
+McGonagall didn't even look surprised as she surveyed them. Harry
+supposed she had become used to linking strange occurrences and him.
+``My office, Harry,'' she murmured, and walked up the corridor.
+
+Harry followed her, wondering if Hogwarts would have to close. If it
+did, he knew the safehouses he would recommend that people enter, and
+the offer of sanctuary in France might become more important than ever.
+
+He was not sure what would happen to his own war effort without the
+library of books, the tense guard they were keeping on the Sword
+Horcrux, the central location that gave them a place to meet in
+crises---
+
+And the sense of safety and security that the wild Dark had ripped away
+with one capture.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Minerva narrowly studied Harry. She had to admit that his theory made
+sense, though without more proof she was reluctant to accept it
+completely. And if the Ministry got to hear of it, they would demand the
+closing of Hogwarts, as they had before the term began, and all her time
+would be spent fighting that battle instead of attending to her students
+and her school the way she needed to.
+
+Then she pushed the thought away. \emph{Closing the school is a last
+resort, even in the middle of a war. If the disappearances get worse, it
+will be necessary, but we should make the point, in that case, that the
+wild Dark can take the children wherever they are, whenever it wants.}
+Minerva shivered despite herself, and looked at a shadow cast by one of
+the torches. \emph{It is terrifying. But we cannot give up, even if the
+wild Dark is working with Voldemort. Too much depends on our winning the
+war for us to give up.}
+
+``Headmistress?''
+
+Harry's voice drew her attention back towards him. He was sitting up,
+his hands clasped in front of him and his gaze direct. ``Are you going
+to close the school?'' he asked.
+
+``I don't know yet,'' Minerva said. "There isn't enough evidence. But if
+this is the only disappearance, then no. I wish to show those who might
+doubt that the war \emph{cannot} destroy every facet of normal life.
+Hogwarts has remained open through wars, invasions, and the rises of
+other Dark Lords, and it has always offered sanctuary and safety to all
+who pass its gates. I would continue to do that."
+
+``And if it's not possible?'' Harry asked.
+
+``Then and only then will I close it,'' said Minerva. ``But if this is
+the only disappearance---''
+
+``I can't guarantee that it will be.'' Harry's voice was soft, and his
+eyes had gone a dark green. Minerva understood. He wanted her to be
+absolutely sure of the seriousness of the situation. She already was,
+however.
+
+``I know that,'' she said. ``For now, we'll make every effort to search
+for Jessica. It's possible that she may have played a prank, and be
+hiding somewhere in the school. Mr. Smith tells me that she is the most
+mischievous of their first-years.''
+
+``And she left her wand behind?'' Draco Malfoy snorted and crossed his
+arms over his chest, as if that were a defiance of all common sense.
+
+``She's Muggleborn,'' Minerva said absently. ``More used to doing
+without it.'' She shook her head and looked at Harry. ``The Ministry
+will bring pressure to bear on me. I know that. I will still insist on
+keeping Hogwarts open unless there is no other choice.''
+
+Harry nodded in understanding, and then said, ``Should we increase the
+defensive training and the tunnels out of the school we're preparing,
+Madam?''
+
+``Before we do that, Harry,'' Minerva said, ``we are going to check
+everyone's left forearms. I do not want us betrayed from the inside.''
+
+Harry nodded again. The darkness in his eyes had not truly lessened, but
+it had fired with a determination to go on that Minerva could feel
+burning in her own. They did not know the true intentions of the wild
+Dark yet, and it was probably impossible to determine or predict them
+completely. There was no absolute safety. What they must do was bow
+their heads and endure.
+
+Minerva waited until Harry and Draco had left before she turned and
+glared at the Sword of Gryffindor hanging on the wall in its glass case.
+It radiated smugness, to her, and a perfectly despicable darkness that
+made her conscious of her Declaration to the Light as few other things
+did. She rose, strode across the room, and rapped her knuckles against
+the glass case.
+
+``We'll destroy you yet,'' she whispered.
+
+A dark line shimmered along the Horcrux's blade, and it hissed like a
+cornered viper. Minerva went on staring to show that she was not
+impressed, and did not care. Tom Riddle frightened her, but he could not
+make her back down. And a shard of him was less frightening than the
+full thing.
+
+``You'll pay,'' she told the sword. ``For threatening us, for being what
+you are, for corrupting the Sword of Gryffindor.''
+
+The dark line appeared again, but this time it was shrinking back in
+wariness. Minerva smirked and turned to decide what she was going to
+tell the school about the attack of the wild Dark.
+
+SSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco lifted his wand and cast \emph{Lumos} to light the hallway ahead.
+After a careful glance down it, he turned and nodded to the three
+first-years clustered behind him. They immediately followed him like a
+gaggle of ducklings.
+
+Draco forced down the contempt that might have risen to his throat, and
+placed protective feelings there instead. He was responsible for
+escorting the first-years back to their common room. If they reached
+safety, it was to his credit, and if they didn't, that was to his
+discredit.
+
+And besides, they were Slytherins, which immediately made them better
+than some of the other children he could have been escorting. They'd
+shown little fear, and didn't put up much of a fuss when he told them
+he'd be leading them around through the dungeons today. In fact, one of
+them had excitedly asked if he was \emph{the} Draco Malfoy, partner of
+the Boy-Who-Lived, which had been pleasant. So long as they stayed in
+light and not shadows, and so long as they didn't ask too many inane
+questions, Draco didn't find it hard to put up with them.
+
+``What is Harry like?'' the same one who had asked him his name asked
+now, trotting to keep up with him.
+
+Draco snorted and glanced down at her. It had been three days since the
+Hufflepuff girl's disappearance, and that was obviously long enough for
+the best of them to recover their spines. ``You know what he's like,''
+he pointed out, amused. ``You're in the same House with him, and you eat
+at the same table with him every day.''
+
+The girl munched a strand of her hair. ``Yes, but never close,'' she
+said. ``And I don't think anyone knows him like you do.''
+
+Draco rather liked that. Whether it was honest appreciation or a bit of
+flattery that the girl was learning early, it suited her.
+
+``Quiet,'' he told her, as they rounded a bend in the hallway and Draco
+again cast \emph{Lumos} ahead of them. ``Much quieter than you'd think
+someone Lord-level could be.'' The girl nodded seriously. Draco thought
+she was Muggleborn, but the smart ones, the ones who knew that other
+people in Slytherin House wouldn't make exceptions for them, took the
+time to look up wizarding terms. ``And of course he had a horrible
+childhood, so he learned about compassion and pity and goodness, but
+also pain. And I'm the one who helped him recover from that pain, to a
+large extent.''
+
+It was no more than the truth. Besides, it made the girl's eyes glow.
+Draco felt a corresponding swell of pride in his chest.
+
+``You must be a hero,'' she breathed.
+
+``I've often been called that, by the people who know me.''
+\emph{Stretching the truth a bit does not hurt either.}
+
+``What about---''
+
+And then a shadow passed over them, and Draco came to a stop in absolute
+darkness, heart pounding. He heard a shriek behind him, and spun around,
+trying his best to raise light against the thick, inky cloud. He
+couldn't do it. The words froze on his lips, and even seemed to freeze
+in his mind, so that he couldn't remember the spell. He closed his eyes
+and shivered.
+
+He recognized the cold presence hovering near him. It had been with him
+last Midwinter, when he Declared. Harry's suspicion that the wild Dark
+was behind these attacks was correct.
+
+Startlingly, that just made him angry, instead of longing to crouch in
+one place and abject terror until the darkness took what it wanted and
+went away. He lifted his wand, though his arm shook, and snarled,
+"\emph{Incendio!}"
+
+A torrent of flame sprang from the end of his wand, and the darkness
+became dancing shadows. Draco looked around fiercely, and saw the two
+first-years who had followed him huddling against the wall, trembling
+madly, but unhurt.
+
+The girl who had been walking beside him and talking to him about Harry
+and his own reputation was gone.
+
+Draco knelt to look at the floor, though he already knew what he would
+find. No trace of blood, no dent in the stones, and only the lingering
+taste of cold and powerful magic in the air to claim that anyone but a
+wizard or witch had ever been there.
+
+The other two children's eyes were so wide they looked set to fall out
+of their heads. Draco took a deep breath, and rose to his feet, and did
+what he had to do.
+
+``To the hospital wing,'' he said quietly. Madam Pomfrey had dosed the
+girls who shared the Hufflepuff's room with Calming Draughts. These two
+would need it, too, when the shock wore off.
+
+Luckily, it hadn't worn off yet, and they began to walk without
+complaint. Draco swept the corridor with his eyes again.
+
+For one moment, he froze, thinking that he saw the outline of a
+manticore against the stones, but then he realized it was only a shadow.
+He shook his head and hastened after the first-years. His hand shook
+when he tried to hold up his wand, and he decided that he might need
+some Calming Draught himself.
+
+SSSSSSS
+
+Peter stood in front of his NEWT Defense Against the Dark Arts class,
+and narrowed his eyes when he noticed how many of them were talking
+among themselves rather than facing the front. "\emph{Attention}," he
+said sharply.
+
+They paid attention at once. Draco Malfoy was the palest of them, but
+understandably so, Peter thought; he'd seen the latest first-year, a
+Slytherin, vanish right in front of him. Harry leaned forward beside
+him, one hand firmly on his boyfriend's back. Peter nodded. So long as
+they didn't engage in more of a display than that in his class, he could
+hardly reprimand them. Draco had needed the comfort, and Peter had
+actually been surprised that he was returning to classes so soon.
+
+``The Headmistress has directed all the older students who can to learn
+spells of fire and light,'' he said. ``And I promise you, I have some
+spells that you can learn even if you're Declared Dark.'' He let his
+eyes linger pointedly on Draco for a moment, and then on the one
+sixth-year Ravenclaw who had likewise Declared. ``Fire and radiance
+respond better to a Light wizard's will, but there is a kind of light
+that has long been associated with darkness and eerie happenings.''
+
+He lifted his wand and cried, "\emph{Lux errabunda!}"
+
+His wand began to glow. Peter had to concentrate to force the spell
+out---it tended to resist him, since he was Light and not Dark---but in
+the end he made it work. He heard his students gasp in wonder as the air
+around him swirled with a thin line of poison-green radiance, almost the
+color of the Slytherin crest.
+
+``This is the Wandering Fire,'' said Peter, ``the cousin of the lights
+that dance on ships and which the Muggles call St. Elmo's Fire.'' He
+smiled as the green light curled away and lined Draco's chair and the
+chair of the Ravenclaw with insistent brilliance. "It can shine in the
+midst of smoke and storm, and it never goes out until the caster wills
+it so. There's some hope that it might stay lit even in the middle of
+the wild Dark. \emph{Finite Incantatem}," he added, when the fire began
+to curl up, like a purring cat, on the laps of the two Dark wizards.
+``And now, for the most powerful spell of Light.''
+
+He turned to the middle of the room, and added over his shoulder,
+``Shield your eyes.''
+
+He closed his own, even though this spell could not blind its caster,
+falling into himself and drawing on the strength he would need. He made
+himself think of clear, glittering sunlight, the full weight and burden
+of a July day, not the semi-constant gray light they had right now.
+
+Then he cried, "\emph{Lucescit!}" \emph{Day is breaking.}
+
+This was one of the few light spells not diminished and disempowered as
+the world turned away from Midsummer and towards Midwinter, because it
+drew on the memories and Light magic of the wielder, rather than the
+closeness of the sun. Peter felt light stab him through his eyelids, and
+heard several of his students cry out in wonder, and knew he had
+successfully cast the spell.
+
+He opened his eyes and smiled at the light that spread throughout the
+room, not sourced in a glittering ball or a wand, as so many Light
+spells were, but coming from everywhere and nowhere. Where did a memory
+come from? This light came from the same place.
+
+He told his students when they could open their eyes, and he was
+heartened to see hope on some faces where it had faded before, and that
+even Draco Malfoy had his head tilted back, hand clasped tightly in
+Harry's, as if it were the light and not the darkness that would guide
+him through the days ahead.
+
+\emph{We will last through them,} Peter thought. \emph{We have to.}
+
+SSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry pictured himself drifting in darkness. He held onto the vision
+even as he sank into sleep, and dived further and further into himself,
+until he was once again walking---though this time in dreams---through
+the landscape in which he'd arrived to defeat Tom Riddle.
+
+He saw the fence ahead, and the black pool, and shivered convulsively.
+But this was his best chance of figuring out the wild Dark's intentions
+and defeating them if he could.
+
+There had been no more disappearances since Amanda Bailey vanished, but
+there had been many times when torches had burned out and only light
+spells had kept people from dashing in multiple directions. The demands
+to close the school were coming more frequently from the Ministry now,
+though McGonagall had so far still staved them off, and several parents
+had removed their children from Hogwarts already.
+
+What haunted Harry most was the expressions on the face of the refugees
+he passed. They had come to the school for safety, and now they were
+finding out that danger could follow them inside. Harry would spare them
+that, if he could, just as he would spare the students the slow-burning
+panic that was spreading through them.
+
+He leaned on the fence and stared into the still water. A moment later,
+a pair of deep green eyes, many times larger than his head, opened and
+looked back at him.
+
+Harry knew he would not be able to enter Voldemort's mind and learn his
+plans undetected as he was. He was too Light, and he would stand out on
+the darkscape that was Voldemort's thoughts like a firefly in a
+blackened room.
+
+He extended a hand downward. The water slurped, and a hand rose from it,
+stretching forward to meet his.
+
+But he had come to the darkness in his own mind for several nights now,
+and what he had suspected was true. He could access the connection
+between him and Voldemort that way, too. Dive deep enough, coat himself
+with enough darkness and enough dominating will, and he could swim
+across the boundaries in such a way that Voldemort would be extremely
+unlikely to sense him, because Harry would feel like a part of his own
+mind.
+
+The hand clasped his. Harry shuddered as an echo seemed to travel
+through him and into the creature in the pool.
+
+It was risky. He would move slowly. He would have to understand more of
+hatred and loathing and madness than he now did, and share Voldemort's
+thoughts for a longer period of time than he ever had, performing this
+Legilimency even when awake. He would probably drift for a while before
+he learned anything useful, because he wouldn't dare rise to the surface
+of the Dark Lord's mind until he was sure Voldemort wouldn't notice him.
+
+He swung his legs over the fence and slid towards the dark water.
+
+But they had that time, if Harry's estimation was correct. The wild
+Dark's next time of greatest power was Midwinter. Whatever strike
+Voldemort had arranged with it---or it had arranged for itself---was
+likely to come then, not on Halloween or at any point in between.
+Halloween was a special day for wizards, but it had never been a day
+when the wild Dark showed any especial power.
+
+He felt the water creeping towards his face, and he closed his eyes in
+sheer reflex.
+
+They had no other way of learning what Voldemort's plans were likely to
+be, no spy in his camp or any possibility of gaining one. If Harry could
+learn anything from this, even a scrap of information, it would be
+valuable. The people around him could, as Draco had informed him, tell
+if he started acting differently and abusing his magic; Snape would pull
+him out of the bond if that occurred. And---Harry knew this was the true
+reason Snape had agreed to this---it would give him practice with his
+Legilimency and a way to know the darkness within him.
+
+Harry let the creature pull him towards the bottom of the pool, and set
+himself to learn what the darkness was like.
+
+After all, it \emph{was} him.
+
+SSSSSSSSSS
+
+Step, and step, and step, and step, and the final rune was laid. The
+circle, made of blue-purple stones, each inscribed with the letter of a
+name as well as a rune, began to glow. Henrietta stood surveying it with
+quiet satisfaction.
+
+She didn't stand within the circle, of course, but outside it. This was
+a summoning circle, meant to call on a certain person.
+
+And even then, in this case, it wouldn't actually make that person
+appear in the circle; that took both more time and more magic than
+Henrietta had. It would simply attract the person's attention, nudge him
+to come closer, make him, possibly, betray himself and think it was his
+own conflicted impulses that led him.
+
+Henrietta knelt and traced one finger over the first four runes, from
+stone to stone. E-V-A-N.
+
+She \emph{did} intend to have some fun with this, before the end.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 50*: Shackles of
+Silver}\label{chapter-50-shackles-of-silver}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Thirty-Eight: Shackles of Silver}
+
+``And do you really mean that, Mr. Malfoy?'' There was delight in
+Melinda Honeywhistle's voice, but mixed with it was terror. Lucius found
+it provocative. A pity that he needed this woman to spread the story
+that he'd decided on to bait out Hawthorn. He would have enjoyed baiting
+\emph{her} in and destroying her, if only to prove to himself that he
+still could.
+
+``I do mean that, Mrs. Honeywhistle.'' He flicked at a spot of dust on
+his robes. He wore dark blue ones, the finest left to him, as he stood
+in front of the group of five reporters he'd summoned to the Ministry
+Atrium. No one had yet tried to stop them, perhaps because they weren't
+yelling, though they had received some suspicious glances from the
+Aurors on guard. ``Working for Voldemort---'' he watched in satisfaction
+as some of them flinched ``---is not only the opposite of grand and
+glorious, but it is, in the end, ineffective. He had a strong hold on me
+compared to most other people. I was under the Imperius Curse when I
+first served him, after all, and that leaves traces in the mind.'' He
+watched as the reporters nodded wisely. That was not true, of course,
+but none of them knew much about the Unforgivables---not many people
+did---so Lucius had little fear that his lie would be found out. ``And
+then there's the Dark Mark.'' He touched his left arm, and watched as
+their eyes followed his hand in wary fascination. ``And I still managed
+to break free.''
+
+``It cost the death of your wife to do so, though, didn't it, Mr.
+Malfoy?'' asked a fat, pompous man from one of the minor morning papers.
+
+Lucius inclined his head. ``It is true, and regrettable, that Narcissa
+died in the same battle where I freed myself, yes. However, that does
+not make the two things connected.'' He raised an eyebrow, and the
+reporter had the grace to flush. \emph{Too bad that he does not have the
+grace to do much else.} ``Voldemort cannot control the people he does
+have. The people who serve him do so out of fear.'' He paused a moment,
+and then let a sneer slide across his face. ``Or hatred, as Hawthorn
+Parkinson does. She is a werewolf, and Voldemort has played on that
+mindless trait in her, encouraging her to surrender to her rage. She
+could, perhaps, have escaped like I did, but she has made no effort that
+I can see so far.''
+
+``Aren't you worried that she might hear about this and come to take
+revenge on you?'' Honeywhistle asked, even as she scribbled madly on her
+scroll.
+
+\emph{I am hoping that she will}. ``She will not dare,'' said Lucius.
+``Those who serve Voldemort serve out of fear, at the bottom, unless
+they manage to pull free like I did. She might dream of confronting me,
+but she will not actually do so.''
+
+They asked him a few more questions, but his point had been made. Lucius
+had carefully crafted his words so that they would chip at Voldemort's
+formidable reputation, and make joining the Death Eaters seem less the
+opportunity for Dark wizards than the refuge of the coward.
+
+Most of all, he had baited the hook to make it irresistible for
+Voldemort to punish him by sending Hawthorn after him.
+
+He did hope.
+
+He moved casually out of the Ministry when the press conference was
+done, avoiding the Aurors who drifted just as casually after him. They
+quickened their pace to capture him in the alley outside the telephone
+box, but Lucius Apparated without looking behind him. Even if they could
+have traced his Apparition, they would have to be braver than they
+looked to follow him into Knockturn Alley.
+
+He landed outside Seth's shop, startling a thin, ragged owl who flew up
+to the roof of the building and screeched at him. Lucius gave it a flat,
+unfriendly glance, and thought of hexing it. Then he reminded himself
+that he would need his magical strength for the next few days. Tonight
+was the first night of the full moon, and while Hawthorn might come
+hunting him, there were two other chances for it, too.
+
+He entered the shop through a swirl of dead leaves and dust, and found
+the halfling holding a set of silver chains and a muzzle as if he'd been
+expecting him. He almost surely had, Lucius thought. He could see
+through shadows, and his mother could scout for him if someone used
+magic to baffle his senses. Lucius was not aware of any magic that could
+muffle the senses of \emph{that} hunter.
+
+``They are ready, Mr. Malfoy,'' said Seth quietly. When he listened,
+Lucius could hear the slightest tinge of a hiss to his voice, but he had
+really adapted to speaking English remarkably well. ``I almost wish I
+could keep them. They are beautiful, are they not?'' He spun the chains,
+and sighed.
+
+``I have brought the Galleons you requested,'' said Lucius simply, and
+laid the bag down on the counter. Seth eyed him with those frog-like
+eyes for a moment more, then nodded and floated the chains over to him.
+
+Lucius caught and studied them. They appeared to be pure silver, at
+first: four shackles shaped to catch paws extending from a single spine
+chain, with a muzzle to curl around the teeth. It was only when he
+leaned close to them and sniffed that he caught a scent of blood and
+dying things, and saw the dark shimmer that coursed up and down the
+fetters. Seth had forged them of silver and hatred, the way that Lucius
+had requested.
+
+``You shall have your payment, Master Smith.'' Lucius folded the chains
+up and floated them behind him, casting a Disillusionment Charm on them.
+He didn't dare shrink them, in case that affected their properties when
+it came time to capture Hawthorn. ``The little halfling girl is Jacinth
+Yaxley, and her mother is Lazuli. And I have written a letter to her
+asking if she would put her daughter in communication with you. She has
+so agreed.'' He bowed and produced the letter from his pocket with a
+flourish.
+
+Seth took it with trembling hands. Lucius watched him through narrowed
+eyes that he hoped concealed his contempt. Even if one \emph{was} sure
+that one was the only member of one's kind, and then found a second
+individual, that would be no excuse for trembling hands.
+
+``It is real,'' Seth said, leaning close to the parchment and flaring
+his nostrils. Lucius supposed he was absorbing Jacinth's scent. Then he
+looked up and shook his head. ``And now, you must leave.''
+
+Lucius was more than happy to do so, especially since the shadows were
+stirring at his heels. The chains floated behind him. He had
+accomplished, with all luck, two steps of his task: luring Hawthorn to
+him, and finding a means to hold and capture her when she did come.
+
+But the third, talking her back and out of her hatred, did not lie
+within his power. He would have to speak to Harry.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``Lucius.''
+
+Lucius had to admire the balance in the boy's voice, between wariness
+and outright aggression. It was admirable. And so was the way he rose to
+his feet like a dancer, long before Lucius got too close, and yet
+managed to make the gesture look like something other than one of
+respect.
+
+His eyes were a deeper green than Lucius remembered them being, but he
+had heard rumors that Harry was exploring Dark Arts and did not find
+that surprising. Unusually powerful magic sometimes marked its new
+practitioners like that, for a time. He held himself with his magic
+snapping around him like a banner, somewhere between threatening and a
+mere reminder of what he could do. He was treating Lucius more like an
+enemy prisoner, even now, than a returned ally.
+
+Lucius could not have expressed in words how much he appreciated that.
+
+"\emph{Vates}," he said, with a deep bow, and saw a spasm of confusion
+cross Harry's face. He must have expected the same haughtiness and pride
+as always. Lucius shook his head as he sat down on one side of the small
+table in a low chair, the only furniture provided in this designated
+meeting room. Harry had earned the title, never mind how miserable he
+had made Lucius's life in doing so.
+
+``I have a means to fulfill one of my bargains, and bring Hawthorn
+Parkinson back,'' he said, and then dropped the Disillusionment Charm on
+the chains. He knew Harry would have sensed the magic already, but he
+wouldn't have had the chance to examine them yet and see their nature.
+
+Harry came slowly forward, his eyes narrowed and his nostrils working as
+he evidently caught some trace of the hatred. Lucius nodded. He still
+missed the pureblood grace and posture that would have been trained into
+Draco's perfect partner, but there was something appealing about the
+primal way that Harry approached and assessed threats. He was not a
+creature of perfect breeding, but he was a creature of perfect magic.
+Lucius could appreciate the compromise.
+
+"What are they \emph{made} of?" Harry asked suddenly, breaking him from
+his contemplation.
+
+``Both silver and hatred,'' Lucius said, and smiled when Harry turned to
+stare at him. ``Yes, there are people who can do such things, though one
+must know where to find them. In this case, a smith in Knockturn
+Alley.'' He paused, then added softly, ``Someone who is half human and
+half nameless, headless snake, rather like your friend Jacinth.''
+
+Harry stiffened.
+
+``I have already put him in communication with Jacinth, with her
+mother's permission, of course.'' Lucius watched closely, and saw the
+flicker of surprise Harry couldn't hide. ``I am not as committed to
+being the bastard as the man you once knew,'' he said. ``I told you that
+I had learned much of slavery, Harry. That is still true. Freely chosen
+service is superior to slavery in every way, where I once would have
+thought of them as equal and disdained service of any kind.''
+
+``Then you did mean what you said to Draco?'' Harry asked. ``That you
+live at our sufferance?''
+
+``I had to mean it, or the oath would not have taken, and the Dark would
+have told Draco I was lying,'' said Lucius mildly. He watched Harry
+reassess him with a small smile. Of course, the more Harry believed
+that, and the more Draco did, the more freedom they would allow him, and
+the more he could do. He did not intend to betray either of them; the
+oath he had made would not allow that. But he did intend to have some
+room for leisure, and for traveling back and forth, that they would not
+allow if they still distrusted him.
+
+Harry sat down on the other side of the table again, and asked, ``So how
+do you plan to retain her? Even if the chains can hold a werewolf, there
+is still the problem of making her come to you.''
+
+``I have just given a rather insulting interview to several papers that
+I expect Voldemort to see and take offense at,'' Lucius said. ``In it, I
+insulted Hawthorn. He controls her hatred by letting her sate her lust
+for vengeance sometimes; he must, or he would lose control of her to the
+werewolf savagery. He let her torture the Aurors in the raid on
+Tullianum. I believe that he will send her after me, since he knows that
+I am of no more earthly use to him as a servant, and I have dared to
+discourage others from joining him.''
+
+``And tonight is the full moon,'' Harry said.
+
+Lucius leaned forward. "Yes. I am planning to arrange these chains
+around a certain doorway in the Manor, which I will stand behind. She
+will scent my blood and come for me, and the chains will take her.
+However, while I can hold her until morning, that does not mean that I
+can talk her out of her hatred. That is where you come in, Harry. I need
+you to come in and do as a \emph{vates} would, talking her free---either
+while she is still a werewolf, or when she returns to her right mind and
+shape as a woman. Werewolves cannot Apparate, but she has no reason not
+to go back to Voldemort the moment the moon sets."
+
+``And why should I help you keep your promise, Lucius?'' Harry leaned
+forward in turn. The dark shade in his eyes had deepened. ``You are the
+one who made the promise, and you are the one who said you would keep
+it. That means that I should not have to help you. And I am still, if
+one looks at it in a certain light, owed either your life or your magic,
+given your violation of the Alliance oaths before you returned to
+Voldemort.''
+
+Lucius nodded. This was the dangerous moment. But he had survived more
+dangerous things. At least he knew that Harry had a fundamental
+compassion and an addiction to hearing his enemies' side of the story
+that Voldemort did not. He leaned back and fixed him with a serious
+gaze.
+
+``You have forgiven my crimes once, Harry,'' he said quietly. ``You know
+what I did during the First War, and unlike others, you do not have a
+reason to believe that I was under the Imperius Curse when I did it. You
+were telling my son that as early as your first year at Hogwarts.'' He
+watched in interest as Harry's hand tightened on the edge of the table,
+but until Harry actually splintered it and struck at him, he refused to
+be concerned. ``You managed to forgive me for killing the relatives of
+people you knew, for murdering and torturing children young enough to be
+your siblings.''
+
+``Are you tempting me to rescind that forgiveness, Lucius?'' Harry
+snarled.
+
+``I am asking you to extend it.'' Lucius cocked his head. ``I am doing
+what I can to atone for my crimes. I will atone in other ways if you ask
+it.'' And he would. No matter what the end, his family's future was
+bound up with Harry now. He had to stay on his good side and do as he
+said---some of the time---in order to \emph{have} a future. Lucius did
+not always like it, but he could recognize reality when it stared him in
+the face. Ignoring that reality, as he had for most of the last year,
+had been his cardinal sin. ``My life is the price if you ask it. I ask
+that it not be. I cannot help you, and I cannot help others, if I am
+dead. Likewise with my magic. I am very little use to you as a Squib.
+Will you forgive me again, Harry? Will you admit that I made a mistake
+in judgment, but that does not mean that you need to execute me?''
+
+Harry's hand tightened once more on the edge of the table, and his eyes
+looked like jade now. Lucius still remained relaxed. He knew the
+\emph{true} danger signs with Harry, and they had not reached them yet.
+His head did not hurt from the explosion of magic being held back, for
+one thing.
+
+``I should kill you,'' Harry said in a low voice. ``Merlin knows you
+have done things that deserve it.''
+
+Lucius sat silent.
+
+``And you don't regret any of them, either,'' said Harry, his voice
+rising in frustration. "At \emph{all}."
+
+``I regret driving my son and my wife away.'' Lucius leaned forward. ``I
+regret what I did under Voldemort's influence. I regret not recognizing
+right away where the best chances for me lay. Most of this past year
+will live as the Year of Regret in my memory.''
+
+``But not what you did in the First War.''
+
+Lucius gave a graceful shrug, and tilted his head so that he regarded
+Harry from behind one strand of blond hair. ``If you wanted that, Harry,
+you should have asked Hawthorn Parkinson to be sitting here, and me to
+be running on four legs as a werewolf in Voldemort's service. I will
+never do it again. But I refuse to live my life in the shadow of guilt
+that I did not feel at the time.''
+
+Harry stared at him in frustration. Lucius remained still. He was what
+he was. He could not offer less than that to Harry's cause, or his
+son's. What he \emph{would} have was knowledge, now, of whether Harry
+honestly intended to strip him of his magic or his life. He did not
+think Harry would leave him in suspense for long.
+
+``Damn you,'' Harry muttered, looking away.
+
+``Well?'' Lucius asked.
+
+``I am going to come and talk to Hawthorn.'' Harry rose to his feet and
+shot him an impressive, green-eyed glare, with \emph{power} behind it,
+power Lucius could appreciate. ``For her sake, though, I'll have you
+know. Not yours.''
+
+``I would not have it any other way,'' said Lucius. ``I know that I hold
+but a feeble purchase in your heart, as the father of Draco and the
+husband of Narcissa.'' \emph{For now}. He had the chance to change that,
+too, to prove to Harry that he could be valuable even when all his
+promises were fulfilled. He had to, or make Harry think of taking his
+life and magic again someday, when someone pressed him and pointed out
+that Lucius was not contributing to the future Harry wanted to build.
+
+Harry drew a deep breath, then let it go and shook his head. ``I can't
+deal with you right now, Lucius,'' he said. ``Go. Contact me when you've
+captured Hawthorn. I'll meet you at the Manor.''
+
+Lucius concealed a smile as he departed. If his life were seriously in
+danger from Hawthorn's teeth and claws, he suspected he could call on
+Harry earlier than the capture, and he would answer.
+
+But it was just as well not to test that. He would let Harry have as
+long as he needed to think he hated Lucius, and believe that he was evil
+and no good for anything but keeping his promises. Eventually, he would
+flail those last leftover emotions out, and it would be time to build a
+new relationship.
+
+\emph{That is a good thing about his focus on the future. One nearly
+always gets a second chance.}
+
+SSSSSSS
+
+Lucius knew he had been right when he heard the howl splintering the air
+from the Manor's far side.
+
+He checked the doorway around which the chains hung one more time, and
+nodded. The hatred woven into the silver was necessary to contain
+Hawthorn, since she was not a free-running wild werewolf; then silver
+alone could have held her. This would replicate the hold of the loathing
+that Voldemort had on her, and make her remain for at least the night.
+
+Draco had had to lower the wards so that Hawthorn could cross into the
+Malfoy property without being stopped. He had taken the chance to remind
+his father of just how much he was in control, and how much Lucius had
+to depend on him for something that once would have taken him a moment
+to accomplish.
+
+Lucius had looked appropriately humble and chastised all during it. It
+was much easier to dance around his son than Harry. Draco had memories
+of him that Harry did not, and Lucius could play on that love and their
+shared grief for Narcissa to make his son give him concessions when
+Draco thought he was exerting his own will solely.
+
+\emph{Narcissa.}
+
+Lucius shook the thought of his dead wife away. She would have scorned
+him for being so soppy as to weep while he was waiting for an enemy.
+
+And now he could hear that enemy hurling herself against the door of the
+Manor, which swung open before her. Lucius concentrated, and heard the
+skittering slide of claws on rich parquet. He winced. He would have to
+look into having that replaced---and convince Draco it was an important
+expense---after this.
+
+He could feel her coming closer, partially because he could hear her
+growls and smell the musky scent of wolf, and partially because of the
+instinct that seemed to come to all prey when it was being hunted.
+Lucius heard her give a deep, throaty snarl of satisfaction when she
+arrived at the far door of his study. The woman in her recognized him as
+an enemy, and the werewolf was more than happy to use that as an excuse
+for killing, though it would have struck at anyone in its path.
+
+A claw reached out, snagged in the middle of the door, and then wrenched
+backward, tugging the wood with it. Lucius winced again. That had been
+an expensive door.
+
+And then Hawthorn---or the pale fawn bitch with amber eyes who would, in
+a few hours' time, transform back to Hawthorn---stood in the doorway,
+staring across the width of his study at what was apparently her prey
+waiting for her, defenseless, behind yet another open doorway.
+
+Her mouth opened in a delirious howl of triumph.
+
+Lucius looked down that shining gullet, lined with teeth, and let some
+of his fear drift onto his face. But he did not try to run. There was
+always the chance that Hawthorn would track a parallel course to him if
+he did that, and smash through walls instead of the doorway trap. He
+would not risk it, though it took all his control to stand still as she
+began her charge.
+
+She leaped the desk in the middle of the study, and Lucius watched the
+graceful play and flex of her muscles, and thought of the old childhood
+tales of werewolves that his nurse had whispered to him when he was a
+child, to keep him inside the Manor on full moon nights. They were all
+the more effective for being true.
+
+He did not know where he found the courage to keep standing there. Or,
+rather, he had not known until that moment that his will to survive
+socially and create an important position for himself in the future was
+as strong as his will to simply \emph{survive.}
+
+Hawthorn landed on the opposite side of the desk. Lucius watched carpet
+mound around her claws, immense, shining black nails, each one of which
+could inflict lycanthropy. He would have to make sure to move out of
+range the moment she was taken, so that her lashing paws could not
+infect him. Infection was \emph{not} part of the plan.
+
+She lunged.
+
+Lucius commanded the chains to move.
+
+They whirled out of the sides of the doorway and came down precisely
+where they needed to, the silver bonds finding and curling about her
+paws, the straight chain lashing down the middle of her spine, the
+muzzle closing around her wildly snapping jaws. Hawthorn screamed in
+pain as the silver burned through her fur, and then began fighting.
+Lucius heard the chains creaking. He wondered if she would manage to
+fracture a link. Fracture one, and all of them would unravel, since the
+magic and metal held every single one in tension.
+
+But then she flipped over on her back, not a position that she would
+have taken on her own, and the chains bound her paws together over her
+belly. And her snarls subsided to whimpers as the muzzle clamped down
+and forced her teeth together. Lucius found him the target of maddened
+amber eyes, but no other strike.
+
+He touched his left wrist, without taking his eyes off Hawthorn, and
+invoked the phoenix song communication spell to whisper, ``She has been
+captured, Harry.''
+
+Harry arrived at once. When Draco restored the wards around Malfoy Manor
+to be what they had been---other than the fact that they were under his
+command and not his father's, of course---he had restored Harry's
+connection to them as well, which Lucius had given him as a gift at the
+climax of their truce-dance. Harry melted through the wards, and Lucius
+heard him hunting for only a moment before he came through the
+splintered doorway, crossed the study, and then crouched down beside the
+bound Hawthorn from the other side.
+
+And he began to speak.
+
+Lucius raised an eyebrow. He had thought Harry would wait until dawn;
+speaking to a crazed werewolf and trying to bring it back from its
+hatred was impossible. But if he wanted to try it now, and hope,
+perhaps, that her unconscious, the sleeping woman, would hear him and
+rejoice, Lucius was not about to hinder him. He conjured a chair not far
+away and sat down to watch.
+
+``I know that you can hear me, Hawthorn,'' Harry whispered, his voice
+deep and intent. ``And I know that you remember the talk we had before
+you fell victim to Voldemort again, the one that reminded you of the
+future. You suffered the loss of your husband, your daughter, your
+humanity---if you count the nights you've run without Wolfsbane---your
+dignity when the Aurors took you, and your freedom.''
+
+Lucius rolled his eyes. \emph{Oh, yes, excellent tactic, Harry, remind
+her of all she's lost when you want to encourage her to come back.}
+
+"But that \emph{doesn't matter.}"
+
+Lucius blinked. He had never heard Harry sound so savage.
+
+``It doesn't matter what you've lost.'' Harry reached out and let his
+hand hover over Hawthorn's bound paws, though Lucius could not see why.
+"It \emph{doesn't matter.} Dragonsbane and Pansy are dead, Hawthorn, and
+you're alive. Your freedom can be restored to you. You've recouped your
+lost dignity with more than enough violence to answer for it. And your
+humanity can be retained mentally, if not physically, when you take the
+Wolfsbane Potion. You can live. You can deal with things. You have
+\emph{no excuse} to give in to hatred like this, to fall victim to
+vengeance when we talked about rescuing you from it. Lucius, Indigena,
+the Aurors---they're worthless next to your pride, your soul, the
+choices you make."
+
+\emph{I like that!} Lucius shifted, and wondered if he should leave and
+just let Harry speak to Hawthorn in private. But considering the way
+that he was almost touching her now, the boy might let the werewolf
+loose to wreak havoc on his home. Lucius would prefer that not happen.
+He sat still, in the end.
+
+"You are \emph{you}." Harry leaned over the muzzled werewolf's face and
+breathed directly into her nostrils. He either didn't notice or didn't
+care about the aborted lunge that she made towards him, still taking,
+his voice a low, constant stream of encouragement. "You are more than
+capable of walking your own road and making capable, intelligent, adult
+decisions. If I thought you weren't, I would have insisted that you move
+into Hogwarts where I could watch you and lecture you about the
+importance of abandoning revenge. You chose to follow me. You know what
+ideals I espouse.
+
+``No, what happened to you wasn't fair. It wasn't right.'' And then he
+\emph{did} touch her, running his hand along Hawthorn's pale shoulder
+until he almost reached the spine chain. Lucius tensed. \emph{Idiot. It
+is lucky that the chains will not release just because a human touches
+them.}
+
+"But that \emph{doesn't matter.} It has to be overcome. It shouldn't be
+lingered on and chewed over and over again until most of creation has
+forgotten what the original insult is. You should have been able to come
+to me and talk about the rage, the hatred. You're still alive, and I
+know that you aren't going to kill yourself, or you would have done it
+already. You're still alive, and that means making decisions. You can't
+give up and sit back and hope that nothing else happens to make you
+live." Harry flashed a smile so bitter that Lucius stifled the urge to
+sit up and applaud. "Believe me, I know that intimately.
+
+"You have to come back. In the end, there's no choice to be made on the
+road you're walking. There is a choice to be made on the road that opens
+up into freedom. Many of your decisions will be painful, but I have
+faith that you can make them. Why?
+
+``Because you're a fighter, Hawthorn. You've had to survive more in the
+past few years than anyone else I've known, and still you never gave
+up.'' Harry leaned close to her, eye to eye. Lucius stared. Amber eyes
+met green, and held, and Harry never blinked, and the werewolf made no
+sound. "And this is a form of giving up, if you kill whoever Voldemort
+tells you to \emph{just} because he tells you to."
+
+The werewolf lay perfectly still. Lucius shook his head slightly,
+frowning. He knew that couldn't happen. Werewolves without Wolfsbane
+were savage, primal, elemental creatures, inspired by bloodlust. They
+weren't supposed to listen and seem to consider what a human said.
+
+Of course, most werewolves didn't confront a \emph{vates}, either.
+Lucius supposed that could have something to do with this.
+
+Harry gazed into Hawthorn's eyes for long moments, his hands smoothing
+the fur on either side of her muzzle.
+
+And then he drew a deep breath and started the whole thing over again.
+
+SSSSSSSSS
+
+Lucius was waiting for the moment when the moon set, and Hawthorn began
+to change in form. For one thing, he would never have allowed himself to
+fall asleep like this, with a dangerous beast in front of him. For
+another, he knew this was the moment the chains, made for holding a
+wolf, would slip off a woman, and she would probably turn to fire a
+Killing Curse at him before she Apparated back to Voldemort's side.
+
+Harry's voice had long since failed from repeating variations of the
+same words over and over again. Now he sat beside the chains, not
+flinching and not looking away as the werewolf's body twisted and bent,
+the long legs shrinking, the paws clenching into hands and feet in a
+whirlwind of fur and claws, the tail retreating into the body, the
+muzzle retracting into the face. Even through the muzzle, the werewolf
+began a moan that quickly turned into a scream.
+
+And then the chains fell limp and too big, gleaming shackles more
+tangled around than restrained Hawthorn Parkinson, whose blonde hair was
+flyaway, whose hazel eyes were still, to Lucius's gaze, full of madness,
+whose clothes were ragged.
+
+Harry knelt beside her and met her gaze head on. Lucius could not have
+described what passed between them in that moment, not least because he
+was sitting at an angle and so could not see Hawthorn's face well.
+
+``Do you remember what I said?'' Harry asked. Or, at least, Lucius
+thought he did. He was only reading Harry's lips; there was no sound
+left behind them to power his voice.
+
+Then Hawthorn began to cry.
+
+And Harry leaned forward and gathered her in his arms, bowing his head
+over her neck. Before he did, and shut his eyes, Lucius saw a look of
+such triumph in them as made him suddenly sure Voldemort was as good as
+dead.
+
+He had to look away, then, just for a moment, as the sound of the soft
+sobs replaced the growls of hatred. At his command, the chains fell
+limp.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 51*: Intermission: The World Does Not
+End}\label{chapter-51-intermission-the-world-does-not-end}
+
+\textbf{Intermission: The World Does Not End}
+
+Pamela Seaborn lifted her gaze from the intense contemplation of a
+redwood's root system, and stared across the distance. Since her eyes
+were still looking beyond the surface of things, her line of sight did
+not stop at the sealine, but swung out beyond that, into misty realms
+where she had alarms set up to warn her if a Dark Lord or Lady was
+moving towards the United States.
+
+One was, she saw a moment later, but only incidentally. Monika traveled
+out from Austria, but her destination was the island in the middle of
+the Atlantic where the International Confederation of Warlocks would
+hold a meeting to discuss Britain's problem in keeping the Statute of
+Secrecy. Monika was traveling there as an apparent ``servant'' in the
+train of Evamaria Gansweider, the Austrian Minister of Magic. She did
+not intend to intrude on Pamela's territory.
+
+\emph{Almost certainly, she intends to make some mischief,} Pamela
+thought. In her experience, most Dark Ladies did, and Monika was the
+worst of the lot.
+
+It didn't take her long to decide what to do. She had no immediate
+crises that required her attention, and it might be good to know what
+Monika was planning. She dimmed the range of her longsight and then
+stood, stretching her arms above her head. The redwood she'd been
+sitting under swayed very slightly in response to the gesture. Pamela
+smiled sadly. She knew it was only a fraction of the communication she
+could have from it if the webs on the great trees were undone.
+
+``Bear me, old friend?'' she murmured, and then began to climb.
+
+When she was safe in the topmost branches of the redwood, two hundred
+feet above the ground, she leaned back and drew her magic around her,
+concentrating it just above her shoulder blades and just under the balls
+of her feet. The magic under her feet tightened and shivered, coalesced,
+then dissipated into the branches of the redwood. The tree began to
+whipsaw as if in a high wind. Pamela opened her eyes wide.
+
+The tree flung her forward, a far greater distance than it should have
+been able to; her magic had pierced into the paths of Light, and given
+the redwood a portion of its power. Pamela flew away, out across the
+ocean, and when the moment came that her momentum couldn't sustain her
+and she started to fall, she pulled the magic on her shoulder blades
+into motion.
+
+Some struck through her bones, hollowing and lightening them. The rest
+surged out of her back as the wings of a California condor. Pamela had
+done what she could to save the great birds, though she did not know if
+her effort would be enough, and in return had taken part of their
+natural magic into herself, to shelter it if their kind perished. The
+wings flapped now, and bore her steadily over the Pacific in the
+direction of the island. Pamela was confident that she would make it on
+time. The Confederation never did anything important swiftly. There
+would be greetings, festivals, a welcoming feast, and squabbles for
+precedence first.
+
+``Pamela.''
+
+She turned her head, and nodded a bit. ``Alexandre.'' The Dark Lord was
+one of the few powerful Dark wizards she found tolerable. Currently, he
+traveled ensconced in what seemed to be a heat shimmer, though Pamela
+could feel her thoughts growing firmer and more certain as it came
+nearer. Alexandre studied creatures of magic that were half-alive, like
+prophecies, and this was evidently a prophecy he'd bent to serve him,
+one that would never come true or only come true far in the future.
+
+``You're here because of Monika?'' he asked.
+
+Pamela shrugged, and then worked her wings hard to catch a warm current.
+Her distrust of the Austrian Lady was well-known among the Pact.
+Besides, she avoided lying when possible. Lying \emph{could} be a tool
+of the Light, properly employed, but Pamela tended to forget what she'd
+lied about and trip over it. ``I'm interested in her interest in the
+Confederation, especially since they're dealing with the matter of
+Britain. And why are you here?''
+
+She asked it as a joke; Alexandre would no more reveal his real motive
+than he would change his allegiance. Thus, she was startled when his
+haughty face bent into something like a true smile.
+
+``Perhaps I am here for the same reason.''
+
+Pamela rolled her eyes. ``You and Monika get on, Alexandre.'' Not well,
+of course---Monika got on well with no one, by the vice of her being so
+prickly and difficult---but he would not take sides against her.
+
+``Perhaps not for much longer,'' said Alexandre, and, despite the
+conditional in the statement, Pamela was intrigued. She cocked her head
+as they soared over an island where a building Lord-level power
+shimmered. There was a girl who would be a Lady someday, Pamela thought
+absently, if she reached adulthood without being killed. Most wizards
+and witches around a powerful one were aware of what that magic meant
+before the child was, and would watch closely, ready to descend and
+exterminate the child if he or she turned to the Dark. Light Lords and
+Ladies caused problems, too, of course---one of Pamela's inherent
+problems was trying to make sure she didn't change the structure of her
+country \emph{too} much---but those of the Dark caused far more sheer
+destruction. It was a rare one, like Alexandre or Monika, who came to
+full power and Declared before someone else could locate them, evaluate
+them, and kill them.
+
+Alexandre went on speaking then, drawing Pamela's attention to him.
+``Monika has---dangerous ambitions. I might not oppose them if they were
+confined to her own country, but they will not be.''
+
+Pamela blinked. Even knowing this was probably a lie, it was astonishing
+news. ``Monika has always abided by the laws of the Pact.'' It had been
+an edge-of-the-teeth, skirting obedience more than once, when Monika
+almost shattered a protective law that was in place for an excellent
+reason, but Pamela had never known a true exception. What Alexandre was
+suggesting would be a departure from her pattern.
+
+``Because she knows what is best for her, and has not the power to
+oppose us.'' Alexandre rolled comfortably to the side, supported by the
+yellow waves of prophecy-air he rode, and stared seriously at her.
+``Supposing she did? Supposing that she'd gathered such immense magic
+that she could face and kill any three members of the Pact?''
+
+Pamela bit her lip and was silent. She knew how powerful the Dark Lord
+calling himself Voldemort had grown, of course, but she did not know how
+Monika could hope to have that power for herself. She was not an
+\emph{absorbere.}
+
+``Just supposing,'' Alexandre continued, his voice calm and casual,
+``that the wizard who was heir to that magic was weak---in Monika's
+eyes---and capable of being killed once he'd taken it? And now imagine
+that the person taking it from him was a witch who has studied all the
+varieties of reproductive magic until she breeds new creatures in her
+sleep. And imagine that she could create a way to change her body so as
+to take in some of that magic.''
+
+It would be possible, Pamela knew. Monika's specialty certainly argued
+for it. But she had not even thought of it, and so most members of the
+Pact would not have.
+
+``She has spoken to you about this?'' she asked quietly. \emph{Remember,
+his answer is likely to be a lie.}
+
+``One need not speak with someone else to notice a pattern of
+behavior.'' Alexandre inclined his head to her. ``I know that you care
+for your redwoods and your condors, and that is nothing we have ever sat
+down and had a serious philosophical discussion about.''
+
+Pamela rolled her eyes. Trust Alexandre to compare the secret
+machinations of a Dark Lady with the open, well-known public devotions
+of a Light Lady. ``You don't have to tell me if you don't wish to,
+Alexandre. I've hardly asked where your Horcrux is and how to destroy
+it.''
+
+Her only answer was a faint smile. It was a persistent rumor in the Pact
+that Alexandre had a Horcrux, but it hadn't ever been proven.
+
+``And I can tell you if I wish,'' Alexandre said. ``Say, if, for
+instance, and this is only conditional, I was interested in a coalition
+to stop a witch so suicidal, and restore the balance of power after the
+most powerful Lord in the world dies.''
+
+``And will he die?'' Pamela asked.
+
+Alexandre laughed and touched the air around him, petting the prophecy
+that bore him. "There are so many prophecies around Britain right now
+that the answer is uncertain. I wish you could see them, Seaborn. The
+country is \emph{alive} with them as no place has ever been. It---"
+
+Pamela cut him off quickly. Get Alexandre onto a tangent he felt
+inclined to talk about, and on and on he would go. ``But you think it
+likely?''
+
+``Monika does.''
+
+Pamela supposed that was the best answer she would get. ``And if someone
+was interested in forming such a coalition to subdue Monika's impetuous
+plans, what would be the right answer to give you?''
+
+``Willingness to talk about it would be essential.''
+
+``Then by, all means, Prophetic Lord, let us talk,'' said Pamela, doubly
+glad now that she'd decided to attend the International Confederation.
+She might see what Monika was up to, but more than that, she'd found a
+possible ally. And she would rather look to the further future than the
+immediate future.
+
+\emph{Stories end, crises end, but the world does not. And in the cause
+of keeping it safe from Monika, I am willing to endure far worse things
+than Alexandre.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 52*: The House of
+Yaxley}\label{chapter-52-the-house-of-yaxley}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Thirty-Nine: The House of Yaxley}
+
+Indigena shook her head hard, and then sighed. She had never thought she
+would mind being underground---she had spent large portions of her time
+there for more than a year, since she reawakened last September, and
+before that she'd been buried and regenerating among her plants---but
+now she did. The constantly falling dirt, the heat of magic as her Lord
+bred his basilisks, the stifling clash of too many people too close
+together, made even the tendrils in her body yearn for the air and
+sunlight.
+
+Besides, she had another task, which she couldn't carry out as close to
+many of the Death Eaters as being in the burrow required that she be.
+
+She walked towards her garden, her eyes lowered, on the ground in front
+of her and not the slight rise of hills where she might reasonably
+expect him to appear. The bush that had grown the narcissus flower waved
+wildly at the sight of her, and Indigena knelt down with a smile,
+splaying her hand lightly above it. She wondered what it would grow if
+left to its own devices, with only her presence to inspire it.
+
+She never knew, because just then the person she'd been waiting for
+arrived. She saw a gleam of gold from the corner of her eye, and managed
+to convince herself not to stiffen.
+
+``Must you bring that thing with you?'' she asked Evan, standing and
+turning around. ``The Dark Lord might sense it, you know.''
+
+Evan smiled at her, his dark eyes gleaming like blueberries. The madness
+in them had not diminished, but whereas before it had advanced in a way
+that impeded Evan's actions, Indigena thought this time he had control
+of it. Being away from Voldemort might have done that for him, she
+thought, and felt a brief longing to experience the same thing.
+
+Then she shook it off, when Evan tired of holding up the Hufflepuff cup
+and made it vanish among his robes again, saying, ``And you are worried
+about the Dark Lord sensing it? I thought you intended to lure me close
+and trap me for him.''
+
+Indigena eyed him. "And you came \emph{anyway}?"
+
+``Of course,'' said Evan. "You are interesting. There is only one more
+interesting person in the world, and he fails to pay me the attention I
+need. You are \emph{talking} to me."
+
+Indigena decided not to question that. Even if Evan would tell her who
+the person was, without playing his riddle-games, it was not as though
+the answer \emph{mattered} to her. ``Well, that's not the case.'' At her
+casual gesture, the vines growing on the edges of the garden began to
+rise, wrapping them in a many-holed green cocoon. Evan looked at them
+but made no move to run, as Indigena had thought he probably would not.
+If she had grown the vines correctly, Indigena knew, they should bind
+any magic that tried to hear them here, including eavesdropping spells;
+they were a variant of the vines that bound wandless magic. ``As I said
+in my note, I want your help to destroy Sylvan and Oaken Yaxley.''
+
+``You must make it more interesting than that,'' said Evan. "I do not
+\emph{help} people, you should know that. I play with them."
+
+Indigena shrugged. ``I was only speaking from my mind, and not yours.''
+Evan nodded as if that satisfied him. ``Besides, I could do it on my own
+if I wished.'' Indigena was confident of that. There was power in the
+earth that Sylvan and Oaken not only didn't know about, but disdained.
+Given time, she could grow a plant that would separate the twins and
+make them vulnerable to attack. But they didn't have the time, not when
+her Lord spent more and more time walking Sylvan and Oaken around the
+pattern of pounded blood and flesh while he explained matters to them.
+Indigena was fairly sure that they had only until Midwinter, in fact.
+``But I wanted to see how you would conquer them. If your play would
+include leaving them alive, or not doing what I would call help, then I
+have no interest in it.'' She started to turn away.
+
+``Wait.''
+
+\emph{I think I am learning how to deal with him.} Indigena turned with
+an arched eyebrow. ``Yes?''
+
+``You should never take for granted my answers,'' said Evan. ``They hide
+more profound truths than you can know.''
+
+\emph{Riddle-talk. Not important.} ``Does this mean that you intend to
+play with them and break them, then?''
+
+``Yes.'' Evan's eyes were bright. ``Twins are the most delightful toys,
+don't you agree? When I thought about it, I had a good laugh over the
+fact that you had me lure Connor Potter away from his brother. If you
+had let me play with him, I would have been content, but even what you
+allowed me to do was good sport.'' He cocked his head, and a faint smile
+touched his mouth. ``Perhaps I can use Connor Potter again someday, if
+only as a way to annoy Harry. Nothing annoys us like our siblings.''
+
+\emph{That will not happen,} Indigena thought, but thinking about why
+only led her into the tangled maze of her own allegiances again,
+following a man she was learning to despise and fighting a man she
+admired, so she abandoned it. ``I can agree with that sentiment, at
+least,'' she said, thinking of Lazuli and Peridot. "But in this case, it
+is \emph{these} twins you should concentrate on playing with."
+
+``Interest me,'' said Evan. ``Interest me, and I am the most faithful
+game-player you will find. I once spent seven days at darts, because the
+darts were made out of thighbones.''
+
+Indigena nodded, not doubting the intent behind the statement, no matter
+what the literal truth of it might be. ``I do not think that you can get
+inside their shields in time.''
+
+``What time?''
+
+``Midwinter.''
+
+Evan laughed. "I \emph{thought} I had heard that wind blowing."
+
+Indigena shrugged. That could mean any number of things, including the
+windstorm, the wildstorm, that had surged above them in the graveyard
+when Indigena bound him with her thorns. ``What matters to me is whether
+you can really destroy them inside two months.''
+
+Evan gave a slow, contemplative nod. ``I can. But now I must meditate on
+the method I shall use. Shhh.'' He held up a hand at her, as if she
+might be prompted to interrupt, and sank into what looked like actual
+meditation. Indigena used the silent moments to test the temperament of
+the garden through the soil.
+
+While she waited, she heard an immense sound rising from below, both
+snarl and scream, and the Dark Mark on her arm burned. Indigena sighed.
+\emph{That means that he has lost Hawthorn Parkinson for good, then, and
+his attempts to regain control over her are in vain. He will be angry,
+and Merlin knows what he will demand to appease his temper.}
+
+Evan, incredibly, didn't seem bothered by it. He lifted his head a
+moment later, and he was smiling. ``Yes,'' he said. "I know. I
+\emph{know}. But I am not to tell the knowing to anyone else. You must
+not question me." He nodded to Indigena. ``The game will be in motion by
+Midwinter. You, and me, and the twins, and a fifth player.''
+
+Indigena narrowed her eyes. ``Who?'' she asked before she could stop
+herself.
+
+Evan actually reached out and pinched her nose, then pulled his hand
+back. ``That was for questioning me, when I told you not to,'' he said
+sternly. ``Now be quiet, and go follow your Lord. He's calling for you.
+Perhaps he will demand that you play darts with him.'' He turned and
+walked calmly out of the garden, Apparating when he was a sufficient
+distance away.
+
+Indigena shook her head and followed the burn of her Mark, pondering,
+all the while, the fact that she should certainly have searched him for
+the Hufflepuff cup and tried to take it away from him, if she was as
+loyal a Death Eater as she usually acted.
+
+\emph{But I did not act very loyal just then, did I?}
+
+She walked back into the stifling heat of the burrow, and knelt before
+her master in the freezing cold of his anger. She thought he might
+torture her, or order her to torture someone else, and hurt her when she
+refused.
+
+It seemed, however, that her Lord was simply interested in a victory to
+replace the loss he had just suffered and salve the wound. ``Prepare
+Feldspar,'' he told her, his voice replete with hisses even when he
+spoke a word that had no sibilants. "Gather the reins into your hands,
+and test the level of trust he has gained. \emph{They} fall before
+\emph{he} does. Do you understand, Indigena?"
+
+``I do, my lord,'' said Indigena, since she actually knew this plan,
+unlike the one which would happen at Midwinter and involve the wild
+Dark, the pattern of flesh and blood, the twins, and, undoubtedly,
+Harry.
+
+She had just risen to her feet when a whir of wings startled her, and
+she lifted a thorn from her back to strike out at it. Then she realized
+it was only an owl, who landed on her shoulder and insistently held out
+a foot.
+
+Indigena vaguely recognized the handwriting on the envelope, but it was
+not until she opened it and read the letter inside that she understood
+what it meant. Her lips tightened, and the tendrils under her skin
+rippled and jerked and wavered, which she knew always made her look
+strange to someone else.
+
+``What is the matter?'' her Lord demanded.
+
+``Bad news from home, my Lord.'' Indigena crumpled the letter in her
+hand. ``Another one of my cousins has joined Harry.'' \emph{Damn
+Chalcedony}.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry had to admit he was curious as to why Lazuli had asked for a
+meeting. She had said that a cousin of hers wanted to join him, but she
+hadn't included any details about why in her letter, and she had not
+said why it had to be \emph{now}. Frankly, Harry would have preferred to
+wait. Juggling classes, his constant venturing into Voldemort's mind,
+and preparations for the Halloween ritual as he was, he would have been
+better able to sustain the meeting in a week.
+
+But it did have to be now, from the sound of it, so Harry had invited
+them both to Hogwarts and was now waiting for them in the Room of
+Requirement. Draco sat at the table in the center of the room, whistling
+under his breath and practicing hexes now and then. Harry studied his
+shadow, which stretched across the floor, and had to admit that it did
+look a bit longer. When they entered the Casting of Shadows ritual, the
+magic would be at full wax, but it showed itself in small signs before
+then.
+
+Draco looked up and caught his eye, then grinned. ``What time were they
+supposed to arrive?'' he asked. ``Do we have time for---''
+
+A sharp rap on the door made him sit back, pouting. Harry stifled a
+laugh as he moved to answer it. Draco liked Harry's frantic busyness
+lately no more than he did, but at least he had different reasons for
+disliking it.
+
+``On the ritual day, at least,'' he said gently, but saw Draco's eyes
+cloud over. Harry paused. ``What's the matter?'' He would have sworn
+that the Casting of Shadows didn't preclude them from having sex, but
+perhaps he had misread some detail in the ritual.
+
+"\emph{I'd} like having sex then," said Draco, and folded his arms.
+"\emph{You} wouldn't."
+
+Harry was about to ask what in the world he meant, but the knock on the
+door was repeated, sounding irritated this time. Making a mental note to
+ask Draco about it later, he opened it.
+
+Lazuli stood there, her face pale and emotionless as usual. Beside her
+was someone shrouded in a cloak. Harry glanced at Lazuli, who said, ``We
+were afraid that he would attract stares as we came through the
+school.'' She stepped through, with the figure following directly behind
+her, and Harry shut the door after them.
+
+A vision of a deep green curve stopped him. He had to brace himself on
+the door for a moment, and took a deep breath. He was getting these
+glimpses of what Voldemort was thinking about more and more often, but
+he couldn't tell what they were, or why the Dark Lord would be so
+preoccupied with abstract images.
+
+He turned around and saw that Lazuli had taken a seat at the table, but
+the other person had not. Instead, he said, in a voice that had an odd
+echo in it, ``It is proper to meet you on my feet,'' and flung back the
+hood.
+
+Harry blinked. The man facing him was as pale as the other Yaxleys Harry
+had met, but he didn't have their dark coloring in his hair. Instead, it
+was a pale blue-gray, and it hung into eyes that seemed the color of
+Draco's. Then the man turned his head to focus more fully on Harry, and
+small red spots of color flared in his gaze, like the flecks in
+bloodstone.
+
+``Chalcedony Yaxley?'' Harry asked. \emph{He's well-named, at least.}
+
+The man nodded. ``May we sit?'' The echo in his voice repeated
+\emph{sit} a moment after he did.
+
+``Of course.'' Harry sat down on the far side of the table, studying the
+man. Perhaps it wasn't so strange that Lazuli had asked for a meeting
+but given no details. Chalcedony had done powerful and very odd magic,
+to leave his eyes that color permanently. She might have been unable to
+explain what he had to offer to the war effort, and decided to bring him
+along and let him speak in his own words.
+
+Chalcedony sat down carefully, and promptly began to tap his foot in a
+pattern of four beats, with one pause between them. He relaxed as he did
+it, and Harry wondered if it was a means of anchoring his mind, keeping
+it from drifting off.
+
+That made Harry more curious, but also more concerned. Some kinds of
+magic \emph{did} eat their practitioners alive, demanding their
+attention even when that attention should be engaged elsewhere. Harry
+would not want an ally who might fall asleep in the middle of a battle
+or a crucial meeting.
+
+``That is better.'' Chalcedony focused on Harry, never letting up on the
+foot-tapping. Harry could feel Draco's growing irritation from the side,
+and put a hand on his arm to calm him, though he didn't look away from
+Chalcedony, either. Eye contact might be important. ``Now. I see
+patterns. And there is an immense pattern taking shape in the world
+right now. It is not good. It is a soul-pattern.''
+
+Harry blinked. ``I'm sorry, but that makes no sense,'' he said, even as
+he thought of the curves and knots in Voldemort's mind. ``I've never
+heard of a soul-pattern. Are you similar to a Seer? They see souls---''
+
+``And I see soul-patterns,'' Chalcedony interrupted. "Souls are---they
+are \emph{souls}. A soul-pattern is the \emph{representation} of a soul.
+It is the difference between a bird and the painting of a bird." The
+beat of his foot altered, from four beats with one pause between to five
+beats and two pauses in between.
+
+Harry nodded. ``I can accept that. But whose soul-pattern is it? And how
+would you go about sculpting one? And what would you use it for?''
+
+``It is yours,'' said Chalcedony. ``This one is sculpted of rendered
+flesh and blood. And in this case, its main purpose is to get the wild
+Dark interested in your soul.''
+
+"That still tells us \emph{nothing}," Draco observed, grinding his teeth
+as he leaned forward. "Who is doing this? And \emph{will you please stop
+that tapping?"}
+
+Harry frowned at Draco, even as Chalcedony said, ``Voldemort is doing
+this. And I am sorry. I must have a pattern to anchor myself. Otherwise,
+the patterns I see everywhere and anywhere will absorb me and take my
+mind away. I have learned them, but they have learned me, too. They know
+I am here, and they ride me, and make me express them when I must.'' He
+shook his left sleeve back from his hand. Harry blinked at the sight of
+three fingers which looked like worn-down stubs. ``They made me draw
+once until I made a pattern of my own bone and flesh and blood,''
+Chalcedony said simply, and lowered his hand again. ``There must be a
+pattern to ride, and better one I create than one I cannot control.''
+
+Draco sat back, appearing appropriately stunned. Harry said, ``Could you
+tell us, please, why Voldemort is doing this? And how you sensed the
+pattern in the first place?'' He still understood nothing of the context
+that Chalcedony was explaining, though it did explain some things that
+had been bothering him, such as the abstract shapes in Voldemort's mind
+and what he could possibly have done to anger the wild Dark. Perhaps he
+had done nothing at all. Perhaps, as Owen had suggested, it was
+something Voldemort had done.
+
+``I will try,'' said Chalcedony. ``I am sorry. I am not good at
+explaining---context. Too many statements about the same subject joined
+together make a pattern of their own, you see, and it tries to learn
+me.'' He closed his eyes for a moment, and then leaned forward, slapping
+his right hand on the table three times. Then he began to speak, without
+sitting up or looking at Harry again.
+
+``Voldemort is doing this to interest the wild Dark,'' said Chalcedony.
+``Entice it, let it know your soul. A soul-pattern is fascinating. A
+full sight of it destroys the person whose soul it is. The wild Dark is
+learning it, and with the sight of the soul-pattern, it is learning to
+like you, want you, be fascinated, crave to take your soul and have you
+as a possession.'' He leaned forward to bang his head on the table
+several times, and then sighed, as if that banished a particular
+compelling pattern.
+
+Harry shuddered, feeling his skin crawl. ``But why doesn't Voldemort
+just lure me close enough to see the soul-pattern and destroy me that
+way?'' he asked.
+
+Lazuli picked up the tale, while Chalcedony switched the pattern of his
+foot-tapping yet again. ``This part I understand,'' she said simply. ``A
+soul-pattern annihilates the person who sees it completely, Harry. And
+he doesn't want that. At best, he wants your magic, if he cannot have
+your allegiance. And at worst, destroying you like that might destroy
+him, since the two of you are so connected.''
+
+``How did he get my soul-pattern?''
+
+Lazuli shook her head and glanced at her cousin again. ``Such a
+thing---can be learned---in the mind,'' Chalcedony said, clicking his
+teeth together between words. "Those who have used them in the
+\emph{past} to \emph{destroy} their enemies are mostly
+\emph{Legilimens.}" He grinned with triumph when that was out. Harry
+supposed the irregular stresses had worked to defeat a pattern in his
+mind.
+
+``I don't suppose Harry can use this on Voldemort?'' Draco's voice had
+soared with hope.
+
+Harry saw the hope sour when Chalcedony shook his head. "It can only be
+used on someone with a \emph{whole soul}. Voldemort's soul is not
+\emph{whole}." He paused and groaned then, half-closing his eyes. Harry
+wondered if emphasizing two words at the ends of sentences had been too
+much for him. "I do not know \emph{how} to describe it," he continued,
+after a panting moment, "but it is \emph{split}. He cannot be
+\emph{de}stroyed that way."
+
+Harry nodded grimly. He saw Lazuli's eyes narrow in suspicion, but he
+ignored that. He had not trusted everyone among his allies with the
+secret of the Horcruxes. The most many of them knew was that Voldemort
+had a number of objects which needed to be destroyed before they could
+destroy him. If Lazuli guessed the truth from this, however, Harry could
+hardly blame her.
+
+``Will any sight of the soul-pattern destroy me?'' he asked. ``Even if I
+glimpsed it through the connection that he and I have?''
+
+``Yes,'' Chalcedony gasped, and then abruptly leaned back in his seat
+and screamed. Lazuli turned to tend him without comment. Harry shook his
+head, but turned willingly when Draco grasped his shoulders and pulled
+him. He had expected something like this as soon as he heard the truth
+from Chalcedony.
+
+``Stop looking into Voldemort's mind,'' Draco snarled. "\emph{Now}.
+Before you have a full sight of it."
+
+Harry held still for a moment, watching him. ``Even though I'm also
+learning my own darkness, and that's preparing me better for the Casting
+of Shadows?'' he asked. ``Even though we still don't know what Voldemort
+really intends to do once he's got the wild Dark interested in my
+soul?''
+
+"\emph{Now}."
+
+Harry nodded, and closed his eyes, drifting towards the connection that
+he'd started to open between his mind and Voldemort's. It was actually a
+simple matter to cut it. No matter how much he'd learned about the
+darkness, he still knew the light, the world above the tar-like surface
+of his mind, better. He jerked back, and the dark water bubbled and
+screamed and let him go.
+
+It tried to follow him, of course, to occupy his attention and demand a
+claim on it, but Harry shut the door firmly, crossed back over the fence
+and stepped back from the darkness. The creature inside it snarled at
+him, then rolled over and dived down beneath the black oil to brood in
+silence.
+
+When Harry was sure he could find no trace of the connection left, he
+opened his eyes and looked at Lazuli. Chalcedony had passed out, and she
+was helping him to his feet, wrapping him again in the dark cloak. Harry
+supposed the cloak had been not only to keep people from gaping at him,
+but to reduce the visual stimuli he received, which could transform into
+patterns.
+
+``Is there anything that can be done for him?'' he asked.
+
+Lazuli shook her head. ``No. He is dying. He traveled too far into the
+patterns, and they are eating him alive. He came to you because he
+sensed this pattern taking form, and believed it was too evil to be
+allowed to endure. But now that he has done his duty, I fear that is the
+limit of service he will be able to offer to our side.'' She wrapped a
+fold of the cloak around Chalcedony's face, and then brushed a golden
+button on the side of the hood. Harry saw it wink and glow, then
+dissolve the strange Yaxley into the bright colors of a Portkey. Lazuli
+turned and faced him. "\emph{I} may be able to do more," she said.
+
+Harry raised an eyebrow. ``Tell me.''
+
+SSSSSSSSSS
+
+Indigena rolled her eyes as Feldspar vanished again. Honestly, she was
+not sure how he managed to fool Aurora Whitestag. He \emph{must} be more
+convincing than he appeared here when he was in the Ministry.
+
+\emph{Of course, he might behave better when he doesn't have you there,
+terrifying him out of his wits.}
+
+Indigena ignored the thought. She wasn't in the mood to think anything
+charitable about her family today.
+
+And she was even less so when a chorus of scents filled her nostrils.
+Mingled rose and lily---that meant someone was trying to enter the
+garden at Thornhall, her private sanctuary, the home where her most
+precious plants grew.
+
+And, not incidentally, the place where she had buried the wand that
+contained a shard of her Lord's soul, when she had retrieved it from the
+orphanage after assassinating Scrimgeour.
+
+She vanished at once, Apparating without a word; if she had lingered to
+tell her Lord where she was going, she might miss a moment when the
+intruders managed to pierce her wards. It was evident that she would
+have to have stronger protections for the garden. She had counted on the
+reputation of the plants and lack of knowledge about the Horcruxes to
+keep intruders out.
+
+She landed in front of the gate, her thorns already out and lashing on
+her back. The group in front of her paused. Indigena recognized the
+young Malfoy and the traitor Severus Snape near the back, but it was the
+two figures in front that her eyes focused on. One was Harry, of course.
+He knew about the Horcruxes, and he would have come on any hunt for
+them.
+
+The other was Lazuli.
+
+Indigena lifted her head and her thorns both higher. ``Oh, yes, come
+against me,'' she said. ``If you want to die, that is.'' She swayed the
+tendrils back and forth, and looked for the best target. Snape would be
+easiest to reach, standing as he did in a gap between others, but she
+knew she should strike and kill the young Malfoy if she could. Tear out
+his heart, and Harry's heart would rupture with it.
+
+Thoughts tried to intrude again, assaulting her with the differences
+between what she was and what she wished she could be---serving
+Voldemort as opposed to serving Harry. She dismissed it. Even if she
+changed allegiances, she knew they would never accept her. She had
+killed Scrimgeour, Percy Weasley, Harry's parents, and Pansy Parkinson,
+and she would still slay more of them, even now. They disdained her
+brand of honor. They knew nothing about the gestures she made that might
+have softened them towards her, such as setting the narcissus free and
+trying to destroy Sylvan and Oaken, and she would never tell them. She
+had done them because they were right, not because she wanted to make
+herself appear good to Harry.
+
+``Move aside, Indigena,'' Lazuli said, stepping forward. ``We know that
+you have a piece of the Dark Lord's soul buried here. I had wondered at
+the reason for your increase of wards around the garden. Now I know.''
+She actually had the nerve to hold out a hand, as if she thought the
+sight of her chewed arm would sway her sister. ``I know your heart. I
+know your version of honor. I know that you can come to us, still, and
+fight as viciously for us as you did for Voldemort.''
+
+Indigena snorted. ``You know me less than you thought you did, sister,
+if you truly believe such a plea would sway me.''
+
+Harry moved up beside Lazuli, drawing her attention there in turn. ``You
+know what the Horcruxes mean,'' he said. "You know that your Lord is
+attempting to live forever, and you \emph{know} what he would do with
+that immortality. Can you honestly say that you want him to succeed?"
+
+\emph{He is used to converting people with his voice alone.} But
+Indigena was not blind. She could see the loathing in his eyes. He might
+accept her on his side if she groveled, but he would never accept her
+differences from his plans the way that her Lord did. Voldemort had
+listened to her when she refused to torture others simply to cause pain.
+Indigena thought Harry would not do the same thing, because he would
+believe that what he asked her to do was right, and that she should be
+willing to do anything to make up for her past crimes.
+
+Indigena greatly admired Harry. He was a Lord more after her heart than
+the one she served. But she had no desire to become what she would
+become if she followed him---believing in ideals that carried her far
+from the earth, into worlds she had no business inhabiting. Had the Dark
+Lord not approached her, had the honor debt not been called, she would
+have remained neutral forever, taking no place and no part in the war.
+She had no natural commitments to the outside world, such as Lazuli's
+surety that her child deserved more justice or Chalcedony's conviction
+that some patterns were evil, which could drag her past her garden. And
+she would not join for the obscure reasons that Peridot had joined---but
+then, there was no understanding Peridot.
+
+Harry would make her care too much. He would make her into someone
+Indigena did not want to be, and devoted to ideals that had too much to
+do with people she would never meet.
+
+``You know nothing about what I want,'' she answered Harry, ``or the
+world that I live in now.''
+
+Harry's eyes narrowed, and his magic began to grow and pulse around him.
+He would probably begin draining her in a moment, Indigena knew. He
+seemed to have lost his scruples about draining enemies.
+
+She was proud of him for that, in a way.
+
+She was not proud of herself for feeling like that, though, because it
+was only another emotion, another thought, that made her world more
+complicated than it needed to be.
+
+She turned and cast the spell she had already studied for such a moment
+on the garden entrance. Even if Harry drained her now, he could not stop
+the spell once flown, and he would not be able to enter the garden
+himself. The spell was an Unassailable Curse, meaning that only someone
+with a Dark Mark could go into the garden.
+
+That done, Indigena faced her enemies again. Harry had backed off, wary
+of magic he didn't recognize. Well, he would be, wouldn't he, after
+Slytherin's shack? Snape was leveling his wand. The young Malfoy had his
+eyes closed, as if he would try to possess her.
+
+Lazuli just stood there, gazing steadily at her, matching her look for
+look and breath for breath.
+
+Indigena looked back, gave a nod, and then shot a thorn at the Malfoy
+boy. Swift as she was, Harry, of course, was swifter when forewarned,
+conjuring a serpent that swarmed up the end of her thorn and bit off.
+Indigena winced at the pain, but she had accomplished what she wished
+to: a distraction, and the crippling of the possession gift. Malfoy had
+stumbled backward, and was drawing his wand.
+
+Indigena Apparated again. She would still know if they tried to have
+someone with a Dark Mark---Snape, perhaps---enter the garden, but she
+doubted they would be so stupid as to simply rush in. Without Harry's
+\emph{absorbere} gift, they had no sure means of defending themselves
+from her children, and Indigena had armed her garden with weapon after
+weapon against such intrusions.
+
+She landed back in the burrow, and explained the situation briefly to
+her Lord, who nodded in approval. Indigena herself could enter the
+garden at any time and retrieve the Horcrux if they decided on a better
+hiding place for it, but for the moment, there was no place so
+well-defended. And the Unassailable Curse was a good thing, forcibly
+separating Harry from his allies as it did. Indigena knew that Harry's
+presence at the destruction of the last Horcrux had been essential.
+Without him, his allies would have a much harder time destroying
+Ravenclaw's wand.
+
+``You have done well, Indigena,'' her Lord praised her.
+
+Part of her reveled in that.
+
+Part of her despised herself for reveling.
+
+Part of her wished for her Lord to die, even if it meant that she would
+have to die with him, which of course it would.
+
+Indigena shook her head as she walked towards her garden. She had so few
+certainties anymore. Most of those she did were green and rooted in the
+earth.
+
+\emph{Or running around the country with a golden cup, perhaps.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 53*: Face the
+Darkness}\label{chapter-53-face-the-darkness}
+
+\textbf{Fair warning:} The fourth scene here contains heavy slash. Don't
+read it if you don't wish to. It's been slightly edited from the version
+present on LJ and Skyehawke, to maintain the M rating.
+
+\textbf{Chapter Forty: Face the Darkness}
+
+Snape regarded the potion with a dubious eye.
+
+Oh, it \emph{appeared} innocent, a flask of primarily green liquid,
+which sometimes shifted and eddied and took on a glint of blue from the
+fire in the hearth. But he knew as well as anyone that it was not. It
+was a formed and balanced poison, capable of traveling through the Dark
+Mark to destroy a Death Eater.
+
+Currently, that might mean any Death Eater. Snape wanted to change the
+composition of the potion to insure that he and Peter---and now, it
+seemed, Lucius and Hawthorn Parkinson, though Snape felt less inclined
+to trust them---would not be affected. To do that, there had to be a
+test.
+
+"Just \emph{start}, Severus."
+
+Snape turned and glared at the man who sat beside him. Regulus crossed
+his eyes and stuck his tongue out, as if to prove that he was more
+childish than Snape. Then he rolled up his left sleeve and held out his
+arm. Snape stared in silence at the black Grim that rested there.
+
+``You can test the poison on me,'' Regulus urged. ``I think Lady Death
+will protect me. She did say that I couldn't die until she came for
+me.''
+
+``And perhaps now and through the poison would be the means by which she
+decided to come for you,'' said Snape. ``Have you thought of that?'' He
+didn't add \emph{you idiot} to the end of his sentence. He didn't need
+to.
+
+Regulus shrugged. His eyes were happier than they had been in a long
+time. They always were when he was conducting childish arguments, Snape
+thought spitefully. ``If she really means to kill me, it's inevitable,
+Severus. You could leave the poison alone, and then she would arrange to
+dump it on my head as I passed under it. Besides, I should be a useful
+control subject, shouldn't I? I don't have anything of Voldemort left in
+my arm, and you and Peter have less of him left there than the other
+Death Eaters. That means you can figure out the edges of his magic and
+learn how to tune the poison to only attack those who have a higher
+concentration of the Dark Lord in them.''
+
+``You realize,'' Snape murmured, even as he stood and retrieved the
+flask of poison from the shelf, ``that you are speaking as if the Dark
+Lord were a burrowing parasite beneath the flesh, and not a Lord-level
+wizard?''
+
+Regulus blinked innocently. "You mean he's \emph{not} a grub? The pale
+skin and the lack of eyes fooled me."
+
+Snape growled under his breath. Regulus \emph{would} play like this,
+would attempt to bring humor into situations where it was not to be
+found. But what he said made sense. And while Snape could use both
+himself and Peter as willing test subjects, they were far likelier to
+die than Regulus was.
+
+He picked up the flask of poison and looked carefully at the Grim on
+Regulus's arm, then down at his shadow. That shape was currently curled
+up in sleep, however, and seemed unlikely to object.
+
+Snape drew his wand, and cast the spell he'd developed to work with the
+poison. Of course they would not have the chance to track most of the
+Death Eaters and splash the poison on them; they must reach out from a
+distance to kill them. This spell would turn his own Dark Mark into a
+conduit to transfer the potion, once they were sure that it worked.
+
+He hissed the words quietly, and watched the Dark Mark begin to glow
+blue, a light that the potion picked up. Then, concentrating on the idea
+of impurities in the mark on Regulus's arm, traces of Voldemort, he
+carefully uncorked the flask and splashed a few drops on the Grim.
+
+He felt the poison attack at once, sorting through the blackened flesh,
+chasing any traces of the Dark Lord---the caster of the Mark and the
+developer of the spell that created it. Snape was grateful, at this
+point in time, that Voldemort had insisted on being the one to Mark
+every Death Eater himself. If he had allowed his followers to do so,
+they would have had to figure out every single ``lineage'' of Marks and
+develop poisons that would annihilate each chain, back to the first
+person who had received the snake and skull from Voldemort himself.
+
+Regulus made a pained grunt. Snape reached out and clasped his hand
+without taking his eyes from the Grim, or loosening his half-aware
+trance of the poison's shifting and searching.
+
+This was the most \emph{self-aware} potion he had ever developed,
+without a doubt. It raced through the twists and curves of the Grim, now
+in the flanks, now in the hindquarters, and pulled him along. The rest
+of the world became dim. Now and then Regulus clasped his hand more
+tightly, and Snape squeezed back, but most of his mind was riding along
+on that strange journey.
+
+The poison could find nothing, though, the way that Regulus had said it
+would not be able to. Now and then it brushed up against the edges of a
+cold and dark power---Lady Death---but that was not what it had been
+trained to seek. It wanted what it had been trained to seek. It coiled
+sullenly in the middle of the Grim mark, and finally flushed back to the
+surface. Snape opened his eyes fully to see the blue-green liquid
+squeezing and pattering out of Regulus's arm, useless now, soaking the
+floor as little more than a puddle the color of algae.
+
+``Did you learn what you needed to know?'' Regulus's voice was slightly
+breathless.
+
+Snape nodded. "The poison \emph{will} seek traces of Voldemort," he
+said, eyes slightly narrowed as he watched the puddle. ``I did not know
+that it would bring me along so intensely for the ride. It means that I
+will be there when most of the Death Eaters are destroyed.'' He
+considered the Yaxley twins and Indigena for a moment, then shrugged. It
+was unlikely the poison would kill them where a werewolf and blood
+curses had not managed. But if he could destroy the rest of the Death
+Eaters, he would count himself satisfied.
+
+``That's a good thing, isn't it?''
+
+``Yes.'' Snape looked up and met Regulus's eyes. ``Peter, Hawthorn,
+Lucius, and I may be sick for a time---'' he could not help but think it
+was the least Lucius deserved ``---but it is the others who will die.
+Thank you.''
+
+Regulus gave him a strange, wistful smile, and stood. ``I always like
+helping you when I can, Severus. Lunch?''
+
+Snape nodded. There would be fewer students in the Great Hall now due to
+the time, and he had no class to teach after lunch today. He and Regulus
+could take their time and both speak and eat at leisure.
+
+Regulus kept looking at him wistfully on the way to the Great Hall.
+Snape found that he had no idea why.
+
+SSSSSSSS
+
+Hawthorn had pictured her first days of freedom---if she ever had
+them---as days of solitude and silence. She would spend time in the
+Garden, behind locked and warded doors. She would gaze out the window at
+the dragonsbane and pansies surrounding the hawthorn bush, the memorial
+to her family. She would renew the charms and remove the dust that would
+have accumulated in her home during her long absence. She would relearn,
+if slowly, the political landscape of Harry's allies and friends.
+
+She had never anticipated her first days back being a struggle against
+the Ministry, who were reluctant to accept that she had truly been under
+the Dark Lord's control.
+
+Harry had offered her what help he could, but Hawthorn had refused it
+unless and until she saw that she could not regain her property and
+money any other way. She \emph{wanted} to achieve things on her own. For
+so long, her mind and her will and even her body had not been her own,
+and it had taken Harry to bring her back from her hatred to freedom. She
+wanted to do this herself.
+
+When she arrived at the Garden and found Aurors there, she had leveled
+her wand at them and asked in a cold voice what they were doing. They
+had tried to dismantle the Parkinson wards on the house, she found, but
+they were too ancient to respond well to that; the most they'd done was
+gone dormant and stop stinging anyone who walked through the door. The
+moment they sensed her, they were up and surging again, surrounding her
+in lines of light and flowers, and the Aurors looked more worried about
+that than about her wand.
+
+One of them did answer her, however, a witch in her twenties with a pug
+nose, bright blue eyes, and an expression of nervous defiance.
+``We---Minister Juniper seized the property of known Death Eaters under
+martial law. We can use the house as a headquarters for as long as we
+like.'' She paused, and then, probably because she was in that
+temperament where daring and stupidity were the same thing, added, ``And
+the Ministry has taken command of your funds, too.''
+
+``I see,'' said Hawthorn. The wards grew thicker at her back, and she
+knew they would listen to her, kill the Aurors if she told them to, but
+she did not wish to start her return to the wizarding world with murder.
+Humiliation would do.
+
+"\emph{Protego}," she told the wards.
+
+The Aurors looked confused, since they connected the word with the
+Shield Charm and not the special commands Hawthorn had bred into her
+wards. They were even \emph{more} confused when the lines of light
+surged forward and surrounded them, snapping at them with the heavy
+teeth of sundews and Venus-flytraps.
+
+The pug-nosed Auror was the first to howl and dash for the door, her
+robes flying behind her. The rest followed shortly after, especially as
+the wards nipped at their ankles and their bums. Hawthorn watched,
+smiling, as one who fell sustained bruise after bruise before he could
+stand and scramble out of the house.
+
+The witch did pause halfway down the path to yell hoarsely, ``This is
+still the Ministry's house, and they will hear of this!''
+
+``I'm looking forward to it,'' said Hawthorn calmly, and shut the door,
+and turned to attend to the disarray both Aurors and months without her
+had put into the house. The wards danced smugly around her while she
+cleaned.
+
+The next morning, of course, she had received a polite demand from the
+Ministry to come to them at once and explain what she was doing in her
+house. Hawthorn had complied, and taken some pleasure in showing her
+amber eyes and her teeth to the terrified young wizard who had to greet
+her. He kept stumbling, staring, and doubtless remembering that there
+was still one night of the full moon left, before he finally ushered her
+in to ``see someone.''
+
+That person turned out to be Aurora Whitestag, to Hawthorn's faint
+surprise. It seemed the Acting Minister's favorite hound was reduced to
+licking at the bootstraps of freed Death Eaters. In truth, Hawthorn
+couldn't say she was surprised when she thought about it. Aurora was
+undeclared, and Juniper favored the Light. He wouldn't keep someone
+without his own fanatical devotion in a position of true power for long.
+
+Aurora sat behind a desk and frowned at her. Hawthorn smiled back, and
+thought about murmuring that she was hungry---which happened to be
+true---but decided not to, in the end. She doubted that Aurora would
+react as badly to that as the young wizard at the desk in the outer
+office had.
+
+At last, Aurora cleared her throat and looked down at the papers in
+front of her. "You do realize that you can't legally own property as a
+werewolf \emph{or} as a former Death Eater," she said. ``And property
+and money taken under martial law are used for the good of England,
+which means that claiming you should have them and can put them to
+better use makes you a traitor to your country.''
+
+Hawthorn blinked a bit. Then she said, ``I was not aware that a law had
+been passed forbidding werewolves to own property once again. I am sure
+another rebellion would have started if it had.''
+
+Aurora blushed and bit down on her lip, then looked at her notes.
+``It---it's a provisional measure,'' she said. ``Temporary. Most
+werewolves who live in London now are biting Muggles, inducting them
+into their packs. That's breaking the International Statute of Secrecy.
+Until the Ministry can make sure that you aren't one of them, it can't
+allow you back into your home.''
+
+"I'm currently \emph{in} my home," Hawthorn pointed out. ``The wards
+recognized me, and Parkinsons have possessed the Garden for centuries.''
+
+"Yes, but you aren't \emph{supposed} to be there." Aurora looked at her
+as if she thought this would carry some weight.
+
+Hawthorn shrugged. ``As little as I care for legal fights, I will wage
+them. I have returned from my slavery to Voldemort. I have never bitten
+a Muggle.'' \emph{That I remember.} The nights she had run as a werewolf
+without Wolfsbane were sketchy in her memory, but she did not know if
+she could have distinguished Muggles from wizards in that state unless
+Voldemort told her to bite only a certain kind of person. And he had
+been far more interested, generally, in sending her after his enemies,
+those people Harry loved. ``I have not violated the Statute of
+Secrecy.''
+
+"Yes, but the Ministry has to be \emph{sure}, you see." Aurora rustled
+the papers in front of her.
+
+Hawthorn watched her for a moment, then nodded. "\emph{I} see," she
+said. ``You know that you can't truly do anything about my possession of
+my home, but you want to threaten me into thinking you can. And you know
+that if I went to Gringotts and demanded the money from my vault, the
+goblins would oblige me, thus possibly opening a rift between the
+goblins and the Ministry that you really don't want or need at the
+moment. And you haven't moved against the packs in London because they
+own little property that you really want, and because you're frightened
+of them. I understand the true state of things perfectly.'' She leaned
+nearer and winked, ignoring the flinch that the other woman gave, as if
+trying to get away. ``Don't worry. I won't spread that outside the
+office. It will be our secret.''
+
+``That is not the true state of things at all,'' said Aurora, who had
+flushed again, and looked as if she desperately wished she had stronger
+words, or stronger beliefs, to back her up. ``You are a criminal if you
+remain in the Garden. It is an Auror safehouse.''
+
+``No, it's not. It's my home.'' Hawthorn arched an eyebrow and sat up.
+``And if you don't agree to stop sending Aurors at me, they will get
+bitten. Perhaps. Perhaps I might simply bury them in my garden and give
+them to my flowers to eat.''
+
+``Do not even joke about that!'' Aurora slammed her hand into the middle
+of the desk, perhaps hoping to startle Hawthorn, or wound her, since
+werewolf ears were more sensitive to sudden noises. ``Or you will remind
+people of Indigena Yaxley, who killed the Minister.''
+
+Hawthorn felt an upsurge of hatred and violence as she recalled the
+night of the assassination, the night she had become a slave again. But
+she quelled it. There were more important things in life. Harry had told
+her that, but he should never have had to tell her. She should have been
+able to work it out on her own.
+
+``I don't care,'' she said. ``My home and my money are my own, and I
+demand that you return them to me immediately, or I will cause a scandal
+that the Ministry cannot afford.''
+
+Aurora hissed under her breath. "Don't you see that this is the wrong
+way to go about things? The Acting Minister \emph{will} fight you. He
+doesn't care for werewolves, or for Death Eaters."
+
+Hawthorn shrugged and stood. ``You are the one who has to make this
+decision,'' she said. ``You are the one dealing with me. Promise me my
+home and my money right now, and then the Ministry won't have the
+outcry.''
+
+Aurora closed her eyes, and looked slightly ill. Hawthorn watched her,
+and nodded slightly. She had smelled the wavering, the doubt, in the
+woman's scent. She was remembering that she had her own allegiances,
+beyond those to the Ministry. Or perhaps she had already begun to
+distrust Juniper before Hawthorn entered the fray. Either way, this was
+up to Aurora Whitestag now, and not anyone else.
+
+In a series of swift movements, Aurora seized what looked like the deed
+to the Garden, scrawled her name at the bottom, took up another sheaf of
+parchment, and signed again. Then she handed both in silence to
+Hawthorn, who took and studied them. One was, yes, the deed to the
+Garden, and the signature revoked Ministry possession of it. The other
+document ordered that Hawthorn have the money in her vault released to
+her, or an equivalent amount of money, if Galleons had already been
+taken out and used for something else.
+
+Hawthorn nodded to her. ``Thank you. See, that wasn't so hard.''
+
+Aurora sighed and ran a hand through her hair, but, in the end, shook
+her head. ``Your problems aren't mine, Mrs. Parkinson, and my problems
+aren't yours,'' she said quietly. ``I'd appreciate it if you would leave
+now.''
+
+\emph{That's the truest thing anyone has said since I entered the
+Ministry.} Hawthorn nodded to her again, and took her leave. The wizard
+behind the desk in the outer room shrank away from him as she stalked
+past him. Hawthorn looked once over her shoulder and gave a single, deep
+sniff, as if she were memorizing his scent for the hunt that night. He
+kept himself from fainting with fear, but, by the look of it, that was a
+near thing.
+
+Only when she had left the Ministry entirely and was walking in Muggle
+London did Hawthorn take a moment to lean against a wall and take a deep
+breath, because only there could she be sure there weren't Aurors and
+wards watching her.
+
+She could collapse. She could give in to the remnants of slavery and
+hatred in her mind.
+
+Or she could go on and live, the way she would have to. She had lost so
+much already. She could not let another loss cripple her.
+
+She stood upright, shook her head, wrinkled her nose at the immense
+amount of rubbish in Muggle London, cast a Disillusionment Charm on
+herself, and Apparated home.
+
+SSSSSS
+
+Draco opened his eyes slowly on the morning of Halloween. This ritual
+would begin the moment they woke, and continue until the moment they
+fell asleep. That meant his shadow should be extending across the floor
+by now.
+
+It was.
+
+Draco caught his breath. His shadow was the color of ink, sharply
+defined even against the green carpet of the Slytherin bedroom. It
+overlapped the edge of the bed, ran along the floor until it met the
+wall, overcame a good portion of the wall, and then flowed into the loo.
+He propped himself up on an elbow, and the shadow moved with him, but
+not as far as it should have.
+
+Of course, it also shouldn't have been cast that far by the low amount
+of light in the room, either. The Casting of Shadows was a means of
+embodying the Darkness in a courting pair; the size of the shadow
+referred to how much they had of traits like selfishness, greed, and the
+will to dominate others. It was Draco's soul that shed this particular
+blackness, not his shoulders and arms.
+
+And that had an effect on the way he reacted and thought about this day,
+of course. He was deeply pleased by the look of the shadow. He was what
+he \emph{should} be. No one else should dare to try and change him. He
+would do anything for those people he cared for, but that number of
+people was extremely small. And he would demand what he wanted at the
+most inappropriate times and in the worst situations. He was a childish
+brat in many ways, but then, most of the people who would criticize him
+for that were not people he had to listen to.
+
+Behind him, Harry gave a little sigh and stirred.
+
+And the bedroom vanished in night.
+
+Draco caught his breath in surprise before he realized what must have
+happened. Harry's shadow was so large and so black that it had swallowed
+his own; in fact, it extended across the bedroom like a swathe of night.
+He reached out and ran his hand through the blackness, smoothing his
+hand up and down. It felt cooler than he had expected, but it warmed up
+quickly, like flesh exposed to a snowstorm and then brought inside
+again.
+
+A hand gripped his shoulder, and Harry's voice whispered, ``Draco?''
+
+``I'm here.'' Draco turned, groping his way through the night, and felt
+his elbow bump into Harry's shoulder. ``Sorry,'' he said, and then he
+caught the edges of Harry's face and kissed him fiercely.
+
+Harry gave as good as he got, leaning forward until Draco was pressed
+flat into the bed, biting and nipping as if he couldn't have enough.
+Draco had expected that to happen, and his pleasure grew.
+
+A moment later, Harry drew back with a gasp. ``What am I doing?'' he
+whispered.
+
+``This is the side that you normally keep caged coming out, Harry,''
+Draco said calmly. "And that's the reason I said that I wouldn't mind
+having sex when we were in the middle of this ritual, but that you might
+not like it. I don't think you'll be able to hold yourself back from
+doing whatever you want with me. And I \emph{like} that." He moved his
+legs up, clasping them around Harry's waist, and squeezed tightly.
+
+Harry swallowed, and Draco could feel him fighting the impulse to grind
+back, press down, and bring them both to orgasm, and ignore the fact
+that they had classes today. ``I suppose this is why the joined couple
+is considered irrevocably joined after this,'' he whispered. ``They've
+seen things about each other that no one else ever will.''
+
+``Partly,'' said Draco. ``Of course, this ritual was also designed to
+bring out obsessive and jealous qualities around each other, and until
+it was formalized as the point where no one could interfere, there
+were---well, incidents of one partner tearing someone apart whom they
+thought was eyeing the other one.''
+
+"\emph{Draco.}"
+
+He chuckled and reached up, this time making sure to cradle Harry's face
+gently. ``You don't need to sound so distressed, Harry. I honestly don't
+think anyone will try to snog me, given your shadow and your presence.
+And I also think that you can control yourself from dispensing jealous
+violence. Just think about me instead.'' He arched his neck and kissed
+Harry once again. Harry made a low purring noise, like the rumble of
+some great cat, and returned the kiss with interest, once more.
+
+And then the shadow dissipated, at least for Draco. Familiarity with it
+did let the partners see each other. He noticed at once that Harry's
+eyes had deepened in color, the way that they had when he was exploring
+the connection between Voldemort's mind and the pool of blackness in the
+bottom of his own thoughts. His expression was conflicted, twisting
+between passion and incredulity that he could feel that kind of passion.
+
+Draco liked it. He thought that had been one thing Harry never
+understood about him: how he could be so unafraid of not only Harry's
+magic, but also his darkness.
+
+The simple answer was that Draco was a Dark wizard, and he \emph{still}
+could not imagine Harry hurting him, no matter which personality facet
+possessed him at the moment.
+
+He kissed him one more time, lingeringly, and this time got the response
+he wanted, hard and demanding, the response that Harry was too afraid of
+himself to give most of the time. He clasped his legs around Harry's
+waist hard enough to wring a grunt out of him, and tried to roll them
+over so that he was on top.
+
+Harry pushed back down instead, holding him still, and this time reached
+out with obvious intent to remove his pyjama top.
+
+Draco sighed happily, at least until Harry started kissing him
+breathless again. They could be a little late for breakfast. No one who
+mattered would mind.
+
+SSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry knew what the ritual was supposed to do. Everything that he'd read
+and which Draco had told him about the purpose of it made sense. So he
+wasn't \emph{surprised} to feel the emotions surging up in him.
+
+He just---he'd never realized to what a large extent they were present
+in him, as long as he gave himself free rein to feel them.
+
+Yes, his ability to control himself could account for some of it, and so
+could his fear of expressing emotions like this, but still, it was just
+much easier to think of himself as \emph{not} jealous.
+
+It wasn't that easy to realize that, after the first few moments in
+which their shadows had reduced people to stunned stares and whispers,
+he was watching anyone who looked at Draco for too long. Most of the
+stares probably weren't sexual. They were probably discussing how
+selfish he was, from the shape of his shadow, or how he could stand to
+be partnered to someone who, with a shadow like that, resembled the next
+Dark Lord.
+
+But Harry didn't \emph{like} it, anyway.
+
+It was a stupid emotion, silly, primitive. It wasn't as though the
+school was filled with people dying to court either of them. It wasn't
+as though Draco, having been the one to initiate a ritual that lasted
+three years, would leave him to run off with the Hufflepuff girl who
+sighed dreamily after him as she left Transfiguration. And she was a
+fifth-year, anyway, so she was probably just entertaining innocent
+dreams.
+
+He didn't like it anyway. He found himself with the strongest desire to
+hide Draco behind his back for the majority of the day, or shove him in
+a closet and make love to him until Draco forgot there was such a House
+as Hufflepuff. He growled at the girl, who started and scurried away
+when she saw him watching.
+
+Draco, of course, was enjoying himself hugely. He didn't deliberately
+flirt with anyone else---he was rather occupied in watching people who
+stared after Harry and hissing at them---but he did sit back sometimes,
+and look at Harry with a smug smile, and revel in the close attention.
+
+\emph{Do I not pay attention to him, normally?}
+
+\emph{Not this closely.}
+
+And Harry knew that, in one part of himself, but it was as though his
+normal mindset, for one day, had become a painting, and this kept-out
+part had surged forward to become the reality. He knew how he usually
+felt, but that didn't matter when he was watching Draco lick butter from
+his fingers and knew that Michael, across the room at the table where he
+ate with other refugees, was watching, too.
+
+Harry wanted to slam Michael against the nearest wall and demand that he
+stop staring.
+
+He went to Arithmancy with Draco bristling, on edge, his magic and his
+shadow both snapping around him like banners. Professor Vector did ask
+him to calm down so that the windows she opened to throw light into the
+classroom would actually be effective. Harry acknowledged her with a
+grunt and tried to concentrate on his equations, instead of the way he
+wanted to hunt Michael down or take Draco somewhere and shag him silly.
+
+Draco sat next to him and innocently did equations of his own, which
+didn't help. His narrowed eyes at anyone who came near Harry were
+probably less noticeable than Harry's scowl.
+
+That led Harry back into the pattern of thought about how he normally
+didn't look at Draco like he was the center of the universe. And that
+presented him with a nasty idea.
+
+\emph{What if that means that someday, he does get fed up with not being
+important enough to me, and leave? What if he takes a lover who actually
+gives him the attention he deserves, and doesn't make him play second
+fiddle to a war?}
+
+The thought, once lodged, burned in his belly like a hot coal. And Harry
+finished Arithmancy with one desire firmly in mind. He waited until
+Draco had taken a step past the door in their usual direction, then
+grabbed his hand and pulled him in the opposite one. Their shadows paced
+them. Harry paused once to study them, and saw his shadow, snake-shaped,
+carrying Draco's dragon-shaped one in a bundle of writhing coils, tongue
+flickering hard and eyes maddened.
+
+``Harry?''
+
+``Here.'' Harry threw open the door of the nearest room and raked it
+with his eyes. His sense of other people's magic had already told him it
+was empty, but he wanted to make \emph{absolutely} sure. Other people
+didn't get to share what he was about to do with Draco.
+
+``Harry---''
+
+``Hush,'' said Harry, and shut the door behind them, and shoved Draco up
+against the wall. Draco blinked at him, then shook his head.
+
+``I haven't been looking at anyone else,'' he said, softly.
+
+``I know that,'' said Harry, and fell to his knees in front of him,
+undoing his trousers with hands that shook with eagerness and
+impatience. ``I'm just making sure that you never do, either.''
+
+Draco opened his mouth to retort, and then his eyes rolled and his head
+fell back against the wall. Harry knew why. He had not only opened
+Draco's trousers by then and fastened his mouth rather firmly around
+him, but he had done what he'd never dared before and brought his magic
+directly into play. A current of it was coursing through Draco's skin
+where Harry's hand rested on his groin, running like stinging, biting
+lightning.
+
+``Harry! What is that---why did you never---''
+
+Harry ignored him. For one thing, it wasn't as though Draco couldn't
+figure out the answer to that question if he searched for it. More to
+the point, he had more important things to do.
+
+He sucked, hard, not with the gentleness that he'd always used before,
+and which he knew Draco deserved. He'd always been afraid---of losing
+control, of hurting Draco, of frightening him. Now he knew that he
+wasn't going to hurt Draco, he couldn't frighten him, and, well, what
+was the Casting of Shadows about but letting down barriers?
+
+His magic gathered in his mouth. This time, Harry commanded it to ride
+his tongue, increasing the sensation, taking the pleasure that flowed
+out of Draco's body and feeding it back, until Draco could also feel
+what Harry felt, such as the way Harry had to work to keep his teeth
+wrapped back and away when he really wanted to use them.
+
+``You can,'' Draco whispered.
+
+Harry glanced up at him, never stopping his task, and silently rejoiced.
+Draco's eyes had gone so hazy that Harry doubted he could see far, and
+his hand trembled as he reached down to stroke Harry's hair.
+
+``Please,'' Draco said. ``A bit of using your teeth---is all right. I
+don't---'' And he arched his back, unable to finish the sentence, as
+Harry curled another loop of pleasure through him.
+
+So Harry used his teeth, just a bit, then used his tongue to soothe the
+hurt, and then sent the pleasure flowing forward again. This was more
+delicate work than he'd ever used it for. That didn't matter. He knew
+his magic would do exactly what it was told.
+
+And so would Draco.
+
+Draco came hard, with a cry that rather made Harry hope people were
+passing up and down the hall, so that everyone could hear him. He
+swallowed what landed in his mouth and licked his lips equally hard,
+sitting back and catching Draco as he slid down the wall, then leaning
+close so that he could nuzzle his nose into his hair.
+
+``I really, really want you,'' he said.
+
+Then he paused, wondering if he should say that he really, really
+\emph{loved} him, instead. But Draco's eyes were open, and he saw the
+doubt, and he reached up and dragged Harry's head down to his, kissing
+him thoroughly. Harry knew what he was saying clearly. He could hear of
+love whenever he wanted to. He knew Harry loved him. He wasn't as sure
+of Harry's lust.
+
+``Now,'' said Draco, when he'd recovered a bit, ``I want you to put up
+locking and silencing spells on the door, and fuck me properly.'' He
+raised an eyebrow. ``And, before you ask, yes, I know we're going to
+miss Transfiguration. It's worth it.''
+
+``I wasn't even thinking about that, to be honest,'' Harry muttered, and
+reached down to pull Draco's shirt off.
+
+Draco's voice was full of pure, if breathy, triumph.
+
+``Good.''
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 54*: Holding Their
+Own}\label{chapter-54-holding-their-own}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Forty-One: Holding Their Own}
+
+``I don't mean anything personal by it, Malfoy. I'm just saying that
+when Saturday comes, the Gryffindor team will make the Slytherin team
+wish they'd never heard of Quidditch. You don't need to get into a snit
+about it.''
+
+Harry rolled his eyes. Connor and Draco hadn't stopped arguing about
+Quidditch ever since McGonagall had announced that the
+Gryffindor-Slytherin match would be held as normal. The wild Dark had
+taken no students since Amanda Bailey, and the Ministry had softened its
+pressure to close the school once they saw (and actually believed) that.
+Besides, the Headmistress believed they should continue to live as
+normal a life as possible, and to many students, Quidditch spoke
+``normal life'' as nothing else could. There would be professors
+watching on the grounds, as well as students that Moody had trained and
+wizards and witches who had come for teaching but not departed for their
+home villages yet. Voldemort probably didn't have enough Death Eaters to
+defeat that many people even if he sent them all, and he would be an
+idiot to risk them all in one place after the disaster of the Midsummer
+battle.
+
+What really concerned Harry---though he wasn't saying it aloud, because
+he didn't want anyone else to think he was \emph{dreadfully}
+worried---was that he wouldn't be there.
+
+Juniper had sent him a peremptory letter on the same day he'd finally
+informed McGonagall that the Wizengamot had decided the school could
+stay open. Apparently, the International Confederation of Warlocks had
+made a decision on the Statute of Secrecy. Harry was to hear the news in
+private, before it was announced to the British wizarding world at
+large. Juniper had called it ``a gesture of reconciliation.'' Harry had
+braced himself to hear that they'd determined every time he broke the
+Statute was a crime and that he should be locked up in Tullianum. He
+would refuse to submit to that, of course.
+
+And then politics between Juniper and Harry would become---rather
+interesting.
+
+But that visit was set for the Saturday of the Slytherin-Gryffindor
+Quidditch game. Harry had fretted until Draco had reminded him just how
+many people would stand around the Pitch. He thought the greater danger
+would come from people trying to surreptitiously hex the players of the
+team they didn't favor. And, in the end, Harry had to agree.
+
+He had been more inclined to listen to Draco since the Casting of
+Shadows. He wondered if that was a bad thing or not. At least it wasn't
+making him interfere in arguments about Quidditch.
+
+``If Harry still played on the team, you'd lose, you know,'' Draco said
+mutinously as they drew near the Great Hall. "Don't even \emph{pretend}
+that you don't know that, Potter. He's worth more than the whole
+Gryffindor lot of you."
+
+``Did he tell you that while you were still drunk from his shagging?''
+Connor muttered. ``Or is this from fantasies about being squeezed
+between `Quidditch-toned thighs'---''
+
+"I don't want to hear \emph{any} of this," Harry declared, and pushed
+past them both to enter the Great Hall alone. He could feel the
+smoldering glares on his back. The one thing Connor and Draco seemed to
+agree on was that they both hated anyone who interrupted one of their
+arguments.
+
+Harry sat down at the Slytherin table and regarded the head table for a
+moment. Snape gave a shallow nod of his head.
+
+So. He'd perfected the poison that worked through the Dark Marks, then,
+or thought he had. Harry Transfigured an extra fork into a piece of
+sausage and used his own fork to eat it nervously. Snape had tested the
+potion thoroughly on himself and Peter, and even Hawthorn, who had
+agreed to it, rather surprising Harry. Lucius had watched them with
+disdainful eyes when they asked and refused to submit himself to it, at
+least until Draco had a quiet but violent talk with him.
+
+They might be able to poison most of Voldemort's Death Eaters this
+weekend, in fact.
+
+Harry swallowed his food without tasting it. He knew that this was one
+of the few offensive strikes they could make in the war---so far, they'd
+found no way around the curse on the Sword of Gryffindor, their probes
+at Indigena's garden had revealed more than a hundred different
+varieties of plant, and there was no way to call up Evan Rosier on
+command---but it still struck him as risky. He preferred all-out
+defensive war.
+
+\emph{Or maybe I only think that because Snape might not wait until I'm
+back to use the poison.}
+
+Harry shook his head and resolutely attended to breakfast. He could
+hardly watch \emph{every} single thing that happened around him and
+guide it personally. That interfered with the free will of others, in
+the end. He would go to his meeting with Juniper like a good little
+diplomat---taking his sworn companions with him, of course, in case
+Juniper ``accidentally'' tried to trap him in the Ministry---and trust
+the others to take care of themselves.
+
+SSSSSSSS
+
+Connor grinned fiercely as he strode out onto the Quidditch Pitch. He
+could feel the excitement hovering in the air around him, and howling
+through his body, skimming like a wind along the ribs.
+
+They were going to \emph{win.}
+
+He felt a sharp satisfaction and joined power that he only felt when he
+was in proximity to the other members of the Quidditch team. He turned,
+skimming his eyes over them, and was rewarded with steady nods from
+their Beaters and Chasers. Ron caught his eye and bared his teeth in
+what could only be considered a smile because he probably didn't mean it
+as a snarl.
+
+Connor waved his arm to him, and then turned and focused on the middle
+of the field ahead, where Madam Hooch stood with the balls beside her
+and her own leg swung over a broom, her expression stern and forbidding.
+
+Memories of other games tried to intrude: the absolutely magnificent one
+that they'd played last year, for example, acting and reacting around
+the balls like one being, or rolling and dodging and curving in an
+attempt to catch the Snitch from Harry in fifth year, at which he'd
+failed as usual. Connor pushed them away. What really mattered was the
+game in front of him, and the win they would have---they \emph{would}
+have it, he was certain---and how he would fly, not how he had flown.
+
+The Slytherin team lined up on the other side of Madam Hooch. Connor
+sneered at them. He could do that. The Slytherins were no longer his
+enemies because of House affiliation, or because he believed the lies
+that Sirius had told him. They were enemies simply because they were
+really \emph{bad} Quidditch players. They had let themselves become too
+dependent on Harry's skill as Seeker, and then they'd scrambled to fill
+the holes last year when he didn't play. And now they were still
+scrambling, since their best Beater last year had left Hogwarts.
+
+\emph{They know they're going to lose,} Connor thought, seeing the
+gnawed lips and the anxiously darting eyes. \emph{They can't win unless
+some disaster happens, and they know it.}
+
+He waited patiently as Madam Hooch gave the usual speech that never
+prevented the Slytherins from cheating anyway, and then Ron and the
+Slytherin captain shook hands. They were apparently attempting to crush
+each other's wrists. Madam Hooch cleared her throat pointedly at last,
+and they let go of each other.
+
+And then the moment came. Connor felt excitement rearing up in him like
+a wild horse, and crouched a little over his Firebolt.
+
+The whistle.
+
+The balls flying.
+
+And the teams unfolding, opening outwards like a rose, Connor flying
+precisely where he was supposed to go, and knowing that Ron and the
+others were going where they were supposed to.
+
+This was going to be one of the good ones, he could tell almost at once.
+The team danced behind him like a swarm of bees, thinking and doing one
+thing. The Slytherin Seeker, meanwhile, flew high to look for the Snitch
+and almost collided with one of his Chasers, who were
+trying---unsuccessfully---to get the Quaffle away from Gryffindor.
+
+Right on cue, an enormous banner unfolded from the Gryffindor seats, and
+the roar of a lion rolled out over the stands, not drowned by the
+enthusiastic hissing from the Slytherin seats. Connor grinned. Parvati
+had been to enchant the lion's roar, even if Dean had drawn it.
+
+And then he began to look for the Snitch. The first rule was to start in
+the opposite direction from the one where the Slytherin Seeker was
+looking.
+
+SSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry entered the Ministry in resignation. He had four sworn companions
+with him, but that wasn't the true source of the stares. Everyone would
+recognize him now; the newspapers had been running enough photographs
+lately, as they reported on the attacks of the wild Dark at Hogwarts and
+suggested that Harry couldn't do anything about it.
+
+That was true, actually. Harry was only surprised that they seemed to
+consider it news.
+
+The ride to the Minister's office was silent. Aurors had appeared to
+accompany them before they crossed the Atrium, and they didn't bother to
+conceal their tight grips on their wands and their suspicious glares.
+Harry didn't mind that much, but he had to think determined, glacial
+thoughts in order to calm the agitation of his companions. Even Syrinx
+looked as if she expected an attack any moment.
+
+The corridor outside the Minister's office was crowded with yet more
+Aurors, to the point where Harry wondered if any of them were doing
+anything else. He still kept his face blank, though, and thanked his
+childhood training. By the time they reached the office door, he had
+taken to keeping one hand on Owen's side, low, where it wouldn't be
+seen. Owen's breathing had at least eased, and Bill and Charlie seemed
+content to stare hard into faces and memorize appearances for later.
+
+``Enter,'' said Juniper's voice when one of the Aurors escorting them
+knocked.
+
+They stepped inside, and Harry nodded. ``Acting Minister,'' he said,
+wanting to make it clear on what basis he'd approached the other man
+immediately.
+
+Juniper looked up from behind his desk. His face was more care-worn than
+Harry had thought it would be. Of course, it would help if he had grown
+that concerned over important things, instead of assuming that the
+Muggles were a greater threat than Voldemort, Harry thought.
+
+He did his best to chain his temper. The Casting of Shadows had taught
+him even more than he'd wanted to know about his own darkness. He
+\emph{could} get angry and destroy Juniper in a glorious burst of
+temper. That didn't mean it was a good idea.
+
+``Harry,'' said Juniper, carefully emphasizing the lack of a title.
+``You were told to come alone.''
+
+Harry snorted. ``Did you truly think I'd obey that order, Acting
+Minister?'' He took another step forward, and then halted as the Aurors
+drew together enough to almost obscure his view of Juniper, bristling.
+Harry studied them coldly. None of them were truly powerful, nowhere
+near Snape's or even Henrietta's strength. Admittedly, that kind of
+magical power was rare, but it only made it all the sillier for them to
+oppose him. His magic stirred. He could destroy them.
+
+``This news is only for your ears,'' Juniper said, as if he imagined
+that could cut ice with Harry. Harry didn't think he believed it any
+more, though. He probably thought he had to follow the forms. \emph{He
+shouldn't. It only wastes time and energy---my time, his energy.}
+
+``Then send the Aurors away.''
+
+Juniper leaned forward, looking rather ridiculous peering over the
+shoulder of an Auror, and fastened his gaze on Harry. Harry stared back,
+bored. As important as the news might be, the way Juniper presented it
+deeply diminished his enthusiasm for hearing it.
+
+``That will not happen,'' said Juniper.
+
+``And neither will the departure of my sworn companions.'' Harry's arms
+itched with the need to fold them, but he refused to express impatience
+and disdain so openly through his body language. "What is the news that
+you have for me, \emph{Acting} Minister? What did the International
+Confederation of Warlocks decide?"
+
+Juniper sat still for a long moment. Then he cleared his throat and
+reached for a thick scroll of creamy parchment on one side of the desk.
+His hand shook. Harry thought the emotion that it made it shake anger.
+He shrugged, but inwardly felt a small blurt of satisfaction. Perhaps
+Juniper would finally see that insisting on standard, traditional forms
+of respect wasted his time.
+
+``They have decided,'' said Juniper, holding up the scroll so that Harry
+could see the official, globe-shaped seal on the outside, ``that you
+have broken the International Statute in the past to defend Muggles and
+wizards against He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Such breaches were deemed
+acceptable because the Ministry's Obliviators managed to contain them.''
+He spat the last words like acid.
+
+Harry gave him a sweet smile.
+
+``On the other hand,'' Juniper said, and he smiled in turn, ``they have
+also declared that another breach, now that you have attained adult
+status and are legally responsible for your actions, will be immediate
+cause for imprisonment in Tullianum. You may still continue your
+training there, and the Ministry will bring you out for the final battle
+with the Dark, but you would have no freedom and no other rights.'' He
+flung the scroll across the desk like a challenge.
+
+Harry picked it up and read it carefully. Yes, the language was formal
+and archaic, but Juniper was telling the truth about what it said. Harry
+laid it back on the desk and pushed it towards Juniper. The Acting
+Minister stared expectantly at him.
+
+``I don't accept it,'' said Harry.
+
+The Aurors gasped as one. Harry wondered whether they had fainted when
+Juniper asked them to deal with the aftermath of Voldemort's poisoned
+rain in Cornwall.
+
+"You \emph{must}," said Juniper. ``This is not based on personal dislike
+anymore, nor the whims of an overindulged little boy. You must obey
+international law, Harry, or the Confederation has the power to raise
+sanctions against Britain, including denying British wizards the right
+to travel to other countries.''
+
+``I notice that France, Portugal, and Spain all abstained from
+condemning my actions,'' said Harry.
+
+Juniper frowned. ``Rather. But, of course, those Ministers are in your
+robe pocket.''
+
+Harry snorted. ``Wanting to help the British Isles does not equal
+obeying me, Acting Minister. And I mean this. If it comes to a choice
+between saving people and preserving the International Statute of
+Secrecy, then I will choose to preserve lives. And if, after that, you
+try to imprison me in Tullianum, I will rebel again.''
+
+``It will mean that our people suffer---''
+
+Harry couldn't help it; he snarled, and his magic touched his shoulder
+with a serpent. Juniper shut up, his eyes fastened warily on the
+snake-shaped patch of air. "Our people are \emph{already} suffering,"
+Harry snapped. "From fear, from want, from the certainty that some of
+their numbers are turning to Dark Arts and becoming Death Eaters, since
+they have no other choice under that \emph{stupid} law you created,
+unless they wish to come to me. We are fighting a war, and of course it
+must be a civil war at the same time. They're longing for a true leader,
+and you won't give them one. Don't talk to me about suffering, Acting
+Minister Juniper. I have not seen you take one action that I would
+credit to the true desire to stop Voldemort, rather than preserve your
+own political power."
+
+He both felt and heard Owen growling agreement at his side. Harry
+watched Juniper with narrow eyes, taking in his shocked face, waiting to
+see what would happen next.
+
+What happened next was that all the lights went out.
+
+SSSSSSSS
+
+Draco snorted. Much as he hated to admit it, the Slytherin team was just
+as awful as Connor had claimed it was. The Seeker alternated between
+wild staring about and following the figure of Connor on his broom. The
+Keeper hovered uncertainly, and now and then darted towards the Quaffle,
+which usually enabled the Gryffindor Chasers to handily toss the ball
+past him. The Beaters hit the Bludgers into empty air. And the Slytherin
+Chasers---that they'd been put on the team at all was simply
+embarrassing.
+
+Meanwhile, of course, the Gryffindor team didn't just look good in
+comparison, but actually \emph{was} good, to the point of flying in
+patterns that Draco could admit were beautiful, even through his haze of
+rage.
+
+He shook his head at last and stood, walking out of the Slytherin
+stands. A few heads turned to watch him, but most people still leaned
+towards the game, hissing at the Gryffindors and screaming at the Seeker
+as if they could somehow make the difference between an inferior team
+and a superior one.
+
+Draco reached the bottom of the stands and leaned his head against one
+of the supports for a moment, closing his eyes. How in the world was he
+supposed to be proud of his House when they had a teem like \emph{that}?
+Slytherin House shouldn't have only two students to be proud of. He and
+Harry would leave the school after this year. What would that mean to
+the Slytherins left behind?
+
+He sighed and turned away, walking towards the edge of the Pitch. At
+least, if he didn't want to watch the game, he could take over sentry
+duty. A refugee wizard stood at the edge of the Pitch opposite him,
+leaning forward with an anxious expression as he scanned the Forbidden
+Forest. He twitched at every shout from the Quidditch game behind him,
+though, and Draco knew which way he'd prefer to be facing. Well, proper
+training would do better than mere earnestness, anyway.
+
+``Here, go watch the game,'' he ordered. ``I'll take your place. I don't
+doubt it's what you want.''
+
+The man turned sharply to face him, probably startled by his silent
+approach. Draco found himself facing a wizard with large, almost bronze
+eyes, and dark hair. That in itself wasn't so unusual.
+
+The shimmer around him, another face and body slowly melting into the
+place of his own, was.
+
+Draco had seen them only once, but he recognized the Yaxley twins. And
+all his training hadn't been for nothing. He didn't resort to spells
+that he knew would only bounce from them---if a werewolf's teeth
+couldn't harm them, almost nothing would---but raised his wand and sent
+up a bright flare of blue sparks, the agreed-upon danger signal for
+Moody's wizards.
+
+Nor did he waste time wondering what had happened to the wizard who used
+to stand sentry duty here. He could see small flecks of blood on the
+Yaxley twin's hands, and he could guess.
+
+He charged forward instead, meeting those bronze eyes and leaping
+straight into their paired minds, intent on possessing them. He had no
+doubt they would be hard to handle, well-trained as they were.
+
+But---well, so was he.
+
+SSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry heard the distinctive snarl of the wild Dark in the next moment,
+and doubted that this was a coincidence. He flung out his hand---the
+right hand, the one he still had trouble using---and ignored the
+trampling around him, the screams, and Owen's attempt to move him.
+
+If what Chalcedony Yaxley had said was true, the wild Dark had come
+hunting \emph{him}. It wanted his soul, that distinctive pattern. Merlin
+knew why, or how Voldemort had managed to interest it so much with
+Harry's soul-pattern, or what it would actually use a human soul for,
+but there it was. It had struck where he was, and even stopped taking
+first-years after only two attacks. Harry thought this appearance had
+more to do with his presence in the Ministry than any irritation with
+Juniper.
+
+``Here I am,'' he called.
+
+The snarl halted. Then an immense, heavy presence alighted softly beside
+him, like the sound of a jaguar's footfall, and Harry felt jaws open and
+close gently around his head.
+
+He knew they could crush him. He held still nonetheless. The Dark was
+not at its time of greatest power yet. That would be Midwinter. And he
+didn't think it would take him now. Two years ago, it could easily have
+destroyed him before Midwinter. But it had waited for that time instead,
+wanting the full might of its magic behind it. The wild Dark was rather
+like Voldemort, sometimes.
+
+Harry was well-aware that he was trying to make generalizations and
+guesses about the behavior of a completely unpredictable, inhuman
+entity. But given that he had no other means of proceeding, he might as
+well act as if what he believed were true, until he received definitive
+proof that it was not.
+
+The teeth sank further into his skull. Harry fancied he could actually
+feel the buckling of bone, the moment when his skull started to give way
+under the pressure of those fangs.
+
+He waited until that moment, and then he began to sing.
+
+The wild Dark jolted, which made Harry gasp as shocks of pain rang
+through him from the teeth. But he ignored it, and continued to sing,
+pushing the phoenix voice through his throat and the blue flame from his
+hands. He had acquired this gift during his last major battle with the
+wild Dark. There was at least the chance that the wild Dark would be
+fascinated with it.
+
+The wavering light of the blue flame, strangely sharp in that absolute
+darkness, revealed the monster that had hold of him. A manticore. That
+made Harry breathe a little more easily. If the wild Dark wore the same
+form in which it had come to him on the walls of Hogwarts, then perhaps
+it was being consistent enough that he could intrigue it with this.
+
+``Do you know what this is?'' Harry whispered. ``The voice of the
+phoenix who died to defeat you.''
+
+The wild Dark growled, a little, and made his head ring again. But it
+didn't hurt him, instead just staring at the blue flame with wide, and,
+yes, fascinated eyes.
+
+``The second anniversary of that gift is coming on Midwinter,'' Harry
+whispered. ``It will be especially powerful then, especially
+significant. But to kill me before then---well, it would rather undo the
+power and significance, don't you think?''
+
+The wild Dark gave another growl. Harry thought it was considering his
+offer, but that didn't mean he knew what it would decide.
+
+SSSSSSSSSS
+
+Snape was prepared when the flare of blue sparks arose. No, he had not
+expected the Death Eaters to attack today, or he would have insisted
+that Minerva cancel the Quidditch game. No amount of ``normality'' was
+worth having children outside with Death Eaters.
+
+On the other hand, he always expected the worst. So that made him
+better-suited than most to answering the signal. While others still
+gaped and screamed and scrambled, he was on his feet and on his way out
+of the Slytherin stands. Regulus trotted to keep up with him, and on the
+other side of the Pitch, he could see a flurry of motion that was almost
+certainly Peter.
+
+\emph{At least this is an excuse to prevent me from having to watch my
+House lose in the most absurd fashion.} They really had been too spoiled
+by Harry's presence on the team.
+
+Snape reached into his pocket as he ran, drawing out the flask of
+blue-green poison. He waited until he reached a relatively sheltered
+area, just behind a lone tree near the Pitch, and he could see the
+targets.
+
+Draco, and a whirling, cycling, blurry figure that was likely the Yaxley
+twins.
+
+Snape grimaced---he was almost sure that his poison would not destroy
+any Yaxley---but even if other Death Eaters were not here, distance
+should not be an obstacle. He drew back his left sleeve and uncorked the
+flask.
+
+Regulus, the idiot, paused to hover over him, while Peter started to
+move past him towards Draco and the twins. Snape snarled at them both.
+``Peter is going to be incapacitated in a moment,'' he told Regulus
+bluntly. ``Bring him back here, and go after Draco yourself.''
+
+``But---'' Regulus was looking at him as if \emph{he} should need some
+protection.
+
+``I am not a student, and I am not your brother.'' Peter, Snape was
+relieved to see, not being an idiot, had heard him and come back,
+crouching down beside Snape to take his arm as he held up the poison.
+``I do not need your protection. Go to one who does.''
+
+Regulus stayed a moment longer, staring into his eyes. Snape held the
+steady gaze as he poured the potion over his Mark.
+
+Immediately, he felt the poison dive, and start burrowing through his
+arm, looking for evidence of the Dark Lord. He barely managed to take
+his wand in his right hand and cast the proper spell that would use the
+Mark as a conduit to the Marks of other Death Eaters. Then he bent
+double with both the pain and the dizzying impressions of the journey.
+
+He was content to hear Regulus's footsteps pounding towards the Yaxley
+twins. \emph{At least he overcame his bout of sudden idiocy.}
+
+SSSSSSSS
+
+Harry began another song when he felt the teeth careening inward, this
+time one of pure triumph and joy. The wild Dark paused at the sound of
+it, and then Harry felt it quiver---this time, a motion that did not
+transfer itself to him---like a struck bell.
+
+And then it was gone, and the darkness lifted, and Harry could see the
+office and the Aurors, all crowded near the far wall, and Juniper,
+frozen behind the desk, again. At least, he could see them over the
+shoulders of Owen and Syrinx and between the bodies of Bill and Charlie,
+all of whom had gathered very tightly around him.
+
+``You're bleeding,'' said Juniper, breaking the silence and winning
+Harry's internal award for the most inane comment that a situation like
+this would ever need.
+
+Harry snorted and raised a hand to trace his skull. Yes, there were
+rather a lot of bleeding wounds along his scalp and the edges of his
+face, some of them quite deep. He shrugged. He would live.
+
+``I hope that you can at least see why I won't go to Tullianum,'' he
+said. ``I have more important problems to worry about, Acting Minister.
+The wild Dark is one of them, since it's allied with Voldemort.''
+
+Juniper's eyes narrowed slightly. ``That's impossible. The wild Dark
+serves no mortal wizard.''
+
+``No, but he can entice it.'' Harry found that he was a little dizzy,
+which annoyed him. He shouldn't be dizzy, not right now. He yawned, and
+then leaned against Owen's shoulder so that he didn't fall down. "And
+that's what he's done, and that's what I'm dealing with. I don't have
+\emph{time} for Tullianum."
+
+Juniper looked as though he couldn't countenance that. Harry didn't know
+why. The world was rather dark and blurry and warm, and it seemed so
+easy to follow the sliding of the warmth into sleep. He felt Owen's arm
+come around him to catch him and stop him from falling to the floor, so
+\emph{that} was all right.
+
+SSSSSSSSSS
+
+Indigena came in reluctantly on the Gryffindor side of the Pitch. For
+one thing, she thought it stupid of her Lord to send only four Death
+Eaters, even if three of them were his strongest.
+
+For another, she'd been ordered to watch over Feldspar.
+
+Her nephew looked worse than ever. Long nights of torture, and long days
+of infiltrating the Ministry and making Aurora Whitestag believe him,
+were taking their toll. Every few steps he stopped to take a breath and
+then cough out blood. Indigena closed her eyes in silent disgust.
+
+All Feldspar would have had to do to avoid torture was present a brave
+mask around their Lord. Yes, he would still have had the hard task of
+the Ministry, and he would still have had to watch his words, but his
+tasks were no harder than many Indigena had accomplished, and easier
+than nursing her wounded Lord back to life. And watching their words was
+something they all did.
+
+Instead, Feldspar let his eyes roll at inopportune times, and whinged
+about going to the Ministry when their Lord was already maddened over
+losing Hawthorn. It was simply infuriating that Feldspar wouldn't
+realize his cowardly behavior couldn't win him any favors here.
+
+Now he sagged forward with a little sigh as they came up behind the
+Gryffindor stands. ``I'm tired,'' he whispered.
+
+Indigena stifled a deep flare of irritation. And then she looked up and
+saw Connor Potter sweep overhead on his broom, abandoning the Quidditch
+game, and an idea came to her so suddenly that she could only blink for
+a moment.
+
+She seized Feldspar's arm and shook him. ``Stand up and fight,'' she
+hissed into his ear. "Do you know what our Lord will do to you if you
+don't? We came here to take hostages. So \emph{take} them." She gave him
+a violent shove forward. He uttered another sigh, but dragged himself to
+his feet.
+
+And then he saw Connor, and lifted his wand.
+
+``Not that one,'' said Indigena, drawing her own wand. ``Our Lord
+doesn't want him harmed.'' Connor had seen them and was circling in low.
+Indigena was grateful for the stubborn courage that, difficult though it
+made protecting Connor sometimes, would draw him close when needed.
+``Choose someone else. I'll take him, but he has to be handled
+carefully, and you aren't capable of that.'' She made a vague circling
+motion which Feldspar could take as the beginning of a binding spell, if
+he wanted.
+
+He did, and, as Indigena had hoped would happen, the pride he had hidden
+behind the cowardice flared up. He had not believed that the honor debt
+would ever matter, and then, when Voldemort had taken Indigena, he had
+not believed his reckoning would ever come. He believed the world owed
+him things, and he reacted to any misfortune with indignation, when he
+wasn't reacting to it with fear. He pushed at her arm, knocking her wand
+aside, and shook his head.
+
+``No,'' he snarled. ``If he's that important to our Lord, I'm taking him
+myself.''
+
+``Feldspar.'' Indigena let true alarm enter her voice. ``Don't---''
+
+But he'd already turned and aimed his wand at Connor, who was now lying
+on his broom and probably about to try his compulsion.
+
+Indigena aimed her wand at his back immediately. She had the perfect
+excuse for destroying her troublesome nephew now. Her Lord did
+\emph{not} want Connor Potter harmed. That was very important. Indigena
+would become a little ``enthusiastic'' in her hatred for Feldspar and
+her desire to protect Harry's brother, and Voldemort would accept the
+loss in return for keeping said brother alive.
+
+Instead, though, Feldspar collapsed before any spell of hers could touch
+him, screaming and clutching his left arm, and writhing on the ground.
+Indigena stared at him, then stared at her own left arm. Come to think
+of it, she had felt a spark of pain there, but it had faded at once.
+
+She pulled Feldspar's robe away from his arm, and shook her head at what
+she saw. For some reason, the Mark had dissolved into a pile of
+blue-green goo.
+
+Indigena blinked a few times. \emph{They found a weapon against the
+Mark? They must have. And it can't hurt me---probably because it works
+with a human structure of flesh and blood and magic, and I am hardly
+human anymore.}
+
+Of course, if it had hit Feldspar, it might have hit other Death Eaters.
+Her Lord would be watching his followers fall about him, and not know
+what had happened. He would be alone, unless the weapon could not hurt
+the twins and they had already Apparated back to him. Someone had to
+take him the news, describe what had happened, and protect him from his
+enemies just in case this meant Harry had found the burrow.
+
+Yes. Of course someone did.
+
+The fact that it got her away from the battlefield without having to
+hurt anyone else made a sweet taste fill her mouth, but that, Indigena
+decided, could stay between her and her honor.
+
+Just as several people made themselves annoying by trying to fire curses
+at her, Indigena Apparated home to comfort her poor defenseless Lord.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco found himself charging straight forward, skimming down a tunnel so
+slippery with defenses that he almost slid out the other side before he
+could stop himself. He coiled back and turned to face the body that
+waited on the other side of the twin who stood in their world. If he
+could control that second body, perhaps he could make it return earlier
+and replace the bronze-eyed one.
+
+The mind was watching for him, though, sensitive to the presence of
+anyone in him who wasn't his twin, and he rose in battle.
+
+Draco found himself assaulted with images of blood and sacrifice. The
+twins tore off faces like masks. They bent and fed from the opened
+stomachs of their victims, then drew out the scraps of flesh and braided
+necklaces that they hung around their throats with murmurs of various
+incantations. They raped without much passion, more interested in what
+they could gain from the act---the victim's horror and rage made a
+strong component in several spells that could further extend and
+preserve their joined lives, and keep open the gate to another
+world---than in the satisfaction of sex. They knew lives of lightless
+knowledge, which to them was joy, but which would make most other people
+run screaming from them.
+
+Draco did not run screaming. He had seen awful things in his years with
+Harry. And these were only pictures of acts that were past and could not
+hurt him. The twins' images of sacrifice did not compare to the reality
+of a basilisk about to bite him, for one thing. He continued pressing
+forward, sinking himself into limbs and flesh, dodging past the grasping
+claws of the twin---Sylvan---which always stabbed behind him and then
+behind him again.
+
+Seeing that would not work, Sylvan used the images of what they would do
+with \emph{Draco's} body once they had it. They would rape him. They
+would shred him. They would abduct him into the world where their second
+body waited, and he would go mad from the sight of what was found there.
+
+Draco might again have managed to ignore those, but the images of rape
+were too much.
+
+They couldn't interfere in a joining ritual like that. He and Harry had
+passed the Casting of Shadows. They belonged to each other, and no one
+should dare to interfere, even if it was only in a joke or an image that
+was designed to scare him away from a specific action.
+
+He drove forward, screaming in pure rage, and Sylvan retreated in front
+of him, unnerved. He called to his brother, and Oaken replaced him,
+ducking into the world beyond the gate, while Sylvan and Draco burst
+back into the wizarding world.
+
+That gave Draco more impetus to seize control of the body and manipulate
+it like a puppet, not less. He was closer to his body now, and he knew
+that Sylvan would hurt him if he could. When he could feel the limbs
+surrendering to him, he set out to break the connections that bound the
+twins together, shouting out incantations backwards, making Sylvan draw
+his wand and pass it through the air in motions that would undo the
+effects of some of their sacrifices, and controlling the impulses to
+Apparate away or hurt Draco's body.
+
+Then the scene changed into the swirling milky nothingness of the other
+world, and Draco realized that Oaken must have switched them out again,
+pushing Sylvan's useless body back into the second space while he hunted
+Draco.
+
+Draco smoothly gave Sylvan the command to Apparate to Voldemort, and
+drag Oaken with him, while \emph{he} jumped out of both minds and
+hurried back along the sleek tunnel to his own body. It was too bad that
+he couldn't give them the command to be sick all over Voldemort's boots,
+but there were limits.
+
+He opened his eyes in time to see the terror and rage on Oaken's face
+before he vanished. He clucked his tongue. \emph{Just because they never
+had anyone start to undo their spells before doesn't mean that it
+wouldn't happen someday. They should have been prepared.}
+
+A flash of gold traveled past him, and Draco snatched it out of the air
+before he could reconsider. Then he felt the fluttering of tiny wings,
+and knew it was the Snitch.
+
+Laughing, he turned to consider the Quidditch Pitch. Though people
+milled everywhere, and the professors were herding students back to the
+school as fast as they could, he could see no casualties other than the
+one wizard the Yaxley twins had slain. Voldemort had sent his most
+powerful servants, sure that they could not be defeated, and look where
+it got him.
+
+``Good work,'' Regulus Black's voice said from behind him.
+
+Draco turned and nodded to him in a familiar fashion. ``Cousin. Thank
+you. Is anyone wounded?''
+
+Regulus shook his head. ``Not that I can see. Of course, Severus was
+trying to poison the Death Eaters, and I don't know if that worked.'' He
+looked anxiously over his shoulder towards the Slytherin stands, and
+Draco smiled to see Snape standing, with his arm around Peter's
+shoulders, and giving Regulus a look that clearly said he had been an
+idiot to worry. ``I don't think there were that many Death Eaters
+here,'' Regulus continued. "Or else the poison \emph{did} work, and they
+all died before they could attack."
+
+Draco nodded, and held up the Snitch between his fingers, careful to
+hold it fast so it didn't escape. ``Shall we see if we can get Slytherin
+credit for winning the Quidditch game?''
+
+Regulus gave him a kind look. ``We were behind by so much that one
+hundred and fifty points wouldn't matter.''
+
+Draco rolled his eyes. ``Right. I forgot.'' He tossed his hand open, and
+let the Snitch fly away again. Then he began walking the edge of the
+Pitch, trying to see if his impression was true and only one person had
+died.
+
+His heartbeat quickened when he saw the small group of people helping
+someone up the Hogsmeade road, and more when he realized the group was
+Harry's sworn companions. He ran towards them, and Owen, who was
+floating Harry behind him with a Levitating Charm, nodded to him.
+
+``The wild Dark attacked him,'' he said, and sighed. ``He fainted from
+blood loss, but we thought we should bring him back to Hogwarts instead
+of trusting St. Mungo's.'' Then he eyed Draco, and his expression
+changed. ``What happened to you?''
+
+``I'll tell you later,'' Draco murmured, his eyes locked on the sleeping
+Harry. Holes around the sides of his scalp and face, looking like fang
+marks. He kept from shaking his head and rolling his eyes. \emph{We both
+held our own, it looks like. We can be grateful for that much.} He
+finally managed to satisfy himself that the wounds were minor, and
+looked back at Owen with a faint smile. ``Today was a day of excitement
+no matter where members of the Alliance of Sun and Shadows went, it
+seems.''
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 55*: The Heir Game}\label{chapter-55-the-heir-game}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Forty-Two: The Heir Game}
+
+Harry shook his head slightly when Draco looked at him. Draco was
+getting damn tired of that. He'd told Harry about his exploits with the
+Yaxley twins as soon as Harry had been released from the hospital wing,
+of course, but Harry had only remained silent since.
+
+\emph{Well, silent and shaking his head.}
+
+"\emph{What}?" he burst out, when Harry stole another sidelong glance at
+him over the extra Transfiguration essay that Henrietta Bulstrode was
+making him write. "Do you mean to damn me as reckless for going up
+against the Yaxley twins? I \emph{knew} what I was doing, Harry. No one
+else might have been able to possess them, but \emph{I} was. I---"
+
+``Draco.'' Harry's voice was so deeply calm that Draco found himself
+shutting up, and blinking. ``That's not it at all.''
+
+Harry's hand slipped out and cupped his cheek, lifting his head until
+they were eye to eye. Draco hadn't been far from him before, but now
+they were close enough that he felt stripped naked. Harry's eyes had an
+almost perilous mixture of emotions in them, affection and something
+like awe.
+
+``What you did was wonderful,'' Harry whispered. "And nothing I would
+have imagined you capable of doing. The images you describe would have
+driven most people out of Sylvan's mind, possession gift or not. Merlin,
+they might have driven most people out of their \emph{own} minds. I
+didn't even know if one could pierce through the sacrificial magic that
+guards them to invade their thoughts at all. But you managed, and you
+did so \emph{well}. I'm just thrilled and surprised by that, Draco, and
+proud of you, and glad that my lover can defend himself. That's all."
+
+He leaned forward and kissed Draco deeply and slowly enough that an
+immediate fire sparked to life in his groin. This was kissing with
+\emph{intent}, as far as he was concerned, and he grabbed Harry's neck
+when he made to pull back. Harry gave him a calm, wide-eyed look.
+
+``I have a Transfiguration essay to write---''
+
+``No, you don't,'' Draco argued, pushing the book and the scroll to the
+floor, and pushing Harry flat where they'd been. Harry went willingly,
+smiling up at him with bright eyes. Draco leaned down and kissed him
+again, demandingly, kicking the deep heat into high flames. ``Not after
+that.''
+
+Harry turned his head to the side so Draco could access his neck, and
+sighed blissfully as Draco bent to bite him.
+
+It was only later that Draco considered the possibility that he wasn't
+the only Slytherin in the room, nor the only person who could use
+honesty to get what he honestly wanted.
+
+SSSSSSSSSS
+
+Indigena did not know what was wrong with her. She knelt at her Lord's
+feet, among the remains of dozens of dead and dying Death Eaters. Their
+arms had bled blue-green goo that consumed their bodies for hours. The
+stink was awful. Some still died, screaming and thrashing, their cries
+and struggles both growing weaker as the poison did its work. She and
+her cousins---and Evan Rosier, she supposed, if one counted him---were
+the only true Death Eaters left. Lord Voldemort's rage was all around
+her, black as ink an octopus had shot, with the swirling cold of deep
+sea water.
+
+All those awful and high and solemn and horrible things, and she had to
+bite her lip to keep from laughing.
+
+"\emph{Indigena.}"
+
+He might have found her out, and perhaps he would destroy her for that.
+Indigena could not bring herself to care. She lifted her head just
+enough to look at the new snake curled around his waist, which he was
+training to see for him. ``My Lord?'' she murmured.
+
+``You are skilled in Transfiguration and in weaving with your plants to
+create a shadow of something that is not,'' Voldemort breathed.
+
+``Yes, my Lord.'' Indigena's amusement admitted a bit of confusion. She
+didn't know why he was asking her this.
+
+``We must push our plan forward, though Feldspar is dead,'' her Lord
+said harshly. "A loss for a loss. We are \emph{losing}, Indigena, in the
+eyes of the world, and we cannot afford to lose, or Dark wizards will
+not join us."
+
+\emph{After this, I don't think many people will be rushing to join us,
+no matter how attractive we look, because few people have the ambition
+to collapse into mush,} Indigena thought, but not even the wild
+irreverent violence of her heart would permit her to say that aloud.
+``Of course, my Lord,'' she said instead.
+
+``You will go to your bush that is capable of growing anything,'' said
+her Lord. ``You will encourage it to grow as close and complete a
+replica of Feldspar's body as possible. We still need him.''
+
+Indigena felt her eyes brighten. \emph{A challenge, a true challenge,
+and one that uses my skills instead of my ability to kill.} It felt like
+too long since she'd had a task worthy of her abilities. ``Yes, my
+Lord,'' she repeated, and climbed to her feet.
+
+She knew what her Lord would do with Feldspar's body. She found that she
+did not truly care, however. His plan had been in motion for a long
+time, long before Indigena began doubting her own loyalty, and if there
+was anyone who deserved the full fury of it, it was its targets.
+
+SSSSSSSSSS
+
+Aurora ran a weary hand through her hair. Erasmus had been speaking
+about Harry's defiance of not just British law, but international law,
+for the past two hours, and there were only so many ways that phrases
+about the same thing could be combined to sound fresh and new.
+
+"---doesn't \emph{understand} that I am trying to think of the larger
+picture and life after the war---"
+
+To her horror, Aurora had to bite her tongue to keep from retorting
+something about life \emph{during} the war, and how that was at least as
+important as British wizards being able to freely travel in Europe some
+distant day. She smoothed her face out and shook her head. \emph{I may
+keep all the ridiculous sentiments to myself that I like, but sharing
+them with Erasmus is out of the question.}
+
+Unfortunately, Erasmus, who'd been pacing the paperwork shop that had
+become her office, turned around in time to see the headshake. His body
+bristled, and his mouth puckered in defense, as it did whenever he found
+someone who disagreed with him. ``What is it?'' he hissed.
+
+Aurora stared at him in silence. She could see the brightening gleam in
+his eyes---not just fanaticism, but his own weariness of the situation.
+She could see his body strained taut with stress. One word in the right
+place, one kick at the weakest point of the structures holding him up,
+and he would collapse.
+
+\emph{He is a terrible wartime Minister. The stress is destroying him.
+He might have done well in peacetime, but we'll never know.}
+
+Oddly, it was that observation, which she would have agreed with
+carelessly if anyone voiced it, that crystallized things for Aurora. She
+sat up and pinned Erasmus with a fierce gaze, which seemed to both
+startle and please him. Obviously he thought she had retained her
+interest in his rambling speech even as it passed the two-hour mark.
+
+She had not. She had simply realized that Erasmus, being a terrible
+Minister, was making the Ministry die with him as a player in the war.
+And Aurora would not have that. She had not linked her fate inextricably
+with his, but she had linked her fate, she thought, inextricably to the
+Ministry's. It \emph{should} be the refuge and the friend of those who
+were only trying to live through the war, those who did not want to
+fight and should not have to make the choice to do so. Aurora counted
+herself no friend of Voldemort, and though she was more sympathetic to
+what Harry was doing lately, he required things of his followers she
+could not give. That left the Ministry as her sole place to stand.
+
+And she was interested in standing, not running off.
+
+``Just thinking that you're absolutely right, sir,'' she said crisply.
+"There are things about ordinary wizarding life Harry ignores. He might
+\emph{think} he knows them and has taken them into account, but he
+hasn't. He would have to listen to advisers to have the full picture. No
+single wizard can comprehend everything about Britain's situation right
+now."
+
+Erasmus nodded, pleased. Aurora watched the numerous ambiguities in her
+speech swim right past him. ``Good,'' he said. "That is \emph{good},
+Aurora, that is right. I trust that I can leave you in charge of
+drafting a statement to the International Confederation explaining that
+Harry doesn't intend to obey their decree, and requesting help?" He
+moved towards the door. ``We will need Lord-level wizards to handle
+him.''
+
+\emph{You've had four in Britain already, and three of them were on the
+same side. And now you want to invite more in? Oh, yes, let's openly}
+change \emph{the balance of power among the strongest wizards and
+witches in the world, and see what happens!}
+
+But Aurora was beyond saying something like that. Events had left
+Erasmus behind. The events might be only in her own head for now, but
+they would soon enough move into the real world. She could regard
+Erasmus with a sort of distant pity. He was so irrelevant, and soon he
+would know it.
+
+``Of course, sir,'' she said.
+
+Erasmus nodded one more time, and shut the door behind him. Aurora spent
+a few moments carefully drawing up the long list of titles that would
+have to go at the head of a letter to the Confederation, watching the
+closed door the while. If he suddenly came back in because he wanted to
+discuss something else with her, he should see her there.
+
+But he didn't return, and when Aurora subtly cast a spy spell that let
+her see through the door and into the hall beyond, he didn't stand
+there, and there was no sign of his Auror guard.
+
+Aurora rose smoothly to her feet, and turned. She knew exactly whom she
+should speak to about unseating Erasmus and starting a subtle rebellion
+against the trend of the Ministry. It would not look strange for two of
+the Order of the Firebird to be together in the same office, anyway.
+
+She opened the door of the room where she knew Cupressus Apollonis most
+often worked, and blinked when she found him facing her, a faint smile
+curving his lips. He placed his fingers together in a triangular shape
+and nodded to her. ``Come in.''
+
+Aurora stifled irritation as she shut the door. Just because Cupressus
+was a bit faster than she was at seeing the obvious was no reason to
+turn against him. She had worked with people far more difficult than a
+smug Light pureblood bastard, Merlin knew.
+
+``You know,'' said Cupressus, staring into her eyes. ``You know that
+turning closer to Harry's side while preserving as much of the
+Ministry's neutrality and original mission as we can is the only way for
+those things we love to survive.''
+
+Aurora nodded. ``I do.'' She leaned forward. ``The question is, how do
+we do it?''
+
+Cupressus pulled a long scroll from the side of the desk with a
+flourish. ``I am so joyful that you happened to ask.''
+
+SSSSSSSS
+
+The rage had passed like a storm, like a wind on the sea, like the
+flying buttresses of cloud that guarded too many places in his islands
+to be coincidence and were signs of the presence of the Dark Lady
+Kanerva Stormgale. He was beyond rage and into the cold swamps of
+hatred.
+
+No one could match Lord Voldemort for brooding, not for regretting lost
+chances. Should the soul-pattern be destroyed? Harry knew about it; Lord
+Voldemort had felt that spark of knowledge from him before the contact
+between their minds cut off. And while the power in that would gather
+and grow until Midwinter, it left him unable to take vengeance for his
+fallen Death Eaters in the meantime. And the wild Dark was chancy.
+Binding it, even with its own interest, was no guarantee that it would
+join him when Midwinter came.
+
+But no, he could not turn. The pattern was nearly complete now, and had
+its own momentum; it would probably continue growing, summoning flesh
+and blood from his three remaining Death Eaters in order to finish
+itself. It had its own match and its own map in Harry's soul, and so
+long as that existed---which it would until Midwinter---it did not have
+\emph{need} of a human vision to guide it. That simply made the matter
+more convenient.
+
+But Lord Voldemort, he needed to do \emph{something} to express his
+hatred. Being where it had all begun was no longer enough. Knowing the
+third was no longer enough. Anticipating the expression on Harry's face
+when the hammer fell and he knew everything was no longer enough.
+
+And Harry had turned the trick of tormenting him back upon him.
+
+The snake around his waist hissed. The basilisk eggs tucked in the
+corner of the burrow warmed themselves as under a summer sun and did not
+speak yet. The hatred in his mind throbbed like a beating heart.
+
+There was---one thing he could do. One thing that Harry's own actions
+had neglected to protect him against. But it was risky, and he would
+have only one chance. More important, thought the Lord Voldemort, high
+and deep in the darkness, it would require some pain to himself.
+
+But it would cause more pain to Harry.
+
+He looked ahead into the darkness, and chose.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry frowned slightly at Connor. ``Of course I understand that,
+Connor,'' he said. Why his brother would have been reluctant to come to
+him about this, he couldn't understand. "We were so close when we were
+children, because we didn't have anyone else. Of \emph{course} you can
+feel neglected if you think I'm closer to other people than you." He
+reached out and put his hands on Connor's shoulders, ignoring the way
+that his right hand flinched at contact with the cloth of Connor's
+robes. It was only freaks of pain that dashed through his flesh which
+made him feel that way sometimes, and he could put up with them. ``What
+I wish is that you had told me about this before.''
+
+Connor turned his head and glared the other way. Harry wasn't fooled.
+Connor's sullenness was a defense mechanism most of the time. He wanted
+other people to go away on the surface, but digging deeper and forcing
+him to confess what really bothered him yielded rich results.
+
+``I didn't want to,'' Connor muttered at last. "You always seemed so
+\emph{happy}, Harry. And I wanted you to be happy for once in your
+life." Then he turned back and scowled. ``But it's not wrong to want to
+have a relationship with my brother, is it?''
+
+``Of course not.'' Harry looked around for a moment. Connor had met him
+with a torrent of words about feeling neglected in the hallway near
+Gryffindor Tower, and there was no comfortable place to sit. In the end,
+he conjured chairs and pushed them back near the wall so that they
+wouldn't completely obstruct the corridor, then sat Connor down in one.
+As he took the other, he made sure not to look away from his brother's
+hazel eyes. ``What kind of relationship do you want us to have that's
+different from the one we have right now?''
+
+``I just---I want---'' And Connor stopped and paused as if confounded,
+as if he didn't really know what he wanted. It had been Harry's
+experience that most people didn't. At least Connor was more aware of
+the costs and consequences of his desires than most people had the
+experience to be. He waited.
+
+At last, Connor murmured, ``I feel alone, sometimes. I know that's not
+true. I have you, and Parvati, and Ron, and Hermione, and more friends
+if I ask them to come a little closer. But I'm the only person with the
+last name of Potter in the world. I'm close to you, but I don't have
+importance and a unique gift in the war effort the way that Draco and
+Snape do, to justify their closeness.''
+
+"You will never have to justify \emph{anything}," Harry said firmly.
+
+``I feel as though I do.'' Connor's fingers twined anxiously together.
+"And I don't know how. I've tried and tried, but I don't think I'll be
+able to learn my Animagus form before Christmas holidays. I don't know
+how to \emph{help} you in battle, Harry. I didn't even do anything when
+I had Death Eaters directly beneath me during the attack on the
+Quidditch game. How can I help you when I'm so useless in battle?"
+
+Harry blinked. ``Connor,'' he said. ``I don't---I'm not leaving the
+world, or becoming part of a different one, just because I have to fight
+Voldemort. I don't only want people around me who can contribute to that
+effort. I want people living in safehouses, yes, if they're too
+frightened to fight, or if they're too young or otherwise incapable of
+it. But why would you think that you had to start being someone other
+than my brother just because there's a war on?''
+
+Connor shrugged, staring at the floor. ``I don't know. Everyone else was
+two people, who they used to be and the person who could help you, so I
+thought I had to be two people as well?'' He mumbled the last words.
+
+\emph{I wish he felt as though he could talk to me before matters got to
+this point.} But it was hardly something Harry could scold him for,
+considering how well he kept his own secrets. He gently rubbed Connor's
+shoulder instead, and sought for words that would reassure his brother.
+
+``Look,'' he said at last. ``Even if we can't share a battle-bond for
+the year of the War, or however long it lasts, we shared something in
+our childhood that no one else will ever approach. You know me better
+than anyone else, Connor---all the little things.'' He paused, but his
+longing to keep what he said next secret was nothing next to the longing
+to reassure Connor. "Sometimes I think Snape and Draco want to pretend
+that everything which happened before I was eleven doesn't matter, that
+it was just a shadow I've thrown off now. And that's \emph{not} true.
+You're the only person left who knew me all along, Connor. \emph{That}
+is all I would ever need from you. You could become great in battle, and
+I wouldn't love you any more. You're my brother."
+
+Connor leaned close to him, and to Harry's relief, his eyes were bright
+and the jumping pulse in his throat had relaxed.
+
+``Thank you, Harry,'' he whispered. ``If I feel that alone again, I'll
+remember this, or come to you.''
+
+``I'm glad---''
+
+Harry closed his eyes and shuddered as he felt an invisible hand grip
+his throat. It \emph{hurt}. Fingers clamped down around his windpipe and
+started to choke him. When he stood and turned south, the pressure eased
+for a moment, then began again as if it had never been interrupted. It
+reminded him of nothing so much as the pinching that the wild Dark had
+used to lure him to the battlements.
+
+``Harry?'' Connor's voice sounded very far away.
+
+``Someone's choking me,'' Harry whispered.
+
+But now, along with the touch, came a voice. It was flat and smooth,
+without inflection---probably not human, Harry decided. It intoned words
+from a short distance away. When he concentrated, Harry realized the
+words were his name and a sort of legal refrain, repeated over and over
+again.
+
+"\emph{Harry. Born Harry Potter. Not without a surname. Offered Black,
+offered Snape, offered Malfoy, offered Opalline, offered Burke. But one
+claim over all holds him. One claim in the name of magical heir, not in
+the name of legality or rejected blood.}"
+
+The voice paused, and then began repeating the passage again. This time,
+Harry felt a twinge in his mind to accompany it. He knew exactly where
+the twinge originated: the part of his thoughts that held and contained
+the pool of darkness.
+
+Connor was shouting his name now. Harry had no strength to respond,
+though. He'd dropped to his knees, and the voice and the twinge and the
+choking sensation grew until they became all the world. This time, when
+the voice reached the end of the passage, it didn't turn back to the
+beginning as before, but continued.
+
+"\emph{One claim as magical heir, for magical heirs are the most sacred
+and valued of children, and no one sane refuses the claim. By the name
+of the one born Tom Marvolo Riddle and called Lord Voldemort, by the
+power shared, by the magic flowing between them, the lord calls his
+scion home.}"
+
+The choking and the twinge grew so bad that Harry came close to
+Apparating immediately. He was sure he would have ended up at
+Voldemort's side if he did.
+
+He couldn't \emph{breathe.}
+
+He forced that fact away, slamming it behind the walls of his training
+to ignore pain, and faced the facts that mattered. Voldemort was
+performing the Heir-Call. It was rarely used; most parents didn't want
+to summon their magical heirs back to their sides and bind them for the
+rest of their lives, which was what the spell did, even after a severe
+quarrel. And most disowned wizarding children could protect themselves
+against the spell easily enough by marriage, joining, or adoption into
+another family.
+
+Harry had no surname, though, and magical heirship was considered more
+important than merely legal inheritance, so Voldemort could assert a
+claim.
+
+There was an easy protection against that, of course. Name a family now,
+bind himself to that family, and Voldemort's call must cease.
+
+But Harry refused to let himself be driven into that. He had made the
+decision to reject his blood heritage freely. When and if he chose
+another lineage to replace that one, it wouldn't be a stopgap measure
+like this one was, but a carefully considered decision.
+
+By the time he finished that thought, he was gasping on the floor, and
+his vision burst with patches of black and red. His body rattled limply
+to Connor's shaking. Had he ever had the strength to move and walk on
+his own? It seemed he hadn't.
+
+Voldemort's laughter intruded over the calm repetition of the voice
+invoking the Heir-Call. The twinge grew worse. Harry knew which hold
+Voldemort was using to summon him, of course: the dark parts of his
+mind, the parts most similar to Voldemort's, which he'd swum while
+trying to learn the secrets of his silence.
+
+But that was not all he was, even if sometimes it felt like it, even if
+he associated mostly with Dark wizards and used mostly Dark magic.
+
+Harry opened his eyes carefully, and drew on the air, using his magic to
+force it into and out of his lungs, making himself breathe as if he were
+a bellows. Connor's anxious face loomed over him. Harry forced his hand
+to move and clasp his twin's wrist. It was a tight enough grip that
+Connor winced, but that heartened Harry. That meant he had some strength
+left for something besides Apparating to Voldemort's side and bowing
+down, which was rapidly becoming his overriding motive.
+
+``Connor,'' he whispered. ``Cast a spell into me.''
+
+Connor fumbled for his wand and drew it out so quickly that he nearly
+hit himself in the head with it. His voice trembled, but he managed to
+whisper, "\emph{Rictusempra."}
+
+Harry gasped as the Tickling Charm settled over him, and began to jolt
+him, nearly sliding his hand from Connor's. Perhaps it hadn't been the
+best choice, but he wasn't going to criticize it now.
+
+Connor had Declared, and he was Harry's twin. Light magic struck down
+and through Harry's body, and he drew on the current of it, felt
+Voldemort in his Darkness flinch away from it, and began to sing.
+
+Through the song, the voice of a phoenix, he called to the Light, again
+and again, remembering that he could have mercy, that he could forgive
+his enemies, that he limited himself, that he valued free will, that in
+many of his morals he was more Light than Dark. His magic swelled around
+him, blue flames on his arms, and then struck in a lashing golden coil
+at Voldemort.
+
+The murmuring voice fell silent in confusion. Harry grinned, though it
+felt as if he struggled to lift his lips against stone weights. He was
+Voldemort's magical heir in many ways, but not \emph{entirely}. He had
+Parseltongue and the \emph{absorbere} gift from him, and their ability
+to cast Dark spells drew on the same energy, but the Dark Lord had never
+loved or understood the Light. Harry believed he did both. He just chose
+not to join it.
+
+The Light glittered in his mind's eye, and then the choking sensation on
+his throat and the twinge in his brain began to ease. Harry burned the
+threads of blackness that connected him and Voldemort, knowing it
+probably would cause some damage to him, too, and not caring. How
+\emph{dare} Voldemort think he could use the Heir-Call. Just because
+Harry had rejected Potter did not mean he would consent to have another
+name forced on him, to be Riddle or whatever ridiculous substitution
+Voldemort might have devised.
+
+For one moment, one spinning moment, they were face-to-face, Voldemort's
+eyeless white mask floating before him, and Harry loaded his voice with
+all the venom he could to spit back at him.
+
+\emph{Your heir in magic, but never in spirit, in temperament, in hatred
+or cruelty. Not yours! Mine!}
+
+Then the magic whirled them apart, and Harry belled in pure triumph as
+the connections holding them failed. He realized he was lying on the
+floor, clutching his brother's hand and howling like a mad thing. He
+didn't care. Voldemort had done his worst, and Harry had won. He could
+howl all he liked.
+
+"What \emph{was} that?" Connor whispered, when he seemed content that
+Harry wasn't choking any more. He lowered his wand to the floor with a
+careful click.
+
+``Voldemort tried to summon me,'' Harry said, and his voice was hoarse.
+He didn't care. He'd \emph{won}, and he'd retained a part of his life as
+his own even when Voldemort tried to force him to give it up. \emph{Take
+that, you bastard.} "It didn't work because you were here, and you're my
+twin, and you're Light, and we still have a connection that won't let me
+go. I rejected the Potter name, but I never rejected \emph{you}, Connor.
+Even if I'm his magical heir and don't have a last name, he can't summon
+me that way." He closed his eyes.
+
+``Maybe you should think about a last name,'' Connor muttered, as he
+gently pried his hand free.
+
+Harry wasn't fooled by his tone. He knew his brother was grinning,
+caught somewhere between pride and embarrassment.
+
+``No,'' said Harry. ``Not until I want one.'' He closed his eyes more
+firmly than before, and took a deep, rattling breath. He would have to
+stand in a moment, and explain things to people.
+
+For right now, though, they weren't here, and he didn't have to.
+
+SSSSSSSSSS
+
+Monika raised an eyebrow and stepped away from the scrying pool in which
+she'd watched with interest as Lord Riddle tried the Heir-Call on Harry.
+
+\emph{He was able to resist it. Interesting. Of course, he should become
+the heir of someone else soon, or perhaps the Dark Lord might try it
+again, with the wild Dark's help, and win this time}.
+
+She touched the worm wound around her arm and shook her head. Poor
+creature. It had so looked forward to being used. She had designed it
+carefully, knowing that when Harry killed his enemy, she would need to
+send the creature into him, have it drink as much of his essence as it
+could, and then pull it free and place it into herself. It would feed on
+her like the tapeworms it mimicked, draining her of some physical energy
+and mass, but giving her back magic in return for it, as waste.
+Meanwhile, her own magic would keep her alive and help restrict the
+worm's damage.
+
+She gave a final, regretful glance at the pool she had charmed to warn
+her of any unusual interactions between Harry and Lord Riddle, and shook
+her head again.
+
+\emph{Not today, then. Too bad.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``I told you so,'' Alexandre said lazily, waving one hand and
+dissipating the image in the prophecy-pool before Pamela's shocked eyes.
+
+Pamela gazed blankly for a moment at the pool of liquid prophecy, the
+last remnants of fates that had already come true and had collected in
+this wild jungle where Alexandre made his home by some quirk of nature
+or magic. Then she covered her eyes and leaned back against a tree in
+thought.
+
+``Should we involve the others?'' she asked at last.
+
+``Name me one who will help us rather than try to use Monika's worm for
+his own gain,'' Alexandre told her, voice extremely dry, ``and I will
+fly to his home at once to speak with him.''
+
+Pamela sighed. ``Coatlicue---''
+
+``Cannot stand the sight of me, if you have forgotten, and will simply
+assume I am lying and wish to convene a full meeting of the Pact.''
+Alexandre shifted, his robe rustling as it brushed the tree. 'There are
+problems with too strict a definition of Light."
+
+Pamela nodded reluctantly. The Light Lady of Mexico was her dearest
+friend after Jing-Xi, but she also would never do something so simple as
+lie. She would want Monika dealt with before the full Pact, if she
+believed Alexandre's story at all. And Monika would deny it and destroy
+the evidence, and the whole trial would be useless.
+
+``Jing-Xi?'' she asked.
+
+``Has her hands full with her own country and trying to help Harry
+within the limits the Pact set out,'' Alexandre said in a voice full of
+oil. ``One more piece of knowledge could set her over the boundary of
+what the Pact deems acceptable. Besides, she would go to confront Monika
+immediately, would she not?''
+
+``Damn,'' said Pamela. ``Yes, she would.'' She pulled her hand from her
+eyes and frowned at him. "And you, Alexandre? Do I dare ask why
+\emph{you} don't want the power that Lord Riddle wields?"
+
+His dark eyes glittered when he smiled. ``You forget, Seaborn. I know
+prophecy. I know the moment of my death. And that power would do me no
+good. It is not my destiny to have it.'' He cocked his head, and the
+glitter was gone. ``But we two may do something about it. Yes?''
+
+Pamela nodded and stared at the prophecy-pool again. She did not see
+that they had any other choice.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 56*: Defending}\label{chapter-56-defending}
+
+The poetic lines quoted here come from Swinburne's ``The Leper,'' which
+probably wins for his most disturbing piece of poetry.
+
+\textbf{Chapter Forty-Three: Defending}
+
+``No. I'm sorry.''
+
+There was silence, but Harry thought that was mostly because Snape,
+Draco, and Regulus hadn't been anticipating such a calm response. When
+they figured out this was the only one they were going to get, they
+would press further and faster, of course. But for now, Harry sat back
+and enjoyed the cup of tea that Snape had insisted on fetching him when
+he heard about Voldemort's Heir-Call.
+
+Snape shook his head slightly. Not surprisingly, he was the first to
+recover from Harry's refusal. ``Voldemort could try this again,'' he
+said quietly. ``And this time, no one might be there to save you. He
+might try it in dreams. From your description of the way he pulled on
+your mind, he did know that you were present in his head when you tried
+to view his plans. But could you detect him in the same way?''
+
+``I don't know.'' Harry shook his head and sipped the tea once more. ``I
+probably won't know until he does try.''
+
+"This is \emph{serious}," said Draco. Harry wondered when he had ever
+done anything to suggest that it wasn't serious, but let that thought go
+when Draco continued, face earnest. At least this wasn't the scolding
+that he could easily have received just a little while ago, before Draco
+and Snape sought new ways to talk to him. ``I think that you should take
+the last name of Malfoy, Harry, but I'll support whatever decision you
+make. Just choose one.''
+
+``I won't let Voldemort force me into doing this, any more than I'd let
+him pick a battleground.'' Harry set his teacup down gently on the arm
+of his chair. ``I've chosen, Draco, and for now I choose to remain
+nameless.''
+
+Regulus sighed. ``Harry, as much as I would like you to have free
+choice, you cannot. If the bonds of being the legal heir to Black were
+not enough to stop the Heir-Call, then the line of protection I counted
+on doesn't work. The Light defended you. Will it do that forever? Will
+it do that if Voldemort tries the Heir-Call again at Midwinter, when
+both he and the wild Dark want you?'' He paused, nibbling his lip. ``You
+know that I would like you to become Harry Black. But I agree with my
+cousin. Choose the name you wish to have.''
+
+``And Professor Snape would like me to become Harry Snape.'' Harry
+cocked his eyebrows. ``He has as good a claim as you two do. He's my
+father.''
+
+Snape said nothing. He didn't need to, though. Harry could see the
+agreement and dissatisfaction with Harry's proposed solution moving in
+his dark eyes.
+
+``And that's one reason why I won't choose,'' Harry continued. ``Not
+until I have a distinct preference that I can argue for and defend.''
+\emph{Which might be never. I enjoy being Harry, forcing people to view
+me without a convenient name to stamp on my forehead.} ``I don't want to
+cause competitions or resentment between you three. And, if I chose too
+quickly and without thought, my brother might wonder, justifiably, why I
+couldn't remain a Potter.''
+
+"Well, of \emph{course} you couldn't remain a \emph{Potter}," Draco
+said, disgust in every syllable.
+
+Harry smiled and stood, stretching his arms over his head. Snape and
+Regulus both stood at once, as if he would fall. Harry rolled his eyes.
+His brain didn't hurt, and the pressure around his throat had faded with
+the effects of one of Snape's potions and the warm tea. He would tell
+them if he was hurting, now. That was one thing they'd earned by no
+preemptive scolding.
+
+``I'm not taking a name,'' he said pleasantly. ``Not right now. I do
+thank you for offering, but I won't.''
+
+He swept out of Snape's offices, with Draco trailing behind him. He knew
+he'd won the fight because he was the least desperate. The rest of them
+were more interested in Voldemort's threat than he was. It had come
+once, and he'd survived it thanks to his connection to his brother. He
+could survive it again, especially because he now knew the signs.
+
+``Harry.''
+
+He looked over his shoulder. Draco's face had taken on a thoughtful
+expression it hadn't worn since he heard about the attack. Harry nodded
+to him, and waited for what he would say.
+
+``Part of it is about politics, too, isn't it?'' Draco cocked his head.
+``And not just us, or whether we'd resent someone else whose name you
+took. Not that I would,'' he added haughtily. Harry ducked his head in a
+swift nod of agreement, and to hide his smile. ``If you become Harry
+Malfoy, the Malfoys are suddenly elevated to a position of acclaim and
+grace that my father's actions lost for us. Add Snape, and suddenly
+Professor Snape is an important political figure. And if you're Harry
+Black, then you're making claim to the Blacks' heritage of glory and
+madness.''
+
+``Very good,'' said Harry, and Draco blushed and even gave a little
+wriggle at his praise. Harry had to raise a hand in front of his mouth
+to cover his smile this time. In the small things, Draco was so easy to
+please. ``Yes, that's another reason, but it's not as important as my
+wanting to have the choice. I'm already juggling several political
+balls.'' He sighed as he thought about the story that had appeared in
+the \emph{Daily Prophet} that morning. Rita Skeeter had managed to
+ferret out the story about Squibs' Association, and though of course she
+put a flattering spin on it, the \emph{Daily Prophet} was already
+printing letters claiming that Harry never should drain anyone's magic
+but an enemy's. ``I don't need my enemies suddenly thinking that one
+group of my allies is more important to me than the rest.''
+
+``Would you consider Malfoy?''
+
+And then there were some things with Draco that weren't so simple.
+Sometimes he did distrust what Harry said on the surface, and wanted to
+hear them over again. Harry turned to face him, reaching out to grip his
+shoulders. He let his fingers stroke reassuringly over cloth and skin as
+he stared into his partner's eyes.
+
+``I promise I'm doing that,'' he said. ``It doesn't mean I'll choose it,
+but it's one of my top three choices.'' He watched Draco preen, then
+added, ``Though sometimes I think I should choose Opalline, and then I
+would have an excuse not to fight.''
+
+Draco scowled at him. ``Don't even joke about that, Harry,'' he said,
+putting out a hand, gripping the back of Harry's robe, and pulling him
+tightly against him. ``We need you in the war. The war needs you.''
+
+Harry rolled his eyes, safely out of sight, and put his head down on
+Draco's shoulder. \emph{The one thing I'm not going to forget is that.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``This is still just an experiment,'' Neville said as he put down the
+potted lily gently on the floor of the tunnel. ``It doesn't mean that
+they'll work, you know. We have to test them.''
+
+``That you managed this at all is wonderful,'' said Connor, and watched
+in a little wonder as Neville swelled with pride. \emph{Is just speaking
+the truth enough to get people to behave that way? Well, truth and
+flattering lies, I suppose. Harry would use that line even if Neville's
+plants were useless.} ``Let's see what they can do.''
+
+They had two rows of the potted lilies, tall flowers with faint golden
+spots on their white petals, lining either wall of the escape tunnel out
+of Hogwarts that Parvati's spot of light had discovered. Neville set the
+last one down and stepped over to join Connor at the far end of the
+tunnel, towards the hole that led beyond the Forbidden Forest. At the
+other end, Peter waved to them.
+
+``Here I am, just a regular Death Eater walking through the tunnel, not
+planning mayhem at all\ldots{}'' Peter sang under his breath as he began
+to walk between the rows of lilies.
+
+He passed several without incident. Connor frowned, and avoided glancing
+at Neville. Maybe this wouldn't work after all.
+
+But then one of the lilies quivered like a tuning fork, and the ripples
+and vibrations spread from flower to flower. By the time Peter reached
+the middle of the row, the lilies leaned towards him, their petals
+spread wide, their golden ``tongues'' writhing as if to catch his scent.
+
+Then two of them reached out, and curled about his limbs with
+uncompromising strength. Peter made as if to reach for his wand, and the
+lilies tightened. Then the rest of them lunged.
+
+There was a complicated moment when Connor had considerable difficulty
+in seeing what was happening. It ended with Peter on his back several
+inches above the floor, tendrils turning his arms and legs into a mass
+of green, lily petals locked on his face and attempting to suck his
+breath out.
+
+``They work,'' Neville whispered in wonder.
+
+``They do,'' Connor pointed out, ``and now someone's got to stop them
+from hurting Peter.''
+
+Neville started, then clapped his hands. The lilies slowly lowered Peter
+to the floor and uncoiled from him, though many of them swayed as if
+asking Neville if he were \emph{sure} about doing this. Peter took a
+deep gasp for breath and sat up, rolling back his left sleeve. Connor
+winced. He was bleeding from a gash near the Dark Mark, which had
+triggered the lilies into attacking.
+
+``Oh, Professor Pettigrew, I'm so sorry---'' Neville began in horrified
+tones.
+
+``It's quite all right, Longbottom.'' Peter's voice was firm as he
+touched the wound with his wand and murmured \emph{Integro}. Most of the
+bleeding slowed, though Connor knew he would need to visit Madam Pomfrey
+to have it healed completely. ``Professor Snape and I will just have to
+remember that we can't possibly take this route out of the castle.'' He
+smiled and stood up. ``Of course, if an attack does happen at Hogwarts,
+we'll probably leave another way in any case, since we'll be fighting.''
+
+``And any student can take this tunnel.'' Connor eyed the lilies. ``How
+often do they need to be watered, Neville?''
+
+``Not at all,'' said Neville proudly, as the lilies nodded and swayed
+towards the sound of his voice. "They \emph{grew up} on water. They've
+drunk enough for a year of vigilance. They'll keep watch until next
+year, now."
+
+Connor smiled and waved his wand to begin casting Disillusionment Charms
+on the plants. It seemed their defense for this section of the castle
+was complete.
+
+They met Fred and George in the middle of another corridor, the one that
+led from Ravenclaw Tower down towards the major escape tunnel. The twins
+were standing, one above the other, on a broad section of the half-ramp,
+half-stair that was meant to insure the students didn't have room to
+lag, and arguing hotly with one another.
+
+``---couldn't work, because we can't adapt---''
+
+``To all Houses? Of course we can. Stop being such a---''
+
+``Disbeliever? Sometimes, one must take you to task, dear brother---''
+
+``Brother of mine, who doesn't understand the simplest thing about
+jokes---''
+
+``Fred? George?'' By the speed with which their heads turned towards
+him, Connor thought he knew who was who. He shook his head in private
+amusement. He'd thought the twins would have finished arranging their
+traps for potential Death Eaters already. ``What's wrong?''
+
+The twins pointed at each other. ``He,'' said Fred, "wants to set up
+tricks that will track students by the House crest on their robes.
+\emph{He} doesn't understand that we would have to arrange four
+different layers of spells, one for each House. That's too---"
+
+``Much?'' George leaned forward and pointed at Fred a little harder, as
+if that would convince Connor of his rightness. "\emph{I} say that we
+can do it easily, use the same spell for every House at Hogwarts. But he
+won't believe me. Disbeliever."
+
+``Idiot.''
+
+``Moron.''
+
+``Imbecile.''
+
+``Skeptic.''
+
+Connor hastily intervened; he'd been witness to several arguments like
+this in the Burrow, and he knew they could go on for hours. ``Well, we
+have House crests.'' He touched the Gryffindor crest on his own robes.
+``Why doesn't George use the spell that he thinks will detect students
+from all Houses, not making it specific to Gryffindor, and we can test
+it?''
+
+George leaned forward, seized his hand, and pumped it brutally. ``You
+are a brilliant man, Connor Potter, sir,'' he said, in an uncannily good
+imitation of a house elf. ``George Weasley is honored to work for Connor
+Potter sir.''
+
+Connor coughed, feeling his cheeks flush. \emph{Good thing we didn't
+have any house elves by the time Harry and I were born. I couldn't have
+commanded them anyway.} ``Yes. Well. What's the incantation?''
+
+George straightened and cleared his throat as though performing for a
+bigger audience than his brother, Connor, Neville, and the very amused
+Head of Gryffindor. "\emph{Aediculae de Hogwarts protego!}"
+
+A colored smoke left his wand and sauntered through the corridor.
+Squinting, Connor could make out that the smoke was purple, changing to
+blue. It snapped abruptly into taut lines along the walls, and clung
+there, so faint that Connor needed a strong \emph{Lumos} charm just to
+see where it had gone.
+
+He moved cautiously forward.
+
+The smoke didn't react. Connor walked the length of the corridor, to the
+foot of the tunnel that began the steep climb to Ravenclaw Tower, and
+came back, then had Neville do the same thing. No reaction. Connor
+glanced uneasily at George. ``Is it supposed to do that?''
+
+``Of course,'' said George. ``Now watch.'' He took something from his
+pocket and fixed it to his robes with a few whispered words. Peter
+rolled his eyes.
+
+``Do I want to know how you got a Slytherin House crest?'' he asked.
+
+``No, sir.'' George gave him an angelic smile. ``I'm sure it would only
+distress a genial old man like yourself.'' He turned and strutted up the
+hall, his head lifted and a sneer on his lips. Connor bit his own lips
+to keep from laughing. He couldn't be \emph{sure} that George was
+mimicking Draco---there were other Slytherins who walked the same
+way---but it would add to the authenticity of the illusion if he were.
+
+Once again, he passed through the corridor without being stopped. By
+then, though, Fred had his arms crossed and was shaking his head smugly.
+``Of course you think that the spell works, dear brother,'' he said.
+``Having it do nothing is the prime requirement for being able to claim
+genius with no hard work.''
+
+George grinned ferally, and Connor saw, a moment before Fred, how he'd
+been smarter than his twin for once. ``That's why we need someone who's
+not wearing a House crest at all to test it,'' said George, and then
+dragged his twin forward and down half the corridor before he could
+react.
+
+At once, the glittering bars of a cage grew around Fred. Then they
+flipped him neatly upside down and hung him by his heels, with his robes
+dangling past his face. A smoking brand crept out of the wall towards
+his flank, as if it were going to burn a pattern into his skin.
+
+Fred yelped and wriggled. George was laughing so hard that it was up to
+Peter to take his out his wand and say firmly, "\emph{Finite
+Incantatem.}"
+
+Fred dropped to the ground, and spent a few moments wiping at his face
+and robes. George had fallen to the ground, laughing still. The brand
+disappeared back into the wall, and Connor heard the vigilant hum of the
+spell.
+
+"I \emph{will} get you back."
+
+Fred was giving George the evil eye. George winked at him and sprang to
+his feet.
+
+``Of course you will, brother mine,'' he said. ``But at least you aren't
+a skeptic any more.''
+
+``You're still an idiot.''
+
+``Moron.''
+
+``Imbecile.''
+
+Connor rolled his eyes and left them to it.
+
+SSSSSSSSS
+
+Henrietta had decided it would be a good idea to take a walk. If she
+carried two pasties with her from the kitchens, and one was made of
+blueberries and one of raspberries, that did not mean anything. They
+steamed gently in her pocket, and were companions while she moved.
+
+She went into the Forbidden Forest, watching as the branches arched
+overhead to frame a sky gone blue with one of the last fair days they
+would have before winter truly descended. Now and then ice glittered
+from a sheltered nook, but the snow that had fallen four days ago had
+failed to establish a lasting hold. The main presence in the Forest was
+the leaves that rustled and eddied around her, stirred by her robes and
+sometimes her spells into swirling patterns of color.
+
+She had thought that might make it easier for him to find her. And it
+did. Halfway through a complicated dance of gold and orange, she saw him
+leaning against a tree, staring at her with dark eyes.
+
+``Greetings, Evan,'' Henrietta said, then made the leaves dance through
+her widespread arms. She took out the blueberry pasty, hefted it in her
+hand for a moment, and tossed it towards him. He caught it handily and
+bit into it, never taking his eyes from her the while.
+
+``I know what you are doing,'' he said.
+
+``Good.'' Henrietta made the leaves settle on her head like a crown, and
+smiled at him. ``This would have been boring if you didn't. You know
+that I enjoy enemies who can challenge me.''
+
+He licked his fingers as he finished his pasty, and then cocked his
+head. ``Blueberries? That says that you are sorry for me, Henrietta,
+that you expect me to die. You only enjoy challenges you can win.''
+
+She shrugged gaily. It was not her fault that Evan Rosier did not
+completely understand her, while she walked as close as anyone could to
+understanding the shadows of his madness. ``I didn't know that I was
+going to win when I held you down and raped you, the night you came to
+`convince' me to join the Death Eaters. I only knew that you excited me
+more than anyone I'd ever known, and I wanted to fuck you.''
+
+His eyes had darkened further with the mention of the rape. Henrietta
+breathed softly, watching him, then shook her hair and let the leaves
+drift out of it, filtering down behind her with a crack-rustle.
+
+``I will kill you,'' he said. ``I need your help, and I will have it,
+and then I will kill you. But I will rape you first.''
+
+``You can't rape the willing, Evan.'' Henrietta took a step closer to
+him. ``Do you want to feel how willing I am? My thighs are wet. They
+always are when I face you.'' The sky above them was very bright, and
+the grass around her stark with color. The ice glittered from its nooks.
+
+His eyes stared at her. Henrietta understood him, and waited.
+
+``There is a task that someone has asked me to help her with,'' Evan
+whispered. ``Juicy targets, plump targets. Let me have the other pasty
+that you carry. I can smell it.''
+
+``Smell that, and not my arousal?'' Henrietta took out the raspberry
+pasty and tossed it to him. ``You're getting slow, Evan, very slow.''
+
+He ate a few bites, paused halfway through, and said, ``That is the task
+that I will ask you to help with.''
+
+``I know, Evan,'' said Henrietta patiently. ``I once told you that we
+were destined to meet and duel out our hatred, that enmity shared bound
+us to do more than taunt each other now and then. I will be happy to
+help you destroy these enemies, because it moves us one step closer to
+that moment.''
+
+Evan finished the pasty, delicately licked his fingers, and then handed
+her a brilliant smile. ``Because you are the only one who has ever
+brought me sweets,'' he said, ``I will warn you of this. Midwinter will
+be hard. And another blow falls soon, one that hands the victory to my
+Lord if you are not careful. At least, it hands him victory over the
+minds and hearts of the people.''
+
+Henrietta shrugged a little. ``Harry will handle that. You and I have
+another dance, Evan, another way to walk.'' For a moment, she thought
+she heard a roll of thunder in the sky, but when she looked up, the
+heaven was as high and fair as ever.
+
+In that moment, Evan crossed the distance between them and seized her by
+the throat, bearing her back against the trunk of an oak. Henrietta
+smiled at him, and tilted her head so that he could see the place where
+her pulse beat. That made the skin pull tight against his hold, and her
+vision wavered and burst into poison ivy as he held her hard enough to
+threaten the flow of her air. Beautiful, so beautiful, the sky was so
+beautiful and clear.
+
+``I shall have you,'' Evan said.
+
+Henrietta knew what he meant by that better than he thought she did. He
+would break her, he meant. That was what truly infuriated him about
+Henrietta, the reason that he was a pawn in her games instead of the
+other way around. Other people feared him, such as Hermione, the girl he
+had taken prisoner before he freed Durmstrang and sliced with the
+Severing Curse in the Midsummer battle. He could get inside them, leave
+his presence as a shadow in their heads. Henrietta had never been afraid
+of him, and \emph{she} was a shadow in \emph{his} head.
+
+The hatred between them was something very nearly sacred, almost like
+the bond that Harry and Voldemort shared, but Evan did not want that. He
+did not want to be bound to anyone like that.
+
+\emph{Too bad. He is.}
+
+Henrietta leaned up and kissed him on the side of the mouth. He dropped
+her as if she had tried to poison him and reeled back, wiping at his
+face, spitting out foul insults.
+
+Henrietta watched him with half-lowered eyelids, her breath coming fast.
+When she shifted, her thighs moved against each other with squelching
+sounds, and she felt the soft tingle of arousal building to a more
+insistent pressure in her belly. She would have liked to come now. But,
+of course, Evan would never consent to watch her do it, or to offer her
+assistance in the doing. There were limits to his sadism. Always,
+always, they concerned her.
+
+She stood straight and met his eyes. She could see the madness beyond
+the blueberry-darkness, the screaming pit that he had only escaped by a
+few steps. She could drive him into it, if she wanted.
+
+She chose not to. Today.
+
+``\,`Love is more sweet and comelier,'\,'' she whispered, ``\,`than a
+dove's throat strained out to sing.'\,''
+
+She saw his eyes flash with rage and recognition. She had taken lines
+that he would have liked to say, and turned them back on him. She
+smiled, and advanced another step. He backed up.
+
+``\,`Yea, though God hateth us, he knows that hardly in a little
+thing,'\,'' she said, and Evan stumbled trying to get away from her,
+``\,`love faileth of the work it does till it grow ripe for
+gathering.'\,''
+
+Evan jerked his head, bared his teeth, and vanished. Henrietta watched a
+scrap of pasty fall to the ground in his wake; he must have been holding
+it in his hand, but not tightly enough for it to follow him in the
+Apparition. She came to it, knelt down, and held her nose to it.
+
+It was blueberry.
+
+She murmured the final stanza to the piece of pasty, to the Forest, to
+the dancing leaves and the frozen ones.
+
+"\emph{I am grown blind with all these things:}
+
+\emph{It may be now she hath in sight}
+
+\emph{Some better knowledge; still there clings}
+
+\emph{The old question. Will not God do right?"}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Lucius examined the letter in front of him with a faint smile. It was by
+an oversight that it had come to him. Doubtless, the wizards and witches
+who had written it had imagined the Mr. Malfoy in residence at Malfoy
+Manor to be Draco. And his son was supposed to come by in a few hours,
+to collect his post and have his weekly serious talk with Lucius, as
+though he imagined his father had any choice now but to follow both him
+and Harry with serious devotion.
+
+This letter, though---
+
+He had not known Draco's ambitions extended so widely.
+
+He studied it again. It was from a group of Aurors in the American
+Ministry, who were indicating dissatisfaction with the American
+Minister's decisions in the past. One of them was a choice not to help
+Britain with its ``small problems,'' including Voldemort and the broken
+Statute of Secrecy, but only one of them. Yes, they were interested in
+hearing more about the British \emph{vates} whom Draco thought they
+would have to deal with sooner or later anyway, considering all the
+magical creatures bound with webs in America, and perhaps getting on his
+good side now.
+
+\emph{Interesting.}
+
+Lucius had already memorized all the pertinent information, including
+names and those details that might allow him to contact the American
+wizards again, and he knew he could feign his son's handwriting fairly
+well \emph{if} necessary. Now he was pressing the letter carefully back
+into the envelope, and casting charms that would make it seem as if he
+had never opened the envelope at all.
+
+Draco was doing what he had to do to raise the Malfoy name back to
+prestige and make the world a little more comfortable for both himself
+and Harry. That much, Lucius approved of. And, of course, Draco had
+evidently started this correspondence when Lucius had fled, and he had
+never thought that he would have to deal with his father again.
+
+But he might be going about it the wrong way. The letter indicated that
+the American wizards were letting Draco's age influence them. They were
+trying to take him for what they wanted while ignoring his own demands.
+And while Lucius knew his son could resist such crude manipulations for
+the most part, he still might lose something that he didn't want to
+lose.
+
+It was time for Lucius to intervene.
+
+Not under false pretenses unless he had to, of course. He would tell the
+Americans who he was, and doubtless endure some abuse before they
+listened to him. But money spoke, and so did past power, and the assumed
+innocence of his crimes that his acquittal in the First War had won him.
+He was a Dark wizard, yes, but he was not so Dark as to be a willing
+servant of Voldemort, they might well think.
+
+Lucius would play with them. Find out what they wanted with his son and
+the man who was essentially his Lord now. Coax them into revealing more
+than they had to Draco. Show them what a master player of the game was
+like, while at the same time maintaining the obsequious tone that most
+American wizards expected of most British.
+
+It was, after all, only self-defense.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 57*: The Hammer
+Falls}\label{chapter-57-the-hammer-falls}
+
+\textbf{Cliffhanger warning.}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Forty-Four: The Hammer Falls}
+
+Aurora yawned, and pushed a hand against her mouth, trying to conceal
+it. Cupressus looked up at her at once, though, shaking his head. ``You
+have an appointment to go to, my lady,'' he said. ``With the contact
+that you are so reluctant to inform me of, and then to your bed.''
+
+``I wish I could stay.'' Aurora sat back and stared at the paperwork
+spread around her. Cupressus's plan to recover respect for the Ministry
+was multi-tiered, and she knew she hadn't even finished reading every
+stage of it yet, let alone making all the comments and contributions she
+could. ``I'd like to---''
+
+``Yes, I know you would,'' Cupressus interrupted. ``But your
+contributions would be limited by the level of your weariness. I would
+prefer that that not be the case. I would prefer that you approach
+something this important with open eyes and a fresh mind.''
+
+Aurora smiled. Cupressus had not lost the side of him that loved to
+command others at every opportunity. ``I'll remember that,'' she said,
+and stood. ``Good night for now, sir.''
+
+Cupressus made a humming sound under his breath and bent over the
+paperwork again, then grabbed a quill to scribble a note next to a
+diagram. Aurora suspected he would remain here long after she'd gone to
+bed herself, adjusting his own plans and then attempting to blend the
+new ideas with the old.
+
+She went quietly towards the small closet where she and Feldspar had
+agreed to meet that night, reviewing the plans in her own mind. She had
+to admit she couldn't see a flaw in them. Their coup would be a slow
+one, timed to allow the Light and the Acting Minister as much dignity as
+possible. Besides, their more violent actions were restricted by the
+oaths they'd sworn to the Order of the Firebird. So it would take some
+months, perhaps as much as half a year.
+
+\emph{It doesn't matter, though,} Aurora reminded herself. \emph{What
+really matters is that we'll have recovered the Ministry as a place
+where ordinary wizards can be proud to stand, and where we can hover
+between two sides of the war without looking like cowards. That dream is
+worth any amount of sacrifices.}
+
+She had never thought she would feel so close to Minister Scrimgeour,
+she mused as she arrived at the closet where Feldspar should already be,
+unless the Aurors had managed to stop him this time. She could see the
+import of his dream now, in a way she might not have managed to if he
+were still alive to carry it. Sometimes the dreamer obscured the dream.
+Aurora believed she might have been even more sympathetic to the concept
+and the task of the \emph{vates} if it didn't belong to the man who had
+killed her children.
+
+But Minister Scrimgeour had died and left his dream behind. And Aurora
+had been able to pick it up, turn it around, and decide that, after all,
+it was worth protecting and preserving and dreaming. She felt it around
+her shoulders now like a heavy, warm cloak as she opened the door.
+
+She started when she saw two figures in the darkness, and not just one.
+``Feldspar?'' she whispered.
+
+He straightened and nodded to her. His movements were more jerky than
+usual, but Aurora supposed that might have something to do with the
+triumph in his eyes. And if the person at his feet was who she thought
+it was, Aurora could see why. It \emph{looked} like Indigena Yaxley,
+wrapped in her own vines.
+
+``What happened?'' Aurora whispered.
+
+``She finally took it a step too far,'' Feldspar replied harshly, his
+chest heaving with emotion. "She was one of those who tortured me at her
+Lord's command. And he had taken to leaving her alone with me while she
+did it, because he trusted her so much.
+
+``I thought she would kill me. She pressed so hard. She would cast
+healing spells when necessary to reverse the worst of the damage and
+revive me, but then she would start again.'' He shook his head, and
+Aurora heard his hair rustle. ``It built up in the middle of my chest,
+that anger, until I thought it would burst. And it did.'' He looked down
+at Indigena's wrapped body and nodded in satisfaction. ``So I managed to
+take her, and I brought her here. I thought you'd want her more than
+you'd want me to remain in Voldemort's service.''
+
+``She killed the Minister,'' Aurora mused, staring down at Indigena.
+``And of course we couldn't catch her and execute her to show our people
+that we took that crime seriously. We can now. Thank you.'' She moved
+closer, enchanted by the way that the vines wrapped Indigena like
+braided ropes.
+
+One of them writhed around her neck before she realized what was
+happening.
+
+Indigena opened her eyes and sat up with a sigh and a stretch. The vines
+binding her retracted into her skin; they'd been tendrils, Aurora saw,
+fully under her control. She tried to turn to Feldspar for help, only to
+see him collapsing into a mixture of leaves, bushy roots, and
+half-spoiled fruit.
+
+``He was a replica, born of one of my plants,'' said Indigena. ``Really,
+you ought to communicate with your supposed allies more. Then you would
+have known that Feldspar Yaxley died in the assault on Hogwarts.'' She
+moved closer to Aurora, one vine catching her chin and tilting her head
+back. ``You are cleverer than I thought you would be, far more the heir
+to Scrimgeour's vision of things than I ever believed. I thought you
+would be an easy pawn, and then things changed.'' Indigena shrugged.
+``It is a pity that I have to kill you.''
+
+Aurora struggled madly, but she might as well be pressing against iron
+chains for all that the vines gave. She sought for words that would
+allow her to bargain, to keep her life. ``How did you get in here?'' she
+blurted, at last.
+
+``The wards are still not set up to detect plant magic, of course,''
+said Indigena. ``Too few wizards who know it. Wrap my wand with leaves,
+and I can walk through the wards. Wrap myself with vines, and it hardly
+registered. And, of course, it helped that I did know all the routes
+that Feldspar so cleverly mapped through the wards and the Aurors, since
+I was the source of them.'' She reached out and flicked a lock of
+Aurora's hair back from her forehead. Her leaf-shadowed face was vaguely
+regretful, Aurora saw. "If it helps, I \emph{am} sorry that I have to do
+this. I asked my Lord if I could spare your life and merely make you a
+victim of another kind, but he said no." Indigena shrugged, and Aurora
+felt the vines tighten. ``So to death we must go. I promise, Madam
+Whitestag, it will be gentle.''
+
+For a moment, outrage, indignation, and hatred bubbled wildly in
+Aurora's chest. She could not believe this was happening to her, that
+she was dying. It \emph{must} be a dream. She had fallen asleep on her
+way to the meeting with Feldspar, and this was her reward for neglecting
+her duties, a nightmare.
+
+But the vines tightened, and her breath began to come raggedly, and she
+knew she had a choice. She could go to her death much as Scrimgeour had,
+denying it was happening, unable to react in time to do anything
+worthwhile.
+
+Or she could use the moment of her death to make a difference.
+
+She let her head fall back, and directed all her thoughts fiercely and
+endlessly to what she wanted. The moment of one's death was useful, if
+pitted against one's enemies in the right way. She was dying anyway. If
+she chose to die a willing sacrifice, then she might still have a part
+to play in the long drama of war and blood that would follow her death.
+
+Her last thoughts were, therefore, of Indigena.
+
+SSSSSSSS
+
+Indigena watched calmly as Aurora Whitestag's face grew blue, and shook
+her head as the woman stopped breathing. ``I wonder why this is part of
+my fate, to continually kill people I admire,'' she remarked to the limp
+body, as her darlings started to unwind from it. ``I thought Minister
+Scrimgeour would be the last of those, but instead you had to develop a
+conscience and a will and start acting effectively. Was that really
+necessary?''
+
+``Yes. It was.''
+
+Indigena started badly. The voice was Aurora's, though it sounded
+distant and cold, as though she were speaking down a tunnel filled with
+wind. She took a step away, eyeing the corners. Had she killed someone
+wearing a glamour, or Polyjuiced to look like the Acting Minister's
+second-in-command? That would reveal a level of deviousness in Aurora
+she hadn't known was there, but then, Whitestag had surprised her
+several times since the beginning of this plan with Feldspar.
+
+She understood a moment later, as she watched silver liquid collect
+around the body, glowing vividly, like mercury. The drops ran together,
+and bubbled up into the shape of a woman with long hair. Her face was
+visibly younger than that of the Aurora Indigena had killed. And she
+looked fiercer, too.
+
+Indigena frowned. ``You just had to come back as a ghost, didn't you?''
+she demanded.
+
+The newborn ghost opened her eyes and gave Indigena a feral smile.
+``Yes,'' she said. ``I dedicated my last moments to wishing for that.
+And I was thinking of you, too.'' She leaned forward, raising an
+eyebrow, and sending a whisk of cold breath across Indigena's face that
+made the leaves beneath her skin tangle together trying to get away.
+``That means that I'll be here looking for some way to defeat you,
+Indigena Yaxley. I hope you enjoy the enemy you've created.'' And she
+turned away, tattering and drifting through the far wall as scraps of
+mist.
+
+She left Indigena to blink, for a moment. But no strike of vengeance
+immediately came. It seemed that the ghost was content to wait for a
+better moment.
+
+\emph{I didn't plan that. I wish I had known something like that might
+happen. But, changed as she seemed, I wouldn't have pegged Aurora
+Whitestag as having the amount of self-control and foresight necessary
+to use the moment of her death like that.}
+
+She shook herself like a dog shaking off water and moved past the
+moment. The first major task her Lord had asked of her had been
+accomplished. Aurora lay motionless on the floor, and if she wasn't
+quite dead, her ghost at least seemed uninterested in interfering
+further with this task.
+
+Now for the second part.
+
+Indigena closed her eyes and lifted her arms, a soft, vibrating song
+traveling through her lips. She knew, though she could not see it, that
+Feldspar's body would be vibrating like a whirlpool, the tendrils and
+plants she'd stored there climbing out of him and reaching for the
+walls. Roots writhed, digging into stone and metal and finding ways
+through them. She would bind the whole of the Ministry into a cage of
+roots before she was done, vines blocking the way out, flowers breathing
+calming fragrances into the air, a garden coaxing people to stay at
+their desks.
+
+When that was done, she would call to her Lord and let him know.
+
+The caged Ministry would become a cage of Squibs as her Lord drank and
+drained their magic, and grew immensely more powerful. Indigena shivered
+a little, to think of how strong he would be when all this was done.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Cupressus heard it as a shrill, nagging whine in his left ear, the cry
+of a wounded unicorn foal. He sat up and gave Aurora a moment of
+silence. The ward was one he had cast to warn him if she died suddenly.
+
+Then he was up and moving. He doubted that Erasmus had killed her in a
+fit of temper. That made it far more likely that Voldemort and his
+people had created another entrance into the Ministry. And in that case,
+he knew what he had to do. He \emph{always} knew what he had to do. It
+was other people who ruined the pattern by moving about in ways that
+pawns, and even knights and kings and queens, were not supposed to move.
+
+He opened the door, and something grabbed the knob and tried to slam it
+shut again. Cupressus dragged hard, though, and so managed to see the
+writhing vine before more tendrils joined it and yanked the door from
+its hands.
+
+Cupressus nodded. He had planned even for this. What the Dark had tried
+once, they might try again. They had sent the vine-born Yaxley to murder
+the Minister. That meant they might do it again. Cupressus did not think
+that Erasmus was their main target, or they wouldn't have bothered to
+murder Aurora, but she was here, the Yaxley, Voldemort's running hound.
+
+So he gathered himself, sinking carefully into his soul, where golden
+Light ran in streams like water. There were many Light spells he could
+not use at this point of the year, when the sun was on the other side of
+the earth, but he had made a point to study those that relied on inner
+Light, so that he would never be helpless. Evil could strike in any
+month.
+
+At last, he opened his eyes, aimed his wand at the door, and murmured,
+"\emph{Caminus intimus}."
+
+The fire soared forth from his heart, powered by his own heat, his
+conception of the inner forge that the spell literally called on.
+Cupressus moved forward, gesturing the fire back and forth between his
+wand and heart, singing under his breath. The heat warmed and centered
+him, and reminded him of what he was: a Light wizard, opposing the Dark.
+That he had to do it through subterfuge and without the Minister's
+cooperation was a pity, but needs must when the Dark arose.
+
+The door burst into flames. The vines beyond it lashed forward, trying
+to get through the fire, and dripping dew-cold liquids from their stalks
+that were meant to quell the heat. Cupressus laughed. The vines were
+mighty, but they could not quench the fire without killing him, and they
+could not kill him unless they quenched the fire.
+
+He raised his wand. The fire danced to meet him, gladly roaring. The
+vines withered and blackened in the heat, and then fell, and Cupressus's
+passage to the corridor beyond was clear.
+
+Clad in a cloak of brilliant fire, Cupressus strolled towards the
+Minister's office. He knew his duty. It was not what he \emph{wanted} to
+do---he wanted to find Aurora's body and give her a proper burial; he
+wanted to simply leave and go home, from the place where he could more
+easily command his people---but it was what was needed. The Ministry
+would fall this day as a symbol of hope. The Acting Minister must
+escape, so that he could be the symbol in its place.
+
+No, Erasmus was not the choice he would have made. But he was the choice
+that \emph{had} been made. Cupressus would cooperate with him and use
+him as a figurehead to help them win this war.
+
+He burned the vines that were trying to get through the Minister's door,
+and stepped over the body of an Auror who had fallen fighting them. A
+giant flower gusted fragrance at him, a visible cloud of pink gas, which
+was probably meant to calm and soothe him. Cupressus closed his eyes,
+and the flames crossed in front of him like dancing scimitars, gesturing
+the fragrance away. Cupressus snorted. \emph{Dark wizards are pitiful
+when they think they can take a Light wizard with simple tricks.}
+
+He broke through the Minister's door, and then stood in front of
+Erasmus's desk. Erasmus was sinking back, his eyes on the walls, where
+roots gleamed through star-like cracks. He jerked his head around when
+he heard Cupressus enter, and broke into a fit of shivering.
+
+``Are you with them?'' he whispered.
+
+Cupressus rolled his eyes. ``The day I join the Dark is the day I commit
+suicide,'' he answered. ``Quite literally. The vows I have sworn to the
+Light would kill me before I could accomplish anything for the Dark.''
+He cast a deep sleeping enchantment on the Acting Minister before he
+could say anything more. Yes, he had to be safe, so that he could be
+their ``leader'' when this fall was done, but he would only cause
+trouble if he were awake, getting in the way and trying to give orders
+when Cupressus was the one who had to do that. Cupressus would make sure
+that he was safe, but listening to him was out of the question, as it
+had been for months.
+
+He strode around the desk, scooped up Erasmus in his arms, and turned
+around to consider the vines that entwined the door. They were
+thickening, small tendrils braiding together, all of them slick now with
+water. They would choke him if he tried to get back through them, and
+they might succeed.
+
+\emph{I can save no one else. Aurora is already dead, and I must get my
+most important burden to safety.} Cupressus hefted Erasmus and snorted.
+\emph{That a day would come in Britain when a man like this is the most
+important burden!}
+
+He touched the golden torque around his neck, which most of the time was
+hidden under the collar of his robe. It gleamed, and then the tug of a
+Portkey hooked under his navel and dragged him and Erasmus back to his
+house.
+
+Vines and dew and shattered door and cracking stone walls vanished, and
+Cupressus stood in his receiving room, blazing. He calmed the inner fire
+with a word, then laid Erasmus down on the floor and checked him for
+burns. Granted, burns would have meant Cupressus was losing control of
+his magic, which would have been a bad sign, but still, he should check.
+Sometimes such flames conveyed any hidden anger that the caster felt, as
+he felt towards Erasmus, no matter how much the wizard tried to hold
+back on the fire.
+
+``Cupressus?''
+
+He glanced up. Artemis stood in the door of the receiving room, her
+hands clasped to her mouth.
+
+``The Dark Snake has attacked the Ministry,'' said Cupressus calmly. ``I
+have the Acting Minister. But he will not be awakening for some time. He
+swallowed too much smoke,'' he added.
+
+Artemis dropped her hands and gave him a smile that said she knew
+exactly where the ``smoke'' had come from. Then she came forward a step.
+``What do you need to me to do?'' she asked. ``Since I assume you will
+be occupied in trying to make the Shadow Lord listen to you.''
+
+Cupressus nodded. ``Shadow Lord'' was the name that the Light families
+outside Harry's web had taken to calling him, since he was a Lord-level
+wizard no matter how much he tried to deny it, and he was in the shadow
+of evil without having quite succumbed to darkness. There was still hope
+of Light finding him, if he Declared the way he was supposed to. ``Light
+the beacons,'' he said. ``We will have to have a meeting before they
+accept it fully, of course, but the beacons are important.''
+
+His wife nodded, and left the room with a sharp swirl of her skirts.
+
+Cupressus called an elf to take the Acting Minister to bed. He himself
+would contact the Hogwarts hospital wing and try to make Harry listen to
+him. Artemis would be lighting the beacons that would blaze up and down
+the coast of Ireland, and even be visible to the coast of Scotland, if
+there were still people there who would listen to them and heed the
+fires' message.
+
+When those flames burned, the families who followed the Light were to
+put aside all petty, personal enmities, and all political commitments
+they might have, and all ambitions that had nothing to do with the wider
+world, and answer their ultimate allegiance, to their Declaration.
+Apollonis was one of only three families that had the right to light
+them, and command the others to fall in. In this case, Voldemort's
+attack and the Ministry's fall meant that such a moment had come.
+
+They were the enemies of the Dark Lord, more than they were the enemies
+of Harry. No, Harry's undeclared status was not ideal, and Cupressus
+would be watching for the moment when Harry tried to take advantage of
+them. But they needed to ally with him to defeat Voldemort, to bring
+down the Dark Snake.
+
+There would be arguments later. Cupressus knew that. The family heads
+would insist on getting together and drafting a formal document of
+alliance. And Erasmus would undoubtedly be a hindrance in the process,
+yet one they could not do without, not if they hoped to command the
+allegiance of the undeclared.
+
+For now, though, there were no arguments. The beacons were a call to
+battle, and no Light wizard worth his flames would deny them.
+
+Cupressus knelt in front of the fireplace and cast a handful of Floo
+powder into the flames, calling, ``Hogwarts hospital wing!''
+
+SSSSSSSSS
+
+Indigena cursed as she felt Cupressus Portkey out. Yes, only one or two
+wizards escaping her net was not a large number, but she would have
+preferred that almost anyone escape save an old, experienced, canny
+Light wizard. Indigena had faced and fought the breed before. They
+inevitably caused trouble.
+
+Then she shook her head, and closed her eyes to check the state of the
+rest of the Ministry. What she found satisfied her. Vines tied people to
+their desks. Flowers dangled in front of their faces, breathing a deep
+fragrance on them and lulling them almost into dreams, or at least the
+borderland on the edge of sleep. Tendrils held fingers motionless just
+short of wands. A few other Light wizards had tried spells of fire
+against her darlings, but they did not have the deep dedication
+necessary to keep raising the flames even against the dew Indigena had
+impregnated her plants with. They were captives, and that meant they
+were birds ripe for the plucking, meals for her Lord and his
+\emph{absorbere} gift.
+
+Indigena touched her Mark, and felt the pain smoldering at the bottom of
+it grow, until she knew her Lord understood her message. His Ministry
+was ready for him.
+
+She opened her eyes, and smiled.
+
+And then something at the bottom of the Ministry, something that could
+resist magic, said \emph{No} in a decisive voice.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``Harry!''
+
+Harry jerked his head up as Madam Pomfrey, of all people, came running
+into the library, her hair flying around her, her wand wildly waving.
+She ignored Madam Pince's glare, and Draco's, and dragged him to his
+feet with one hand.
+
+``The Ministry has fallen,'' she hissed into his ear. ``Cupressus
+Apollonis is calling for you in the hospital wing fireplace, offering to
+tell you any details you want to know.'' She bent even closer to Harry's
+ear. ``He did say that the Acting Minister is safe, but that Aurora
+Whitestag is dead.''
+
+Harry felt a shock race through him as strong as the fall of the
+Ministry had probably caused Cupressus, but he didn't allow himself to
+be slowed by it. He braced his hands on the table and levered himself to
+his feet, shaking off the grip on his arm. He could get himself to the
+hospital wing faster than Madam Pomfrey could. Looking back, he
+collected Draco with his eyes and led him along, while he asked the
+matron for more information. ``How many people dead?''
+
+Madam Pomfrey frowned and shook her head. ``That, I don't know. Mr.
+Apollonis didn't seem to think many people had died, but I didn't know
+why.''
+
+Harry nodded, and simply \emph{ran}. There were a few moving staircases
+that tried to get in the way, and slow him down; he simply used his
+magic to force them back into position so he, Draco, and the matron
+could jump up them. He felt a slight current of disgruntlement and
+discontent from Hogwarts when he did that, but the school would recover.
+The people who might be dying in the Ministry right now, or joining the
+ranks of Voldemort's captives, would not.
+
+He raced into the hospital wing, and saw Cupressus's face hovering in
+the green flames. He dropped to his knees before him, so as to be sure
+of missing no nuance of expression. ``How many are dead?'' he asked.
+
+``It is impossible to tell.'' Cupressus's voice was absolutely calm.
+``From what I could tell, Yaxley's vines were not meant to kill, but to
+take and hold prisoner. If I had to guess, I would say she was taking
+hostages, or captives so that her Lord could drain their magic.''
+
+Harry closed his eyes and nodded. If Indigena could turn the Ministry
+into a cage, then Voldemort would gain far more magic than he could from
+isolated disappearances and captures by the wild Dark. And even if Harry
+got there in time to save lives, he might not get there in time to save
+the captives' magic.
+
+He pushed the thought ahead. He had to act quickly now, but it would not
+do to rush into a trap. ``What else can you tell me?'' he asked, forcing
+his eyes open.
+
+``Dedicated Light-fire destroys her vines,'' said Cupressus promptly.
+``Take someone strongly devoted to the Light with you, someone who can
+use spells that do not depend on the sun.'' Harry nodded, thinking of
+Peter and the Light spells he had showed them how to do during the
+period when the wild Dark was terrorizing the school. "And the beacons
+have been lighted up and down the coast of Ireland, \emph{vates}, by my
+wife. The Light families of the British Isles will know that a crisis
+has arisen which compels them to put aside their personal enmities and
+ally with you. They will doubtlessly argue later, and it will not be
+easy to convince them, but for now, we do not have a government, or a
+seat of government. This is a crisis."
+
+Harry swallowed. He had not absorbed the full psychological consequences
+of the Ministry's fall, but if some people had panicked when Voldemort
+had proven that he was capable of breaking into Tullianum, it would be
+nothing compared to what actually happened now, with the Ministry itself
+breached.
+
+``Yes, it is,'' he said, forcing his mind on track, to deal with what
+was in front of him and not what might lie beyond that. ``Is there
+anything else that you can tell me?''
+
+Cupressus shook his head. ``I took the Acting Minister and Portkeyed out
+as soon as I could, so my observations were limited. I will say that
+simply appearing inside the Ministry strikes me as a bad idea. That is
+more likely to add the people who go on Voldemort's menu.''
+
+Harry raised a hand in acknowledgment. ``And how soon will the Acting
+Minister awaken?''
+
+The other wizard's eyes shone with innocence. ``As soon as your plans,
+and ours, need him to awaken, and not before.''
+
+\emph{At least he has a good sense of how useless Juniper is.} Harry
+nodded. ``Then he should get some rest for now.'' He stood, his mind
+already whirling. He would have to approach the Ministry from the
+outside. He would need to take at least one strongly Light-devoted
+wizard with him, and probably more. Well, Moody was here, and Ron and
+Ginny. He did not know if he dared ask McGonagall, given how weak her
+heart was, but he would search among the other professors and students,
+and hope to find someone else both Light-devoted and strong enough to
+perform the spells.
+
+``If you can wait for five hours, there will be a contingent of Light
+wizards in my home,'' Cupressus offered. ``I will drop the wards so that
+you and your---Dark allies---may pass through.'' The distaste in his
+voice was clear, but it remained brisk. ``They will be strong enough,
+all of them, to perform the Light and the fire spells that can rid you
+of Yaxley's vines.''
+
+``I do not think I can wait that long,'' Harry murmured. ``But I will
+try to send you a message if I am still battling in that time, and I
+will welcome your assistance.'' He nodded to Cupressus again. ``Is there
+anything else that you can think of to tell me?''
+
+``No,'' said Cupressus. "We will concentrate on gathering Light wizards
+and setting up a provisional government, \emph{vates}. This battle, no
+matter what the outcome, cannot be allowed to spell the end of the
+British Ministry."
+
+``No, it cannot,'' Harry said, and the Floo connection ended. He turned
+to find Draco studying him intently.
+
+``I hope that you're not thinking of rushing off to battle by
+yourself,'' he said.
+
+``No,'' said Harry. ``But I do need Light wizards with me, as well as
+Dark, and I need to think and decide what to do. It sounds as though
+Apparating into the Ministry won't work, and nor will approaching it
+from the outside without a plan.''
+
+He started from the hospital wing towards the Defense Against the Dark
+Arts classroom to fetch Peter, his mind whirling.
+
+\emph{Approach from the outside. That would mean we have to appear in
+the alley outside the deserted telephone box. But how to get into the
+Ministry from there? The approach through the Atrium or the telephone
+box itself will probably be wreathed with Indigena's vines.}
+
+Well. There was one answer that Harry could count on, though he didn't
+think it would allow him to Apparate into the Ministry.
+
+Carefully, he began to think of names and faces of people he had known
+who worked in the Ministry, some of whom still did. He began to imagine
+countless other innocents who might wait there now, destined to become
+either Squibs or corpses if Voldemort reached them, and probably both.
+
+Even as Draco asked questions and he answered them, even as he opened
+the door of the Defense Against the Dark Arts room into the middle of a
+third-year class and summoned Peter with a glance and a jerk of his
+head, he was reaching into the darkness in the middle of his mind and
+stirring it.
+
+When he went to battle this time, the only thing that might suffice to
+easily rid the Ministry of Indigena's vines was his deepest rage.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+They brought him gently, Sylvan Yaxley's arms closed around their Lord,
+supporting him and holding him so that his feet did not brush the
+ground. He would have said thanks for that if he were a creature of
+gratitude. But the Lord Voldemort was no one's creature but his own, and
+so he did not stop to thank them.
+
+The blindness of Apparition seized him, and then the more relaxed
+blindness of some light and physical solidity. The snake around his
+waist still did not see perfectly. The Lord Voldemort did not care. He
+could make out the succulent, tempting meals of magic around him, and he
+opened his \emph{absorbere} gift and began to drain.
+
+Already, he knew, he was the most powerful wizard in the world. With the
+magic he was eating now, he would become more powerful than that, a
+rearing, titanic force of magic that not even his heir could cope with.
+
+In the meantime, because there was nothing wrong with his ears, he
+enjoyed the screams and shrieks of those suddenly rendered Squibs, and
+the rarer ones who realized what the disappearance of their magic would
+probably mean for Britain as a whole.
+
+For the first time in a long time, laughter was rising up his throat.
+Let the little Light fires burn. Let the Stone in the Department of
+Mysteries prepare to resist him, and eat Indigena's vines when they came
+near it.
+
+Let Harry come. Let even the third come.
+
+They would find Lord Voldemort ready for them.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 58*: Two Lords That Are
+Deathless}\label{chapter-58-two-lords-that-are-deathless}
+
+The title of this chapter comes from Swinburne's ``By the North Sea'':
+``For the land has two lords that are deathless:/ Death's self, and the
+sea.''
+
+\textbf{Cliffhanger warning.}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Forty-Five: Two Lords That Are Deathless}
+
+Indigena cursed under her breath as she sent yet another vine forward.
+Until today, she wouldn't have thought a creature existed that could
+disarm these vines so easily. They'd grown pincers, teeth that resembled
+the teeth of a sundew, dew that froze attackers in their tracks, and
+maws that projected magic. They should have captured any troublesome
+wizards and witches who had managed to stay free so far.
+
+But they didn't manage to capture the Stone. Instead, what happened
+involved the vine putting its maw around the door to the Department of
+Mysteries, and the Stone snipping it off.
+
+The voice burbled and laughed at her, sometimes telling her that plant
+magic was interesting but limited, sometimes asking her questions about
+how she bred the vines that Indigena didn't intend to answer. It showed
+no effort. That made Indigena angrier than just about anything else.
+
+\emph{I bred these vines, I wound my magic in them, and now they cannot
+take something so simple as---}
+
+As a sentient piece of rock immune to magic, if the rumors Indigena had
+heard of the Stone were true. Well, given that set of conditions, she
+supposed she could not be angry about not immediately triumphing.
+
+She closed her eyes and tried to scout through her plants that trailed
+through the levels just above the Department of Mysteries. It was
+difficult, however. Beyond a certain place, her tendrils simply
+withered, and the flowers that served as large blinking eyes closed as
+if in the face of immense cold and refused to open again. She supposed
+that was the Stone's way of defending its home.
+
+It was an \emph{annoying} way. Indigena was certain there were wizards
+in the Department of Mysteries with the Stone, wizards probably
+practiced in magic and rich with the knowledge of ancient artifacts, not
+to mention the artifacts themselves. Her Lord would want them. He would
+expect her to have the doors open already by the time he descended that
+far, and he might turn to punishing her if she did not succeed. Indigena
+was fairly certain that he would be able to do \emph{anything} he
+wanted, after he had swallowed most of the magic in the Ministry.
+
+\emph{Oh, yes, he is here. I never thought he was very interesting, but
+perhaps I was wrong. And he is destroying the Ministry? That is
+interesting.}
+
+And Indigena found herself shouldered aside very efficiently, as the
+Stone's consciousness lifted past her and in the direction of her Lord,
+filled with curiosity and intense interest.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``Can you do this, then?'' Harry stared into Moon's eyes, waiting for
+some sign that the pale centaur was backing down, but he received none.
+Instead, Moon scraped a forehoof on the ground and nodded.
+
+``Yes. We are less vulnerable to human magic than humans are. And they
+will not be expecting an attack from that direction.'' Moon put up a
+hand, though Harry hadn't made a motion to interrupt. ``We are less
+vulnerable to human magic, but we are not immune. We will scout for you,
+and then return to you the moment we have learned the extent of what we
+can.''
+
+Harry nodded. That was more than fair---in fact, it was more than he
+would have asked of the centaurs, but Moon had insisted on offering.
+Harry stepped out of the way as he watched Moon use hand signals that
+meant nothing to Harry, but which made the herd nod and scatter in
+several directions. The centaurs Moon had first sent off were already
+coming back, clutching long spears, scythes, and clubs.
+
+Harry had taken along several centaurs when he attacked the Ministry
+during his rebellion to free Hawthorn and the others from Tullianum.
+Though it was not widely understood how, because wizards rarely studied
+the magic of other species, centaurs could appear in places named after
+them---such as the Centaur Office in the Ministry, which had supposedly
+been set aside in case any of them forsook their pride enough to come
+and talk to Ministry officials. They would appear in the Office, scout
+in what ways they could, and then return to the Centaur Glade in the
+middle of the Forest, their most protected area.
+
+Moon had offered it when Harry came to him, even before he could ask.
+That eased Harry's fears about sending them into such a dangerous
+situation, a little. But he didn't know what would happen to them when
+they arrived, if Voldemort would succeed in draining them of their
+magic, if Indigena would kill them with her vines. He reminded himself
+that none of them might return, and shivered.
+
+A hand clasped his shoulder. ``I know that look on your face,'' Connor's
+voice said into his ear. ``You're worrying about what's going to happen
+when they get there. Don't be so concerned about them, Harry. They want
+to help, and they're going to. They know the risks.''
+
+Harry turned around and managed to smile at his twin. He could feel a
+muscle jumping in his cheek, though, and suspected it wasn't a very calm
+smile. ``I know that,'' he murmured.
+
+``You haven't accepted that people might die, yet.'' Connor was holding
+both his shoulders now, and looking at him with a mixture of affection
+and exasperation. "It \emph{happens} in war, Harry. You know that. We
+have to fight anyway, despite the fact that we might die, and they want
+to fight for you." He gave Harry a slight shake. ``Don't devalue their
+loyalty by worrying so much.''
+
+"I will never accept that people \emph{have} to die," said Harry
+quietly, and stepped out from under Connor's hands. ``If I do that, my
+heart has been hardened, and I would not want that.''
+
+He glanced one more time at the wizards and witches gathered around him.
+Snape and Draco were there, of course; Harry doubted that he could have
+kept them away. He had attempted to call Kanerva, but had received a
+sighing answer only from the wind. She might appear in the middle of the
+battle, for all Harry knew, but he could not count on her. And Jing-Xi
+was still in China.
+
+The rest of the complement with him was Light, though. McGonagall had
+insisted on coming, and Madam Pomfrey, when asked for her professional
+opinion, had allowed that she was probably recovered enough to do so.
+Connor had the necessary power and dedication to the Light to perform
+the inner fire spells, at least since their birthday, and Ron, Ginny,
+Moody, Tonks, Hermione, Zacharias, Parvati, and Padma waited behind him,
+too. Harry had been hesitant about contacting Fred and George, since he
+knew Indigena waited on their battlefield, and he thought the twins'
+eagerness to get revenge on her for Percy might overpower their good
+sense. In the end, though, he'd called on them. Their narrow grins
+didn't reassure him, but at least they hadn't attempted to Apparate into
+the Ministry early. They stood whispering to one another instead,
+apparently arguing about what painful punishment they should inflict on
+Indigena.
+
+Moon reared up in front of him, catching Harry's attention again. Harry
+met his eyes and nodded, once, as much of a vote of confidence as he
+could offer when he had no idea what the centaurs were walking into. The
+white centaur reared high, his pale hooves and tail flying.
+
+Between one moment and the next, he vanished, and so did the ten
+centaurs gathered behind him, an assemblage of chestnut and palomino and
+black hides. Harry sighed and folded his hands beneath his chin to wait.
+
+This time, the one who touched his shoulder was Draco, but he didn't try
+to speak any comforting words. That was at least part of the reason that
+Harry didn't try to shake this touch off.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+He was swollen, with such power.
+
+He had never known that it was possible to drink all the magic around
+him. He had never tried it. The \emph{absorbere} gift had limits. After
+a certain point, it would shut and force the wizard who possessed it to
+digest what he had eaten. The Lord Voldemort knew that better than
+anyone. He had been the only one who possessed the gift for years, and
+then, when his heir had shared it and stretched it between them, he had
+neither liked it nor understood its full capabilities.
+
+But it seemed that the gift could be strengthened with exercise, like
+any other muscle. The Mudblood children he had drained of their power
+before Sylvan and Oaken took them, pounded their flesh, and introduced
+it into the soul-pattern growing on the floor of his home had been that
+practice, he understood now. He drank, and he drank, and he rarely had
+to shut his mouth and concentrate on settling what he'd drunk. Magic was
+a liquid to him, a fresh lake after he had run panting across a desert.
+And his belly was limitless, even as his cruelty was, even as his power
+was.
+
+He laughed aloud.
+
+A voice said, \emph{You are interesting.}
+
+The Lord Voldemort swung some of his attention in that direction. So
+swollen with magic was he that he could easily have two minds, if he
+wanted. One of them reached down to the eighth floor, the Atrium, and
+reaped the captives there of their magic; he had drained the seven
+floors above them. The other studied the presence that was creeping out
+of the Department of Mysteries, aiming for him.
+
+It did not alarm him; he knew what it must be, since he had read his
+traitors' memories. Adalrico had been most eloquent in describing the
+Stone that had attacked Harry at Woodhouse, since he was the one who had
+utilized the memories to create his ward-eating stones. He knew powerful
+minds like this, did the Lord Voldemort. He had met his share of them,
+one of them lying at the foot of each Egyptian pyramid. They had been
+tricked into entering Earth long ago by wizards who served the pharaohs,
+and they resented it greatly. But they were also subject to magic, and
+could not hurt those who had bound them, only those who intruded into
+the tombs with the intent of robbing them.
+
+This Stone was not subject to wizards, he understood at once, because
+his swiftness of intelligence was too great to be fooled. It had made
+wizards subject to it, those it called its Unspeakables. And it reached
+out to him with a child's curiosity, as if it could do the same thing
+now.
+
+\emph{A careless child has his fingers burned,} he thought, directing
+the words so the Stone could hear them, and then reached out with a
+flare of magic, gently roasting the personality that extended towards
+him. He heard a startled yelp from the Stone, and then the edge of its
+personality retracted. The Lord Voldemort snarled in satisfaction and
+turned back to draining magic.
+
+He felt the tremble of an unfamiliar presence on the edge of his
+consciousness, and paused to watch. He snorted with amusement when he
+realized centaurs had appeared in the Ministry and trotted on the fourth
+floor, staring at the drapery of vines around them. Harry would have
+sent them ahead to scout. And he would trust their reports, of course,
+because he had not realized that such halfbreeds were only good enough
+to fight in situations where humans would not do.
+
+The Lord Voldemort thought about killing them, but then he had a better
+idea. They should return to his heir and report that the Ministry was
+dangerous but manageable, so that Harry would not hesitate, but would
+come ahead.
+
+And then, once he was near, the Dark Lord, the Lord of all creation,
+would perform the Heir-Call again, and it would be much likelier to work
+this time, when Harry knew his power better and knew how many were
+Squibs now.
+
+He had just nodded in satisfaction and turned back to his work when the
+Stone's voice said, \emph{That was not nice.}
+
+And time flooded the Ministry like a river turned back on itself.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry lifted his head sharply as the air behind him shimmered. When he
+turned, it was to see the Centaur Glade alight with wavering shapes. The
+returning centaurs, he knew, but he didn't know why they hadn't arrived
+as smoothly as they vanished. According to what Moon had told him, they
+should have.
+
+Then the shapes hardened, and Harry could make them out. He stared,
+though. Several of the palomino and chestnut centaurs looked
+considerably younger than they had when they went to the Centaur Office,
+one or two foals. One black centaur had to lean on his spear, so
+decrepit did he seem. Only Moon looked relatively normal, and Harry
+could make out a few wrinkles of age around his eyes that hadn't been
+there before. He shook his head and fixed his eyes on Harry with an
+effort.
+
+``What happened?'' Harry whispered. He would have gone to them, but
+Draco's hand on his shoulder held him back. Harry bit his lip and forced
+himself to remain still, conceding that until they knew what magic had
+affected Moon and the others this way, it was probably stupid to touch
+them.
+
+``Time,'' Moon whispered. ``Time is loosed in the Ministry.'' He turned
+and caught his black herdmate just as he started to collapse, easing him
+gently to the ground. In the profound silence that had overtaken his
+fellow wizards when the centaurs appeared, Harry could hear the aged
+centaur's breath, wheezing harshly in and out of his lungs. ``It struck
+us just as we tried to return. As you can see, it changed some of us.''
+He gestured to the foals who were trying to heft their weapons. ``I do
+not think it has affected their memories, for I am aged, and yet I have
+not lived through other years.''
+
+``Is this an enchantment of Voldemort's?'' Harry demanded, his heart
+bounding at the very idea. If Voldemort had entered the Department of
+Mysteries and managed to drain some of the Stone's artifacts, of course
+it was perfectly possible, but the thought of facing him---except alone,
+where there would be no one else to suffer the effects---made Harry's
+heart snap in horror.
+
+Moon shook his head. ``The surge came from beneath us, but further
+beneath than Voldemort was.''
+
+``The Stone, then,'' Harry said. He wondered why it had decided to
+interfere in the battle. Of course, it could be something as easy as a
+decision to defend its home, when Indigena and Voldemort between them
+might well manage to down the Ministry.
+
+Moon gave a painful nod. ``Yes.'' Then he turned and aimed a hoof at the
+black centaur. ``Can you drain the extra magic from him?''
+
+Harry started and hurried forward. The centaur shivered as Harry laid
+hands on him, but Harry didn't know if it was from pain or the alien
+touch of a human wizard. He closed his eyes and began to drink, and
+nodded at the slightly sour, slightly salty taste in his throat. Yes,
+this tasted like the artifacts he had drained when the Unspeakables were
+hunting him. The Stone was attempting to age Voldemort, it seemed.
+
+Harry doubted it would work. Given the Horcruxes, Voldemort was
+immortal, and effectively outside the scope of normal time. But the
+Stone had always relied on time magic first, and perhaps did not know
+about the Horcruxes. It had not known about the prophecies that danced
+around Harry until it confronted him in the Department, after all.
+
+Slowly, the extra years sloughed away, and the black centaur danced and
+kicked and stepped away from Harry with a sweeping bow. "Thank you,
+\emph{vates}," he said. ``My name is Corydon, and my life is yours to
+call upon if you will.''
+
+Harry nodded, then turned towards the foals. Moon shook his head,
+however, and moved between him and them. ``The young ones must mature
+again,'' he said. ``The stars declared it long ago, when we first came
+in contact with those who could change us. Forward in time, into a
+future we did not live, we might return. But backwards in time, we must
+grow up with a second past.''
+
+Harry couldn't say that he understood that, but when he caught the
+newly-young centaurs' eyes, they all nodded, so he backed off. He asked
+for a more detailed report, then, but there seemed to be little that
+Moon could tell him that they did not already know. Vines everywhere.
+Voldemort beneath them, draining magic. The Stone sending Time flowing
+through the corridors.
+
+Voldemort a shadow of immense power. Moon had never felt the like, and
+though he hid the fear well, Harry could see it bubbling in the backs of
+his eyes. He had not known that one wizard could be that mighty, and it
+left him afraid for the future of his people. The centaurs had slavery
+or death to fear if Voldemort won, and had had it ever since they chose
+to ally with Harry.
+
+\emph{They knew that, though. They allied with me knowing that.} Harry
+forced himself to think of something other than what would probably
+happen to the centaurs in a dark and distant future, and wrestled his
+mind back to the immediate problem. \emph{How to enter the Ministry, if
+the Stone is making it impossible for anyone but Voldemort, and maybe
+Indigena, to live there?}
+
+They would go to the alley outside the Ministry, he decided at last, and
+choose from there. At the very least, they could send fire down through
+the telephone box shaft and try to burn Indigena's vines, so that if the
+Stone retracted its magic, they would have a clear path to approach.
+
+``Apparate to the alley outside the Ministry,'' he said, raising his
+voice so that everyone could hear him. ``If you don't have a clear
+picture of it or can't Apparate, take the arm of someone who does.'' He
+noticed that Parvati was taking Connor's arm, and that, after a small
+hesitation, Hermione had taken Zacharias's. Harry caught every pair of
+eyes he could, trying to send silent strength and reassurance forth.
+
+No one backed down. No one even really looked away, though he caught
+stray shivers and shudders here and there.
+
+"\emph{Apparate}," Harry said, and closed his eyes, and leaped.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Indigena shivered as the waves of time swept over her, and all the
+flowers in her body closed their petals in the face of winter. An
+immense sleepiness had overcome her. She wanted to lie down, wrap
+herself in warm earth, and not wake until the winds of spring had made
+the air mild again.
+
+A moment later, though, heat and an incredible energy struck---summer.
+Indigena shook her head and forced the weariness away, forced herself to
+remember that her Lord was fighting this enemy a few floors below, and
+might need her.
+
+Then came the dying tints of autumn. Indigena growled under her breath.
+\emph{At least I have perennials and not annuals as the basis of my
+being, or I might have simply withered when the time began to vary. But
+all these changes are still annoying.}
+
+She fought her way against what felt like heavy air---years reversed and
+flowing---towards the lift shafts. Her vines had tied the lifts shut, of
+course, so that the people in them could not escape her Lord's reaping,
+but Indigena could descend beside them, sliding from tendril to tendril.
+
+As she slithered down between one leaf and the next, dropping like a bit
+of dew from a thick strand to a thin one, she felt her Lord gathering
+his strength like an immense maelstrom, preparing to strike at the
+Stone. Indigena frowned as she landed at the bottom of the shaft and
+opened the door. \emph{I wonder how he will do that? The Stone is, after
+all, immune to magic in and of itself.}
+
+A moment later, as she felt the magic heave and surge forward, she had
+her answer. Her Lord was not attacking the Stone directly, from the
+front, but coming around from the back and the side, dropping to the
+tenth level and rising up. Indigena felt the doors to the Department of
+Mysteries buckle, smashing open, unable to stand the tide flowing
+against them.
+
+And then the Stone said, in a voice that echoed throughout the Ministry,
+\emph{Now I am angry}, and the time turned to crushing cold.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Cupressus turned to look around the room, nodding to the family heads
+whose eyes he met. Even Tybalt Starrise, distasteful as it might seem,
+poor heir though he made to his mighty uncle Augustus Starrise, was
+there, and he met Cupressus's gaze with a raised brow and a cocky smile.
+
+At least his Muggleborn partner was quiet, keeping his eyes cast down,
+as befitted someone of his heritage in a room with lines that stretched
+back to the dawning of wizardry in the British Isles.
+
+As for the others, they knew what they were about, and they knew what
+this gathering was about. Augusta Longbottom gave Cupressus a nod.
+Amelia Bones avoided his eyes, since she knew that she had things to be
+ashamed of, but she did not stand and walk from the room. Miriam Smith
+raised a hand in acknowledgment when her turn came to stand subject to
+his gaze. Cupressus gave her a slow nod. Though the Smith family had
+lost in power and prestige over the years, in part because they so
+rarely took political advantage of their descent from Helga Hufflepuff,
+they remained paragons of the culture that was gone. Cupressus had
+always admired the way they raised their children, so that it made
+\emph{sense} for their heirs to take political control at fifteen,
+instead of waiting two more years until the time of their greatest
+magic.
+
+``Listen to me,'' he said, when he thought he had examined the faces of
+everyone who mattered, and the room quieted at once. Augusta Longbottom
+leaned forward. The rest of them showed various signs of listening,
+which contented Cupressus. They would demonstrate their attention more
+clearly in a short time.
+
+``The Ministry has all but fallen,'' he said bluntly. ``Indigena
+Yaxley's vines have, by now, made meals of most of those in the
+building, or held them as meals for her Lord. I rescued the Acting
+Minister, but many others---our friends, our family, and those who made
+decisions---are dead or gone. The Wizengamot was not meeting today, or
+the whole of the wizarding government in Britain might have perished.''
+
+``What about Aurora Whitestag?'' Augusta asked. Cupressus knew she had
+been in contact with Aurora, since she had often written the Ministry in
+the last few months about rights for half-human wizards and witches.
+
+``She is dead,'' Cupressus answered. ``The first victim of Indigena, if
+the wards I set were correct.'' And no one in this room, he knew, would
+question if they were correct. ``That means that either we have no
+government, or we have tatters built on the backs of Acting Minister
+Juniper and the Wizengamot, or---'' And he cocked his head and waited
+for someone else to come to the obvious conclusion.
+
+Amelia Bones, of all people, was the one who found words for it. Of
+course, she had always been quick to leap to conclusions where Harry was
+concerned, Cupressus thought, with pardonable cynicism. "Or we have a
+government built in alliance with the \emph{vates}, and on the shoulders
+of the Light."
+
+"Not just in alliance with the \emph{vates}," said Cupressus. ``Working
+as equal partners with him. We have the Acting Minister still. We need
+not make Harry our Minister, our leader. What matters is that we show a
+strong, guiding hand to bring wizarding Britain through this crisis.''
+
+``Always thinking of the future,'' Miriam Smith murmured from her
+corner.
+
+Cupressus nodded to her. The words were a private joke between them,
+remnants of a time long ago when a violent political disagreement
+between their families had been turned aside by his words. ``Yes. And we
+will need it. I do not think that Harry can rescue the Ministry. I saw
+the vines. There were too many of them, and the attack happened too
+suddenly. If more than a few other wizards escaped, then I will be
+surprised. I nearly did not as it was.''
+
+``Where is the Acting Minister now?'' Tybalt Starrise asked, his head
+cocked and his foot bouncing. Cupressus was impressed to see his partner
+lay his hand on his arm in restraint. \emph{Perhaps that one is not so
+bad an addition to the councils of the Light after all.}
+
+``In a guest room of my home,'' Cupressus said evenly. ``Resting
+comfortably. Sleeping off smoke damage, in fact.''
+
+He could see the opinions darting through the eyes around him. They knew
+what he really meant. And they were considering whether it would be
+worth it to wake Erasmus and demand that he hear what was happening.
+Some of them might think they could better manipulate Erasmus than
+Cupressus, which was certainly true.
+
+Cupressus waited. This was the first test. If they gave in to the
+temptation to achieve personal political goals, they would demand that
+he wake the Acting Minister. If they did not, if they cared more about
+the future of Britain as a whole and what they might build in concert
+with the Dark wizards and Harry, they would let him sleep.
+
+``Why interrupt his well-earned rest?'' Miriam Smith murmured. ``Let him
+sleep.''
+
+``Let him,'' said Augusta.
+
+``Let him,'' echoed half a dozen other voices.
+
+Cupressus inclined his head, the only visible acknowledgment he intended
+to give, but in secret, he was immensely proud of the other wizards and
+witches around him. They had put aside the goals that might have divided
+them, and they were going to pool their strength instead of wielding it
+against each other. He doubted Dark wizards could have done as much.
+
+A spark of loneliness shone in the back of his mind, as always in
+situations like this. \emph{Ignifer should be here, standing beside me,
+to see this. She was my true heir.}
+
+He smothered the spark with the ease of long practice, and nodded to
+Miriam Smith. ``Such an effort as we plan to make must involve the
+cooperation of Ireland and Britain. What say you, my lady, to being the
+British representative of the alliance, while I am the Irish one?''
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Sylvan Yaxley cried out as his hands began to freeze. Oaken replaced
+him, while Sylvan shook off the cold in the other world, but the Lord
+Voldemort knew they must trade places again, and soon. The twins were
+invulnerable to most human spells and curses, the magic of the wizarding
+world, but this winter rising up through the Ministry now was not from
+the wizarding world. It came from another place, one similar to that
+where one twin always hid, and it could not be denied, hidden from, or
+transcended for very long.
+
+It would have frozen his Indigena, too.
+
+But it could not whelm Lord Voldemort, especially not now that he had
+broken the doors of the Department of Mysteries and was flowing into his
+enemy's stronghold, feeling the sharp sparks and spears and spines of
+magic all around him, debating which ones he wanted to swallow.
+
+The Unspeakables dashed out, ready to defend their master. The bindings
+connecting them to the Stone were truly impressive. The Lord Voldemort
+studied them in admiration. When he built his Death Eaters again---when
+he decided that he needed sworn companions---he would adapt some of the
+vows that the Stone had invented, and use them on his own people.
+
+But they were mortal still, and armed with artifacts enchanted by
+ordinary wizards, and Lord Voldemort was not mortal and not an ordinary
+wizard. He swallowed their magic without a pause, and since it was their
+magic that bound them to the Stone, they halted in confusion.
+
+The cold grew worse. Lord Voldemort laughed aloud. He could feel the
+Stone's strange innocence. It worked its experiments, even the ones that
+other humans would consider horrible, in the spirit of pure knowledge.
+That was all it wanted from the prisoners brought into its domain, from
+the artifacts it collected, from the Unspeakables who swore to it.
+Simply to know, to demarcate the boundaries of and \emph{learn} those
+subjects it found interesting.
+
+It did not know evil.
+
+He did.
+
+Lord Voldemort turned his magic to memory, and sent every current of his
+being that had invaded the Department of Mysteries to carry images of
+the things \emph{he} had done, in the pursuit of knowledge. He showed
+the Stone the bones he had removed from living flesh, and the joy he had
+taken as he watched blood spill over his hands, and knew another life
+destroyed. He showed the Stone the branches of magic he had learned in
+the heart of India, knowledge that even its own practitioners had
+declared too dangerous to have at the last. Pain, there was pain, and he
+had caused agony even when he was fairly certain of the answer to his
+researches, for to cause pain was joy.
+
+The Stone connected his blood-soaked tortures to its own blood-soaked
+tortures, and recoiled in confusion. Had it done that, as well? Had its
+actions been evil in the eyes of those who watched it, immoral?
+
+Lord Voldemort laughed, and laughed, and laughed. The Stone was
+retreating before him, pulling its cold into itself as it considered
+this new perspective. The Stone was immortal, immune to magic, but there
+were only two lords that were deathless here, Death and he. He had
+spurned Death, he had defied it, and in a moment he would show the Stone
+how.
+
+And then the moment had come, because on the upper edge of the Ministry
+he felt his heir arrive.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Monika would have attended earlier to the shrill alarm ringing from her
+pool that tracked the activity of Lord Riddle and Harry, but she had
+been elbows-deep in birthing fluid, trying to make sure the crossbred
+\emph{ovantula} survived the half-whale child she was giving birth to.
+As soon as she could, she hurried to the pool, washing her arms clean,
+and watching the images that formed between trailing lines of blood and
+dark purple gore.
+
+The image showed only abstract pictures, a swelling cloud of dark glory
+facing a tiny, gray spark.
+
+Monika straightened. \emph{This is it. This is the moment when the final
+battle comes. It must be. Lord Riddle has attained his highest level of
+power.}
+
+She hurried to fetch the items she would need to interfere in the battle
+anonymously. She would need to be swift, and invisible, or else the Pact
+would notice and condemn her for violating boundaries. But the Pact also
+tended to live with what had happened. If she succeeded, they would
+grumble and scold, but would not offer her actual violence.
+
+Monika smiled a bit. \emph{How could they offer me actual violence? If I
+succeed, I will be the most powerful witch in the world.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``Oh, but I expected she would do something like this.''
+
+The calm words cut through Pamela's swearing, and she turned her head to
+see Alexandre approaching the prophecy-pool. A swirl of gold curled
+above his shoulder, and Pamela eyed it and stepped out of the way. She
+had never liked being near an active prophecy. It tried to bend all the
+people around it to fulfill it. She was free-willed, thank you, and
+believed in free will, not in fate.
+
+"You \emph{expected} it?" Pamela demanded. ``How, when we know that
+Harry threatened her with death if she didn't stay out of Britain?''
+
+Alexandre waved a hand, his eyes intent on the pool. ``Monika always has
+thought she can surpass the limits. She would believe that she was not
+about to be caught even if she saw the Pact Lords and Ladies bellowing
+on her trail. Rules do not apply to her that apply to others. And if she
+can manage to transfer Harry's magic into herself, she may even be
+right. Certainly the Pact would not dare to touch her then, and she
+could command the curses and the creatures that Harry may have set on
+her.''
+
+``I still don't see how you could have foreseen this exact sequence of
+events,'' Pamela murmured, stepping back from the prophecy-pool. She
+felt itchy, wanting to do something, but, of course, if she intervened,
+that would be just as bad as what Monika was doing. Sometimes she hated
+that she had chosen Light when it came time to Declare.
+
+Alexandre touched the active prophecy beside his shoulder and raised an
+eyebrow.
+
+"You're \emph{kidding}," said Pamela, staring.
+
+He made a little moue at her. ``I do wish you wouldn't be so
+undignified,'' he murmured, kneeling. ``A Light Lady should be a bit
+more formal, and I wish that you respected the rules, Seeaborn.''
+
+``There's a prophecy that predicted this?'' Pamela demanded, kneeling
+next to him.
+
+``Just so.'' Alexandre apparently found the pool much more interesting
+to look at.
+
+``And what are we supposed to do about it?''
+
+He turned a lazy smile on her. ``The prophecy predicted that, too.'' He
+reached his hand into the pool, his arm vanishing to the elbow. ``And,
+as it happens, there are many different fates alive in Britain right
+now, and I am a friend to prophecies.''
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+The Stone had already recovered from its shock. Now that it was alive to
+the differences in moral and immoral actions, it wanted to know more
+about them. The Lord Voldemort could feel the deep coil of its interest
+rising like the tide, trying to learn more about him and make him stay
+in one place so that it could do so.
+
+He had already drained most of the artifacts in the Department of
+Mysteries, though, and the majority of his attention was on the surface,
+where his heir was waiting, vulnerable and unsuspecting. How
+\emph{could} he suspect, when the Dark Lord was more powerful than any
+Lord that had ever lived?
+
+Carefully, he Apparated Sylvan, Oaken, and Indigena to safety. He would
+have liked for them to be here to see his triumph, but the cold had
+disabled Indigena completely, and Sylvan and Oaken, though powerful,
+were not Lord-level wizards. They would not understand much of what was
+happening.
+
+Then he tugged on the vines that ran throughout the Ministry. His level
+of understanding of them did not matter. That Indigena was the one who
+had bred them did not matter. What mattered was the level of his magic.
+Magic more than compensated for missing knowledge.
+
+The vines sank more deeply into the stone at his command, and trembled,
+and writhed, and dug their roots in. And then they began to pull, and
+the pulling made the walls of the Ministry sway and crack.
+
+The Ministry was full of Squibs now, people whose magic he had reaped.
+The Lord Voldemort needed it no longer.
+
+He did three things simultaneously then. He rose, moving his body out of
+danger in an Apparition to the surface.
+
+He reached out and began the Heir-Call, pulling powerfully on Harry,
+commanding his heir to come to his side.
+
+And he commanded the vines to bring the Ministry down, stone after
+stone, wall after wall, in a collapse and a roar of rubble on the head
+of the Stone and its Unspeakables and the newly-made Squibs.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 59*: Taken And Snared As a
+Prey}\label{chapter-59-taken-and-snared-as-a-prey}
+
+The title of this chapter again comes from a line in Swinburne's ``Hymn
+to Proserpine,'' the poem the story is titled after: ``The depths stand
+naked in sunder behind it, the storms flee away;/ In the hollow before
+it the thunder is taken and snared as a prey.''
+
+\textbf{Chapter Forty-Six: Taken and Snared As a Prey}
+
+Harry felt caught between a ringing bell and a stabbing sword. The
+twinge in his head was the ringing bell. The voice was the stabbing
+sword, chanting his obligation to Voldemort over and over again.
+
+And now Voldemort had appeared on the surface, his voice roaring in
+laughter, the shadow of his power sweeping the sky like the death of
+hope. Harry could feel the hunger of his open gullet. He'd drained the
+magic of everyone in the Ministry, it seemed, but he would be more than
+happy to make a meal of the wizards and witches who had come with Harry.
+
+And Harry could not \emph{help} them because of this stupid Heir-Call.
+
+Before he could decide what to do, the deserted telephone box collapsed
+into its own shaft. Harry lifted his head, blinking away the tears of
+pain, and tried to determine what had caused that. A vine rose in answer
+from the hole, a flower on the end that waved like a hand, the petals
+opening and closing before they dived back into the ground. Harry heard
+the cracking and rending, then, which could mean only one thing.
+
+\emph{He's bringing the Ministry down.}
+
+And, doubtless, all the people in there whom Voldemort had drained
+hadn't managed to escape before he did it.
+
+Harry lunged forward, his own magic blazing around him. The Heir-Call
+dropped him before he'd run two steps. He heard the continual cracking
+in front of him, but he could hardly see anything through his tears,
+hardly move between the pain in his lungs and the hammer that felt
+poised to smash his skull open.
+
+But he \emph{had} to. He had to save those who couldn't save themselves.
+If his magic couldn't do that, what good was it?
+
+When the voice began its chant again, Harry replied in the words that
+would defeat the Heir-Call, refusing to let himself be cowed or think
+about the consequences that might follow this. ``I deny the claim. I am
+legal heir of the Black line, and now I bind myself to that family of my
+own free will. My name is Harry Black, and Tom Marvolo Riddle has no
+claim on me.''
+
+The pain vanished so suddenly that Harry was left in the middle of what
+felt like an immense silence, though he knew it wasn't. His own gasps
+tore his lungs, now.
+
+But that meant he was free to do what needed to be done.
+
+He rose, his magic and his rage already stirring like ropes around him,
+aiming to reach down the lift shaft and stabilize the Ministry.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+The Lord Voldemort was displeased. \emph{Very} displeased. He had not
+imagined that his heir, usually so stubborn, would choose \emph{now} to
+give in and be difficult about the claim that his Lord did have on him,
+and had had on him since that fateful night in Godric's Hollow. Briefly,
+he considered reaching out to the third.
+
+Then he disdained the idea. Far better to save that for a moment when
+Harry could concentrate on it, and would collapse in perfect despair.
+For now, Harry was too concerned about the dying Squibs to notice
+anything else.
+
+Of course, the Lord Voldemort could always increase his despair over
+this event. Not for nothing was he called the Dark Lord. Dark his heart,
+and dark his power, and dark his vows, and dark his glee when he saw
+someone else unable to do that which was most important in the world to
+them.
+
+So he struck Harry with his magic. He had grown mighty; it barely needed
+a thought to bind Harry's limbs, or to mimic the vines that Indigena had
+once bred for him and declare that his wandless magic could not fly
+beyond a certain limit from his body. Harry tumbled to the ground like
+an ice statue, though the Lord Voldemort knew it was his heart and not
+his body that would shatter when he landed. He leaned back and prepared
+to watch, disregarding the rushing of the wizards and witches beyond
+Harry. \emph{They} did not matter, not when none of them would know how
+to hurt him if the solution pranced in front of them.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry screamed, but only in his head; his voice seemed to have ended,
+too. He threw himself against his bonds again and again, his anger
+increasing each time, fury spreading over his mind like a cloud. He
+\emph{had} to do something. This wasn't like the graveyard, where he had
+stayed helpless while the werewolves devoured a little boy. That was
+when Voldemort had the power of Midsummer behind him. This time, he did
+not---it was no significant day, not even Midwinter---and so that meant
+that Harry should fulfill his duty and \emph{defeat him}.
+
+But the bonds did not yield for all Harry's desperate reasoning. He
+called up his magic and pulled on the tunnel that connected it to
+Voldemort, and still it did not increase. The bonds themselves seemed to
+hold his magic separate from Voldemort's for now, as in a glass cage.
+
+The hole in the ground roared, and then the stones around the place
+where the telephone box had stood began to crumble and sway and drop
+into the gap. Dust swirled in the air, blanketing the exact
+circumstances from Harry's sight, but he had ears, and they told him
+well enough what was happening.
+
+The Ministry was collapsing. He heard stone shrieking, iron buckling,
+wood snapping and groaning under the intense pressure---or maybe those
+were people shrieking, skulls buckling, bones snapping and groaning. His
+own yells obscured some of the more delicate distinctions between
+sounds. He had never pulled as hard, never strained as hard, as he did
+against the bonds. He \emph{had} to get free. Or he \emph{had} to wake
+and find that this was a bad dream, that Voldemort hadn't really managed
+to destroy the Ministry and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives inside
+it.
+
+But he did not wake, and the sounds went on rising from the hole. Groan
+and snap and buckle and shatter, and the Ministry fell and fell, and
+still Harry was on the lip of the hole with the bonds of magic wreathed
+tight around him, with Voldemort laughing in his ears.
+
+Voldemort laughing.
+
+Harry turned to face him. He was a crouched white shape to the left of
+Harry, a short distance from the pit, leaning forward. Whether he had a
+snake around his waist, concealed in the folds of his flowing robe, or
+whether his magic saw for him, Harry did not know, and did not care. It
+was obvious that his enemy was savoring his expression, whichever way he
+took it in.
+
+Harry had a moment where even the fact of death in front of him seemed
+less important than their observation of one another.
+
+And then he fell over the edge into hatred.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Minerva stepped carefully away from the rest of the children, though her
+instincts shouted at her to stay near them in case a spell should
+strike. She didn't think they would move. They stood still with
+fascinated horror---all but Draco Malfoy, who strained against a wall of
+magic that wouldn't let him dart forward and aid Harry. But no one was
+paying attention to her, even when she drew her wand and leveled it at
+Voldemort.
+
+She knew she might die. There was a deep calm in the middle of her that
+accepted that possibility. But at least she wouldn't die on a bed in the
+hospital wing, swallowing potions and complaining about the taste of
+them to Poppy. She knew that Poppy wouldn't understand her determination
+not to do that. But then, Poppy had never been a Gryffindor, had never
+known that intense longing to die on her feet.
+
+Severus, at least, was watching her. Minerva would recognize that
+burning gaze on her back anywhere.
+
+Harry pulled and writhed in midair, screaming in a voice from which the
+sanity had gone. Minerva did not know how Voldemort was holding him, but
+it obviously involved magic, and it had obviously been effective. It had
+kept from diving into the Ministry to save anyone.
+
+\emph{The Ministry. All those poor people---}
+
+Minerva put the thought from her head. She had to think about the here
+and now, the way she had after the Children's Massacre when she'd
+carefully taken the Muggleborn children, still living, down from their
+crosses. That had been Evan Rosier's work, but it had been done on the
+orders of his master. And now that master was in front of her, and she
+had a chance to make a difference against him, but not if she lost
+herself in mourning.
+
+A distraction. That was all she could be against a wizard whose power
+brooded fit to crush her mind, but that might be all she needed to be,
+when Harry danced on the edge of breaking free.
+
+She Transfigured Voldemort's left foot into a rat. There came a pained
+squeal from under his robe, and then the rat bit his leg in the
+desperate scramble for light and air. Minerva smiled. She knew that
+spell well. It had disabled more than one Death Eater, in the days when
+she was still fighting them.
+
+Those days of the First War seemed almost innocent, considering what lay
+before them now.
+
+Voldemort turned his attention to her. Minerva stared into his face, a
+bit surprised to find herself almost fearless. She could feel his magic,
+yes, but what she \emph{saw} was his eyes, burned and destroyed by the
+venom of the Many cobras. Harry had been the one to execute that plan
+when he was fifteen. No matter how hard he struggled, Voldemort kept
+losing to a teenage boy.
+
+And Minerva was sure that the same thing would happen now.
+
+Even as Voldemort's magic sought and found her weakness, even as the
+crushing pain in her heart began, she felt magic travel past her like
+snapped rope, and knew that Harry was free. And she could imagine the
+anger and the brewing hatred that he would bear, having heard more than
+a thousand people die.
+
+Harry threw the hatred directly into Voldemort's face.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Monika was wise enough to land a long way from the battle. Though she
+doubted the Muggles knew what was going on, and even some weaker wizards
+and witches would only shiver and complain of a coldness in the air, any
+Lord or Lady would feel the immense amounts of power being tossed about.
+By the feel of it, the scent of it, Lord Riddle had reaped more than a
+thousand wizards and witches.
+
+Monika stood there for a moment with a smile on her face, her eyes
+closed. \emph{How wonderful it must be to have the} absorbere
+\emph{gift}. \emph{He enacts the dominance that the rest of us only
+dream of. The rest of the world is his prey, and when he is not stopped
+by interfering children or prophecies, they know it.}
+
+She shook herself out of her preoccupation, and knelt down to place the
+small silver statues she'd enchanted on the ground. The first was a
+perfect replica of Lord Riddle, with the information she'd discovered
+about his childhood carved on it. That had not been easy to come by, but
+it was worth paying spies in Britain itself and observing Harry's
+movements. A journey he'd taken to an insignificant orphanage had
+yielded a treasure trove of information.
+
+The second statute represented Harry, and Monika had managed to carve
+far more information on that one, because Harry was more open about
+himself. Monika shook her head sadly. She would have advised him not to
+be, but, of course, after today, he wouldn't be in a state to listen to
+her advice.
+
+The air around her turned cold and dark with power. Monika paused,
+cocking her head. It seemed that Harry had broken free of Riddle's hold
+and was wheeling against him. Monika shook her head again. Under the
+circumstances, it was as ridiculous as a dog attacking an elephant. He
+would never survive, save for her interference, and he should know that.
+He should have fled, forsaken the dead and worked to save the living.
+She was a bit surprised that he could so give up his own principles.
+
+She turned back to her work, pulling the tapeworm that would feed her
+Harry's magic from her robe pocket. She let it coil around the silver
+statue of Harry for now. She could not send it \emph{into} him until
+Harry had both survived the battle and imbibed the magic. Her task was
+to make that a bit easier.
+
+The second creature she drew out had taken her some time and effort to
+breed. She knew as much about snakes as any other living creature, but
+Lord Riddle was a Parselmouth, which had changed her calculations and
+made the first serpents she created not strong enough. She touched the
+small head of the jade serpent now and whispered instructions to it,
+crooning love and praise. The little snake yawned, patches of gold
+fluttering on her head, fangs extending from her upper lip. Monika knelt
+and wound her about Lord Riddle's statue, where she would stay until the
+moment Monika told her to strike.
+
+Then she stepped back and looked up at the sky, the swirling gray clouds
+that Muggle would call bad weather and she knew were power.
+
+``Don't worry, Harry,'' she murmured. ``Auntie Monika's coming to rescue
+you. And then drain you, but, of course, one can't have everything.''
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry had never hated so much.
+
+He wanted Voldemort to \emph{suffer}. He had always disdained torture,
+because it put off the deaths of enemies who could cause more trouble in
+the meantime, and it was often used as misplaced vengeance. And he had
+feared the impulse that he had sometimes found in himself, to revel in
+pain.
+
+Now he reveled in \emph{it}. And he fully saw why some other people
+wanted their enemies to suffer. But no one, he was sure, had ever
+deserved it as much as Voldemort.
+
+The moment he was free of the bonds, thanks to Voldemort's distraction,
+he lunged at him and began to tear, ripping magic from him like strips
+of flesh, pulling it to himself and winding it into his being. The
+technique he had learned when he was studying Parseltongue magic, to
+divide his \emph{absorbere} gift into many small snakes and set them on
+his target from several different directions, he used now, but he had as
+many as thirty snakes moving all around Voldemort, taking any magic they
+could and channeling it directly back to Harry. He could control them,
+when he would never have dared anything like this when he was facing
+Slytherin, because his anger made it impossible for him to seek a lesser
+punishment.
+
+The magic that flowed him into came from people drained and murdered,
+used as sources for their magic. The paths of their lives were ended
+now, and what they might have been, wonderful or evil or helpful to
+others or merely the cause of amusement and a smile once a day, would
+never be known.
+
+That \emph{maddened} Harry.
+
+He ran around and around his magical parent. He could feel Voldemort's
+amusement, now that he had recovered from his indignation at having his
+foot transformed into a rat. Voldemort was strong, and Harry was small.
+All he had to do was crush Harry.
+
+\emph{If he can catch me.}
+
+Harry was small, but he was quick. And he had a natural visualization
+for speed, here in this world of the imagination where what you imagined
+yourself doing was what mattered: flight on a broomstick. He thought of
+himself as swooping around Voldemort, chasing a Snitch which was
+vengeance for the dead, and he drained magic again and again, because
+Voldemort just thought of him as an annoyance and not a threat.
+
+In fact, Voldemort was laughing again. And Harry saw a hole in his
+defenses, a relaxation that he should never have shown.
+
+In a flash, Harry pounced and closed his little snakes' teeth on the
+magic revealed through that hole; he reached out and captured the
+elusive Snitch of power that he'd wanted to catch.
+
+The hole opened almost straight to Voldemort's magical core, the remnant
+of a tunnel he'd placed to allow the swallowed magic easy access. It was
+one thing that made him powerful.
+
+And Harry ripped it straight out of him.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+The Lord Voldemort lost his amusement again.
+
+His heir should know better. He should have given up. He should have
+come to the Heir-Call, and let his Lord have him. It was what he
+\emph{must} do, since his power was shared, his life was a gift, and his
+principles had not prevented such numerous and savage deaths.
+
+He was not supposed to lock his serpents' teeth on what felt like a
+nerve, and in reality was a pure shred of power, and tug it away from
+him.
+
+The Lord Voldemort staggered, and watched as the magic coiled around his
+heir's body, traveling down the tunnel, sticking closely to the boy as
+if that was where it had always intended to end up. He opened his mouth
+to scream, which would be followed by an attack so spectacular that
+Harry would have to give up.
+
+And then someone else screamed, and his sight briefly fled as a claw
+traveled down the middle of his forehead, marking and scarring the skin.
+Blood flowed into his eyes, which pure balls of power had begun to
+regenerate. No magic could repair the effects of the Many cobras'
+poison, but it could grow brand-new eyes if enough power was
+concentrated in the right place.
+
+In the moment of his distraction, Harry seized another shred of power,
+and then attacked the Lord Voldemort's body itself, trying to tear apart
+his midriff under the robe he wore---and the robe was not fine enough
+for the most powerful wizard in the world; he would have to see about
+getting something better.
+
+Shaking the blood off, the Lord Voldemort saw a bird wheeling in front
+of him with a lizard's tail, claws on its wings, teeth in its beak. It
+screamed at him, and this time wheeled in to trail a talon across his
+right hand, opening a wound there, too. Coming a second time, its
+screech had the sound of satisfaction.
+
+The Lord Voldemort ignored it for now. This bird was the representative
+of the connection between himself and his heir, and of course it would
+favor Harry, because magic was supposed to flow in one direction, not
+the other. But that didn't mean that it would give Harry the victory in
+this battle, and he could not allow it to distract him from winning.
+
+He was going to win.
+
+He could simply let his titanic power fall on Harry, crushing him out of
+existence, but he preferred not to do that; he might lose some of the
+magic that lived in Harry himself, that power he'd been born with. And
+the Lord Voldemort wanted it all. Harry was his most precious meal, if
+he could not become his most precious pawn and toy.
+
+He might still be a pawn and a toy. He had resisted the Heir-Call, but
+the Lord Voldemort could feel the hatred coming from his heir's
+direction. He had fallen into loathing, abandoned his soul, and thus his
+principles, for the sheer chance to attack.
+
+And he still had the scar on his forehead.
+
+The Lord Voldemort began to perform the same spell that had enslaved his
+traitorous children to him again, the spell that depended on the hatred
+living in a person's soul and a mark that connected him or her to the
+Dark Lord.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Connor didn't \emph{care} that Snape was trying to make them all stay
+still, or that Parvati was holding on to his arm hard enough to cut off
+the blood flowing to his hand. He \emph{had} to go and check that
+Headmistress McGonagall was all right. She had just crumpled to the
+ground after casting that Transfiguration spell at Voldemort, and it
+wasn't right that she was lying there all by herself, without anyone to
+check on her health.
+
+He took a step forward, and dragged Parvati with him. ``Where are you
+going?'' she yelled, leaning close to his ear to do it.
+
+Connor winced. \emph{She doesn't need to yell that loud.} The noises of
+cracking and crashing from the Ministry---well, where the Ministry had
+been---had retreated far underground now, and no more stones showed a
+sign of crumbling into the hole from the alley itself.
+
+Except that---well, there was something else in the air. Connor supposed
+it was the sheer pressure from two competing, fighting Lord-level
+wizards. He could not really hear the magic, but his ears constantly
+popped, and it raced along his skin like rasping claws. It felt like the
+silence just before or after an immense storm. There was the temptation
+to shout, even though the silence that received their words still
+sounded like silence.
+
+``To help McGonagall!'' he shouted back. ``Come with me if you're
+coming!''
+
+Parvati, luckily, decided that she was no coward and would join him, so
+she set her feet and came with him. It felt like bearing into a wind,
+Connor thought, which made it all the more confusing to feel only still
+air against their faces.
+
+He did pause on the way there to watch a shallow, bleeding wound appear
+across Voldemort's left hand. He shook his head. Was Harry causing that?
+Why didn't he strike harder than that?
+
+Of course, maybe that was as hard as he could strike. Maybe he had
+tried, and he couldn't do anything else.
+
+Connor shivered, and turned his attention back to McGonagall. She lay
+curled around her heart, in a position that should have made her seem
+frail and helpless. But she wasn't. She had fallen like a lioness, and
+if she was dead, Connor knew, she had died like a Gryffindor.
+
+Was she dead, though? Connor didn't know. He crouched down beside her,
+one eye on Voldemort, his ears alive to the eerie stillness of the air
+that spoke of rushing power somewhere just beyond his hearing, and
+turned the Headmistress over, prying at the hold she had on her heart.
+
+Her hands fell limp when he tugged hard enough. Her face was still, her
+lips nearly blue. But Connor thought he could see the pulse fluttering
+at the base of her throat even now, and that meant he could probably
+save her life, and that he had a duty to save it.
+
+He took a deep breath, concentrating on his most recent Defense Against
+the Dark Arts lessons, and told Parvati, ``Keep watch.'' She tossed him
+a dirty look---she was already standing over him with her wand out---but
+Connor didn't stop to reassure her or listen to any complaints she might
+have.
+
+Peter's voice sounded in his head, calm and decisive, telling him what
+to do if he found someone almost dead and wounded, in need of immediate
+assistance. \emph{Perform the Life Jolt Spell if you can. It gives them
+enough of a shock to bring them back to consciousness, sometimes, and
+gives them enough adrenaline to reach shelter.}
+
+Connor was unsure if it would work with someone who appeared to have had
+a heart attack, but he didn't care. He had no better ideas, so he placed
+his wand above the Headmistress's heart and spoke the spell, enunciating
+the first word carefully, just the way Peter had taught them.
+"\emph{Vexatio vitae!}"
+
+McGonagall gasped, and then began to cough. Connor felt the magic travel
+into her as a golden pulse a moment later, and he grabbed her hands as
+her eyes fluttered open, slinging her arms around his neck. ``Come on,''
+he whispered, hoping his voice was properly soothing, but also conveyed
+urgency. ``Come with me. We have to get you to safety.''
+
+She limped with him towards the others. Professor Snape was striding out
+to help them by then, and Connor willingly handed her over. He could
+feel Parvati's pride at his back, and his heart was beating with pride
+of its own.
+
+Then he turned, to see if he could aid his brother.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry knew he was drowning in his hatred, but he could not help it.
+
+He loathed Voldemort with a coldness that startled him, that went deeper
+into him than bone or magic could go. The emotion was as cold as steel
+in the middle of a winter day, plates of metal that had replaced his
+blood. How could he have done that? How could he have brought down the
+Ministry on the heads of thousands of helpless people? That was the
+refrain that beat through and around Harry's pulse.
+
+And thus he felt the hatred beginning to settle around him as chains,
+thanks to agony centered in his scar.
+
+He tried to fight back, but Voldemort gave him, gleefully, the image of
+a witch cowering as he tore her magic away and then the ceiling above
+her began to sway and creak, and Harry was lost again. If he did not
+hate someone who had done that, then what was he?
+
+On the other hand, if he let Voldemort take him and use him as a weapon
+against his allies, then what was he but a liability who should be
+destroyed?
+
+He tried to shore up the defenses of his mind, reaching for his love of
+Connor and Draco and Snape, and Voldemort promptly struck at his
+weakened walls. He still had all that magic to use, and though his power
+would grow unimaginably great if he could manage to add Harry's magic to
+it, it was just on the edge of imaginably great right now.
+
+Harry's thoughts sprang lightly among options. If he could create a trap
+that would draw Voldemort in, and hold him there while he did something
+that would kill himself---
+
+But there he ran up against the walls of prophecy again, because if he
+had to be alive to fight and kill Voldemort, he could not commit
+suicide.
+
+He was rapidly approaching the place where he would cause more harm
+alive than dead, though, the tipping point he had once warned Joseph
+about. Harry hated the choice that lay before him, but he feared that he
+must make it, while he was still sane enough and free enough of
+Voldemort's influence to make it at all.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Alexandre carried them through the prophecy-pool into the brooding gray
+air above Muggle London. Pamela was not quite sure if they were
+physically present, traveling through the pool in the way that Alexandre
+traveled secure in the arms of a failed prophecy, or if this was merely
+an extremely realistic image, but she felt air whistling along the sides
+of her face and ruffling her hair. That was realistic enough for her,
+she thought.
+
+``Where is Monika?'' she asked.
+
+Alexandre turned his head, following the course of no magic visible to
+her. Pamela clutched the edge of the pool as the vision swooped up and
+down the streets of London, feeling a bit dizzy. She didn't want to fall
+in, just in case it was real and she did lose her life on concrete and
+cobblestones.
+
+``There,'' said Alexandre suddenly, and pointed towards a corner. The
+vision obligingly stooped closer, and, sure enough, Pamela could make
+out Monika, crouched over what looked like a pair of statues twined with
+snakes, and now and then checking the sky for signals that Pamela
+couldn't see any more than she could see the clues Alexandre was
+following.
+
+``She's trying to use sympathetic magic,'' Alexandre said clinically.
+``She'll open a hole in Tom's magical core, I would suspect, and let
+Harry defeat him, temporarily. Then she'll drain Harry's magic with that
+tapeworm she has.'' He shrugged when Pamela stared at him. ``Yes, it
+will take almost all her magic, and if she leaps into the battle like
+that, she stands a high chance of getting killed. But it's a way to get
+around the fact that Tom still has Horcruxes she doesn't know about.
+Technically, he would still be alive, but she would destroy him by
+depriving him of magic. And she would utterly destroy Harry, of course,
+once she didn't need him as a conduit to pass the magic along.''
+
+``She's mad,'' said Pamela quietly, eyes fixed on the woman who knelt in
+the midst of her own blowing black hair.
+
+``To challenge a prophecy? Quite so.'' Alexandre turned to smile at her,
+and Pamela was a little stunned at the brightness of his face. Of
+course, he was in the midst of a place where fate ran incredibly high,
+and perhaps that revitalized him as few things could have done. ``I wish
+you could see prophecies, Seaborn. They fill the air here like
+birds-of-paradise. And this one is especially happy to be in the company
+of others of its kind.'' He sighed longingly and touched the shimmer of
+yellow above his shoulder. ``For permission to visit Britain, when the
+prophecies are in season!''
+
+``Shouldn't you do something soon?'' Pamela demanded. Monika had begun
+to touch the statues and chant words under her breath, words that didn't
+sound like either Latin or German. Pamela though they might be Gothic,
+an old language that some wizards had refashioned as a magical tongue
+before Latin took over.
+
+``The prophecy will tell us to wait for the right moment,'' Alexandre
+murmured, tilting his head to the side. ``Unfortunately, I can do
+nothing to aid Harry in his battle against Lord Riddle. I am here only
+to stop Monika.'' He sat up, his eyes wide and his nostrils flaring.
+"And the moment for that is---\emph{now.}"
+
+Pamela did not expect him to grab her hand and force her to participate
+in the bolt of white lightning he hurled at Monika.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco did not know what exactly was happening. To his eyes, Harry simply
+writhed from side to side, staring at Voldemort the entire time, and
+Voldemort stared back. He could feel tides of magic sloshing back and
+forth over his head, but to try to comprehend them would crush his
+brain. If Harry needed him, he could not tell. It was all very
+frustrating.
+
+But there was a brain nearby that could comprehend them.
+
+Draco closed his eyes and jumped into Harry's brain. It was the mind he
+knew best, besides his own, and over the years since he had acquired the
+possession gift, he had become adept at slipping in without a ripple, or
+he would not have dared to interfere in the middle of a battle so
+important.
+
+What he found appalled him. Harry was struggling against guilt and
+hatred caused by the myriad deaths in the Ministry, deaths he felt
+responsible for, because he could have broken free of Voldemort's hold
+and saved them in time---he thought. If his power could not save lives,
+what good was it?
+
+And from there, what Voldemort was doing was all too apparent. Harry
+hated him, much as he had that night on the Astronomy Tower when
+Scrimgeour had been assassinated. Voldemort had Harry on chains and was
+reeling him in.
+
+Draco dared not possess Harry, not when it would involve distraction and
+magic that he did not know how to wield with the same instinctive
+control as Harry. He could do nothing but remind him of love.
+
+He spread shimmering images of their joining rituals throughout Harry's
+brain: that first Walpurgis with its nervous dance, the July ritual when
+they had seen the Light and Darkness in each other's souls, the
+Halloween when Harry had finally yielded to some of the barriers
+breaking in himself, the Imbolc when Harry had shown that he fought like
+a tree, the Walpurgis when Harry had taken the lead, the July when Harry
+had come into his power and his knowledge of Draco's virtues at the same
+moment, and Halloween, this Halloween, when Draco had finally seen some
+signs that his lover actually \emph{lusted} after him.
+
+All were wonderful. All were symbols of their lives together. And, Draco
+asked in silence as he dug at the memories and sent them to the surface
+of Harry's mind, would he really give everything they had survived
+together up for the chance of getting revenge on Voldemort? He knew
+better than that. He had taught his allies better than that, in fact. He
+should know better, and come with Draco.
+
+Harry paused, hovering, the chains on his mind melting as Draco's
+influence began to strike through the gloom in his thoughts.
+
+And then Voldemort decided to attack Draco's body.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Monika reeled, and a shriek exploded from her throat. She could not help
+screaming. She had never expected a lightning bolt to launch from the
+sky just during the most delicate part of the spell and melt the silver
+figurines she had molded to take the places of Lord Riddle and Harry.
+
+She stood, eyes narrowed, searching the air. When she found who had done
+this---
+
+The people who had done this were gazing down at her from a hole just
+above her. One of them was not a surprise; Pamela Seaborn had disliked
+Monika for decades, and Monika returned the favor with interest. But
+Alexandre rarely acted against anyone in the Pact, and that he would do
+so when Monika was a Dark Lady, as he was a Dark Lord, was doubly
+surprising.
+
+``You have crossed the line of the Pact's acceptable interference,''
+said Alexandre calmly. ``You have come to another Lord's country
+uninvited---in fact, against his command to keep out---and you would
+have taken his magic from him if you could.'' He appeared careless of
+the battle that swirled behind him, never looking away from her. ``Let
+us tell them, Monika, and you will never have a chance to fight before
+the rest of them blast you out of existence. They would have accepted
+your interference if you had succeeded, doubtless, but you didn't.''
+
+Monika bared her teeth. What Alexandre said was true enough. But---
+
+``Harry is not a Lord,'' she said. It was the technicality that she had
+counted on, if worst came to worst, to keep her from savage punishment.
+Yes, a Lord had the right to keep all other Lords and Ladies out of his
+country, but Harry had not Declared and had not claimed the title that
+would give him that right.
+
+``He is accepted as such by the Pact, until they decide what else to do
+with him.'' Alexandre gave her a lazy smile. ``And the others will take
+revenge on you, especially since you tried to attack him in the middle
+of a battle with a Lord they don't want to face themselves,
+unless\ldots{}'' He let the offer dangle.
+
+Monika bared her teeth. \emph{Bastard.} He was going to blackmail her,
+of course. It was what Monika would have done in his place. But that did
+not mean that she enjoyed being in this position any more. ``What do you
+want?''
+
+"You will \emph{stay} out of Britain for the duration of this crisis,"
+said Alexandre. ``In fact, you will accept an Unassailable Curse from me
+that will hurt you if you come within a hundred miles of the island's
+shores. Also, you will give me the unicorns that I know you have
+captured.''
+
+Monika clenched her hands. ``What do you want with them?''
+
+``That isn't important to you.'' Alexandre smiled at her. "Just imagine
+what Coatlicue will do with this information, Monika. What \emph{Elena}
+will do. She has been waiting for an excuse to hurt you for some time,
+you know. She does not forgive insults easily."
+
+The Dark Lady of Peru was not a threat that Monika needed to be handed
+right now, she thought grumpily. But it was also an effective one. Elena
+was slavering to get her hands on Monika's blood, and had been ever
+since Monika had stolen some valuable magical artifacts from under her
+nose and escaped punishment on a technicality. She would urge the Pact
+to demand death.
+
+``I accept your terms,'' she said grudgingly.
+
+``Good,'' said Alexandre, and dropped into the incantation of the
+Unassailable Curse. Monika eyed the slagged remains of her silver
+statues with regret in the few moments before she Apparated away.
+
+\emph{It was a good plan.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+The Lord Voldemort was so far from pleased that he could see over the
+edge into true anger and disgust. His heir was not behaving as he
+should. And now he was remembering love too easily, a sure sign that his
+interfering lover rode with him. That meant the lover was not in his
+body, though, and so the Dark Lord could much more easily hurt the young
+Malfoy.
+
+He made a feint in that direction, and Harry, unsurprisingly, sent a
+charging wave of magic to get between him and the body. The wave
+manifested as a snarling creature, half snake and half lion, singing
+with a phoenix's voice. The Lord Voldemort was tired of such antics,
+however, and destroyed the creature with a single blow.
+
+The phoenix voice was the only thing he could not destroy. It went on
+ringing, rising from the air midway between the Lord Voldemort and
+Malfoy's body, sending cascades of Light into his brain. He hovered,
+waiting for it to be finished, building his strength as he did so. He
+would strike when Harry's magic wearied, as it must, or when Harry
+actually had the audacity to believe that he had driven his magical
+parent away from attacking.
+
+Then sight was gone.
+
+The Lord Voldemort's first belief was that Harry had found a way to
+blind him again, perhaps by draining the magic that had gathered in his
+eye-sockets. But then he felt cold around him, cold more profound than
+Harry could summon even in the midst of rage, and he knew what this was.
+
+\emph{You promised me that I could have his soul,} the voice of the wild
+Dark screamed in his mind. \emph{You were to take his magic alone. But
+now I find you trying to take soul and body and magic and all. I will
+not have it. His voice is beautiful, and the one who sings like a
+phoenix is mine! In soul,} it added conscientiously.
+
+The Lord Voldemort held very still. He could feel the wild Dark stalking
+all around him, manticore paws rising and falling in patterns that
+imitated those forming in the middle of the blood-and-flesh design on
+the floor of his home. The bad thing about encouraging its fascination
+with Harry, he decided, was that it then thought of Harry as its
+possession. And the wild Dark was very protective of its possessions,
+until the moment when it decided it didn't want them any more.
+
+\emph{Midwinter,} the wild Dark decided. \emph{You can have his magic at
+Midwinter. For now, go home, little snake.}
+
+And the Lord Voldemort found himself flung spiraling after his Death
+Eaters, his magic unbraiding behind him as Harry lunged at the exact
+same moment, sank snake fangs in, and hung on, helpless, impotent rage
+filling him.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry opened his eyes slowly. He stood on the ground outside the immense
+hole that had been the Ministry with Draco in his arms. His own magic
+had increased enough to snap at the air around him. His phoenix song
+still warbled from his throat, low and rusty, but loud enough to make
+the point.
+
+Voldemort was gone. And not far away stood the wild Dark in the form of
+a manticore, with an enchanted look on its face.
+
+It paced towards him. Harry stared up at it, but didn't stop singing. He
+knew his voice was probably what had attracted the wild Dark in the
+first place, and the only thing keeping them safe.
+
+\emph{Well. For some version of ``safe.''}
+
+The wild Dark lowered its scorpion tail and caressed the side of Harry's
+face with the sting. Harry tried not to think about what would happen if
+the tail moved just a little and sank through his cheek, or if the wild
+Dark grew bored and began attacking the people with him. He kept
+singing, and the sting fell down and rested in the hollow of his throat.
+
+\emph{Midwinter,} said the wild Dark, in a voice that played his bones
+like gongs. \emph{Midwinter is when I shall have you, to sing for me
+like a caged bird. Until then, little one, sing on.}
+
+It was gone, then, and Harry could see the others, shivering and rubbing
+their arms, alive with gooseflesh. Draco blinked and pushed against his
+arms, letting Harry know he'd returned to his body. Only then did Harry
+feel free to stop singing, and to step away and let Draco stand on his
+own.
+
+``Voldemort's gone?'' Padma whispered, as if she couldn't believe it.
+
+Harry nodded in silence, and looked at the hole where the Ministry had
+been. Now that he had the ability to do so, he let his magic range into
+it, looking for some sign that someone had survived it.
+
+Nothing. Silence. No one. All had died when the walls and the ceilings
+fell on them. Voldemort would have made sure of that, of course, not
+wanting anyone to be spared, even for further torment later. He knew it
+would hurt Harry more if everyone perished.
+
+``Voldemort's gone,'' he said, and his voice was hoarse and raspy and
+sounded like a dying cricket's. ``But this cannot, in any sense, be
+called a victory.''
+
+The Ministry was gone, he thought as he turned away from the hole. The
+foundation of wizarding government, the greatest guarantee of stability
+in their world, had been smashed, and Voldemort still had most of the
+magic he'd managed to reap from the people who worked there.
+
+And Midwinter was a month away.
+
+Harry lifted his shoulders against the darkness, because someone had to
+do so. The suicidal part of himself was shut in a small cage and would
+have to remain there, for now. He didn't have the time to deal with it.
+
+``Back to Hogwarts,'' he commanded, and after a look at his face, no one
+questioned him, or even tried to approach him. Harry stood alone at the
+edge of the hole for a moment, his head bowed.
+
+He could still hear the walls snapping like bones, if he listened.
+
+He could still feel the wild Dark's scorpion sting on his cheek.
+
+He Apparated.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 60*: In the Wake of
+Wildness}\label{chapter-60-in-the-wake-of-wildness}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Forty-Seven: In the Wake of Wildness}
+
+Rita had not expected to be summoned, especially not with the amulet
+that she'd given Harry so long ago. Why would he call her now? There was
+so much to be done, since she'd seen the dust swirling up from the
+Ministry and received at least that much confirmation that a major
+attack had taken place. She needed to buzz about the ruins and interview
+survivors. She didn't need to Apparate to Hogwarts and then fly up to
+the Astronomy Tower, which was the only place the wards would permit her
+to approach in her Animagus form.
+
+Her mind changed when she landed and saw Harry waiting for her, though.
+His face was imperious, shut, behind the marks of tears. That meant
+something \emph{enormous} had happened. He was preparing to send a
+public statement to the press and the wizarding world, Rita understood
+then, not only the article she had envisioned. She changed back to
+human, sitting on the battlements, and took out her quill and her
+parchment without even asking what it was about.
+
+``The Ministry has fallen,'' Harry said.
+
+Rita had always imagined she would immediately write down any such
+momentous news, but instead her quill froze, because she could not
+believe what Harry had said was true. It \emph{had} to be wrong, didn't
+it? The Minister might be dead, there might have been an attack by Death
+Eaters that left a hundred people killed or wounded, but the Ministry
+could not have \emph{fallen}.
+
+``What do you mean?'' she asked. She was pleased that her voice did not
+shake. At least part of her fantasies of what would happen when she
+wrote down the most shattering story of her career was intact.
+
+``I mean that the Ministry has fallen.'' Harry had two people at his
+shoulders, one a dark-haired young wizard Rita had seen before, one a
+golden-haired witch she didn't know as well, who glared at her as if she
+should be imprisoned for daring to question their leader. Harry himself
+didn't waver. He just looked her in the face and repeated that
+impossible news again. ``I mean that the wizarding government is
+homeless now, though the Acting Minister escaped alive, and since the
+Wizengamot did not meet today, any of its members not in the building at
+the time of the collapse also still live. But Voldemort brought the
+building down. It has fallen. I searched, with my magic, for anyone
+other than the Acting Minister who might have escaped.'' He took a deep
+breath. ``There were no survivors.''
+
+``How many dead?'' Rita whispered. She had begun to write, but she felt
+almost as if her hand were part of another body, detached from her,
+while her ears remained to listen.
+
+``In the high hundreds at least,'' said Harry. ``Perhaps as many as a
+thousand. I didn't count them. I was more interested in whether or not
+someone lived in the rubble.'' He shook his head. ``And no one did.''
+
+``How am I going to spin this?'' Rita resisted the urge to throw one
+hand up in the air, because that would just be silly. "I can't just---I
+can't go to the \emph{Prophet} and print a story this bleak without some
+factor to mitigate its bleakness."
+
+Harry raised an eyebrow and stepped towards her. Rita found herself
+mesmerized by the depth of his eyes. Of course, looking back later, she
+wasn't sure she saw the strength in them that she imagined there. It
+could easily have been that she saw what she needed to see, what she
+wanted to see.
+
+``I have absolute faith in you,'' Harry told her. ``If anyone can make a
+story like this sound less bleak, you can. While still telling the
+truth, of course.'' A small smile curled his mouth. ``Didn't you say
+that you wanted to tell the truth and look good while doing it, Rita?''
+
+\emph{He still remembers.} She'd expressed the ambition to him more than
+three years ago, and so was slightly surprised that he did. But---well,
+perhaps he had people to remember it for him. As powerful as he'd
+become, Rita wouldn't be surprised.
+
+``You think I can?'' she said.
+
+"I \emph{know} that you can." Harry tilted his head. ``I've seen you
+rescue the wizarding world from impossible situations before. Words are
+your playthings. You can do this, Rita, and I know it, or I would have
+called on someone else, or just waited for people to discover this
+themselves.'' He raised an eyebrow. ``It's not as though I don't have
+other things I could be doing.''
+
+Rita nodded in reluctant admission, and sat up. ``Now, tell me all the
+details that you can remember.''
+
+Harry did. Rita had to admit it sounded more and more horrible the more
+she heard, but that didn't \emph{have} to matter. Words were her
+playthings, just like Harry said. If anyone could make this into a
+message of bracing hope for the wizarding world---here is the worst, now
+get ready for worse still---she could.
+
+It must be done. So she would do it.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Erasmus wondered what sort of joke they thought they were playing on
+him. He knew that Cupressus had been a little more disagreeable lately,
+a little quicker to ask him questions that should not be asked, a little
+prone to stare from the corner of an eye when he should have both eyes
+on his work, but surely this was beyond even his capabilities.
+
+"The Ministry cannot be \emph{gone}," he told Cupressus. He was sitting
+in a room in the middle of the man's house, but that meant nothing. Of
+course Cupressus had had to rescue him from Yaxley's vines. He did not
+have to lie about the Ministry's collapse.
+
+``It is,'' said Cupressus, his face absolutely closed. ``Harry
+firecalled me not ten minutes ago. It was reduced to rubble. Everyone
+still in it died. We should be grateful that I was able to rescue you,
+sir, and that the Wizengamot did not meet today. We shall need everyone
+still alive to handle the panic and the psychological wound that
+Voldemort just dealt our world.''
+
+``Of course Harry would tell you something like that.'' Erasmus stood
+up. He'd felt a little faint when Cupressus rescued him. Smoke damage,
+Cupressus said, though Erasmus couldn't remember a fire. ``You can't
+trust him, Cupressus. He wants to knock us down and replace us.''
+
+Cupressus closed his eyes. Erasmus supposed it must be to admire his
+intense wisdom, and kick himself for not seeing Harry's plans. But when
+Erasmus started to move towards the door, Cupressus interposed himself
+between.
+
+``Sir,'' he said. He sounded as if he were speaking through gritted
+teeth. \emph{Why}? ``It really is imperative that you stay here until
+you can realize the magnitude of the situation.''
+
+``I do,'' said Erasmus impatiently. \emph{One would think that he wanted
+Harry to gain control of the wizarding world, the way he's acting.}
+
+A horrible suspicion blossomed in his gut at that, but he had to put it
+aside. The oaths Cupressus had sworn when he became part of the Order of
+the Firebird would not let him act against the Light.
+
+``You do not.''
+
+Cupressus took a step forward. Erasmus stared. Somehow---if he knew how,
+he would have used the trick himself---the old man had become an
+impressive wizard between one moment and the next, his magic giving him
+the shadow of wings, a blaze of Light working through his eyes and his
+mouth. His hand clutching his wand seemed to hold an instrument of doom.
+Erasmus eyed it nervously, more than aware now that he didn't know where
+his own wand was.
+
+``The Ministry is gone,'' said Cupressus. "Fallen. Harry would not lie
+about something that could be contradicted so easily. You may use any
+fireplace in my home to learn the truth. Try to firecall your office,
+Minister, or the Department of Mysteries. They are \emph{dead}. We must
+live in a world where our Minister acknowledges that, or by Merlin
+himself, I will \emph{Obliviate} you, and you will say what I tell you
+to say."
+
+``You cannot.'' Erasmus felt very calm now. He knew where he was: alone
+in the midst of enemies. It was a familiar position. ``The Light would
+destroy you if you lifted a hand against me.''
+
+``I have always served the Light.'' Cupressus inclined his head. ``And I
+know that the Light is larger than any single wizard's ambitions. It
+will not stop me if I do what I do for the good of the wizarding world.
+And I am sure that I do, sir. Try to firecall, since that seems to be
+the only thing that will convince you.'' And he turned and swept out of
+the room before Erasmus could question him further.
+
+Erasmus shook his head and stepped out when he was sure Cupressus was
+gone, glancing cautiously in several directions. No one awaited him,
+however. Through an open door across the hallway, he could see a
+fireplace, and a bowl on the mantle that held Floo powder. Hesitantly,
+he went to it and cast a handful into the flames. They turned green.
+
+Then he told himself not to hesitate. Cupressus's story was fable.
+Anyone could see that. ``Minister's office!'' he called, and tried to
+stick his head in.
+
+He could not. A solid obstruction pushed back against him. When his eyes
+cleared a bit, he could make out stone and wood, a corner of his desk
+that had once stood near the far wall, the edges of slipping metal. The
+rubble started to lean towards him with a groan, as if eager to make
+room for itself.
+
+Erasmus hastily popped back out. Then he shut the Floo connection, and
+gazed at the fireplace for a long time.
+
+\emph{That was only one room. My office. They could have collapsed it to
+make me believe their mad story.}
+
+Thus reassured, he firecalled the Auror Office. He would have some
+answers, or he would call on the Aurors to raid Cupressus's home and
+remove him from the man's ``protective'' custody.
+
+There was stone there, too. And wood. And the stink of death. And only
+silence to answer his calls.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Cupressus strode back into the room where Miriam Smith awaited him,
+shaking his head. The others had returned to their homes after Harry's
+firecall describing the state of things at the Ministry. They knew they
+would be needed to calm the panic and spread the word in a carefully
+controlled way---and they probably needed some time and distance to
+recover themselves, Cupressus knew.
+
+He didn't need it himself. And neither did Miriam, for the same reason,
+as he knew when he looked into her eyes. She knew, as he did, that the
+Light burned most fiercely in a time of deepest Darkness. This was the
+kind of hour that all true Light wizards prayed to be alive in.
+
+They \emph{mattered}, and would matter, to the world after this. And
+Harry had shown his worth in contacting them. If he was not an ally that
+could be trusted, he was close to it. Cupressus intended to work with
+him even more closely in the future.
+
+``He's awake?'' Miriam asked.
+
+Cupressus returned to the source of his irritation. No matter how much
+they might matter to the world in the future, they had an obstacle in
+front of them now: what to do with the Acting Minister. ``Yes,'' he said
+shortly. ``And he refuses to believe that the Ministry was destroyed. I
+told him to firecall the various Departments and see if he received any
+answer. Even that will take some time to convince him. And then, of
+course, he will be prone to taking more importance on himself.''
+
+``We cannot let him have that,'' said Miriam. ``We will build the
+government on our backs, and not his. It was a mistake ever to sit so
+stunned that we let power pass into his hands.''
+
+``I know it.'' Cupressus wasn't surprised by anything she was saying.
+They were the same thoughts that had passed through his head. ``And what
+would you suggest?''
+
+``Play on his fears.'' Miriam shrugged. ``It's true that some people
+will want to kill him; once they find out he's still alive, he'll be a
+major target for the forces of You-Know-Who. And he needs to make public
+appearances without saying anything of substance. Urge him to remain in
+your house, compose speeches, and leave small and petty things up to us.
+He'll like that.''
+
+``It's deception,'' Cupressus felt compelled to say, because it was. And
+deception was not a tool of the Light.
+
+``Deception in a greater cause.'' Miriam gave him a long look. ``Unless
+you think our world can stand to have him at the helm right now.''
+
+Cupressus had to shake his head. Perhaps this was partly their
+punishment for allowing Juniper power at all, that they needed to deal
+with him now, and even use lies to do so. The Light would provide, and
+the Light would tell them if it disapproved so strongly as for their
+behavior to require correction. That was the good thing about serving
+the Light, and having defined rules and standards. One knew what one did
+wrong, and what one did right, and did not have to live with the chaos
+``defined'' by the wild Dark.
+
+``We will make our world right again,'' he said. ``We will fight and win
+against Voldemort.''
+
+``We will.'' Miriam clasped his hand, and then turned to Apparate home.
+She had her own burdens to worry about, Cupressus knew, as the leader of
+the British part of the Light alliance. For one thing, the enmities in
+Britain against Harry ran deeper than those in Ireland, and for another,
+the closest wizard the British Light purebloods had had to a leader,
+Augustus Starrise, was long since fallen. She had not taken on an easy
+task.
+
+But Cupressus was certain she could accomplish it, because there was no
+other choice.
+
+He stood looking out his own window for a moment, relishing the thought
+of rallying the Irish Light purebloods, and felt an emptiness at his
+side. For a moment, he expected to turn and see Ignifer standing there,
+his perfect heir. She had been so devoted to the Light before she
+Declared for the Dark.
+
+\emph{But that is done with. And while we may be comrades-in-arms now,
+we cannot ever be father and daughter again.}
+
+Cupressus began his duties. It was how he steadied the round of his
+days, how he knew who he was, even in the wake of the devastating attack
+on the Ministry.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Remus listened to the howls riding back and forth across London. The
+packs sang to each other this way, exchanging news and messages and
+information via a complicated code that no human ear, even a wizard's,
+could discern the differences in. Right now, of course, the messages all
+talked of the Ministry's fall.
+
+Remus could make out shadows of ambition there, too. Some werewolves
+would think that, with the Ministry's oppressive structure destroyed,
+the time had come to demand full rights from wizards. There was no
+Tullianum to swallow them if they didn't obey the laws, now, no Aurors
+to arrest them.
+
+``Hail, brother.''
+
+He turned. Peregrine hesitated on the threshold of his pack's safehouse,
+her nostrils moving, until Remus nodded that she was welcome. Then she
+relaxed and padded forward, sitting down next to him and fixing him with
+an intent stare.
+
+``What side do you stand on?'' she asked. ``With the wizards or against
+them?''
+
+Remus smiled wryly. ``Some werewolves have accused me of being more
+wizard than wolf,'' he answered. ``But I see the cause of wizards and
+werewolves as being in common in this war. At least they know of magic's
+existence, and some of us do use wands and care about affairs in their
+world. Now is the time to ally with them---demanding respect and
+treatment as equals, of course, but not taking advantage of their
+weakness to take more than that. If we do, their world will be slower to
+recover, and the benefits and blessings that the more violent ones are
+dreaming of won't come to them anyway.''
+
+Peregrine nodded. ``I have already thought of that. And if someone
+objects, and tries to lead their packs in a different direction?''
+
+``Good luck to them,'' said Remus indifferently, ``if they do not
+interfere with me and mine, or with Harry's cause. But I think they will
+interfere.''
+
+``And?'' Peregrine sat up, tension radiating from her body. Remus could
+see his pack members shying away. They probably thought a fight between
+the two alphas was imminent. Remus didn't think so. Peregrine knew sense
+when she smelled it.
+
+``Then they are welcome to fight me.'' Remus didn't have to project an
+air of quiet confidence this time. He really felt it. Since winning the
+fight against Blackbird, and then surviving Hawthorn's attack when she'd
+been in wild werewolf form, he'd become far more confident in his own
+body and his own powers. Few werewolves were his equals, whatever they
+might assume. ``I'll beat them down and set them up again at the head of
+packs that follow our common welfare.''
+
+Peregrine smiled, carefully concealing her teeth so that Remus wouldn't
+take it for a snarl and attack. ``Me, as well.''
+
+Remus nodded solemnly, and put out his hand, deliberately resorting to
+the human gesture before the werewolf one, which called for him to rub
+his cheeks with Peregrine's and receive reassurance from her calm scent.
+She both shook hands and rubbed cheeks, telling him that she believed in
+their citizenship in both worlds even as he did.
+
+There would be packs who disagreed. The werewolves who wanted rights in
+the human world didn't understand, sometimes, that they had to make
+contributions to that human world and have a stake in its survival in
+order to receive any rights.
+
+Remus would make them see sense, if he had to sit on all of them. This
+battle with Voldemort would be hard enough. Harry didn't need rogue
+packs biting Muggles in random numbers and holding equally random riots
+against wizards at the most inconvenient times.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+\emph{It is very bad,} Griselda told herself. \emph{But it could have
+been so much worse.}
+
+She thought that if she kept saying that, even in the privacy of her own
+head, she might come to believe it was true.
+
+The \emph{hanarz} had summoned her the moment the Ministry began to
+fall, and Griselda had arrived in time to see the end of the battle
+between Voldemort and Harry. Then the southern goblins had gone into the
+rubble of the Ministry, trusting to their superior skills in the tunnels
+to save their lives if the stone and wood started to shift, searching
+for survivors.
+
+They had found none, and given the songs the \emph{hanarz} had sent into
+the stone, which she said came back empty, there were none to be found.
+
+So many people gone. So many people Griselda had known, so many she had
+fought and argued with, so many she had passed in the hallways every
+time she went to Courtroom Ten for a meeting of the Wizengamot. The loss
+was incalculable, as was the way it had changed the balance of the war.
+
+\emph{For now. I am sure there are people already attempting to
+calculate it.}
+
+The Acting Minister had escaped. They could establish a temporary
+Ministry. But Griselda knew it would not have the force of authority in
+many minds that needed a building and an office and all the trappings in
+order to think power was solid. They would have rebellions, arguments,
+and people joining Voldemort out of sheer terror of his power. They
+would have people who wanted to hold an election in the middle of war,
+people whose devotion to their principles outweighed their devotion to
+reality.
+
+So preoccupied was she that she didn't notice, at first, the
+\emph{hanarz} trying to get her attention. When she did, she shook her
+head and apologized. The goblins had suffered enough ignorance from
+wizards throughout their long history together. Turning away from one
+now was a deep insult.
+
+The \emph{hanarz} ignored that, though she would not have ignored the
+lack of an apology, Griselda knew. ``We can compel attention to you, and
+forestall panic,'' she said. ``At least, panic for anyone who has their
+money in Gringotts.''
+
+Griselda blinked and stood a little straighter. They were in one of the
+underground chambers of the bank, not far from the tunnels that had once
+led to the Ministry. \emph{Get used to thinking in past tense. It will
+make the loss easier to bear.} "Do you think it's wise to involve your
+people in this, \emph{hanarz}?"
+
+``We are already involved.'' The \emph{hanarz} spread her hands
+slightly. "We stepped into politics with the Ritual of Cincinnatus, and
+the \emph{vates} will be fighting the Dark Lord. What is power if is
+saved and stored underground like silver unmined? It must not lie in
+stone any longer. We can rise. We will cut off access to the vaults for
+anyone who seems intent on joining the Dark Lord. We will give limited
+monies to those who cause trouble for the \emph{vates}. There is no
+Ministry law to seize assets for the Ministry any longer, but we can
+deny financial independence to those who would work against us."
+
+Griselda realized, then, how much really \emph{had} changed. Yes, the
+Ministry was gone, and the southern goblins no longer needed to operate
+in its shadow. They could reveal how much strength they truly had,
+because there was no organized force that could punish them, and when
+they revealed their reasons, most people, to object, would have to admit
+their contrary allegiances aloud.
+
+``If you are sure that it will not involve danger to your people,''
+Griselda said, one final time.
+
+``There is danger.'' The \emph{hanarz's} teeth and chains both gleamed
+when she smiled. ``But we have the arrows to meet it.''
+
+Griselda nodded, and began to feel the first stirrings of a plan in her
+own head. \emph{I can help them. I can be their spokesperson, as well as
+join the new Wizengamot when it forms. Perhaps I am not much more than a
+figurehead in a battle such as this---I am too old to truly fight---but,
+by Merlin, I can be the most excellent figurehead that there is, and
+somewhat compensate for Juniper's dead weight.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+The truth was written in the stars. Every young centaur knew that. What
+they did not understand, what it took them years to understand as they
+rose from foals, was the many kinds of truth inscribed there. That on
+which Mars shone was not the same as that marked by Orion, and of course
+a comet introduced many doubts and ambiguities that had taken celebrated
+astronomers decades to work out.
+
+But the astronomers had worked it out long since, mapped the movements
+of the sky, and while events changed on earth, the stars and the
+planets, the moon and the sun, and all the other dancers of the heavens
+marked out the relations of those changes to what had come before. They
+were continuity. They united future and past and present, and they
+permitted the leaders of herds to act in ways that blind humans would
+never understand.
+
+Such were the thoughts that ran through Moon's head as he stood on a
+rise in the Forest and looked up at the bright stars. Yes, they spoke of
+troubles still to come, perhaps even ones that would cost them the
+\emph{vates}, and certainly ones that would cost some of his people
+their lives.
+
+That did not matter. They had sworn. That swearing was in the stars, and
+so was the outcome. If they could not yet read it, they had once read
+outcomes like it, and the centaurs had survived those. So long as one of
+their kind lived on earth, there was a continuation for them. And so
+long as the stars shone, the knowledge could not truly die.
+
+Moon turned and cantered towards the Glade. His people were waiting for
+him, spears and scythes in their hands.
+
+``Polaris shines,'' he said.
+
+They bowed their heads and all sank to one knee, less in awe of him than
+the message he carried, the truth he conveyed. Moon looked up again, at
+the bright North Star, shining free even as the clouds raced about it.
+
+He brought one hoof down sternly. Polaris shone, and its path changed
+the least of any star in the sky. The message was clear.
+
+Humans might imagine eternity all they liked. Centaurs knew it.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Minerva was convinced that Poppy must have poured half the potions in
+the hospital wing down her throat by now. She coughed on the latest one,
+a particularly foul-tasting liquid that seemed inclined to make her
+forget her heart attack by burning her throat, and thrust out a hand.
+
+"That is \emph{enough}," she said. ``I am Headmistress of this school,
+and I say that you must stop.''
+
+Poppy eyed her and snorted, unimpressed. ``You almost died,'' she said
+tartly, and reached for another vial.
+
+``You can't command me---'' Minerva started.
+
+"You will \emph{die} if you go into battle again."
+
+Minerva blinked, and leaned back against her pillows. That certainly
+hadn't been what she thought she would hear.
+
+``Go on,'' she said.
+
+``Your heart has been too strained.'' Poppy clutched the potion vial to
+herself as if she were speaking of the end of the world, but her words
+were those Minerva used with the slowest students in Transfiguration,
+the ones who could not grasp the simplest of spells even when they saw
+the incantation demonstrated multiple times. ``You could have a heart
+attack now from the sheer stress and excitement of battle. And there
+won't always be someone nearby to use the Life Jolt and bring you back
+to your feet.''
+
+Minerva studied her in silence. Then she said, ``And if I say that this
+is a risk I understand and accept?''
+
+Poppy clenched her hands around the vial. ``You should ask yourself if
+the contribution you can make in battle is worth depriving Hogwarts of
+its Headmistress.''
+
+Life had certainly been easier when she was Dumbledore's Deputy
+Headmistress, Minerva thought grumpily to herself. Much as she hated it,
+she doubted most people would trust Severus to assume the post of Deputy
+Headmaster and lead the school in her place.
+
+``I suppose not,'' she said.
+
+Poppy curved her hand around her ear in sheer annoying parody. Minerva
+knew the matron had heard what she said. She shook her head and leaned
+back against the pillow. ``I suppose not,'' she repeated. ``I will stay
+behind in case of battle. Though I do wonder what will happen if the
+time comes when paperwork will do no good, and my wand is needed.''
+
+``Trust someone else to tell you when those times are,'' said Poppy
+darkly, coming to her and pouring the potion down her throat before
+Minerva could object. ``Don't trust your own judgment.''
+
+Minerva would have protested the unfairness of this, but the potion was
+apparently enchanted to travel straight to her stomach, and to cut off
+consciousness as soon as it reached there. Her eyes closed, and if Poppy
+continued to scold her, she never heard the words.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Millicent rose to her feet, one hand clutched around the side of a
+crystalline stone ring. The rock resembled quartz, but the ring had come
+out of the vault of Bulstrode treasures, so it was almost certainly
+something rarer. Millicent hadn't cared to find out. What mattered was
+that this was the ring that her ancestors had used to join courting
+couples for centuries on end.
+
+Pierre Delacour held the other side of the ring and looked at her
+anxiously across it.
+
+``If I gave up my name,'' said Millicent simply, ``it would mean the
+extinction of the direct line of the Bulstrode family. I have a cousin
+in France who may be able to take up the burden of carrying our legacy,
+but I consider her an unworthy heir for any but the most extreme
+circumstances. Meanwhile, you have numerous cousins and siblings and
+other relatives who can carry on the name of Delacour. Will you do me
+the honor, Pierre, of becoming Pierre Bulstrode?''
+
+From the calm expression on his face, he'd expected this, and wasn't
+even particularly upset. Perhaps he wasn't attached to the Delacour
+name. He nodded. ``I will accept your name, my wife.''
+
+``Good.'' Millicent stepped forward and bent over the ring, kissing him.
+It was a hard kiss, stony---a good kiss for a Bulstrode marriage to
+begin with, she thought. Pierre's relatives, gathered solemnly about
+them in this underground chamber beneath the Bulstrode home, burst into
+applause.
+
+Millicent nodded to them and joined hands with Pierre, the crystalline
+stone ring now encircling both their wrists, binding them together as
+one. Cousins and aunts and Pierre's parents came forward to offer their
+congratulations. Millicent felt a pulse of regret that Elfrida could not
+be here to see her daughter get married, but she and Marian had already
+transformed into statues in another Bulstrode vault, charmed against
+aging and warded with curses.
+
+Besides, Bulstrodes didn't do sentiment. Millicent wished that Elfrida
+could have been here more for her mother's sake than her own. She was
+not born to the hard, proud traditions that Adalrico had valued and
+taught his daughter and heir.
+
+Pierre looked at her now and then with trepidation, but with no
+diminishing in the adoration of his gaze. Millicent was glad of that.
+All she needed was a husband who thought only of romance and didn't
+focus on the practical difficulties and advantages of getting married in
+a time of war.
+
+As soon as the last relative had kissed her and wrung Pierre's hand and
+exclaimed over the both of them, Millicent nodded to them and took up
+the Portkey that would bear them to the house's inner bedroom. The world
+blurred, and then Pierre was sitting down hard on the side of the bed,
+staring around at the dark walls and the shrouded portraits that hung on
+them. The portraits were motionless, rather than the more common
+wizarding pictures that hung elsewhere in the house. It was thought that
+Bulstrode ancestors should be with their descendants on the wedding
+nights, but there was no need for them to actually watch the
+consummation, Millicent thought as she put the Portkey away. They could
+be there in spirit, and it was still just as meaningful.
+
+``Millicent?''
+
+``Yes?'' She undid the black ribbons binding her hair---a mixture of
+mourning and a concession to the finery of the occasion---and sat down
+next to Pierre, removing the ring from their wrists at last. It had
+burned both their wrists, painlessly on Pierre's part, with pain on
+hers. But the agony had been so small compared to anything she'd had to
+bear in recent months, she'd barely noticed it.
+
+Pierre put up his hands, clasped hers, and kissed their interlocking
+fingers. ``I promise to be a good husband to you,'' he said. ``And a
+good Bulstrode. And a good father of the heir that you will carry in
+your belly after this night.''
+
+Millicent relaxed. She had been afraid, given his reaction to the
+wedding---
+
+But that was silly of her. He would not have agreed to marry her if he
+didn't find strength attractive. Besides, even if she had been wrong
+about him, it was too late to go back now. Bulstrodes didn't divorce,
+because of centuries in which the option hadn't existed. They put down
+their heads and endured.
+
+Now, she kissed him back, on the lips, and then pushed him gently flat
+on the bed, and began the process of both knowing her husband and
+securing their future, in the form of the heir she \emph{would} carry
+after this. The fertility spells and charms she'd cast on herself were
+not about to fail.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Parvati spoke calmly to her parents through the hospital wing fireplace.
+She couldn't deny their right to be worried, after what they had heard
+about the Ministry, but she thought it almost funny that they
+\emph{were} so worried when she hadn't been one of the people caught in
+that wrack.
+
+``Yes, Mother, I'm fine, actually. So is Padma. We never even got a
+chance to fight. It was all Lord-level wizardry, no spells.'' She sighed
+at the thought of it. Was it any wonder that people became discouraged
+about what they could contribute to this war, when it was Harry and the
+wild Dark fighting Voldemort half the time? ``Except Connor using a
+spell to save the Headmistress's life, of course.''
+
+Sita's eyes were wide and pleading. ``Parvati, are you sure that you and
+your sister won't consider coming home?''
+
+``Not yet, Mother.'' Parvati sat back from the fireplace, winding a curl
+of hair around her finger. ``It's simply not possible, not with what we
+want to be and do. How could we leave our lovers in danger while we fled
+to safety?'' She ignored Sita's wince at the mention of ``lovers.'' Her
+parents obviously still hadn't recovered from the list Parvati and Padma
+had sent them of their ``activities'' that proved the strict definition
+of virginity, at least, no longer applied to them.
+
+``But if they love you, they would want you to be safe.'' Sita leaned
+forward. ``We want you to be safe, and we love you. They also love you.
+Why wouldn't they want you to be safe?''
+
+Parvati laughed a little. "Well, most of the time you might have a
+point, Mother. But Luna doesn't regard safety in the same way most
+people do, and Connor wants me there so I can fight \emph{beside} him."
+She felt a little thrill in her stomach at the thought. Her boyfriend
+wasn't someone whose sense of self-worth came from protecting other
+people so much as relying on them. She had always thought that Harry
+would make a horrible boyfriend in that respect. ``Even if I can't fight
+in every battle, I can help defend the school, and teach other people
+spells, and heal the wounded as they fall on the field. That's what I
+want to do. This is what I want to be. And people who love others can
+also be happy when those others find something they want to do.''
+
+``It's very hard for us to put up with this, Parvati,'' Sita whispered.
+``Please, please understand that.''
+
+``I do,'' said Parvati. ``But, equally, it's hard for me and Padma to
+put up with being protected all the time. Please understand that.''
+
+Sita closed her eyes, and didn't reply. A moment later, the Floo
+connection closed.
+
+Parvati shrugged and rose to her feet. They were in for some hard times,
+doubtless, now that the Ministry had fallen. But they would fight
+through them, and survive as best as they could, and help others in the
+doing so. That was what life was all about.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry had called everyone to Hogwarts who could come: those Aurors not
+absolutely needed to defend the safehouses, Kanerva, Laura Gloryflower
+and her contingent of artificial winged horses and their riders, Augusta
+Longbottom, and those allies and families of his allies not already
+living in the school. They needed to make plans. He had already compiled
+a list of wizarding villages in order of vulnerability, which depended
+on their size, their wards, their locations, and the number of their
+defenders, among other things. Most would be evacuated, with many people
+going to France, and some going to Ireland, which would be a stopping
+place in transition to, of all countries, Iceland. But the Icelandic
+wizards had offered, via a snowy owl that had arrived after what looked
+like a nonstop flight, and Harry was hardly going to resist the offer or
+ask if they were sure.
+
+Not now.
+
+He'd spoken with at least one person from each village, eased them past
+the immediate panicky transition when they wanted to scream and run in
+circles over the Ministry's fall, and made them listen to his plans for
+evacuation, or vanishing into a safehouse where they didn't want to
+leave Britain. They'd mostly listened to him. A few were still
+screaming. Harry would leave them for the morning.
+
+He'd given the word to those who had not heard it, by firecall or
+phoenix song communication spell where he could, by owl where he must,
+and directed Skeeter to do the best she could with the news. Not
+everyone would listen. Some people would blame him. He would have to
+live with that as it came down, just as he would have to live with the
+certain attempts to sabotage the new coalition government. Some of them
+would come from Juniper.
+
+In one corner of his mind, the guilt burned like acid, and it seemed to
+have dripped down to the deepest corners of his being.
+
+But there was no time for open mourning, just as there was no time for
+extensive coddling of any one person. Harry had to treat them like
+responsible adults and rely on them for those things they should be able
+to do. For the most part, they had responded to the treatment well, even
+seeming to draw confidence from it, as if his belief in them made it so.
+
+But that acid was there, dripping. Harry had never so much wished for
+his emotionless training back.
+
+He didn't know what was going to happen tomorrow. He didn't know how
+soon Voldemort, irritated by the wild Dark and maddened by Harry's
+escape from him, would strike. He didn't know how much magic was left to
+Voldemort, either.
+
+He opened his bedroom door, and found Draco sitting on their bed,
+waiting for him. Harry paused, staring at him.
+
+Draco stared back.
+
+Then he opened his arms.
+
+Harry swallowed, twice, only to find that he couldn't speak any more.
+Carefully, he crept to Draco and laid his head on his shoulder, closing
+his eyes. He had thought he would cry when he had the time, but so many
+tears had built up that it seemed he couldn't shed a single one. He just
+lay there, dry-eyed, in the one place and with the one person whom he
+could trust to support him.
+
+Draco lay back, stroking his hair and saying nothing.
+
+At some point, the acid ceased to drip, and Harry fled from thoughts of
+death and defeat and responsibility and killing himself into sleep.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 61*: Hawthorn's
+Dream}\label{chapter-61-hawthorns-dream}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Forty-Eight: Hawthorn's Dream}
+
+What he had to do now, Harry told himself, was stay very, very sane.
+That way, he would not go either enraged or mad when someone spoke to
+him the way Snape had just spoken to him now.
+
+``I chose the name Black because I meant to if I was ever cornered,'' he
+said calmly now. He was very calm. It helped that they stood in Snape's
+office, where he had spent many happy and \emph{serene} hours brewing
+potions. ``Had I had longer to think, I'm not sure what I would have
+chosen. Perhaps none.''
+
+``And why did Regulus's name come to you first in a dangerous
+situation?'' Snape demanded.
+
+Harry stared at him. \emph{He's---jealous?}
+
+From the glint in Snape's dark eyes, that was the problem. Harry decided
+not to let on that he'd noticed. It was such a ridiculous thing to be
+jealous of that he wouldn't know how to respond if Snape demanded a
+response.
+
+``It was the name of the family, rather than the man,'' he said. ``After
+all, that was Sirius's surname, too, and I felt anything but safe around
+him in the last months of his life.'' He didn't let the words truly sink
+into his brain. He had all the guilt and all the longing to die he could
+handle. ``I'm already Regulus's legal heir, and I've been sheltered and
+protected---and sheltered and protected my people, too---in the Black
+houses. So that was a matter of practicality, and my short-term plan. I
+would have liked to make the choice more freely. That's not what
+happened, though.'' He hesitated, then said it because it had to be
+said. ``Please, sir, don't scold me for this. I need you too much for
+other things.''
+
+Snape left the subject, but reached out and captured his chin in one
+hand, tilting his face up. Harry held his breath as he felt the
+Legilimency gently skim the surface of his thoughts. \emph{Please don't
+notice, please don't notice\ldots{}}
+
+``I am one of your refuges in this, then?'' Snape looked guardedly
+pleased.
+
+\emph{That, I don't mind him seeing.} Harry nodded. ``You and Draco,
+sir. Connor, too, to an extent, but I'm not sure he understands why I
+blame myself for the Ministry. You both do. Please know that you'll
+always be important in my life.''
+
+He hoped that would content Snape. He only had so much energy to parcel
+out, and giving Snape and Draco the majority of it, while proper, left
+him drained of energy with which to reassure others.
+
+``And your other refuge?''
+
+\emph{Shit.} ``What other refuge?'' Harry thought he could play dumb.
+Snape might simply be trying to trick him into admitting more. It didn't
+mean he'd actually seen anything in Harry's mind.
+
+``There is a thought of a third place to hide in your mind, a third
+thing that strengthens you, though I cannot make out its nature.''
+Snape's eyes had gone hooded, but still pierced him like the fang of a
+viper. ``I want to know what it is.''
+
+Harry hesitated again, torn between his promise not to lie to Draco and
+Snape about his emotions, and the fact that he would face disapproval of
+his spoke the truth. Then he sighed. ``It doesn't mean that I'll do
+it,'' he said. ``I know I can't. And it doesn't involve suppressing my
+emotions. It just involves---thinking about what I would do if I was a
+different person, had a different life.''
+
+"\emph{What is it, Harry.}" Snape did not make it a question, and his
+voice sounded deep, rather than angry.
+
+``Just---thoughts of death.'' Harry shrugged, then rushed on while Snape
+stared at him. "I \emph{know} I can't die. All the people I love, all
+the promises I made, the fight against Voldemort, all demand that I stay
+alive. I \emph{know} that. But if I were a different person, and I felt
+as guilty as I do now, I could kill myself and get it over with.
+Sacrifice my life for a Horcrux, for example. That's \emph{all}. I
+promise. It's just something I like to think about. Not something I
+would actually do."
+
+Snape said nothing. Harry relaxed, bit by bit. He might be able to think
+of nothing to say.
+
+He might actually understand.
+
+Harry hoped for that. He knew the difference between fantasy and
+reality. He knew he couldn't kill himself, that too much rode his
+shoulders.
+
+\emph{Please, please don't take this away from me. I know what I have to
+do. I've known since third year. This---this is just a place in my mind
+where I like to vanish sometimes. Let me have it.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Hawthorn woke late, with thoughts and memories scrambled and drifting in
+her mind. She lay staring at the ceiling for a long moment, trying to
+decide why her dream mattered so much to her when such bad news had come
+from the Ministry yesterday. Surely she ought to live in the world that
+the news defined, not the one that her thoughts did.
+
+And then the full force of her dream returned.
+
+Hawthorn literally jumped out of bed, then nearly went sprawling as a
+sheet caught her foot. She kicked it off, limped into her potions lab,
+and went towards notes she'd made months ago, blowing the dust off them.
+She hadn't worked in the potions lab since she returned, and the Aurors
+hadn't had a chance to damage it, so she had done only the most basic
+cleaning spells in here.
+
+The dreams weren't entirely dreams, of course. Voldemort's mind had
+woven through hers. She had lost most of the memories that might be
+useful---where the burrow was, for example---but others, odd bits of
+information that she picked up in conversation and eavesdropping, still
+remained to her. Some of them concerned the potions Adalrico had brewed
+and improved for Voldemort.
+
+And combined with the knowledge she'd had in the months before her
+enslavement---
+
+Combined with the visionary force of the dream that had struck her---
+
+One piece of that puzzle might help her to figure out this one.
+
+Hawthorn flung her pyjama sleeve over one arm and bent to begin writing.
+She \emph{had} to write now, or she feared the dream would vanish.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Indigena had recovered only slowly from the Stone's winter. Most of the
+flowers in her body still wanted to sleep. Cold spoke of hard times for
+them, months when the roots survived but the bright petals had to fold,
+or wither and blow away. It was only with the greatest difficulty that
+Indigena kept her eyes open as she stood attendance on her Lord.
+
+The atmosphere in the burrow didn't help, either.
+
+Voldemort's magic brewed like a potion, sang and hissed like a serpent
+forced into hibernation early, slid around her like the edge of a vine
+she didn't control. Indigena sat with her head bowed and resting on her
+knees, her arms looped around them, her breathing slow and steady.
+Meanwhile, the enormous might darkened the sky and made the walls of the
+burrow tremble at odd moments, as if they would fall in on her.
+
+This was the true reason a wizard should not have so much magic,
+Indigena believed. Not that there was a problem with it inherently, or
+that anyone was incapable of maintaining his morality in the face of
+such power, but because of the discomfort it caused for other wizards
+and witches to be around that person.
+
+Sylvan and Oaken showed less discomfort, but then, they were out of the
+burrow most of the time, capturing more Muggleborn children and bringing
+them back for Voldemort to drain. The soul-pattern in the largest room
+grew bigger and bigger. The basilisks stirred in their eggs under the
+warm sand. The Dark Lord brooded.
+
+As soon as the warmth increased to the point where her flowers could
+open, Indigena promised herself, she would step outside. She could not
+bear to be in here much longer.
+
+Besides, if she understood the bargain Voldemort had struck with the
+wild Dark correctly, he couldn't make another attack until Midwinter,
+still a month away. The thought of enduring this poison for thirty days
+made Indigena's skin crawl, and brought to her delicious, wistful
+thoughts of the gardens and greenhouses in Thornhall, so far away.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Hawthorn swallowed. The potion required a swan feather, and she didn't
+think she had one. But she could, of course, track down and trap a swan.
+She knew where they swam.
+
+She just wondered if it was worth pursuing, if this entire potion was
+worth brewing. Did she stand on the brink of a great discovery, or of
+death, because of a fever dream she didn't want to take the time to
+investigate properly?
+
+Then she pushed the thought away. She \emph{knew} the dream was real.
+The sheer force of it had settled on her mind like a lead weight, and
+she'd worked like a madwoman since dawn, brewing and mixing and writing
+notes and casting spells into the potion at the perfect moment. She knew
+the limitations of the recipe, but she also believed she might have
+found a way around them. No, she \emph{knew} she'd found a way around
+them. So she could not stop this.
+
+\emph{Even if it kills you?}
+
+Hawthorn shrugged, and stood, reaching for her cloak. She would find a
+pond or a river where a swan swam, and get the feather.
+
+In the back of her head was the thought that her life was worth little
+anyway, if she could not manage to make up in some way for the harm she
+had done in Voldemort's service---and the reason she had done that harm.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry stood patiently on the Northumbrian beach that had seen several of
+the important things that happened in his life---sailing ships at
+Midsummer with James, fighting Voldemort on the day he tried to command
+the sirens to capture Muggles, riding with the unicorns. It was a
+relatively deserted place, with the natural magic keeping Muggles from
+noticing that it was uninhabited or venturing there in large numbers.
+The presence of northern goblins nearby, and the wards at Lux Aeterna,
+Harry thought, might have something to do with that, too.
+
+It was here that the people of the first wizarding village to be
+evacuated, tiny Torpenhow, had come to meet the French ships.
+
+Harry had been surprised at first to learn that they would leave by ship
+instead of Apparating, but then he'd realized that most of the residents
+of Torpenhow were weaker wizards and witches unsure of their ability to
+Apparate between countries, and children. It was simply easier and
+quieter for them to be taken across the Channel in French ships,
+especially since not many magical creatures had elected to flee Britain.
+
+The ships themselves, constructed by the Veela Council, looked like
+nothing human. Harry eyed the one that stood off the beach with some
+wonder. It had flaring wings, and a prow that blended directly into the
+figurehead, a seagull's fierce projecting beak and glaring eyes. The
+whole of it was white, and shimmered with a silver tinge, rather like
+Veela hair. The sails belled and danced to a wind that Harry did not
+think was natural.
+
+The boats rowing in from the ship looked more ordinary, with Veela or
+part-Veela in each one. As they ground up on the gray sand, people
+leaped out to help the villagers inside. Harry raised his magic and
+looked around alertly. He was there mostly to make sure Voldemort did
+not attack in the middle of the transfer, when most people would be
+helpless to do more than cower or seek to protect the children and
+belongings that had come with them.
+
+Only his own dread darkened the horizon, though, and most of the
+villagers, solemn and silent and white-faced in the middle of abandoning
+their home, entered the boats without a hitch. The Veela helped them in,
+singing under their breaths sometimes, a tune that had the sound of a
+dirge. Harry could see why. Veela were, supposedly, terribly attached to
+a home once they had chosen it, and at once honored the strength of
+those who could leave their own homes and mourned the necessity of it.
+
+``Harry?''
+
+He turned, to see Adrienne Delacour, Fleur's and Pierre's cousin,
+striding towards him. Behind her came Roxane, the official
+representative of the Veela Council. Roxane's face was tight. Harry
+tensed, wondering if something had happened.
+
+Roxane spoke to him first, and without a shred of courtesy. But then,
+Harry had thought she was a woman like that since their first meeting.
+``It is true that the British government is fallen, and you have no
+Minister?''
+
+``We have Acting Minister Erasmus Juniper,'' said Harry, wondering how
+they could have known one piece of news but not the other. ``He escaped
+the ruin of the Ministry. If your Minister would like to be in contact
+with him---''
+
+``It is not that.'' Roxane shook her head hard enough that some of her
+own hair hit her in the face. ``But we do not trust him. It is a bad
+time for Britain to have no leader. Therefore, you are the leader, yes?
+France will deal with you as such. The Veela Council will deal with you
+as such.''
+
+Harry shifted his shoulders back and forth while he thought about that.
+Then he shrugged. He doubted he could keep people in France from
+thinking of him as Britain's leader if they really wanted to do so. What
+he \emph{could} prevent was people coming to him for information that he
+couldn't provide, or decisions he couldn't make.
+
+``My words won't have the force of law,'' he pointed out. ``I couldn't
+make treaties, or allocate funds, or give France promises that would
+hold after the war.''
+
+``If we choose to take it as the force of law, it will,'' said Roxane.
+"The money, no, but I have heard of the goblins and how they respect the
+\emph{vates}. They may give you money if you ask for it. We need someone
+who can \emph{speak} for Britain, whose voice we can trust, and whom we
+can negotiate with as the seasons and the situation change."
+
+Harry frowned. ``Why? If you don't mind my asking, what is wrong with
+the arrangements that the French Minister and the Veela Council have
+created for me so far?''
+
+``Voldemort is coming.'' If Roxane feared the Dark Lord, she didn't show
+it, but then, she seemed more interested in practicalities than in fear.
+``That will require a closer alliance between us. France will send more
+Aurors. They will send food, if needed. Money, if needed.''
+
+Harry stared at her. After the decision by the International
+Confederation of Warlocks that he had to stop violating the Statute of
+Secrecy, he had been sure he wouldn't receive any more help from abroad.
+It was one thing for France to help him on the sly, another for them to
+openly defy the governing body of wizards---especially when the Acting
+British Minister was still alive.
+
+``Why?'' he asked.
+
+``Voldemort will invade our shores,'' said Roxane, ``if he defeats you.
+He will come for us first, since we are closest to him. And while the
+others might not worry about that, they will not come to help us,
+either, if they do not come to help you. We are making sure that your
+victory takes place on the soil of your land, not on the soil of ours.''
+
+Harry licked his lips. He supposed he had taken up a large share of the
+responsibility already.
+
+But they had counted on using Juniper as a figurehead. That wouldn't be
+possible if he heard about Harry accepting part of the power that should
+rightfully be his. He might not start a civil war, but he wouldn't eat
+the reassuring lies that people like Cupressus wanted to feed him.
+
+``I regret to say that I can't give you an answer right now,'' he said
+quietly. ``I will stand security for any promises I make, but as of the
+moment I am making them for myself and the Alliance of Sun and Shadows,
+not for my country as a whole. There are wizards even now who prefer not
+to be allied with me, you know, or to come under my protection. They
+believe it would cost them too much.''
+
+``Then they are fools,'' said Roxane. "Know that the French government
+does not intend to accept your Acting Minister. Power and practicality
+are harder masters than political delicacy. We will work with none other
+than the \emph{vates}." And she turned back to the ships as if a
+discussion had concluded.
+
+Harry shook his head. He would have to seek Cupressus's and Miriam
+Smith's advice. He had not the slightest idea how he could take the
+leadership but convince Juniper that he was still in charge. The
+Minister was stupid, but he knew how to read the newspapers, and he saw
+treason in every shadow.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Hawthorn grabbed the Stupefied swan as it drifted towards shore and
+spread one wing wide, plucking the feather from it. Originally, she'd
+intended to kill the bird, but she felt compelled not to now. Let it
+live. It hadn't done her any harm, and sometimes a slight aura of power,
+almost like a willing sacrifice, could be added to potions ingredients
+harvested from a living animal. The collector could have killed it, but
+had chosen not to, and the magic would know and remember that.
+
+And it would be appropriate, given what the purpose of the potion she
+was brewing was.
+
+For a moment, Hawthorn lost herself in hope, standing there with the
+feather in one hand and the swan's wing in the other, and she still
+stood like that when her Stunner wore off. Then she had to duck to avoid
+a blow from the swan that could have broken either her neck or her arm.
+
+The swan hissed at her as it swam back into the middle of the river,
+shaking its tail and settling several ruffled feathers.
+
+Hawthorn sniffed as she Apparated again. She was allowed to think they
+were evil birds. There was no rule against that.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Owen paced along the walls, carefully enchanting them. When wards were
+up around the doors, the windows, and the broken pieces of furniture in
+the middle of the room, his twin finally rolled his eyes and broke the
+silence.
+
+``And what do you think you're doing?'' he demanded, folding his arms.
+
+``Blocking the way out.'' Owen turned around, bouncing his wand lightly
+in his hand, and looked Michael straight in the eye. ``You won't get
+away from me this time. You're run every time I tried to corner you and
+talk to you in the last few days, but not now.''
+
+Michael rolled his eyes again. ``It could just be that I have nothing to
+talk with you about, Owen. How hard is that to comprehend?''
+
+``I know that you have something to say on the subject of Harry,'' Owen
+replied. "The way that you stare at him conveys \emph{that}. He hasn't
+noticed, thank Merlin, what with everything else that he has to do, but
+he may emerge from his haze and notice fairly soon. Have you thought---"
+
+``What is it with you and your sympathy for him?'' Michael gave his hair
+a shake that would have done credit to a wild pony. "Has it occurred to
+you, Owen, that I've suffered too? What about the people who lost family
+and friends in the Ministry? \emph{They're} the victims, here. They're
+the ones you should be worried about, if you want to be worried about
+someone. Not Harry. He survives disaster after disaster, and still
+everyone loves him." Owen knew he hadn't imagined the undertone of
+resentment in Michael's voice. ``He has all the sympathy he can handle.
+Everyone loves him, everyone admires him. Why don't you spend some
+sympathy on me, and our dead mother and sister?'' Michael took a step
+forward. ``Sometimes, I think you forget that we're brothers, forget
+your obligation to the family.''
+
+Owen sighed. He should have insisted that his father give Michael an
+education more similar to the one he'd received after all. Charles
+hadn't thought his second son needed it; he would have a different life.
+But now he was Owen's heir, and not even the wound of Medusa and Eos's
+loss, which should have been shared between them, had made them bleed
+the same blood. Michael was too much a child. He didn't understand that
+while he spoke what might have been the truth for \emph{him}, Owen's
+oath to Harry meant Harry would have to come first in his life.
+
+``I forget nothing,'' he said quietly. ``But I'm both family head and
+sworn companion right now. And while there aren't any Rosier-Henlin
+relatives to protect since they all fled, and it would be madness to
+defend our lands, I'm spending my energy on protecting Harry.'' He
+pushed towards his main reason for the meeting. "Actually, Michael, I
+wanted to ask if you would take my place as head of the Rosier-Henlin
+family. That would both relieve me of an obligation and make sure that
+someone who \emph{does} care and does have the time is taking care of
+Rosier-Henlin interests." \emph{And it would give you something else to
+think about than Draco and Harry,} he thought, though he didn't say that
+aloud.
+
+And it would be the perfect situation for Michael to learn about adult
+responsibilities, too, since there virtually were none at the moment. He
+could study the dances he'd need to know, the rituals, and what it would
+mean when the war ended and he did have people to protect and meetings
+to attend as a head of the family. Owen wanted a long period between the
+first time his brother cracked a book and the first time he tried to put
+what he'd learned into practice.
+
+Michael folded his arms and looked away.
+
+Owen blinked. Twice. ``You're going to say no, aren't you?'' he
+demanded.
+
+``Of course.'' Michael looked faintly bored when he turned back. ``I
+have ambitions that don't involve our family, Owen. You know that.''
+
+``I thought it was the one thing you did still care about. With the way
+that you talked about our mother and sister---''
+
+``You thought wrong. Who I am isn't defined by my blood. It doesn't
+begin and end with my last name.'' Michael's face was firmly closed, and
+stubbornly set.
+
+``Then what do you want?'' Owen feared that answer.
+
+``Just a little sympathy.'' Michael's eyes glittered. "Just a little
+consideration. Just a little \emph{remembrance} that I won't do what
+everyone else wants me to do, when they want me to do it. I'm not a
+toy." He lifted his wand. ``Now, take these spells off the room, or I'll
+blast them down.''
+
+Owen stood gazing at his twin for a moment longer. It seemed so long
+since they'd shared a single brain. Not since Michael had become
+infatuated with Draco, at least, and that had happened soon after the
+Midsummer battle.
+
+In the end, he had to shake his head and let Michael out. As he watched
+him go down the hall, he wondered if Michael himself knew what he
+wanted.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Hawthorn gazed and gazed at the potion on her desk, which sparkled a
+smooth, liquid silver, and didn't vanish when she turned her back,
+though she half-expected it to.
+
+If she had done it correctly, she had bypassed the potion's limitations.
+She had cast part of her magic into the potion, but she'd used a
+shortcut that Adalrico had used on some potions where he didn't have
+Snape's native brewing skill. He'd chosen an enchanted artifact and
+dissolved the artifact slowly in a blend of acids. There was a
+flickering moment between the dissolving and the moment when the
+artifact ceased to exist at all when a spell would capture the magic and
+make it behave like the wizard's or witch's own power.
+
+Adalrico had used that to compensate for his lack of reflexes and innate
+genius with potions. Under the magic of the artifact, volatile
+ingredients would sit together quietly. Hawthorn had used that captured
+magic to infect the potion, and make it think that she was sacrificing a
+great portion of her own strength.
+
+And so, if she were right, if she could trust the force of the dream
+that had come to her, she would have her long desire in her hands.
+
+Of course, there was also the fact that it might kill her, given that a
+large part of its ingredients consisted of pure silver from Sickles
+she'd melted.
+
+After a moment, she picked up the vial. Her hand trembled.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``I don't see any way that we can keep Juniper from newspapers,'' Harry
+said through the fireplace. Cupressus's plan to keep the Acting Minister
+as isolated as possible, telling him it was for his own safety, and only
+bring him out when the occasion demanded, was a good one, but Harry was
+not sure how practical it would be to use from day to day. ``Nor from
+asserting his own idiocy if someone shouts out a question to him while
+he's making his speeches.''
+
+``I can control what newspapers he receives,'' said Cupressus calmly.
+``So far, he has made no attempt to leave the house. He believes me when
+I tell him of his countless lurking enemies.''
+
+"And when he \emph{does} want to leave?" Harry asked.
+
+Cupressus shook his head. ``His home was laid waste. I believe that the
+Yaxley twins went there looking for him. And given how stupid Erasmus
+is, that was actually a good tactic. For now, he believes me when I tell
+him there is no safer place for him than with the leader of the British
+part of the Light alliance, and a fellow member of the Order of the
+Firebird.''
+
+Harry, a bit appeased, returned to one of his original concerns. "And
+when the \emph{Daily Prophet} reports on the Minister of France deciding
+to treat me as the leader of Britain? He'll read \emph{that}, of
+course."
+
+``You underestimate the wards on my home.'' Cupressus smiled a bit. "I
+am an old hand at politics, Mr.---Black, and in my day, there were
+people who would pay to know what my letters said when they left the
+house. I have wards that change the words on every piece of paper to
+make them say what I wish them to say. The \emph{Prophet} articles will
+become harmless long before Erasmus sees them."
+
+It was the best compromise they could find, Harry thought. And he
+certainly didn't want to refuse the French Minister's aid for the sake
+of one man's comfort, as compared to all the people who could use the
+food and the funds that the French might be able to send them.
+
+``Accept the position, Black.''
+
+Surprised, Harry looked up with a blink. Cupressus had actually leaned
+towards him, as if about to extend a hand through the green flames, and
+his face had lost the smile. His eyes glinted, though, the hard look of
+a predatory bird riding a windstorm.
+
+``It will benefit all of us,'' Cupressus went on. ``At the moment, we
+need to look more like a unified group than a coalition to keep our
+people from panicking, even if we know the truth behind the scenes. One
+wizard whom the international community speaks with, whom the Light and
+Dark families follow, and whom Voldemort fears is a good thing. It will
+make us seem as if we know what we are doing, more than anything else.
+And that, in turn, will tame the reports that filter out, both at home
+and abroad.''
+
+Harry let out a breath. ``It's still precarious. Juniper could find out
+at any time, and cause havoc.''
+
+``Risky, but worth the risk.'' Cupressus's eyes glinted again. ``And if
+it comes to that, I would rather silence Erasmus than lose you and the
+command of the war.''
+
+Harry decided not to ask what ``silence'' meant. He really didn't want
+to know. Besides, he didn't think that Cupressus's ethics would let him
+murder the Acting Minister.
+
+\emph{Probably}.
+
+``Very well,'' he said, and then stepped away from the flames and shut
+the Floo connection down with a nod to Cupressus. Despite the man's wise
+words, there were only so many things that newspaper articles and calm
+announcements could do. Britain was still reeling under a psychological
+wound, the loss of their people and their government only slowly sinking
+home.
+
+It would need something greater than calm words to heal that wound.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+It began as fire.
+
+Her bones were iron, melting in a forge. Her blood had become silver,
+and it scored and scalded her skin, which itself was not much less
+painful than burning water. Her mind melted and slipped, and she saw
+life as a pit of brilliant white light into which she fell. She tumbled
+down, and she knew she was screaming, but she could not hear anything
+beyond the intense blaze. It was as if sight had taken the place of
+sound, and crowded out her other senses---except for touch, of course,
+and the nerves that carried the pain signals.
+
+It turned to water.
+
+She drowned under crushing pressure, the ocean descending on her head,
+making her ears ring, bursting her eardrums with the weight. She
+welcomed the return of sound, but her scream was still a rusty noise
+somewhere in the distance. She struggled madly and felt the struggles
+become fainter and fainter, yielding to reality.
+
+It hurt more than any transformation. That was part of the point, of
+course, and the reason why the potion stood such a high chance of
+killing her. The human body, strengthened by the curse, could become a
+werewolf at the full of the moon and change back again---with a great
+deal of pain, naturally, but non-fatally, most of the time. This time,
+Hawthorn had nothing but her own will to stand against the pain.
+
+And she could not lose consciousness. She had to guide the potion, tied
+to the portion of her sacrificed magic that remained inside the liquid.
+Lose her concentration, and it would not know what it was supposed to
+do. The molten silver would run rampant, react badly against the
+werewolf curse in her blood---well, worse than it was already
+reacting---and slay her.
+
+She remained awake, from moment to moment, existing in a world of pain,
+and of utmost dedication.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry sang from the top of the Astronomy Tower, his head tilted back and
+the phoenix song flowing from his throat.
+
+The last time he had done this, he had done it to remind people of his
+rebellion and the magical creatures waiting for wizards to acknowledge
+them. This time, the purpose was both simpler and broader: to remind
+people of the existence of hope. To give them a moment free of grief, if
+he could. To tell them that Light still existed in the world.
+
+This time, he rose with the song, hanging at a point in the air high
+above Hogwarts before his consciousness fragmented and raced away with
+different sparks of light speeding in different directions, rather like
+falling stars.
+
+He danced out across the Forbidden Forest, and the centaurs looked up as
+he passed overhead and stamped their hooves in time. Other voices joined
+theirs, curling around the trees of the Forest, singing a song that
+Harry had not heard for years. The first time he had gone running
+through the Forest, accompanying Remus and Sirius as they took Connor
+for a run, the creatures had sensed the presence of the \emph{vates} and
+responded. This time, their voices were more solemn, reflecting both the
+triumphs and the losses in the years since, including the loss of the
+phoenix who had flown with him then, but still they resounded.
+
+He flew to Ireland, and raced into the middle of a meeting of Light
+wizards discussing if they should listen to Cupressus and ally with
+Harry. They went still as they heard. One or two shook their heads,
+evidently trying to dismiss it as a persuasive tactic, but the rest of
+them had softened faces, and one woman put her head down on the table
+and wept.
+
+There was water beneath the phoenix song, and another ship coming from
+France heard. Harry saw heads tilt back as if the Veela could pinpoint
+the exact source of the song, the single trailing point of light that
+soared over them and on towards the east, across Europe, where Harry
+soon gave up trying to follow it; the number of people and places that
+appeared was dizzying.
+
+The refugees still in the safehouse at Cobley-by-the-Sea came to the
+windows and looked out. One small girl asked her mother if the sunset
+was singing.
+
+Molly Weasley stood still, and closed her eyes, and put down the towel
+with which she'd dried dishes. Her husband, absent from the Ministry two
+days before by the merest of chances, came up behind her and put his
+arms around her waist, resting his chin on her shoulder.
+
+Kanerva laughed and danced in the winds high above Britain. The song
+mattered to her, but more important was the sheer fascination that
+lingered in the dark beyond the stars. The wild Dark heard, and wanted
+the voice. It amused Kanerva because she knew them both, audience and
+singer, so well, and she laughed to show that she did, if anyone else
+knew her private language.
+
+Jing-Xi arrived again in the room at Hogwarts that she had nearly made
+her own. She paused. The mantle behind her turned to jade.
+
+Laura Gloryflower wheeled on a winged silver horse high above the
+ground, patrolling a wizarding village that would have to await its turn
+to evacuate until more safehouses in France could be opened up. She
+bowed her head, clenched her hand into a fist, and held the fist to her
+heart. This was the voice, the essence, of the Light that she had sworn
+to serve.
+
+A scrap of awareness, caught and drifting on the wind, turned in the
+direction of the phoenix song. It reminded the ghost who had been Aurora
+Whitestag of---well, of something she had forgotten. After a moment, she
+shook her head and moved on. She had only one purpose, and she could not
+forsake the premise of her existence.
+
+Michael Rosier-Henlin turned his head away, and closed the shutters of
+the window through which he'd heard the song.
+
+Draco lifted his head and soaked it in. He would have grabbed anyone
+else standing next to him, paralyzed with wonder, and bragged that he
+was dating the man who sang like that, but they all knew already, and in
+any case he was close to being paralyzed with wonder himself.
+
+Regulus stopped sorting through artifacts in Silver-Mirror and sat back
+for a time, his eyes blankly and contentedly staring into the fire.
+
+Connor closed his eyes and held Parvati.
+
+From person to person, from magical creature to wizard, from ocean to
+land, Harry strung the song, and tried his best to make a point of hope
+glow in the sky next to every star.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Hawthorn opened her eyes slowly. The first thing she noticed was that
+she hurt more than she had when Lucius bound her in silver shackles, or
+used the \emph{Argenteus} curse on her.
+
+The second thing she noticed was the stillness in her own mind.
+
+She sat up, frowning. What had changed? The empty potions vial beside
+her reminded her of what she had \emph{meant} to do, but she could not
+tell if it had worked. She reached up and felt her temple, shaking her
+head. The faith that had carried her into the experiment seemed mad now.
+How could she have risked her life over a dream?
+
+And then she knew what was different.
+
+Her mind was still. The muttering, savage voice of her wolf, that spoke
+constantly of blood and darkness and the need to kill, was gone.
+
+She had succeeded in curing herself of lycanthropy.
+
+Her head found her folded arms, and she wept.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 62*: Delegation, Darkness, and
+Draco}\label{chapter-62-delegation-darkness-and-draco}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Forty-Nine: Delegation, Darkness, and Draco}
+
+Erasmus knew they thought him stupid, but in reality, he was more
+intelligent than all of them. He looked into the shadows, and knew them
+for the distractions they were.
+
+Cupressus and the rest might think they could make some sort of
+compromise with the Dark. Let Dark wizards soothe them with sweet words,
+talk to them about politics that combined the two allegiances, and offer
+them help against Voldemort, and they would nod and give in. They
+couldn't deal with the destruction of the Ministry. It was a cancer in
+their minds, and in an effort to ignore the cancer, they gave in to the
+power that had destroyed it.
+
+One couldn't trust Dark wizards. Erasmus had known that. He'd tried to
+tell the others that. And now they said that it was just \emph{one} kind
+of Dark wizard, Voldemort's kind, that couldn't be trusted, while the
+others had a more benevolent influence.
+
+As if there were different breeds of them. As if the malignant
+malevolence of one ``breed'' could be overridden by the work of another
+who would have done the same thing to the Ministry that Voldemort did,
+if he only had the gift and the power and the same twisted ambitions.
+
+No, what was needed was a renaissance of the Light. Instead of allying
+with Dark wizards and saying it was the best they could do, they should
+show forth the power of the sun. That was the true hope that would make
+other people follow them, and admit that they'd been wrong in thinking
+the struggle against Voldemort hopeless, or worthy of moral corruption.
+
+But Erasmus was realistic. If they'd ignored his word enough to talk to
+Dark wizards in the first place, he couldn't make a speech or remind
+them of the existence of the Order of the Firebird and expect that to
+turn them back to him.
+
+He would have to do something else. Use a tool that the Light had used,
+but also secure a great part of the Light's power.
+
+He knew how to do that. There were Aurors who had escaped the Ministry's
+destruction, working in the field. Some of them had more closely agreed
+with him than others; that was the kind of person Erasmus had settled in
+the properties seized from Dark wizards. And some of them had artifacts,
+or could fashion artifacts, that would aid them in proclaiming the
+Light.
+
+He made a firecall, on the sly. He could not prove it, but he was almost
+sure that none of his letters were leaving Cupressus's house in their
+original form. Even the Floo was risky; he might be intercepted, and
+Cupressus could still control what happened to him as long as he was in
+his home.
+
+But he was not intercepted. He spoke to an Auror, Duckworth, who
+understood, and who would come for him as soon as possible. He would
+bring what was needed with him, too, and then Erasmus had only a few
+more easy steps to take to insure that his vision became a reality.
+
+Things were moving.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``But why isn't he moving?''
+
+``I don't know.'' Harry kept his voice patient as steel. He didn't have
+the time to give in and crumple under pressure, and this would be an
+especially bad time, when he was trying to reassure a representative
+from Hogsmeade. Hogsmeade was the largest single wizarding population
+around now, at least if one didn't count Diagon Alley, and they'd
+already been attacked once. Though some brave souls had gone back to
+their houses, Harry couldn't blame them for being afraid, or their
+representative, Candida Coltsfoot, for wanting definite answers as to
+why Voldemort hadn't attacked them yet.
+
+He couldn't blame her, he told himself again and again. That would have
+to provide a sufficient guard against strangling her.
+
+``You must know.'' Candida leaned forward confidingly. She was in her
+late thirties, Harry thought, or her early forties. Her hair was already
+streaked with white. He couldn't tell if that came from magic, or a
+natural coloration---sometimes the intensely inbred pureblood families
+looked like that---or stress. Her eyes were too big for the space over
+her nose, wide and staring, blue clouded with bloodshot. ``I've heard
+that you're---connected to him.'' Her eyes flickered to the scar on his
+forehead. ``You can use that to find out, can't you, why he's not
+attacking? When he'll attack again?''
+
+Harry held himself still. He couldn't be sure that someone had really
+found out about his and Voldemort's connection; it could be a rumor, or
+a lucky guess, or some magical theorist's insistence on symmetry. ``I
+can't venture into a pit as black as Voldemort's mind, madam,'' he said.
+That would have to satisfy her.
+
+It didn't, of course. Candida's face darkened again. ``You can't
+possibly want people to die, Mr. Black.''
+
+``Of course not,'' said Harry, trying to get over the strangeness of
+being addressed by his new last name.
+
+``Of course not,'' Candida repeated, nodding. ``No matter what people
+say about you, I know that you're different from
+He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.'' She leaned forward again. "And that means
+that you \emph{have} to locate the time and date of the next attack. How
+else can you save lives?"
+
+Harry smiled sadly. Perhaps a dose of truth would content her. It would
+do something to satisfy the guilt that had dissolved a corner of his
+mind again. "Even if I'd known about the attack on the Ministry, madam,
+I don't think I could have saved everyone. Voldemort would have probably
+managed to drain people and cause some damage. And when I did arrive,
+when I did know, it was too late. He was simply too powerful. He still
+has most of that magic. If he commences an attack on Hogsmeade, I'll
+know, and I'll be sure to stop him as soon as I know. But, at the
+moment, we simply don't have a spy among his ranks, or any way to
+\emph{guess} what's coming next before Midwinter, when we know he plans
+an attack. He's not that predictable."
+
+``You must know,'' said Candida. She seemed rather hung up on that.
+
+Harry heard the door open behind him, and knew from the sound of the
+footfalls that Draco had entered. He frowned slightly, but only in his
+mind. He knew Draco wouldn't have interrupted his meeting with
+Hogsmeade's representative unless something was badly wrong.
+
+``I can't predict it,'' he said simply. ``We can draw up maps and likely
+strategies, but Voldemort is insane. We can warn people and evacuate
+them, but inevitably someone might live in a wizarding village we miss
+out on warning in time, or might decide to stay and then get attacked.
+Our warning system of Aurors and trained defenders is very good, but it
+can't be perfect. ''
+
+``It's your responsibility to protect us.'' Candida's face had turned
+red by now.
+
+Harry could hear a growl from Draco. He winced. Draco was always in a
+worse mood when he was made to wait.
+
+``I'm sorry, madam,'' he said. ``I'll give you the reassurance, the
+protection, the leadership, I can, but I can't guarantee that no one
+will be hurt.''
+
+``Or that twelve hundred people won't die either, is that right?''
+Candida demanded. Twelve hundred people was the \emph{Daily Prophet's}
+estimate for how many wizards had been in the Ministry when it
+collapsed. "I don't understand. How can you claim to be doing \emph{any}
+good when your best guesses are this weak and unrealistic?"
+
+``We'll still try---''
+
+``That's not good enough.'' Candida closed her eyes and turned away from
+him, shaking her head as if someone had tried to put a bridle on her.
+"We \emph{have} to have more than that. Sing all you want, Black, but in
+the end, what we want is safety, and hope, and we can't have that when
+you suffer disasters like this and permit disasters like them to
+happen."
+
+Harry opened his mouth, and then closed it, swallowing. What good would
+yelling at her do? It might ease his anger for a moment, but it would
+make him guilty later. Besides, it would drive her further into her
+shell and convince her she was right, and he needed the people of
+Hogsmeade to at least listen to him, as he needed the people of every
+wizarding village to listen if he was going to protect him. Perhaps he
+should let Cupressus speak to her. He might be able to point the
+contradiction in her logic---she wanted protection from disasters like
+the one at the Ministry, but she was also convinced that Harry was the
+reason the disaster had happened---better than Harry could.
+
+``If you believe that, madam, we have nothing more to say to each other
+for right now,'' he murmured. ``I'll have Cupressus Apollonis speak to
+you.''
+
+``Who's he?'' Candida cocked her head to the side. "I don't recognize
+his name from the \emph{Prophet.}"
+
+\emph{There were only four articles about him,} Harry thought
+sarcastically. \emph{Perhaps there should have been five?}
+
+But then he subdued that impulse, too. He knew Candida had lost a sister
+in the Ministry's collapse. Under the circumstances, it was
+understandable that she would pay attention to the news of that first
+and other things later, if at all.
+
+``He's the leader of the Irish part of the Light alliance, madam,'' he
+said. ``He escaped the collapse of the Ministry, and rescued Minister
+Juniper.'' Around Candida, it didn't seem wise to call Juniper the
+Acting Minister. ``He has a very clear view of these things.''
+
+Candida looked pleased. ``I would rather speak with him, then.'' She
+gave a decisive nod, and Harry heard Draco growl again. He winced a
+second time.
+
+``I'll contact him and let him know, madam.''
+
+Candida swept grandly out of the room, pausing to eyeball Draco, as if
+she didn't know what \emph{he} was doing here. Harry waited until she
+was gone, because he didn't know if he could have controlled his face,
+looking at her, and then turned around and faced Draco with a small nod.
+
+``What collapsed, broke, or burned?'' he asked.
+
+``I actually had good news.'' Draco moved forward and wrapped his arms
+around Harry. Harry stroked his back. ``I've made contact with some of
+the Aurors who were out of the Ministry and working when it fell. There
+are a few who saw no choice but to serve Juniper if they didn't want to
+be sacked, but now that he's not in power, they'd rather join your
+side.''
+
+``That is wonderful, Draco,'' said Harry, and let most of his bad mood
+drain away. ``How many want to come to us?''
+
+``Ten right now,'' said Draco. ``Leave it alone for a few days, and that
+might become fifteen or twenty. Yes, it's not very many people, but
+their symbolic impact is more important than their numbers.'' He stood
+still a few moments more, while Harry continued to stroke his spine. He
+was trembling with indignation over something else, but Harry didn't
+know what it was.
+
+Then he burst out, "How can you let them \emph{treat} you like that,
+Harry?"
+
+Harry shrugged. "I don't \emph{like} it," he said wryly. ``But it's a
+choice between keeping channels of communication open and losing people
+to my own pride, Draco. Given that kind of decision, I know where I
+stand.''
+
+``But you don't have to,'' Draco muttered rebelliously into his
+shoulder. ``No one should have to accept whatever someone else tells
+him, without protest or complaint, just because he's a leader.''
+
+``I have greater power,'' said Harry. ``With that might come giving up a
+few ordinary things that ordinary people get to do, like protesting
+unfair treatment.'' He shifted from side to side, restlessly. This
+discussion was making him dwell on the conversation with Candida, which
+he didn't want to do. He wanted to sit in a corner for a few minutes and
+think of darkness and ending. It was healthier than filling his mind
+with continued poison.
+
+``And it makes them lose respect for you,'' Draco pointed out, quick as
+a striking serpent. ``That won't win them to your side either, Harry, if
+you're so weak that they think they can say whatever they like to you.''
+
+Harry hissed between his teeth, unhappy. He wanted to change into a lynx
+and run through the Forbidden Forest. He wanted to bury himself in
+thoughts of suicide and hoped they cooled the fire building behind his
+forehead. Most of all, he wanted to shout at Draco, and he didn't
+\emph{want} to want that.
+
+``I don't see that there's much I can do,'' he said casually. ``Yes,
+yelling at them might prompt respect, but it might just as easily make
+them not listen to me, and I need them to listen---''
+
+``Why?'' Draco threw up his hands, then lowered them and glared at him.
+``If someone comes making unreasonable demands of you, like Coltsfoot
+does, you can ignore them. You don't need to waste your time listening
+to them and coddling them, not when actually reasonable people exist and
+want to talk to you.''
+
+``She represents people who are innocent even if she isn't,'' Harry
+snapped, showing a bit of the fire in the cracks between the stones. He
+watched the shutters on the classroom windows bang in the wake of his
+magic, and took a deep breath, which hissed out again. ``Cut her off,
+and I'm cutting off access, and warnings, and protection, to them.''
+
+``Just tell her that you want a new representative, then,'' said Draco,
+unflinching as steel. ``Tell her you won't talk with her anymore, but
+the people of Hogsmeade are more than welcome to send a new
+representative who doesn't want the impossible.''
+
+``Would that work?'' Harry asked. He assumed the people Candida spoke
+for had chosen her for a reason.
+
+``It's as likely to as anything else, isn't it?'' Draco took another
+step closer to him. ``You're worrying yourself apart doing things like
+this, Harry. Either demand a replacement for the people like Coltsfoot,
+or delegate the task of dealing with people like her to others.'' His
+teeth gleamed when he smiled. ``Me, for example.''
+
+``They'd demand---''
+
+``You've let them get away with too much. Yes, they might demand, but
+that doesn't mean you have to give in.'' Draco leaned forward and
+scanned his face closely, as if he were seeing every drop of Harry's
+weariness and were determined to drink them down and away. ``At least
+try the experiment. I hate to see your strength spent on worrisome
+little things like this. We don't want you so tired from slapping at
+mosquitoes that you can't face the dragon.''
+
+Harry closed his eyes. That was a fact, wasn't it? He wanted to make
+plans for Midwinter, but he had no time when his life was filled with
+half a hundred daily crises that must be dealt with \emph{now}. And
+until this moment, there had seemed no solution, because people like
+Candida insisted on speaking with Harry directly.
+
+\emph{Time, perhaps, to see how well they actually deal with people like
+Draco. Midwinter is worse. If I have to prioritize, then I have to do
+what I can to make sure I come out of that alive.}
+
+``All right,'' he said, opening his eyes. ``You're right, Draco. The
+next time Candida comes to Hogwarts, you can talk to her.''
+
+``Of course I'm right.'' Draco was giving him a smile that wouldn't have
+looked out of place on a crocodile. ``And thank you.''
+
+Harry eyed him as he walked towards the door of the classroom. ``Just
+don't be too hard on her.''
+
+``I'll be gentle as a kitten,'' said Draco, and his smile was even more
+vulpine, reminding Harry of the fact that his Animagus form was a fox.
+Harry shook his head and ducked into the hallway.
+
+Perhaps he wouldn't have to delegate, in a perfect world, but this
+wasn't a perfect world, and his strength was being sapped. He had to do
+what he could to inspire hope in Britain, but endless hours of argument
+with petty village officials wasn't the best way to do that.
+
+At least, so he told himself, trying to attach Draco's voice to his
+conscience.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco stretched as soon as Harry was out of sight, and let his smug
+smile burst forth. He was pleased with himself. He had wondered if he
+could convince Harry to delegate even by pointing out how useless
+Coltsfoot's requests were, but it seemed Harry had finally reached his
+limit. That meant that Draco could speak to the Hogsmeade representative
+the next time she came to Hogwarts, and he had a few---choice---words
+for her.
+
+His plan of contacting the Aurors had gone even better than he imagined.
+He had no proof that those Aurors whom he had slowly been working his
+way among, the ones who had seen him and Harry defeat Dumbledore, were
+still alive, but he'd taken a chance and set an owl to the property of a
+minor Dark family whose house he knew had been seized by the Ministry.
+
+A reply had come at once. Draco still thought they were replying more to
+the promise of power inherent in Harry's name than to him, but that
+hardly bothered him. He could work in Harry's shadow and use his
+influence to orchestrate his own plans. Whatever worked.
+
+The Auror who'd contacted him, Lightsborn, had warned Draco that the
+Acting Minister had spoken to them, too. Apparently he was concocting
+yet another plot against Harry, and at least a few of their fellows were
+going along with it.
+
+Draco had pressed for more details, only to have Lightsborn admit she
+didn't know them. She would pass them on as they manifested, though.
+
+And, in the meantime, Draco got to have some fun from both ends of the
+spectrum, helping Harry both far away and here in Hogwarts.
+
+He didn't see how there could be anything wrong with that.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry leaned against the side of the Astronomy Tower and stared upwards.
+
+Above him were stars, and now and then the swooping flight of a
+Gloryflower winged horse. They took turns patrolling the safehouses and
+patrolling Hogwarts, by Laura's agreement with Harry. Harry hardly
+minded. If he was the target of a Midwinter attack, the battle would
+probably begin at the school, though Harry didn't intend to let it end
+here. He would move Voldemort away as soon as he could, but that meant
+Laura and her followers could defend and shelter the students in the
+meantime.
+
+He closed his eyes, for the moment, and dreamed.
+
+Everything had ended, for him. The darkness had crept in around the
+corners of his mind and managed to flush most of the concerns of the
+daylight world away. He knew, somewhere, that other people still existed
+and still fought Voldemort, and he was grateful for their existence. But
+it wasn't his struggle anymore.
+
+Guilt had been put aside. Notions of atonement were put aside. Merlin,
+he could sleep. He had done all he could, and then died, and that was
+the biggest offering he could make to the war.
+
+Here there were no people clamoring for opinions they didn't like when
+Harry gave them, or unanswerable questions about whether he had done the
+right thing by the Ministry victims, Lucius, the Squibs' Association,
+Draco, Connor, Snape, Regulus, Medusa and Eos, his sworn companions. He
+wasn't anything more than a speck drifting in darkness. Sometimes he
+wasn't even that, but the times when Harry could achieve the complete
+oblivion he believed---he hoped---awaited him in death were rare.
+
+He wanted it to end.
+
+He let the feeling soak through him, enough to freeze and calm the
+anguish woken by Candida's accusations, and then stood and shook his
+head. Enough relaxation. He had to decide on a plan for the Midwinter
+attack.
+
+He slipped quietly to the side of the Astronomy Tower and stood
+listening. No one was calling his name. Good. It seemed the truth he'd
+told everyone---that he wanted to be alone while he trained, that no one
+could be with him and survive such extremities of magic as he was going
+to practice---had held.
+
+Harry stretched, then closed his eyes and tried to recall the sensation
+when he'd first fallen into his lynx form, months ago. Yes, it had taken
+the burst of his magic coming into full maturity to force him there
+then, but he had to be able to assume the form at will, or what good was
+it?
+
+He strove for the imagination of four paws, fur settled on him like a
+jumper, a tail projecting from his spine. The sensation of lowness to
+the ground was, oddly, what he remembered best, even though he had been
+a fairly tall lynx.
+
+The image appeared in his head, floating just out of reach. Harry
+gritted his teeth and forced himself towards it. He \emph{was} a lynx,
+that was what he wanted to be at the moment, he could get there, he only
+had to walk a few more steps on the road separating him from the image
+and---
+
+And he was there, opening his eyes and blinking to find that the night
+looked almost gray, and his nose was alive to so many intriguing and
+confusing smells that he doubted he could sort them out.
+
+He leaped lightly down from the wall of the Astronomy Tower and padded
+through the school.
+
+It was different, walking like this. He could smell despair and
+weariness and frustration and the occasional spot or two of happiness,
+though for the most part Hogwarts wallowed in a cloud of sadness and
+forced bravery. Nearly everyone had known someone at the Ministry.
+Nearly everyone was cut by that loss, affected by it. That it could have
+been worse was not a comfort. It could not have been \emph{much} worse.
+
+Harry walked softly, not only because of the pads on his paws but
+because of all that sadness. He traveled through the miasma to the
+entrance doors, cut small holes in the thick wards, and then patched
+them behind him. He picked up speed as he trotted across the edge of the
+grounds and towards the Forest.
+
+With every movement, he became more used to running as a lynx, the
+moments when his belly fur almost brushed the ground, the silent
+enormous gifts of his paws, the whiskers that projected to either side
+of his face and twitched with a will of their own. The cold in the air
+made his blood rush faster and inspired a hunger in his belly that Harry
+knew could be quenched by meat. It wasn't creatures he was hunting
+tonight, though, but a suitable place.
+
+He could feel the call of it almost as soon as he entered the Forest. He
+hesitated on a small rise, nose up, head cocked back to study the waning
+crescent of the moon, and then he turned and plunged towards it.
+
+Brush crackled under him as Harry pressed forward, and then he was
+standing at the edge of the clearing into which he had once seen Nagini
+slither, dragging a helpless Connor behind her. It was the clearing
+where he and Connor had faced Voldemort at the end of first year, in
+Quirrell's body.
+
+Harry spent a few moments pacing the edge, because this seemed as if it
+would be a place of power for Voldemort, not him. Then he caught an edge
+of a sweet odor on the air, and flicked his ears. Yes. That must be it.
+Connor's body had flared with white light when Quirrell had tried to
+touch him. Snape had always insisted that that showed the power of
+Harry's love for him, while Harry had preferred to believe, at first,
+that Connor had saved himself through his own purity.
+
+\emph{Love it is.}
+
+Harry spent a few moments more sniffing the ground for the hint of any
+old traps that Voldemort might have left, then closed his eyes and sat
+down, wrapping his tail around his paws. He could use magic in this
+form, as he knew from using it in his visions against Voldemort, and so
+he began to wrap his magic around him, weaving it into the bushes and
+trees around the edges of the clearing.
+
+The trees were oaks, old and strong-rooted, but also mostly asleep now,
+as it was the beginning of winter. Harry tied the magic to their trunks
+instead of their branches, therefore, so that he wouldn't have to depend
+on a part of them that would be less awake than the rest. Shoving small
+balls of magic under roots and into bark and then running lines between
+them made for exacting, exhausting work, but Harry didn't intend to give
+up. The only possible way to combat Voldemort, who had considerably more
+magic than he did, was to prepare the ground carefully beforehand.
+
+\emph{And the wild Dark?}
+
+Harry had to admit that he still didn't know how to handle the wild
+Dark. He could use the phoenix song to hold it fascinated for a short
+time, perhaps, but come Midwinter, the manticore had already told him
+that it intended to take his soul. No amount of enticing and teasing
+would hold it at bay then. It would come for him and rip his soul out of
+his body.
+
+And, as he had made clear for himself from the beginning of his
+suicide-fantasies, to keep his mind from wandering too far, he couldn't
+die yet.
+
+Harry's whiskers twitched, and his ears flattened, as he went on laying
+the nets around the edges of the clearing. He didn't know what to do
+about that. Voldemort he could lure, and the magic in the nets would
+provide distractions and momentary hindrances, which was the best that
+Harry count on. Sting Voldemort in many small places all at once, as
+McGonagall had done when she changed his foot into a rat, and Harry
+would have a much better chance to use his own \emph{absorbere} gift and
+drain the violently taken magic from him.
+
+But the wild Dark had no such vulnerability, and it had shown no
+inclination to turn on Voldemort and rip his power away from him so far,
+which Harry wistfully imagined as the best thing that could occur.
+
+He wove another net, and then another, and then paused as a white shape
+parted the bushes at the edge of the clearing and came towards him. He
+would have struck, but his nose had already identified the strong scents
+of horse and human sweat. It was a centaur---Moon, Harry saw as he came
+closer.
+
+Moon slid to one knee in front of him. Harry had the time to reflect
+that they would make an odd sight for anyone happening along to see
+them, the white centaur bowing to a lynx.
+
+"Hail, \emph{vates}," Moon said solemnly. ``We bring you news of
+Polaris's shining, and of the weight of your presence in the world.''
+
+Harry could have changed back to human, but he found he didn't want to.
+It was easier to keep spinning the nets of magic if he didn't have to
+expend energy in transformation, anyway. He cocked his head and ruffled
+his whiskers to show that he was listening.
+
+``More webs are melting.'' Moon might have spoken that with exaltation
+in his voice, were he human, but Harry had long felt that centaurs
+didn't \emph{do} exaltation. ``Webs on magical creatures bred by Dark
+Lords and Ladies. The webs on magical serpents living in the deserts and
+jungles of Africa and South America. Webs on hippocampi, who have long
+been hidden from the sight of Muggles; they sport and play in the
+mid-oceans once more. Even those of our cousins who have found a home
+between the mighty trees and the sea speak of the redwoods stirring.''
+
+Harry hissed. That was all he needed to worry about, what havoc his mere
+presence in the world was causing.
+
+Moon reached out a hand and touched his ears. It didn't feel like the
+kind of condescending gesture a human would make to a cat, Harry
+thought, but a gesture of comfort, solidity, reassurance between
+comrades. He slowed his lashing tail and waited for what Moon would say
+next.
+
+``Polaris shines,'' the centaur told him. "The path of clarity is open,
+and we would be fools to ignore the message. For long centuries, it has
+been a guide for humanity, but also for the magical creatures; our
+ancestors followed it when they began their first migrations. The star
+speaks to you, \emph{vates}, among all the others it addresses.
+
+``It says this: though darkness is deep, one may pin his heart to a star
+and navigate by it. The truths of the world are still truths, whatever
+he endures. Thus the seasons come and go, and Polaris shines in the
+north, and magical creatures are freed from their undeserved webs at
+last.'' Moon slammed a hoof into the earth. "Do not forget what you are,
+\emph{vates}, the larger path that waits for you as a burden and a
+gift."
+
+And then he turned and charged into the darkness, again, which closed
+behind him like the swaying branches of trees. Harry gazed after him in
+wonder.
+
+\emph{That's what I did forget when I was thinking only of the war and
+the cool, soothing darkness of death. That there are rewards, gifts, out
+there, too, that it isn't only about doing things and listening to
+complaints. Some people are grateful for what I've done, even if those
+people aren't human, and I can do more good that gives me pleasure as
+well as good that's solely for others.}
+
+Harry turned back to the nets of magic. Suddenly, his lack of a plan to
+deal with the wild Dark as yet seemed less like a failure and more like
+an opportunity to finish planning. He still had a few weeks to
+Midwinter.
+
+\emph{I am the} vates. \emph{I am not just a source of trouble and pain,
+even to myself, but a source of good things, too. I can remember that,
+just as I can remember to delegate. It does no one any good if I tip too
+far in the direction of guilt. Only Voldemort would truly want to see me
+fall that way.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``I have what you asked for, Minister.''
+
+Duckworth's voice was guarded, thanks of course to the fact that they
+spoke through a hostile Floo, but Erasmus knew what he meant. He could
+feel his shoulders relaxing, and he nodded.
+
+``So you've sent the message to Harry?''
+
+``It was easy, Minister.'' Duckworth shrugged a little. ``His Malfoy
+lover contacted us. We did tell him that you'd like a meeting, and while
+he might be wary of that, what leader worth his salt could resist the
+opportunity to patch up old wounds? And that is what this shall be.''
+
+Erasmus nodded. Let Cupressus listen all he liked, or Harry's Malfoy
+lover. They would hear only, and exactly, what Erasmus had given his
+loyal Aurors permission to say: that he wanted to meet with Harry and
+discuss their differences, and cement the alliance in the name of the
+Light. That there would be an additional presence at the meeting, one
+intended to secure Harry's strength for the Light, went unsaid. They
+would all think that Erasmus's request of Duckworth had only meant the
+message that had been passed along.
+
+It might take a few days. Erasmus could wait. Let Harry just join him,
+and they would have enough power to sweep Voldemort away.
+
+And to set other things right, too, things that should never have been
+allowed to happen.
+
+\emph{Things like revealing the magical world to Muggles.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 63*: Helping Hands}\label{chapter-63-helping-hands}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Fifty: Helping Hands}
+
+Connor closed his eyes. If other people could achieve their Animagus
+forms in five months or less of training, he should be able to do it,
+too.
+
+Well, it might have been slightly more than five months, for Draco. But
+it had been \emph{considerably} more than five months for him.
+
+He could see the boar that he would be clearly now, even the odd posture
+that it stood in: with one trotter picked up and curled near its chest,
+its whiskers bristling, its tusks extending to either side of its face.
+Peter had eased Connor past his dismay with the ugliness of the creature
+by pointing out how powerful it was. There was a reason that boars had
+killed so many heroes and hunters in the old legends. The sheer strength
+of their charges could carry them \emph{up} a spear aimed at them and
+lead them to stab a man trying to kill them before the man could wrench
+back and free.
+
+A length of space still separated him from the boar, though, and the
+length seemed unconquerable. He pushed and strained, and managed to get
+a few feet---or maybe inches---nearer, before Peter spoke softly to call
+him out of his Animagus trance and back into the real world.
+
+``I don't understand,'' Connor muttered, as he took a long sip of the
+glass of water Peter had waiting for him. "Harry did it without even
+\emph{trying} when his magic came to full maturity. Why is it taking me
+so long?" He knew he was probably whinging, but Peter was one of a very
+few people who wouldn't scold him for that. And, indeed, Peter just
+smiled and looked thoughtful in reply, instead of snapping.
+
+``Your talents lie in other areas, Connor,'' he said. ``After all, do
+you think Draco would have as easy a time with the Light spells that you
+can perform?''
+
+``He's Declared Dark, though.'' Connor threw himself back on his
+favorite chair in Peter's office to sulk. It was soft behind him, the
+Cushioning Charm making the fabric even more deliciously comfortable to
+sit in. ``He wouldn't want to perform Light spells even if he could do
+them.''
+
+``But even without his Declaration, he couldn't do them with the same
+level of power and accuracy that you can,'' said Peter calmly. "That's
+my point, Connor. Not everything depends on Declaration. There's the
+pressure of innate talent, as well. Most wizards think that they choose
+the Declaration they want to make of their own free will, but that's not
+always true. What spells they like to do and want to do and \emph{can}
+do will prejudice them in a certain direction. Even the Grand Unified
+Theory makes that point." Peter picked up his own glass of water and
+used it, Connor thought, to conceal a smile. ``Which rather dismayed
+some Light wizards and Dark wizards both, since they preferred to think
+that there was no way they would wind up on the opposite side, or that
+there was the chance their children would.''
+
+"Somehow Light spells feels like a minor talent next to Dark spells
+\emph{and} an Animagus form," Connor said.
+
+``You can also fly much better than he can,'' Peter pointed out. ``And
+you're braver. No one else could have brought Harry back that night he
+flew off the Astronomy Tower but you.''
+
+``But Harry's good at flying, too,'' said Connor. "\emph{And} Light
+magic. \emph{And} the Animagus form." He stopped, shaking his head.
+``And---so many other things, really. I wish I had a talent that was
+just mine alone.''
+
+Peter set his glass of water aside and leaned forward. ``Shall I tell
+you what I think, Connor? I can't promise that it's very comforting, but
+I think you might need to hear it.''
+
+Connor blinked and stared into Peter's eyes. They were earnest, and
+didn't waver. Connor felt a small gnawing hole open in the middle of his
+stomach. When Peter looked like that, he was about to become
+\emph{serious}.
+
+But it had to be done. He nodded determinedly. ``Tell me.''
+
+"I think you were raised to believe you \emph{must} be unique," Peter
+said softly. "If one other person in the world shared what you had, what
+you did, it diminished the value of what you had or did. But that's
+ridiculous, of course. Why should someone sharing it diminish it? Your
+father was a good Auror, but so were plenty of other people. And Lily
+believed in sacrifice, but so did other people.
+
+"It was the Boy-Who-Lived belief, of course. That \emph{was} unique, and
+I think they invested too much of you in it. The uniqueness came to be
+the compelling thing about that, the separation from other people,
+rather than the connections you could form with them. One other person
+like you couldn't be a friend, but had to be a rival, and that's why you
+resisted so strenuously any implication that you had anything in common
+with, say, a Slytherin."
+
+Connor looked down and scowled at his hands. He didn't like to be told
+what he thought. Harry was right; it was very annoying.
+
+``I got over that,'' he muttered. "I announced to everyone at the trial
+that Harry was the \emph{real} Boy-Who-Lived, didn't I?"
+
+``You did.'' Peter nodded. ``And it was a very adult moment. And, I
+think, most of the time, you don't let this confusion overtake you. But
+you don't need to be unique to be special, Connor. A magical talent
+doesn't diminish just because one other person in the world can do what
+you did.'' He gave a small smile. ``I think Harry would welcome other
+Parselmouths, if the person who shared the gift with him wasn't his
+mortal enemy.''
+
+Connor bit his lip and drummed his foot on the floor for a moment. Then
+he said, ``And you don't think less of me, because I can't assume the
+Animagus form right now?''
+
+Peter had him in a hug so fast that Connor never saw him move. He
+blinked and hugged him cautiously back. His parents had hugged him like
+that, of course, but since Connor had learned how much of his childhood
+had been a lie, it was impossible to look back on those memories with
+the same fondness as before.
+
+``Of course not,'' Peter whispered. ``You've still managed to come much
+further than we did after two years of training. And yes, it's true that
+we didn't have a proper teacher, because we didn't dare tell anyone what
+we were doing, but some of it was our own fault. I took much longer to
+accept that my form was a rat than you took to accept your form, for
+example. Never think that you're doing poorly, compared to us.''
+
+Connor felt a warm little glow. Harry himself might be more at home with
+Slytherins and consider Snape his father, but Connor still liked
+receiving words of praise from Gryffindors.
+
+``Thanks,'' he whispered, and then sat back, took another gulp from his
+glass of water, and straightened. ``I'm ready to try again.''
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``He should not go,'' Snape pointed out. He knew his tone was logical,
+calm, full of maturity and poise. There was no reason for Regulus to
+look at him tolerantly, the way he would look at a child who insisted on
+staying up past his bedtime.
+
+``And why not?'' Regulus settled back against the chair in which he sat
+with a groan that was almost sinful. Snape controlled the impulse to
+frown at him. At least they weren't in Hogwarts, where a student passing
+through the halls could have heard the sound, but in Silver-Mirror. That
+was still no reason for Regulus to be decadent. ``The papers will pounce
+on him if he doesn't. Skeeter can only do so much, you know. Already
+some of them are saying that Harry's too overconfident of his own power,
+not to have visited the Acting Minister before this.'' Regulus took
+another sip from the glass of wine he held and groaned again.
+
+Snape averted his eyes, and frowned into the fire. ``Draco thinks it a
+trap. So do I. There are Aurors in contact with Juniper as well as those
+in contact with Harry. It is highly likely that they're planning
+something.''
+
+``They always are.'' Regulus's voice was warm, lazy, breathy with wine.
+``Does it matter? Harry will go prepared, thanks to Draco's warnings. If
+nothing happens, we can show Britain's two leaders working together for
+the good of the country. If something does happen, it will be Juniper's
+fault, and that will show that Harry was making a good faith effort
+while the old bastard wasn't. It's perfect. I trust you and Draco to
+keep him safe.'' Regulus sipped. ``And I'll go as well, of course,
+should Harry want me along. In fact, it's probably more proper that I do
+so, since Harry claimed my name.''
+
+Snape turned away with a hiss. He could feel Regulus pausing, and
+setting the wineglass down, but he refused to look at him. Even when
+Regulus stood and walked over to stand beside his chair, Snape still
+refused to look up. And that was mature, too, considering that he knew
+he would fire a curse at Regulus if he \emph{did} look up.
+
+``Severus,'' said Regulus, and he \emph{would} have to use Snape's first
+name, wouldn't he? ``Is this about jealousy over Harry's last name?
+Please believe me when I say that I never encouraged him to choose Black
+as his last name over yours. I'm pleased that he chose it, of course,
+but I wouldn't have wanted to cause you pain.''
+
+``Do not be ridiculous,'' said Snape. ``Of course it is not. It is about
+Harry going into danger when he meets the Acting Minister.''
+
+Regulus's hand fell on his shoulder. Snape thought about shifting out
+from underneath it, but that would show a gesture that could be
+interpreted as one of discomfort. He did not wish to show that. He was
+not uncomfortable. His emotions were tucked in Occlumency pools. He had
+a place in Harry's life, and he knew what it was. He was not jealous.
+
+"A friendship with you would be much easier if you would \emph{admit}
+what you felt and how you felt it, instead of making us guess," Regulus
+muttered, and then he bent as if he were going to whisper into Snape's
+ear, though no one else was there.
+
+That kind of closeness, Snape could not tolerate, and he did move
+further back into the chair. ``We should discuss what kind of guard
+Harry will have when he goes to meet Juniper,'' he said stiffly. ``For,
+be assured, he will need a guard.''
+
+Regulus remained where he was for a long moment. Then he sighed and
+said, ``If you want to be concerned about Harry, Severus, I can't stop
+you. You're his father.''
+
+Snape felt a small stab of satisfaction. At least Regulus acknowledged
+that.
+
+But why should he care about Regulus acknowledging it? The answer that
+made the most sense was his being jealous that Harry had chosen Black as
+a last name, and he was \emph{not} jealous.
+
+``I do wish,'' Regulus went on, ``that you trusted both me and Harry
+enough to know that we aren't going to shut you out of his life. If you
+accepted that, you could do more things like brewing the poison that
+killed the rest of the Death Eaters, and fewer things like sulking and
+raging.''
+
+Snape had to turn to face him then, because there was no choice. "I
+\emph{do not} sulk."
+
+Regulus raised an eyebrow and regarded him.
+
+``I do not,'' said Snape sturdily. ``I am
+occasionally---uncomfortable---with some choices Harry makes, some
+people he lets into his life, and especially the risks he takes. But his
+last name is not one of those things.''
+
+``Do you know,'' Regulus said, apparently talking to the wall, ``I think
+that one should be as honest as possible in a war? Any day may be the
+last that you see someone else alive, at least for them to recognize
+you. And yet so many people lie and think they must keep up a cheerful
+front for the sake of others, when those people would prefer to see the
+truth, no matter how hurtful.''
+
+``Regulus,'' Snape hissed between his teeth, ``shut up.''
+
+``And then there are the ones who try to shut down conversations,''
+Regulus went on remorselessly. ``Sometimes they forbid discussion of
+death and reality, as if that would somehow make them vanish. Or they
+insist that no truth that isn't cheerful can be told, in the name of
+keeping up morale. Voldemort, of course, was notorious for insisting
+that his Death Eaters not tell him bad news, even when they had lost a
+battle badly, and punished those who did so.''
+
+Snape stood and whipped towards the fireplace he'd used to Floo to
+Silver-Mirror. Regulus's arms coming around his middle and hugging him
+stopped him, utterly.
+
+``You are my friend,'' Regulus whispered to him. ``You are Harry's
+father. And sometimes you trust those relationships, and sometimes you
+don't, because you seem to fear that we will disapprove of you, what you
+do or what you say. I think Harry has inherited far more from you than
+he did from James, blood link or no.''
+
+Then he released his hold, and left Snape standing there, hesitating,
+deciding whether he should go through the Floo or not.
+
+In the end, he left, and then spent his afternoon brewing
+Blood-Replenishing Potions. There were some things he was not ready for.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco waited alone in the usual abandoned classroom where Candida came
+to see Harry. She stopped when she saw him, but then appeared to shrug
+and decide that Draco must have been using the room for some other
+purpose.
+
+``Where is Black?'' she asked, glancing around, as if she thought that
+Harry would materialize from the walls.
+
+``Busy.'' Draco didn't try to disguise either the pleasure or the drawl
+in his voice, and that snapped her gaze back to him immediately. ``And
+busy from now on, unless you change your attitude greatly. I'll speak to
+you today. Then I'll send you on to Cupressus Apollonis.''
+
+Candida actually stared with her mouth open. Draco evaluated her in
+interest. His mother had taught him that people who did that were a
+dying breed, because it was so easy for some much smarter wizard to aim
+the Killing Curse down the open throat.
+
+\emph{My mother.}
+
+Draco shook off the thought impatiently. Narcissa wouldn't have wanted
+grief to cripple him when he was dealing with an idiot like this---and
+Candida was indeed an idiot, given the stupid words she was readying.
+
+``I insist on speaking to Black,'' she said, her eyes narrowed and one
+hand raised as if she would curse him with the power of her fingers
+alone. Draco didn't think that would work. He yawned and looked at her
+while her face grew redder and redder. "We live next to the castle. We
+are the most likely targets of Voldemort's next attack. We have a
+\emph{right} to his attention that people living further away don't
+have, because we are more at risk. I represent children who are only
+beginning to live in the midst of war, Malfoy, and adult wizards and
+witches who don't deserve to have their lives cut short because of a
+lack of information. Tell me where he is, and take me to him now."
+
+``No,'' said Draco, folding his arms. "He's delegated me to deal with
+you, because I asked.
+
+"As a matter of fact, there's \emph{no} proof that you're the most
+likely targets of Voldemort's next attack. Voldemort wants Harry. He'll
+go after him first. He may strike Hogsmeade, yes, but he might just as
+easily attack the school, or another place where one of Harry's friends
+or allies is living. That's what Harry's been trying to tell you. No one
+can be absolutely safe from Voldemort because there's no absolute safety
+from the most dangerous and most insane wizard in the world.
+
+``You've demanded the impossible from him, and then been angry when he
+doesn't deliver it?'' Draco arched an eyebrow. "How do you think that
+\emph{helps}? It weighs him down with impossible guilt, and you down
+with stupid demands instead of things that could actually contribute to
+the war effort."
+
+"We shouldn't \emph{have} to contribute to the war effort!" Candida
+yelled at him. "We've \emph{given} enough, blood and lives, and many of
+us gave up our homes when the vampire queen attacked! That's
+\emph{enough}, those sacrifices! What did we ever do to Black that we
+should have to bear part of his burdens, or to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named,
+that he should target us?"
+
+Draco was tempted to bow his head, put a hand on his brow, and shake his
+head sadly. But, in the end, dramatic gestures would suffice less to
+teach Candida the error of her ways than calm, cool words would. He
+arched an eyebrow and stared at her until she had the chance to turn red
+from embarrassment instead of passion.
+
+``You lived in the same country,'' he said. "You preferred to leave the
+duty of defense up to the powerful wizards around you, instead of
+participating in it yourselves. You became fat and lazy, and you started
+to think of war as something that happened elsewhere, to other people.
+And lately, you've snapped and sniped at Harry and stopped him from
+thinking about either the Ministry \emph{or} ways to defend you because
+you were so busy insisting on perfect safety.
+
+``How in the world is a country supposed to defend itself when only a
+few people try to help? When the rest are too busy hiding in their
+houses or wailing about how something isn't their fault to even pick up
+a wand? You want perfection. You won't get it out of Harry. You won't
+get it out of anyone.''
+
+``We had thirteen years of peace,'' Candida whispered. ``Why couldn't it
+have stayed that way?''
+
+``I can hardly believe that you're an adult,'' Draco observed. "Did you
+think, for one moment, that that peace would last \emph{forever?}
+Destroy Voldemort, and another Dark Lord would have risen in his place,
+eventually, or some other Lord would have decided to come and take over
+Britain when Dumbledore died." He kept his knowledge of the Pact and its
+procedures to himself. This woman could barely look out her own windows;
+she didn't need to know anything about the international confederation
+of wizards and witches who would, probably, have kept a stranger from
+establishing himself in Britain. "You can't whimper and whinge and
+expect that \emph{that} gets things done. When someone as strong as
+Voldemort arises, there needs to be opposition to him at all levels, the
+highest to the lowest, the weakest as well as the most strong.
+Otherwise, we have a single defender who's destroyed, and then where are
+we, the rest of us, the innocent who don't `deserve' a war?"
+
+``But he can face it,'' Candida whispered, her head bowing as if it were
+the head of a flower loaded with frost. Draco doubted his words had
+cowed her that much. More likely, the picture he painted was so bleak as
+to compel her to start thinking about what it would really mean should
+Harry fall. ``We can't.''
+
+"Then \emph{learn}." Draco watched in satisfaction as she flinched, a
+straight line of pain that seemed to travel from her stomach to her
+shoes. ``Harry's offered dueling classes, a system of warnings so that
+people can let him know when a village is under attack, evacuation to
+France.''
+
+``We don't want to leave,'' Candida said, face completely lowered now,
+but the corners of her brow set in stubborn lines. ``We just want---we
+just want things to be the way they were.''
+
+"And instead of helping them return to that state, you're moping and
+whinging taking Harry's time away from problems that \emph{are}
+problems, instead of the moans of spoiled children who have never had to
+fight." Draco examined his fingernails for a moment. ``Charming.''
+
+Candida took a sudden step forward, hands balled. "It's all right for
+\emph{you}," she snapped. "You know that you'll be protected no matter
+what happens, because you're so dear to Black. And you came through the
+attack at the Ministry all right, didn't you? But my sister was nobody
+to him. And he was there, and she \emph{still died.} And if the rest of
+us don't protest, don't make ourselves noticed, then he's likely to let
+us die, too, just so that he can protect the people important to him. We
+have to play on his sense of guilt, or we'll be abandoned."
+
+Draco stared at her. Then he recovered his voice. ``That statement says
+more about your own selfishness than anything Harry's done. You might
+leave anyone you didn't personally care about to die. He won't.''
+
+``Then how is it that the people who die when he fights are innocent
+victims, while the people he loves come through again and again?''
+Candida asked triumphantly, as if that proved something.
+
+Draco half-closed his eyes and shook his head. ``I don't care about your
+grief the way Harry does,'' he said. "I \emph{am}, in fact, the way that
+you accuse him of being---I don't give a damn as long as the people I
+love survive---but I've gone through a loss that I don't blame on him,
+and if you've listened to everything he says and can still believe he's
+really like me, you're blind."
+
+``What he says to the newspapers is propaganda.'' Candida shrugged.
+``Just attempts to make sure that most people think he's compassionate,
+and won't turn against him.''
+
+``I see no point in talking to you further,'' said Draco. He had been
+tempted to ask why she was begging for Harry's attention if she really
+thought him so cold-hearted, but he knew the contradictions in her logic
+didn't matter to her. She wanted things to be the way they had been.
+Nothing less would satisfy her, and it was a longing that could never be
+gratified.
+
+Harry would have all sorts of reasons and excuses for her, of
+course---the loss of her sister, the fact that Candida was of the
+generation that had grown up under Dumbledore's protection and had never
+believed she would have to do her own fighting, the proximity of
+Hogsmeade to Hogwarts. But the fact remained that Draco wasn't Harry,
+and that Candida had nothing reasonable in her worldview that he could
+translate into a political bargain.
+
+``Have your people send a new representative, if they really want to be
+heard,'' he added, to Candida, and swept towards the door of the room.
+
+``Wait!''
+
+Draco turned, wondering if she had something to say that could salvage
+the situation. He doubted it. Candida was leaning forward, though, one
+hand extended.
+
+``My people chose me because I was the only one who wanted to come to
+the castle and speak,'' she said. ``The rest of them are too terrified
+to do so. Please. They won't send another person in my place. They'll
+simply huddle in their houses.''
+
+Draco gave a slow, delighted smile. ``You should have thought of that
+before you started to antagonize us,'' he said simply. ``You'll be able
+to speak to Cupressus Apollonis in a few days.''
+
+He turned away and shut the door on her further words, then. He had no
+use for those who refused to admit their mistakes, whose lives were an
+endless series of weepings and wailings and complaints and hopes that
+someone else would take up the slack.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``For the last time, I think we have everything.'' Harry tried to keep
+the tense snap in his voice down, but it was hard. Snape had made him go
+over five different ways to react to any treachery on Juniper's part,
+including an unexpected Portkey, an attack by the Aurors who would be at
+their meeting, and a sudden use of the phoenix web or other powerful
+Light binding spell.
+
+Snape shook his head. ``And I still do not think we should be attending
+this meeting at all.''
+
+"You've made that \emph{very clear.}" Harry bared his teeth. "We're
+going, sir. You and Draco will be with me, and Regulus, and the sworn
+companions just out of sight. It would be \emph{stupid} for Juniper to
+try anything, especially since he \emph{knows} that I'm the only one who
+can defeat Voldemort."
+
+"Juniper \emph{is} stupid," Draco pointed out, leaning against Harry and
+patting his other shoulder. ``So of course he'll try something. But we
+have enough power on our side to counter whatever he tries.''
+
+Harry opened his mouth, then snapped it shut. That might mean that Draco
+was going to read the minds of the Aurors present at the meeting. If
+that was the case, then he didn't want to know it. Life was much easier
+when he allowed the Slytherins around him to do what they needed to do.
+
+\emph{Life would be much easier if I acted more Slytherin at times,
+too.}
+
+Harry pushed that thought away. He was still devoted to keeping his
+peacetime morals as intact as possible. Corruption could wait. ``Let's
+go, then,'' he said determinedly, facing the Forbidden Forest. They had
+come out to the end of the Hogsmeade road, as usual, to Apparate to the
+agreed-upon location with Juniper. Harry could see a few people watching
+them from the edge of the village. Their faces were pale and desperate.
+He found himself watching them and wondering what they thought of this,
+whether they hated him or not.
+
+Then he shrugged the notion impatiently away. \emph{What does that
+matter? It's only idiots like Juniper who want to be universally
+beloved.}
+
+The disorientation of Apparition seized him, and then they were standing
+on the wide field that had been, as Snape informed him when Juniper
+suggested it, the scene of a major battle in the First War. Harry wasn't
+sure what implications to read from that, other than the fact that the
+Light had won the battle, and Juniper might be seeking to relive the
+victory through his own actions.
+
+The day was open and windswept, though dark with clouds that looked
+ready to drop snow. Harry could see Juniper and his guards immediately,
+ten or fifteen Aurors gathered around him. Cupressus stood not far away
+from them, arranged halfway between as a supposedly neutral party---both
+a member of the Order of the Firebird and Harry's ally. He faced Harry
+and gave a nod of welcome.
+
+Harry could feel his shoulders tense. Cupressus had agreed that he would
+shake his head if he believed Juniper to be innocent, and nod if he
+thought there was something wrong.
+
+But then, that only made part of Harry more eager to finish this. He had
+squeezed the amulet and summoned Rita as soon as he had a good idea of
+the meeting place. She would be waiting nearby with a photographer and
+her Quick-Quotes Quill. If something happened, she would record the
+event immediately and make it clear to the \emph{Prophet} and its
+readers that Harry was the wronged party.
+
+He came nearer to the Acting Minister, and nodded. ``Hello, sir. You
+said that you wanted to make peace with me?''
+
+Juniper's eyes locked on him. Harry didn't miss the gleam of
+satisfaction in them. He felt his own gleam of sadness. Juniper really
+couldn't lie to save his own life, could he?
+
+``I do,'' said Juniper. ``I do not think that our people should be
+divided when we have such a formidable enemy to fight.'' He gestured to
+the Auror who stood beside him, and the man, moving slowly and carefully
+so that Harry could see every motion before he made it, drew out a
+scroll tied with blue ribbon from his cloak. ``This is a treaty that,
+once signed, will bind us both to obey the same laws, and to accord each
+other the same measure of honor and respect. It also makes us allies
+beyond doubt in the war against You-Know-Who.''
+
+Harry didn't need Draco's hand tightening on his shoulder to let him
+know there was something suspicious about the treaty. For one thing, the
+ribbon should really have been green, the color of spring and thus of
+reconciliation, if Juniper was following the oldest Light customs.
+
+``Let me see the scroll,'' he murmured, and floated it away from the
+Auror's hand before anyone could object.
+
+Almost at once, he felt a salty, sour tang to the magic around the
+scroll. He wrinkled his nose and undid the ribbon, shaking it out at a
+distance from him to read it. It looked legitimate, filled with archaic
+and legal language, but given the Auror and the ribbon, Cupressus and
+the taint to the magic, Harry knew there must be something wrong with
+it. He just couldn't figure out what, yes.
+
+Draco leaned forward as if reading the scroll over his shoulder. Into
+Harry's ear, he whispered, ``It's a version of the silver collar that
+they used to bind Fudge's Hounds. Transfigured. Put it on you, and the
+person who holds the gem that Juniper's carrying right now controls your
+magic and your mind.''
+
+Harry tried to breathe through the sheer rush of dizzying \emph{rage}
+that descended on him. He wasn't sure what angered him more, actually:
+the idea that Juniper still did not grasp what was important in the wake
+of the Ministry's destruction, or the idea that, even now, he would try
+to bind a \emph{vates.}
+
+But they still needed to trigger the trap so that Rita could capture it.
+Accusations wouldn't look good at all, particularly if they had to admit
+to relying on Draco's possession gift or Snape's Legilimency to get
+their evidence.
+
+He raised his eyes to Juniper's, calming his hatred, and said, ``It
+looks in order. May I have a quill, sir?''
+
+Juniper's eyes lit up as he handed the quill over. Harry understood,
+then. He was probably going to activate the spell the moment he signed,
+or else there was a provision in the contract that made it seem Harry
+would accept the collar willingly. Then it would Transfigure back into
+silver and snap around his neck.
+
+So Harry had to be careful.
+
+He placed the quill against the parchment, and, in a silence tense for
+him and at least five other people, he began to sign. \emph{Harry} went
+on the parchment, which quivered beneath his hands, and then he began
+\emph{Potter.}
+
+He'd just started the curve of the \emph{P} when the scroll moved.
+
+Harry acted at the same time, opening the gullet of his \emph{absorbere}
+gift and draining just enough of the magic from the changing collar that
+it couldn't snap shut around his throat, while still giving it enough to
+let it complete the transformation. A moment later, the collar lunged at
+him, opening and closing like the jaws of a maddened dog, and Juniper
+lifted a gem above his head with a triumphant yell---
+
+Only to pause when he realized Harry was clutching the straining collar
+in one hand and watching him with cold eyes, and that the dazzling
+flashes of a camera were exploding to the left.
+
+Harry was watching. He saw the moment when true despair settled into
+Juniper's eyes. This was making an impact on him in a way that not even
+the fall of the Ministry had, at least for the moment. Maybe it had been
+the last plan he felt capable of coming up with. Harry didn't know.
+
+He \emph{did} know that this was the end of Juniper's usefulness as a
+figurehead. If he would betray the person he had to work with to secure
+the future against Voldemort, he was not useful, in any sense, as a
+leader.
+
+The other Aurors, apart from the one who had handed Juniper the scroll,
+suddenly moved, and closed in on the Acting Minister and his assistant.
+That Auror tried to fight his way free, but they had him disarmed and
+subdued soon enough.
+
+All the while, the camera clicked and flashed.
+
+And Harry went on staring into Juniper's eyes, watching the knowledge of
+defeat penetrate the man's brain at last, and feeling Draco's hand on
+his shoulder, and trying to drown the dull throbs of both
+satisfaction---it would be easier, now, without Juniper's dead weight
+around his neck---and disappointment---he could hardly believe that such
+stupid people existed in the world.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 64*: Destruction
+Laughing}\label{chapter-64-destruction-laughing}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Fifty-One: Destruction Laughing}
+
+The wild Dark laughed above the world, and Kanerva Stormgale laughed
+with it.
+
+She had given herself over to the wild Dark when she first realized the
+extent of its loathing for the world. She felt the same way herself. She
+gazed down at houses and coastlines, lakes and hills, from her height,
+and she thought of winds smashing them and drowning them in the oceans.
+Most of all, though, she thought of them ceasing to exist, as a fine
+black oblivion took them all.
+
+She wanted that. The wild Dark would spread a destruction finer than any
+she could conceive, finer than wine, in every direction. She would cease
+to exist along with everything else. She would go down in peace.
+
+And that was what the wild Dark promised now, as it had not even back
+two Midwinters ago, when Kanerva had lent it her strength as it raged
+above Britain. Let the longest night come, and things \emph{would} cease
+to exist. It told her that, and then it laughed, and Kanerva laughed
+back, because to love it she did not have to trust it.
+
+She vaulted among the clouds, and sang aloud. She felt her winds racing
+around her in a tightening cocoon, and she put a hand out, running it
+down and over and through their smooth bonds. They tied her so tightly
+she could hardly move, and then parted and spun her out again. She knew
+that the wild Dark was behind that, trying to make her afraid, testing
+her resolve.
+
+Kanerva would never be afraid of it again, though. Twenty-five years
+ago, she had stood on a rocky promontory above the ocean and stared down
+into the black water. It was the moment she had come to full power, and
+she knew she had the choice of giving herself over to this incredible
+strength, or casting herself into the ocean and ending her life right
+then and there.
+
+She had chosen the wild Dark. Anxious as she was to pass away, suicide
+into the ocean waves would be imperfect for her. She wanted the wild
+Dark to do it. She wanted oblivion complete and perfect. Nothing of her
+must survive when the moment of death came, because she wanted it that
+way.
+
+She had tried and tried to tell Jing-Xi and Harry the truth of that.
+Jing-Xi only looked at her with wide, sad eyes. Kanerva thought she
+understood, sometimes, but she had still brought Kanerva along to aid
+Britain, so perhaps she did not.
+
+And Harry! Kanerva shook her head and whipped around a rising column of
+air, then descended it towards the earth until it threatened to bear her
+out of the wild Dark's sphere of influence. The boy still thought of
+loyalty first. When someone held a different belief from himself, he
+thought first of persuasion. He did not understand those, like Kanerva
+and the wild Dark, whose ultimate ambition was the destruction of the
+world, and of all the possibilities he held so dear.
+
+Kanerva was fond of him. She could admit that without disgracing
+herself, or turning against her principles. And when Midwinter came, she
+would fight for him, because Voldemort dared call himself Dark Lord, as
+if he were the only one, and play with the force she served.
+
+But she would not stand in the way of the wild Dark as it moved to claim
+Harry's soul. That was a mystery Harry did not understand, could not
+permit himself to understand as long as he loved someone else: the
+mystery of perfect destruction.
+
+High above Britain, destruction laughed, and Kanerva laughed with it.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+{\textbf{\emph{The Daily Prophet}}}
+
+\emph{December 4th, 1997}
+
+\textbf{\emph{{ACTING MINISTER JUNIPER DISGRACED:}}}
+
+\emph{\textbf{Tries to capture vates with child's trick}}
+
+\emph{By: Rita Skeeter}
+
+Thanks to an anonymous warning, this reporter was present at the meeting
+of Acting Minister Erasmus Juniper and {vates} Harry Black this
+afternoon. The meeting was described as an attempt at reconciliation and
+establishing ties between wizards who until today were often described
+as hating each other.
+
+The reconciliation did not work. When the {vates} began to sign the
+treaty, it rose, Transfigured, and attacked him.
+
+It turned out that the Acting Minister was using a variation of a silver
+collar last seen controlling those whom Minister Fudge called the
+Hounds, who were his loyal hunters of Dark magic. Had Black signed out
+his full and true name, as per a provision in the treaty, he would have
+agreed to his own captivity, and the Acting Minister would have assumed
+control of his magic and mind via a gem linked to the collar. It is
+Light, if only by the slimmest of margins, claiming as it does to
+respect the target's free will and own decision to become a captive and
+a slave.
+
+The Aurors with Acting Minister Juniper, all but the unfortunately-named
+Jason Duckworth, turned on their former leader when they found out what
+he had done. Juniper is now under house arrest in an undisclosed
+location, awaiting evacuation to France.
+
+The {vates} has said that he does not intend to charge Juniper with a
+crime. ``What he did has been tried before and failed,'' he said,
+looking extraordinarily composed as he gave the orders for the Acting
+Minister's transportation. ``One has to feel sorry for him, really.''
+
+When asked if the Light still has power in the new coalition government
+that he is helping to set up, Black raised an eyebrow. ``Of course.
+Cupressus Apollonis, among others, has offered his assistance and been
+accepted. He is the new leader of the Irish part of the alliance, while
+Miriam Smith has agreed to lead the British half.''
+
+The {vates} went on to warn those who might wish to flee that they would
+be better off doing it as soon as possible. He said that matters become
+more and more dangerous as we move closer to Midwinter.
+
+``It's the night of longest darkness,'' he said. ``I'm sure I don't have
+to tell you what You-Know-Who might have planned for then.''
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Cupressus smoothed the paper flat with one hand, and read the article's
+opening paragraphs one more time. It was the first time in days that the
+\emph{Prophet} had been allowed to enter his house without having the
+writing in its lead article adjusted to something less inflammatory.
+
+Of course, for those who might have been angry about or doubted the
+wording, there was always the picture, which Skeeter's photograph had
+snapped at the exact correct moment. Juniper was lunging forward, his
+hand raised above his head, his mouth open, and then staggering to a
+stop when Harry grasped the collar a few inches from his throat and
+fixed him with a cold eye. The next moment, the Aurors fell on him like
+a folding flower.
+
+Cupressus was determined to keep an eye on some of those Aurors. Some of
+them would have been waiting, sure that Harry would win, but ready to
+follow Juniper if he did not. Let the danger grow too great, and they
+might abandon their new posts on Harry's side. They could use wizards
+trained in combat, but not if those wizards were going to run from the
+enemies they were supposed to defend the helpless against.
+
+He leaned back, clasped his hands behind his head, and studied the far
+window of his home thoughtfully. There was the emptiness at his side
+where Ignifer should have been. He was trying to learn to ignore it.
+
+He was learning to ignore many things that might have mattered to him,
+truly, because the sheer continued existence of the Light in Britain and
+Ireland mattered more to him than they did. Once, he would have
+disdained to lend Harry his assistance if he found the man dying at the
+side of the road. He had seemed dangerous, the embodiment not of
+Darkness but of the permissiveness that had allowed the Dark to achieve
+the position of power it had. Cupressus could not deny how strongly
+Harry had fought against Voldemort. At the same time, though, why would
+he not demand more from those who followed him? The ones like Cupressus
+who would refuse him outright were rare. He could have grown into a much
+stronger force if he would sometimes make demands, instead of accepting
+the first answers that his people gave him.
+
+And then Minister Scrimgeour had been killed.
+
+That had taken a large part of Cupressus's personal enmity into the
+grave with him. Death was the harshest punishment he could ask for for
+the crime of having invaded his house and believing that he had abused
+his own child. And he had joined Erasmus fully because the man had moved
+fast, faster than Cupressus could have, to gain the Minister's office,
+and had seemed, for a few shining days, the best choice to both lead the
+Ministry and make sure the side of the Light survived.
+
+And then Erasmus had turned out to be useless in war situations, in
+situations for which he did not have plans already laid, in situations
+where he did not have a more or less equal opposition to test himself
+against. Scrimgeour had been far more his equal than Harry or Voldemort
+were. So Cupressus had questioned his definition of Light, and learned
+it was far too impractical and too old-fashioned to survive and grow in
+the modern British Isles.
+
+He'd sworn the oaths of the Order of the Firebird because he could keep
+them, but the Order would never grow. There were too many people who
+could not give their lives to it, could not believe in it. And that was
+well enough for Cupressus. By then, he'd already been detaching his cart
+from Juniper's star, and begun to hitch it to Harry's. Why not? The
+issue of his personal grievances against the boy---far more of which
+were actually lodged in Ignifer and Scrimgeour---was nothing compared to
+the fact that he \emph{must} defend the Light or it would be lost.
+
+And the Light would survive now. Cupressus was certain of that. He would
+do his best to make sure that the Light had its own place in the
+\emph{vates's} councils, even after Voldemort went down to death and the
+world became more or less normal again. They were making progress
+towards creating a provisional government, using the model that Harry
+had established of the defensive network between villages. Those willing
+to help could do anything, from covering escapes to French ships and
+Apparition points to watching those most vulnerable to Death Eater
+recruitment. The loss of the Ministry was devastating, but Britain was
+slowly overcoming it and moving on.
+
+That was primarily what made Cupressus scornful of the letter he had
+received today, written on thick, creamy parchment and sealed with the
+symbol of the International Confederation of Warlocks.
+
+They should have looked more carefully at the political situation before
+they bothered to send this to him. \emph{Really}. Thinking they could
+play on the ancient rivalry between Britain and Ireland to serve their
+own ends, instead of checking to see whether the current leaders cared
+more about that rivalry than the war? Thinking that most people around
+Harry saw him as an abused child, just because Juniper had?
+
+Cupressus had already made a copy to pass along to Harry, one that would
+arrive at the school soon. It suited him that it would be borne by the
+same owl who had carried his test messages asking Harry simple
+questions, trying to see how he would react. He had acted how Cupressus
+expected him to, and that had been one of the middle signs that showed
+Cupressus the right road to follow.
+
+He set down to write a relatively polite letter to the Confederation,
+listening, meanwhile, to the way that his house's wards shifted and rang
+in the sunlight. In another corner of the house, Artemis was singing.
+Cupressus could only hear snatches of the voice, but he knew the song,
+the ancient Latin words and the breaths and pauses that his wife took to
+get around them. This was a song she had sung every day at this time for
+years, a song that many Light witches had once used to anchor the
+blessings of the sun to their homes.
+
+Such traditions were larger and more precious than merely personal
+rivalries, and though he disliked doing it, Cupressus could work with
+people he found distasteful---and some people he had tested and found
+good, such as Harry---to preserve them.
+
+\emph{A pity the Confederation does not understand that.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Indigena frowned in concentration, and closed her eyes. What her Lord
+had asked her little garden to produce this time was harder, since it
+was not living. A narcissus flower, a copy of her cousin Feldspar's
+body---those she could produce without much trouble. But this would only
+be incidentally living, a hammer made of hardened, dead material like
+bone and horn. She would have to grow it, and then make it die, and then
+harden it enough to crush stone.
+
+She became aware of a presence on the edge of her garden, but she
+ignored it for the moment. If it were Evan, he would wait. If it was one
+of the twins, they would realize that her duties for their Lord were
+more important than interrupting her right away to deliver a message.
+
+The presence lingered, waiting, while Indigena strained, and strained,
+and finally achieved something that was what her Lord wanted, though
+Merlin knew it wasn't the most beautiful thing she'd ever made. She
+couldn't resist adding the rainbow of a mother-of-pearl sheen to it,
+though. Who cared? Well, she did. Not many people would see it as
+punched through the rock, and her Lord would only stare with dead eyes
+if she asked him about it, so Indigena thought she might as well please
+herself.
+
+When she looked up, she stared. The presence that waited on the edge of
+her garden was the shimmering silvery shape of Aurora Whitestag's ghost.
+
+Indigena regarded her carefully. Had she come to take her revenge? It
+was stupid of her to risk her existence like this, if so. Indigena stood
+in the sanctuary of her garden, among plants she had bred, on earth she
+had filled with her presence. Aurora could spend her strength here
+without managing to tear a plant from the soil. Yes, she might frost
+them, but Indigena had twined more plants within herself that kept their
+flowers later in the year, and so had a better resistance to that tactic
+now.
+
+Aurora skimmed nearer and nearer, the trailing edge of her robe brushing
+just over the crisp snow that lay everywhere on the ridge but Indigena's
+garden. Indigena watched her come, her hand lightly clenched around the
+edge of the shining hammer.
+
+``Did you know,'' said Aurora conversationally, stopping a few feet away
+from Indigena, "that I died thinking of how I could be useful in
+stopping you? That doesn't have to mean that I kill you to take my
+revenge. It could just mean that I \emph{stop} you." She smiled
+dreamily, as if she knew something Indigena didn't.
+
+``I realize that,'' Indigena said quietly. ``I understand what might
+make a person return as a ghost.''
+
+``Did you like killing me?'' Aurora demanded.
+
+Indigena shook her head. ``But it seems my fate to be involved in the
+deaths of people I have come to respect.''
+
+Aurora snorted and folded her arms. She looked younger, as she had since
+she returned from the dead. Indigena wondered if this was what she had
+really been like, so driven and so passionate, when she was in her
+twenties, or if this was an ideal imagining. ``Fate? It's not fate. It's
+your stupid honor debt, the perversion of your word. If you would give
+that up, many people in the world would be happier.'' She eyed the
+hammer in Indigena's hand as if she knew what it was for. She probably
+did. She could have come near, undetectably, and listened to Indigena
+and her Lord's plans for Midwinter. Ghosts born as vengeance spirits had
+powers like that, though much more limited powers to make use of what
+they heard.
+
+Indigena shrugged. ``Honor is important to me in ways that you will
+never understand.''
+
+``That puts you to sleep at night, I'm sure.'' Aurora brushed her hair
+out of her eyes. ``But do you think that anyone else out there believes
+it?''
+
+``Becoming a ghost has not made you the fount of all wisdom.'' Indigena
+stooped to slip a vine from around the hammer's handle, and murmur
+thanks to her plant. It rustled in exhaustion, then pulled its leaves in
+on itself and went to sleep. Indigena doubted she would gain any more
+from it this year.
+
+``So you don't care what other people think of you?'' Aurora floated
+along the outside of the garden like a rag borne on the wind.
+
+``Very good. Perhaps you can learn wisdom, if you were not made with
+it.'' Indigena hefted the hammer thoughtfully. She would have to have a
+strong vine to carry it, but considering what the Midwinter attack was
+designed to do, she would have had to use strong vines in any case. She
+started towards the mouth of the burrow, carrying the hammer. Aurora
+drifted after her.
+
+She didn't attack when Indigena crossed the border of the garden, to her
+vague surprise. She paused and studied the ghost, who simply drifted a
+bit closer and opened her mouth as if to make a joke of eating
+Indigena's hair.
+
+``What do you want?'' Indigena asked softly.
+
+That made Aurora ripple like a reflection in a pool broken by a tossed
+stone. Indigena decided it probably came from laughter she couldn't
+hear. ``You know what I want,'' said Aurora, when she returned to
+herself. ``You know the reason for what I was thinking when I died.''
+
+Indigena nodded. ``I was simply thinking that the war is likely to kill
+me before you get a chance.''
+
+``So many more things can be done than death,'' said Aurora, her eyes
+half-lidding. "Just as so many other things can be done \emph{with}
+death." And with that, she turned to a frosty smear on the air, and was
+gone.
+
+Indigena shrugged and went into the burrow, dragging the hammer along
+with her. She could feel the earth's dull protest as the head carved a
+groove into it, but its voice was faint and weak now, after so many days
+of occupation by Voldemort and his magic. At least Indigena's forays
+into the open air sustained her tolerance for coming back down into this
+stifling warmth and power.
+
+Her Lord looked up from the throne on which he sat. Small scarlet
+windows occupied the places where his ruined eyes had once rested.
+Indigena couldn't tell if they were a gift from the wild Dark, or a
+consequence of his own increasing power. She didn't know exactly how
+they worked, what he saw. She didn't want to know. She kept her eyes
+averted from her Lord most of the time, in any case, just because she
+didn't want his Legilimency slipping under the surface of her thoughts
+and discovering how disloyal she actually was. Plotting to destroy two
+of the three servants left to him would count as disloyal, Indigena
+guessed.
+
+``This is our weapon, my Lord,'' she said, and hefted the hammer. The
+handle was packed with vines, as much like a stem as it could be. That
+was her concession to the living forces that had produced it, almost the
+only one.
+
+Her Lord, of course, floated it lightly over to him and studied it.
+Indigena stood tamely in front of him, meanwhile, her eyes on the floor,
+awaiting a random order to kneel. Her Lord's brain had seemed more and
+more scattered and scrambled ever since they returned from the attack on
+the Ministry.
+
+``You have done well, Indigena,'' said her Lord at last. ``What would
+you like as a reward?''
+
+She nearly glanced up in her startlement. He had never said anything
+about that before. ``My Lord,'' she said, confused, ``you know the
+reason I serve. Fulfilling my honor debt and having my garden is enough
+for me. I did not come to you to achieve overarching ambitions or even
+protect the existence of blood magic and unwilling sacrifice in the
+wizarding world, as Sylvan and Oaken did. I am content with things as
+they are.''
+
+Silence. Indigena stood still, wondering if this was the last moment of
+her existence. It would be odd, if so. She had never imagined her Lord
+might kill her for being unable to answer a question.
+
+Then he said, his voice soft as the earth once had been before first
+winter and then magic pounded it with storms, ``You shall have of me
+whatever you desire, Indigena. You are the only one who has been loyal,
+the only servant in all the years I have lived who would have found me,
+healed me, and stood by me as I began my return to leadership of the
+wizarding world.''
+
+Indigena remembered how he had looked when she found him, and the way
+that he had sometimes thrashed and screamed during the long months when
+they could do nothing but study plans in books and send dreams to a few
+former Death Eaters. It was strange, but then, when he most needed her,
+when her abandonment would have meant his destruction, she had never
+once considered abandoning him. The honor debt had been strong enough
+then, she believed, to compel her to stay with him forever.
+
+\emph{Strange how things have changed. Strange that if I saw him in that
+state again, I would stand beside him still.}
+
+When her Lord reached out and clasped her hand, Indigena did not resist.
+She could ask herself all the questions she liked, but some questions
+did not have an answer.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Poppy caught her eye across the table and scowled. Minerva scowled back.
+Poppy didn't think she should be on her feet and addressing the school
+yet, but it would be best if this message came from her and not from
+Severus. Besides, an invalid Headmistress, constantly lingering between
+life and death's door according to the rumors, would hardly inspire the
+confidence that, as Poppy had pointed out, people needed to have in
+Hogwarts.
+
+Minerva cleared her throat, feeling the expectant eyes on her from all
+five tables---for her own professors stared, too, wanting some measure
+of reassurance or denial---and began.
+
+``We approach the darkest night of the year,'' she said quietly, ``and
+the time of the Dark's greatest power. We must make a decision on your
+safety. I know that some of your parents have already agreed that you
+must not return for the winter term.'' Mulish expressions sprouted on
+their faces at that. Minerva wondered how many would sneak away from
+their parents after Christmas holidays and insure that they returned for
+the winter. She was sure many of the sixth-years, particularly those who
+had seventeenth birthdays in the next few months, already planned to.
+``But others are worried that their own homes are far too easy targets
+for Voldemort's wrath, and trust to the protection of the wards, or
+dislike the quality of education in whatever country they have fled to.
+I will require every student to sign his or her name to one of four
+lists when this meal is over: those who do not intend to return for the
+next term, those who will go home for the Christmas holidays but return
+when they are done, those who intend to remain in Hogwarts over
+Midwinter, and those who are legally adults and may decide for
+themselves.''
+
+She sat down, and the meal appeared before them. Minerva ate, noticing
+that Poppy appeared to be keeping track of both the amount of vegetables
+and the amount of meat she finished. After Minerva crunched up a carrot
+while staring into her eyes, the matron finally flushed and looked away.
+
+Minerva turned back to her students, a shudder of protectiveness passing
+through her. She was not sure what the best decision was, to tell the
+truth. Many students going away would leave a smaller number for
+Voldemort to attack---but, on the other hand, they would be more
+vulnerable in more weakly-warded homes, and many of them were reluctant
+to leave friends and relatives in danger. The Muggleborn students didn't
+even have the advantage of going into hiding behind wards, unless they
+remained at Hogwarts or could find a sympathetic wizarding family to
+take them in. And that was to say nothing of the numerous people in
+Hogwarts who were not students, such as the adult wizards and witches
+Harry had training or coming to him for advice. There was no other base
+so central and so important to their war effort, now that the Ministry
+had been destroyed. Try to create one between now and Midwinter, and
+they only created a new target for Voldemort to attack, one that could
+not and would not carry the same heavy protections as Hogwarts in the
+limited amount of time they had left.
+
+Besides, Harry assured her that the wild Dark was interested in him
+alone, in his soul, and that Voldemort would almost certainly be aiming
+to take him down. No, he could not say that Voldemort wouldn't attack
+Hogsmeade or Hogwarts on the way, but he intended to clash with the
+older wizard as soon as possible and move the battle to a prepared
+clearing in the Forest. Kanerva and Jing-Xi had both given their word to
+fight with him, or defend Hogwarts if necessary.
+
+In the end, she had to leave the choice up to individual students and
+their families. Some would feel safer in France, or Iceland, or other
+countries even beyond that, if they had a way to get there and a way to
+live once they arrived. Others would feel cowardly for running away and
+leaving a war behind them, or \emph{were} afraid enough to want
+Hogwarts's wards and thick stone walls between them and Voldemort.
+Without a Ministry to order her to close the school, Minerva had decided
+to keep it open, and continue to offer sanctuary.
+
+What most frustrated her was that she would be unable to join in the
+battle on Midwinter, should one come. Why could the strength of her
+heart not match the strength of her will?
+
+A few hours after dinner, she checked the lists hung outside the Great
+Hall. By far the longest ones either said students would be remaining in
+the safety of Hogwarts or intended to return after the Christmas
+holidays. Some students whom she knew were not legally adults had signed
+their names to the adult list.
+
+Minerva did not intend to report them.
+
+\emph{To all of us, good luck, and a good Dark night.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry studied the net he'd woven under the earth, and nodded. He'd
+buried it so deeply that Voldemort would have to be \emph{looking} to
+notice it. It would trap Voldemort if Harry could wound him badly
+enough, but, more than that, it also would give Harry bursts of
+strength. He could fight on past wounds that would cripple him, and if
+Voldemort drained some of his magic, it would not be the beginning of
+the end.
+
+``What do you think?'' he asked, looking up at Jing-Xi. ``Do you like my
+clearing?''
+
+Jing-Xi gave him a faint smile, but her eyes were serious as she stared
+around the expanse of earth already laden with snow, the trees wrapped
+in more magic than leaves now, the hard glitter of it all under the
+nearly full moon. ``You are as ready as you can be at this point in
+time, Harry,'' she whispered. ``But we are facing the wild Dark. There
+is no reason to be overconfident.''
+
+``That, I know,'' said Harry wryly. ``But I don't think I am.''
+
+He really didn't think he was, as he focused on the view of the
+clearing. Traps shone everywhere, but they were traps visible only to
+someone who practiced at least a bit of Light magic; Kanerva had been
+consulted, and had admitted she couldn't see them. By the time Voldemort
+began to \emph{feel} them, it would be too late. Harry would have
+latched on and started to drain his magic.
+
+And he had---well. He could not call it anything so noble and coherent
+as a \emph{plan} to face the wild Dark. It could suffer just as any plan
+did when battle erupted, and, as Jing-Xi cautioned him to remember, this
+was the wild Dark, creature of madness. It might decide to do otherwise
+because otherwise \emph{pleased} it. It wasn't the smartest move to
+think that he could predict an inhuman, mad force.
+
+But Harry had to act from a human position, and that human position saw
+patterns and sense in the wild Dark he thought he could use. So, every
+night for the past two weeks, he had sung from the top of the Astronomy
+Tower, and either seen or felt the wild Dark's manticore form cooing at
+him. It liked the phoenix song, fascinated by the Light of it as a child
+would be by a glittering bauble.
+
+So his plan began from there.
+
+He took a deep breath and shook his head. There were worries, other
+things that could go wrong, but he would \emph{have} to learn to ignore
+the nagging possibilities until they manifested as realities. That was
+the way it was. Draco was right; trying to deal with every tiny problem
+in the book would make him insane.
+
+A gust of wind swept by overhead, and when he looked up, he could just
+make out Kanerva, a pale shape as she flew against the belly of the
+black sky. He wondered what she was laughing about.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 65*: Interlude: Into the Long
+Dream}\label{chapter-65-interlude-into-the-long-dream}
+
+The poems quoted in this chapter are all by Algernon Charles Swinburne;
+they are, in order, ``Anactoria,'' ``Satia te Sanguine,'' ``Dolores,''
+``Félise,'' ``Ilicet,'' and ``Hertha.''
+
+\textbf{Interlude: Into the Long Dream}
+
+\emph{November 22nd, 1997}
+
+\emph{Dear my lady Henrietta:}
+
+I still seek your help when Midwinter comes. Will you agree to this? The
+call that you sent me has not gone unfelt, and shall not go unanswered.
+But whether I come to the school in the midst of your grief and guilt,
+or for this larger purpose, to end the life of one who is a forest and
+one who is a tree, to engage in a dance of five or a dance of two, is a
+mystery to me so far.
+
+Do not say that you would kill me, my lady. Why would you wish to? For,
+as the poet has said:
+
+\emph{Yea, they shall say, earth's womb has borne in vain}
+
+\emph{New things, and never this best thing again;}
+
+\emph{Borne days and men, borne fruits and wars and wine,}
+
+\emph{Seasons and songs, but no song more like mine.}
+
+Would you wish to deprive the world of a song like mine, my lady,
+however much you may hate me? You brought me blueberries.
+
+\emph{In regards to the song,}
+
+\emph{Evan Rosier.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+\emph{November 29th, 1997}
+
+I feel no guilt from my rape of you, Evan. Did you think I really did?
+And if you wish to make my luring of you into a purely personal matter,
+I can only think that you do not understand the meaning of hatred, and
+even less, the meaning of darkness. We are Dark wizards, and we hate
+each other. I told you, once, what that means.
+
+It is you who chose to ignore it.
+
+\emph{I wish you were dead, my dear;}
+
+\emph{I would give you, had I to give,}
+
+\emph{Some death too bitter to fear;}
+
+\emph{It is better to die than live.}
+
+Make it the dance of five, and the death that will kill the forest and
+the tree.
+
+Because, as you said once, I did give you blueberries.
+
+\emph{Henrietta Bulstrode.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS\emph{\\
+}
+
+\emph{December 1st, 1997}
+
+\emph{My dearest, most bloodthirsty lady, of all mortal women most like
+a vampire:}
+
+You pretend that this is all a matter of hatred and ancient tradition?
+But I know you. You told me once to smell your arousal when we danced
+together. I prefer to make it a matter of love. Now, darkness, I will
+grant you. We cannot move for very darkness when we interact.
+
+\emph{For the crown of our life as it closes}
+
+\emph{Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust;}
+
+\emph{No thorns go as deep as a rose's,}
+
+\emph{And love is more cruel than lust.}
+
+You would always choose the cruelest way, Henrietta. You, therefore,
+love me. You may not know it, but you do. How else can a woman like you,
+my Lady of Pain, who would rather rape a man than lie with him, react to
+me?
+
+\emph{In regards to the pain,}
+
+\emph{Evan Rosier.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+\emph{December 11th, 1997}
+
+You are maddened because I understand you, Evan, because I can listen to
+your talk of love and walk away unmoved, because I am not taken in by
+you, but take you in instead. You successfully fascinated Harry into
+worrying about your letters, into taking you seriously as a player of
+the game. I refuse to be drawn into the same trap, because I know what
+you are.
+
+And love? There is no love such as you describe in me. Perhaps, once,
+there was. I must concede that, for in past years I did not know my mind
+so well. But now the situation has turned.
+
+\emph{I that have slept awake, and you}
+
+\emph{Sleep, who last year were well awake.}
+
+\emph{Though love do all that love can do,}
+
+\emph{My heart will never ache or break}
+
+\emph{For your heart's sake.}
+
+Think about it, Evan. Think carefully, and you will understand why I am
+doing this.
+
+\emph{Henrietta Bulstrode.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSS
+
+\emph{December 12th, 1997}
+
+\emph{My lady who does not deny she is my lady:}
+
+Your quotations of poems are inspired. And now the longest night draws
+near, less than ten days away now, hovering in the exquisite air. Will
+you rape me among the ruins, when all falls? I wish you would. I wish
+you would fling yourself on me, unable to help yourself, and do what you
+should have done the night that I first tried to take you and you took
+me instead.
+
+The night that you tied our fates together.
+
+\emph{One girds himself to serve another,}
+
+\emph{Whose father was the dust, whose mother}
+
+\emph{The little dead red worm therein;}
+
+\emph{They find no fruit of things they cherish;}
+
+\emph{The goodness of a man shall perish,}
+
+\emph{It shall be one thing with his sin.}
+
+This is more than you think, my lady, more than quotations can embody or
+raspberries can end.
+
+\emph{In regards to fate,}
+
+\emph{Evan Rosier.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS\emph{\\
+}
+
+\emph{December 20th, 1997}
+
+Fate is nothing to me, Evan. There is only one thing I want from you,
+and in the end it shall come to me, because you don't know what {I}
+want, because you fling yourself headlong into the net, because you
+cannot help yourself.
+
+\emph{Be the ways of thy giving}
+
+\emph{As mine were to thee;}
+
+\emph{The free life of thy living,}
+
+\emph{Be the gift of it free;}
+
+\emph{Not as servant to lord, nor as master to slave, shalt thou give
+thee to me.}
+
+Come, then, Evan. Let it be the dance of five. And then let our dance of
+two, and the manner of giving you will never understand until it is too
+late, commence.
+
+Remember, dear one, that I am tame to {no} man's hand.
+
+\emph{Henrietta Bulstrode.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 66*: Scything}\label{chapter-66-scything}
+
+\textbf{Warning:} This is the first of four Midwinter chapters, all of
+which will contain emotional turmoil, and have more specific warnings
+posted at the top of them. The specific warnings for this one are
+\textbf{gore and a cliffhanger warning.}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Fifty-Two: Scything}
+
+Indigena closed her eyes for a moment. Wind whipped past her, stirring
+ragged trails and tatter-ends of snow through the air, but as long as
+she didn't have to see it, she could pretend Midwinter wasn't there,
+wasn't happening.
+
+Except that it was.
+
+She opened her eyes, but turned around so that she was looking at the
+vines that coiled in the mouth of the burrow. They were her toughest and
+strongest, not single plants but many strands braided together, and they
+writhed and curled around each other as she looked them. One supported
+the enormous weight of the horn hammer she'd grown in her garden a few
+weeks ago, and others carried secondary weapons that she would need.
+Indigena stroked the head of one, and smiled in helpless wonder as it
+curled a tendril around to lick at her palm.
+
+``We go, Indigena.''
+
+She faced forward and nodded again as she looked at her Lord. Her bad
+mood had calmed. So long as her green darlings existed in the world, she
+could pretend that everything would be all right.
+
+She walked, with the vines slithering behind her like a passel of
+snakes, towards Sylvan and Oaken. Sylvan was the one in this world right
+now. He gave her a dark smile that contrasted with the dreamy haze in
+his green eyes.
+
+``Do you think our Lord would let us have the Malfoy child?'' he
+whispered. ``We wish to repay him for hurting us.''
+
+``So long as you hurt his body and not his magic, I don't see why not.''
+Indigena waggled her fingers in a specific signal. The vines curled up
+and around her shoulders, carefully shifting so that they could balance
+the hammer and her as well as their own green weight. From the very
+faintly impressed expression on Sylvan's face, Indigena supposed she had
+disappeared behind a wall of plants.
+
+``You remember what our Lord told you?'' she demanded. ``Wait until the
+right moment, go to the Headmistress's office first, and do not, on any
+condition whatsoever, hurt Connor Potter?''
+
+``We know,'' said Sylvan, his voice faintly echoed as Oaken began to
+appear in his place. ``Of course we know. It would be easier if we could
+capture the boy and hold him until our Lord needs him, you know.''
+
+``You must ask him about that,'' Indigena murmured, and then closed her
+eyes and, keeping careful track of all the additions to her body,
+Apparated.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry was standing on the top of the Astronomy Tower, staring into the
+sky, when he saw the moon go out. One moment it gleamed above him, a
+waning crescent; the next, it was simply gone, as if a trailing wing had
+covered it, or someone had wiped a silver stain from an ebony table.
+
+Harry stepped back from the battlements, his heart pounding hard. He
+could feel the magic stirring lazily above him. And then Kanerva laughed
+like a loon behind him, and he knew the wild Dark's assault had come.
+
+``To your station,'' he snarled, gliding past her.
+
+``I know that.'' Kanerva laughed again, and then vaulted into the air
+over the side of the Tower, unraveling as she fell, splinters of white
+and black and gray and silver that flew towards the four corners of the
+school. Harry shook his head as he increased his pace. He could only
+hope that Kanerva would keep her mind \emph{on} the battle, and not
+flying and wreaking havoc with the wild Dark. But since he needed her
+power to defend Hogwarts too badly, and he would be fighting Voldemort,
+he would have to hope that she could concentrate on her own. There was
+no way to continually check on her and bring her back into line.
+
+He met Jing-Xi on the stairs; she had felt the shifting and stirring of
+the magical forces even more acutely than he had, perhaps, because she
+embodied the opposition to them. She gave him a tense nod. ``I will
+remain in the middle of the fourth floor,'' she said, ``ready to dash to
+the aid of any student who needs me.'' Her black hair danced and tangled
+and lashed around her, moving at least as rapidly as Kanerva's winds.
+Given that the wind protecting her had been a gift from Kanerva, that
+was not a surprise.
+
+Harry gave her a hasty smile and then slid past. He touched his wrist as
+he ran and called on Draco, who was in their bedroom at the moment. He'd
+been scheduled to come up and join Harry in a few minutes, but Slytherin
+House needed reassurance, and he was the best one to provide it.
+
+The phoenix song warbled, and Draco's voice said, ``I can feel it
+coming, Harry. What are you doing?''
+
+``Going out in front of the school to battle Voldemort, of course,''
+said Harry. "\emph{Stay inside the school, Draco.}"
+
+Draco was quiet. This was something they'd avoided talking directly
+about, because, the few times they'd tried, they'd got into shouting
+matches. But Harry could feel Draco's mind ticking over, and arriving at
+the obvious conclusions. He couldn't help in a battle like this, where
+all the participants would be Lord-level or stronger. He would have to
+stay inside the school and act like a noncombatant, never mind the
+stubborn courage that had led him to follow Harry into every battle so
+far.
+
+No response, and no response, while Harry ran down first one flight of
+stairs and then another, and then leaped a gap that a moving staircase
+had designed to give him trouble. Harry snarled the way he had with
+Kanerva. ``Draco, do you hear me? Do I have your word? Or do I have to
+knock you unconscious and ask Jing-Xi to keep you that way for the
+duration of the battle?''
+
+``That's compulsion,'' Draco said, and only the smallness of his voice,
+the fear seeping from him, prevented Harry from losing his temper
+completely.
+
+``Draco, so help me---''
+
+``All right,'' Draco whispered, as if capitulating to the law of
+gravity. ``Yes, Harry, if that's what you need from me right now, then
+yes.''
+
+Harry said, ``Thank you,'' and hoped the depth of emotion in his voice
+would compensate for the fact that he couldn't kiss Draco from this
+distance. ``Stay safe. I love you.''
+
+Draco uttered a murmur that might have been the same thing, but given
+that tears were choking him now, Harry didn't expect it to be clear. He
+cut off the communication spell and summoned Connor's attention and
+voice.
+
+``Stay inside your Tower,'' he said.
+
+``Harry---''
+
+``I will come back from the grave and haunt you if you don't, I swear.''
+
+``Harry---''
+
+``Yes?'' Harry had reached the entrance hall. He could feel the
+prickling burn in his scar, along with the weight of the magic on his
+shoulders. Voldemort was here, and, from the sense of things, standing
+and staring at the front doors of the school, summoning Harry with his
+presence alone, rather than coming inside to find him. Harry gave a
+silent thanks to Merlin for the Dark Lord's sense of the dramatic.
+
+``Good luck.''
+
+``Thank you, Connor. I love you, little brother,'' Harry said, and heard
+it back, and then turned around and nodded into a corner alcove hidden
+near the Great Hall. "\emph{Petrificus Totalus.}"
+
+There came the sound of a body sagging against the stone. Harry waved
+his hand, and Snape floated into view, utterly frozen, his eyes spitting
+black fire. Harry winced a little at the thought of what would come when
+the battle was done and his father could let him have a piece of his
+mind.
+
+\emph{That's assuming that you survive this battle}, he reminded
+himself, and then shook his head and reoriented to the present.
+
+``How many times have I told you to stay here?'' he asked rhetorically.
+``I understand that you consider yourself my father, but you need to
+listen to me as a battle commander. Just so you know, Draco and Connor
+are acting more like adults than you are right now.'' He flicked his
+hand, and laid Snape carefully down on the stones, so that there was no
+chance he would fall over and hurt himself. "Now hopefully that will be
+enough to make you \emph{stay} there. And I love you, sir, but for
+Merlin's \emph{sake}."
+
+And he turned and made for the doors.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco put his head in his hands and breathed for a long moment. He
+didn't want to think of Harry going into danger without him. He
+\emph{wouldn't} think of Harry going into danger without him. He---
+
+Oh, fuck, Harry was going into danger without him.
+
+Draco clenched one hand on his arm and seized a bit of skin, then
+pinched it, hard. He would have to have something to occupy his
+attention while his not-quite-joined partner went into battle, and this
+was better than pacing or yelling at the first-years huddling near his
+door.
+
+Of course, he \emph{could} do something even more useful, if he could
+only overcome the image of Harry, very small and very brave, going out
+to face a towering, titanic power.
+
+There were still people in Slytherin who needed reassurance, especially
+those whose closest contact with the war was rumors and tales and the
+sight of grim-faced adult wizards and witches in dueling classes. And
+Draco could make sure they knew the way to the escape tunnel, the one
+Connor had trapped with Neville's lilies, in case something happened.
+They had drilled on a way to find it again and again, but it might not
+have been enough.
+
+He stood and opened the door of his bedroom. He surprised a first-year
+boy just about to knock. The boy squeaked and tucked his hands together
+behind his back, as if to prove he wasn't touching anything.
+
+Draco sought the name in the recesses of his imagination, and finally
+found it. ``Malachi,'' he said. ``Did you need something?''
+
+``I---we just hoped that you could show us the way to escape if we
+needed it.'' Malachi swallowed convulsively. ``One more time.''
+
+Draco smiled at him, and, cheered, the little boy smiled back. ``I was
+just coming to show you that,'' Draco said. ``Come on, we'll need to
+line up in front of the door to the Slytherin common room\ldots{}''
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``Promise me,'' said Connor, taking Parvati's hand in his and holding it
+to his lips, ``that if something happens to me, if I fall, you'll get
+the other Gryffindors out of the Tower alive.''
+
+Parvati shifted and stared up at him from beneath her eyelashes, a trick
+that usually got her away from whatever it was that Connor wanted her to
+promise. Not this time, though, and after a moment of gazing like that,
+she looked away from him, her hand tightening uneasily. ``Connor---''
+
+``Promise me,'' said Connor again. He didn't feel frightened, even
+though he knew he was discussing his possible death. He felt as if a
+golden wind were blowing through him instead, the consciousness and the
+\emph{sureness} that other people's lives were more important than his
+own. He wondered if this was the way Harry felt all the time. If so,
+Connor couldn't really blame him for the way he'd acted when people had
+died on his watch, and for his insistence that Connor, Draco, and others
+he loved remain inside the walls of the school while he went forth to
+battle with Voldemort. ``I'll be dead, Parvati, and you won't be able to
+help me anyway. Promise me.''
+
+And then she ducked her head and nodded, and Connor felt badly for
+having to push her. He took her in his arms and pressed a gentle kiss to
+her forehead, feeling his arms ache and tremble with the urge to crush
+her close and never let her go.
+
+And then Harry met Voldemort.
+
+They could tell from the way the school shook, and then the wild Dark
+burst into laughter. Parvati cried out and grabbed her ears in pain. So
+did every other Light-Declared Gryffindor in the common room, which was
+most of them. Connor made himself keep his hands down, so that he could
+guide Parvati to a chair when she looked ready to fall over, and gather
+the others in with a calm, assessing glance.
+
+``Sit down!'' he shouted, while the laughter grew deeper and richer.
+``Remember what we practiced. We have to be ready to leave the Tower if
+the worst happens.''
+
+Most people obeyed him. Those who couldn't, Connor went over and pressed
+into seats. Then he turned to face the door of the Tower and drew his
+wand.
+
+He had no guarantees that the wild Dark would come through the door, of
+course. It just seemed likely, and that was enough to make him face in
+that direction. He had to face one direction. Why not that one?
+
+His grip tightened on his wand, partially so that he didn't have to
+imagine his brother facing Voldemort across the battlefield.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Henrietta knew the moment when it came. Of course, she had never
+imagined that the wild Dark and the Dark Lord would attack
+\emph{subtly}, but she had not known if there would be a clear signal,
+either. She could feel the power gathering thickly in her blood for the
+moment before the storm burst, though, and then the laughter came, and
+the school shook to its foundations as two powerful wizards met.
+
+Such strength. Such power. Such forces circling and clashing over her
+head. Henrietta admired them, but she also knew that this was not her
+battle. She was not a Lady, and she could not match them.
+
+She felt the Light Lady answering the wild Dark, spreading her power
+throughout the school, safeguarding the Towers and the Slytherin and
+Hufflepuff common rooms, bracing them against any damage the wild Dark
+might take it into its head to inflict. Henrietta appreciated that, too,
+as much as she thought it might not matter. But it was offensive and not
+defensive battle she was destined for this night.
+
+She touched, once more, the circle of runes she'd created that spelled
+out E-VA-N, and then turned and strode out of her rooms. The walls
+trembled constantly around her, and now and then a stone juddered loose.
+Henrietta rolled her eyes and shook her head. \emph{Unnecessary
+dramatics. The wild Dark would frighten more people if it had crept up
+on us, but I suppose that is not its nature.}
+
+She swept out of the hallway and towards the doors of the entrance. She
+paused when she saw no Evan Rosier waiting for her, though, and raised
+her eyebrows. She supposed he might be out in the Forest, trying to
+witness the battle between Harry and Voldemort, or simply exulting in
+the display of power.
+
+Well, until he brought the three other people to her and began the dance
+of five, she had nothing else to do. So Henrietta settled in the
+entrance hall and admired the display of lightning and power through the
+gaps in the doors. She was so close to the entrance that she would be
+able to leave very easily.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry could feel the boiling rage when he stepped out of the school.
+Most of it came from Voldemort; the wild Dark's primary emotion, as he
+knew when he was able to sort out the emotions facing him from the ones
+in the sky, was still amusement. Kanerva whooped and wheeled and laughed
+somewhere with it---and kept to her position on the four corners of the
+school, Harry prayed.
+
+``My heir.''
+
+Harry looked at Voldemort. He had wondered if he would be afraid when
+this moment came. The man had enough magic to darken the air with a
+shadow of his own, the way the wild Dark had wiped out the moon, and to
+make the skin along Harry's arms feel greasy. He also had new eyes,
+balls of flaming red power that drifted in front of his sockets and
+sometimes rolled as if they would roam around his face like Moody's
+magical eye.
+
+But Harry didn't feel afraid. Instead, staring at Voldemort and
+remembering the Ministry, he simply felt incredibly pissed off.
+
+``Voldemort,'' he said, and then he stepped backward and slipped into
+his lynx form.
+
+Voldemort roared in surprise and outrage, and then Harry turned and ran
+into the Forbidden Forest, taking the path he'd trotted day and night
+until the image of it blazed on the back of his eyes, leaping lightly
+over roots and ducking under the sweeping branches, following the strong
+centaur scent.
+
+Harry, himself, would have hesitated before he followed his enemy into
+the Forbidden Forest, or in fact tried to face him on any other
+battleground than the most appropriate one, the one he himself had
+chosen. But Voldemort was mighty, and he really did seem to believe that
+the choice of ground wouldn't make any difference.
+
+He came after Harry like winter. Harry could see already-frosted
+branches sagging and dying around him, and the grass beneath his paws
+turned to sere, black ash. He ignored that, and kept running. There was
+nothing he could do about Voldemort's effect on the Forest, and in any
+case, what was happening now was still nothing compared to what he could
+be doing if he had access to Hogwarts, or to the centaurs and Runespoors
+and other magical creatures who lived here. The grass would grow again,
+the trees would revive or fall and have new ones planted in their
+places. Harry already had all the guilt he could handle.
+
+He burst into the clearing he'd trapped, and turned as if exhausted,
+exaggerating his panting breaths, to face Voldemort. Already, the nets
+around him gleamed and fired, traps of Light that were perfectly obvious
+if the wizard had a touch of Light in him, but nor so obvious when one
+had given his soul to the Dark.
+
+Voldemort burst through the last of the bracken and stood triumphantly
+regarding him. Heavy wings stretched upward from his hunched shoulders,
+dripping drops of darkness like the greasy black features of a vulture.
+His white hands were clawed and crabbed enough to resemble a vulture's
+claws, too. Harry felt a moment's bitter amusement. His right hand had
+just graduated from a black-red claw to a fully usable set of fingers a
+few days ago. Perhaps there was more than one connection between them,
+making them more than magical ancestor and heir.
+
+Then he shook his head to clear it of such vain imaginings. Of course
+there was more than one connection between them. That was the whole
+problem. He crouched low and swished his tail slowly back and forth,
+then changed to human as Voldemort flung an almost friendly volley of
+black lightning his way.
+
+Harry leaped above the lightning as he changed. He shouldn't have been
+able to, but the stored strength in the earth and the magic that
+shimmered and poured through him now made the impossible possible. As he
+turned, he caught at his \emph{absorbere} gift. It opened, and in the
+next moment, as he landed lightly on the earth, he drew sparks from the
+Light net under the nearest tree, sending up small, biting serpents to
+sting Voldemort's foot.
+
+Voldemort hissed and drew back from him, eyes darting to try and see
+what had injured him. In return, Harry snatched a bit of power from him,
+unraveling it like thread from a spool, and drank it down.
+
+Voldemort's eyes snapped forward, and he gave a slow shake of his head.
+``Do you really think it will be that easy, my heir?'' he asked. ``That
+you can take my magic from me with small distractions?''
+
+``I have something more important than distractions, Tom,'' said Harry.
+A faint flush touched that bone-white, noseless face. Harry resisted the
+urge to fall about laughing. \emph{He still hates his Muggle name so
+much. How can someone so powerful allow such small things to trouble
+him?} ``Do you want to know what it is?''
+
+"I would be \emph{fascinated}," Voldemort said, and then slammed down a
+barrier on the tunnel between them, one Harry hadn't felt before. It
+acted like a sponge backed with steel, absorbing his power towards
+Voldemort, but not letting any of his enemy's magic through. Harry had
+to admit he was impressed.
+
+He whistled, though, and the bird appeared, circling above them for a
+moment before it struck Voldemort a resounding scratch across his left
+shoulder. Harry was resolved to let the bird do whatever it wanted in
+the effort to distract Voldemort. Since he couldn't actually hurt it
+without closing the tunnel or killing Harry, it was one of the best
+allies Harry had.
+
+"I'm \emph{angry} this time," Harry told him cheerfully. ``And I hate
+you on behalf of other people, not for what you did to me.''
+
+``Hatred is hatred, Harry,'' Voldemort purred, and his eyes widened, and
+Harry felt a warning tingle in his scar, a moment before Voldemort
+dissolved the barrier between them in the attempt to call on his
+loathing.
+
+Harry slammed all his strength into Voldemort at once, attacking with
+nets from beneath the earth, with his \emph{absorbere} gift, with the
+sheer weight of all the magic he'd summoned and could use. Voldemort did
+buckle a bit, in sheer surprise, and Harry reached out and filled his
+gullet as full as he could of the black wings of magic hovering above
+Voldemort's shoulders.
+
+He'd practiced, in the weeks since the Ministry attack. He'd swallowed
+magic from the foulest artifacts Regulus could find, and from Dark
+spells that Henrietta and Snape had cast for his sake. It was still a
+struggle to absorb that much magic, like swallowing an entire whale's
+corpse of tainted flesh, but he had done it. Without the barrier between
+them, Voldemort's enhanced ability amplified Harry's. He was stronger
+because his enemy was stronger.
+
+Harry had planned that when he thought of how his visions and
+Voldemort's own \emph{absorbere} gift had changed after the Dark Lord's
+resurrection. If his enemy had strengthened because he had, it shouldn't
+be a one-way track. Harry ought to be able to do the same thing.
+
+And he could.
+
+Voldemort's eyes met his, and Harry saw that the amusement had died out
+of them. Now he looked ready to kill, and so he lashed forward with his
+magic, a sweep like a crocodile's tail, or a dragon's extended claws.
+
+It would have killed if it had hit directly, but Harry moved, and it
+sideswiped him. And then the bird was tearing at Voldemort's right
+shoulder, and a net beneath the earth captured Harry and towed him in
+random directions, and Harry let out his own magic, fierce and free and
+\emph{at last}, and had the pleasure of seeing his enemy stagger.
+
+And so then their battle was joined in earnest.
+
+SSSSSSSSS
+
+The wild Dark laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
+
+Kanerva was drunk on it, rolling on it, around it, with it. She could
+feel the Dark coaxing her to go further, to dip into the maelstrom at
+the center of the sky and see the oblivion it had readied.
+
+Thoughts of duty, friendship, old obligations, called on her to stay
+where she was. The power she served danced and tempted her, and called
+her further on, into the mystery that she had longed to explore ever
+since the first time she had gazed up at a starless night, ever since
+she had first stared into the sea.
+
+There was no contest.
+
+Kanerva spread her arms and rolled away from Hogwarts, leaping from wind
+to wind, knowing that somewhere below the wild Dark had begun an assault
+on Hogwarts's wards, but not caring. How \emph{could} she care? The
+whole of the night was before her.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Minerva leaned against her desk and closed her eyes in supreme
+irritation. Of course, it was understandable that she couldn't go out
+and help in the battle between Voldemort and Harry. That was a contest
+for Lord-level wizards, and more people than just her were forbidden
+from participating in it.
+
+But she could not even patrol the school, and make sure that the
+students stayed safely in their common rooms and no one had the
+``grand'' idea of watching the battle from a window. Poppy had ruled
+even that activity too dangerous for her, given the added stress of
+knowing that a student she loved was battling Voldemort. She had to stay
+put, in her office, and think and worry and fret, instead of dashing
+about.
+
+Minerva had tried to explain that ``dashing about'' would let her
+express energy and so ease the thinking and worrying and fretting. Poppy
+had muttered something about ``Gryffindors'' and refused to hear it.
+
+\emph{So little I can do,} she thought, clinging to the desk as a
+tooth-jarring rattle echoed through the stones. \emph{So little I can
+help.}
+
+And then she gasped and bent double, because something had seized the
+wards and begun to pull on them at the same moment that something had
+struck from below, making the school shake. Minerva, connected to the
+wards, knew there was danger, but not from what. She shook her head and
+tried to stand, while echoes of shock traveled through her and her heart
+labored wildly.
+
+``Minerva!''
+
+She looked up sharply as the shade of Godric appeared in front of her.
+The hair from his head and beard was sticking out wildly. His eyes were
+so wide that they appeared to have taken over his face. He had a hand
+extended towards her, for help, but even he wavered and danced like a
+heat shimmer as another pair of double shocks hit Hogwarts.
+
+Minerva made her voice calm, as she would have with a first-year
+Gryffindor student who missed her mum. ``What is it, Godric?''
+
+``An attack from below.'' The Founder's shade almost wailed, dancing
+back and forth. ``A hammer smashing the stones. Indigena Yaxley's vines
+are coming up through the tunnels.''
+
+``The tunnels are warded---'' Minerva began, and then a blow landed
+which she \emph{knew} had taken rocks from the front of the school, and
+she heard her students screaming, distantly, up the connections of the
+wards.
+
+"They \emph{were}," said Godric, and danced again. ``The wild Dark is
+eating the wards, Minerva. And Jing-Xi can't stop it! She's not nearly
+as strong as it is, especially at this time of year.''
+
+``Kanerva?''
+
+``The Lady Stormgale is gone.'' In Godric's voice, for a moment, was the
+deep disapproval that surrounded his opinion of most Dark wizards.
+
+Minerva ran towards the door, and then stopped, gasping. It wasn't only
+the pull of the wards. It felt as if someone had punctured her heart
+with a pin. \emph{Merlin,} it hurt. And she could hear the children
+screaming, and now the wild Dark was scything into the school from above
+and Indigena Yaxley from below.
+
+If they were not careful, this would be another Ministry all over again.
+
+The Ministry---
+
+Then, it was as if Merlin himself had reached down and placed clarity
+into her head. Minerva straightened, and breathed deeply. She
+concentrated on the drawing of air, and did not let even the screams of
+her students distract her, until she was sure that she was thinking
+logically, anticipating the consequences of her plan.
+
+``Godric,'' she said, and the calm of her voice made him start to
+attention. ``Send Rowena and Helga to guide the children out of the
+school. The tunnel that Connor and Harry found. Have them take that
+way.''
+
+``It dives beneath the school,'' said Godric, hovering uncertainly.
+
+Minerva gave him a faint smile. ``And not as far as Indigena Yaxley is
+under yet, unless I'm mistaken. In any case, I don't think we can stop
+her.'' She put a hand over her heart. ``If I run, as I'll have to if I
+want to escape the school alive, my heart is going to burst, Godric.
+There's no Hogwarts anymore, or there won't be in a very short time---''
+
+\emph{Clang}, sang the hammers from above and below. Chips of stone
+pinwheeled past Minerva's head. From the corner of her eye, she could
+see the misty shapes that marked Rowena and Helga, one of them racing
+upward, one diving down. She nodded her satisfaction and returned her
+eyes to Godric's openly pleading face.
+
+``Hogwarts will be gone,'' she reiterated. ``It's important that we get
+as many students out alive as we can.'' She drew her wand and tapped her
+left wrist. ``Mr. Potter,'' she said. ``Do you hear me?''
+
+``Yes, Headmistress.'' Connor's voice was collected, though fierce.
+Minerva felt a moment's deep pride in her Gryffindors.
+
+"Get the students out \emph{now}. This is not a drill. The wild Dark is
+coming, and I will not have the Tower fall on our heads."
+
+``Yes, Headmistress,'' Connor said. ``I'll tell the others.''
+
+``Good. Farewell, Mr. Potter.''
+
+``Headmistress?''
+
+Gently, McGonagall cut the communication spell, and then caught Godric's
+questioning eye again. He looked half-desperate, which she could
+understand. He might have an inkling of what she meant to do, but he
+could hardly like the idea.
+
+``I'll die trying to escape, Godric,'' she said. Every word fell like
+its own hammer, and if Indigena Yaxley and the wild Dark continued
+attacking the school outside her office, Minerva was honestly unaware of
+it. Every unimportant sensation faded, and she focused solely on the
+now. "I want to make sure that my death serves a \emph{purpose,} that I
+don't die while running away from it but on my feet, facing it."
+
+``Minerva,'' Godric whispered. ``What do you plan to do?''
+
+Minerva turned and looked at the Sword of Gryffindor on the wall.
+
+``Minerva,'' Godric whispered. ``No.''
+
+``Yes,'' she said. "He cannot be allowed to have it, do you see? He
+cannot be allowed to take back this Horcrux, as he will surely do. If
+he's attacking the school, that means he does not care about its safety
+as a hiding place anymore. I would not be surprised if he has detailed
+Death Eaters to fetch it. It \emph{must} be destroyed, Godric, and the
+only way for that to happen is for someone to fall on it." Minerva
+placed a hand over her chest and smiled. Beneath her palm, her heart
+labored on. ``And this old heart---well, it could break in many less
+appropriate ways.''
+
+``Ah, Minerva.'' Godric sounded helpless. ``You---you cannot do this.''
+
+The air sparked, and then filled with sweet thunder. Minerva knew that
+sound, that feeling, from endless descriptions by Harry. A prophecy was
+coming true.
+
+``Yes, I can,'' she said. Her fear was entirely gone. Courage had her,
+the virtue of her House, the legacy of the McGonagall line. ``I am going
+to, Godric. The Unassailable Curse can be broken if someone dies as a
+willing sacrifice trying to destroy a Horcrux. That is what I intend to
+do.''
+
+``I---''
+
+``I will need someone,'' said McGonagall serenely, ``to fetch Harry when
+this is done, because he must destroy the shard of Tom Riddle that will
+come forth from the sword. And I think you can hold and distract that
+shade, Godric. He can't possess you; you don't have a body. I want you
+to make sure there is no way he can take mine, in the last moments
+between life and death.''
+
+She locked her eyes with his. ``And I will need someone to hold the
+sword steady.''
+
+Godric closed his eyes.
+
+``We are Gryffindors, you and I,'' Minerva continued. ``We understand
+that sometimes there is no substitute for a sacrifice, that you do what
+you can. And you know my desire to die on my feet.''
+
+He stood there for a long moment.
+
+``It is right that we help get rid of the taint on your sword, you and
+I,'' Minerva added. ``It was yours, forged for your hand, and I was of
+the House that produced those who so tortured Harry and contributed to
+the degradation of the world and the Light in our world. We have a debt
+to repay.''
+
+An endless moment later, and he nodded. He moved behind her desk, opened
+the glass case, and took out the Sword, carefully solidifying his hands
+so that he could clutch it. He stepped around the desk and held it,
+point towards her.
+
+Minerva spent a moment studying the blade. The dark line of evil still
+ran along the edge. She altered her position, carefully. She remembered
+an aunt, who had trained with swords, telling her once that it was
+extraordinarily difficult to stab someone through the heart, because the
+ribs were in the way, and more often the blade would simply get caught
+on and scrape along the bone.
+
+She looked with a final smile to Godric, and, holding in mind the
+thought that she dedicated her death to the destruction of the Horcrux,
+she ran forward.
+
+The sword impaled her like a stronger version of the pin-puncturing pain
+she'd felt earlier. Minerva felt it tear through flesh and bone, and
+then through muscle, and had a moment when she thought she saw the dark
+face of an older Tom Riddle unfolding from it.
+
+Godric called her name.
+
+And then death came for her, a springing black dog, a curl of prophecy
+and sweet thunder, the knowledge that she had done something right. She
+felt herself fall to the floor in the moment before it settled fully.
+
+\emph{Thus Gryffindor pays its debts.}
+
+Minerva McGonagall died triumphant.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 67*: The Fall}\label{chapter-67-the-fall}
+
+Once again, warnings apply to this chapter: \textbf{violence, gore, and
+a big freaking cliffhanger.}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Fifty-Three: The Fall}
+
+Snape gathered his magic and struck against the Body-Bind on himself. It
+still wouldn't move, but he thought it showed signs of cracking and
+weakening in some vulnerable places, such as around his joints.
+
+\emph{Rather like the walls.}
+
+The entrance hall was swaying and dancing in a way that he'd hoped to
+never see any of Hogwarts sway and dance, even in an earthquake. Chips
+and dust, and sometimes larger chunks of stone, regularly fell from the
+walls now. So far, none had done anything more than graze a line of
+blood across his temple, but Snape was sure that could not last. Again
+he flung himself against Harry's Body-Bind, which would have yielded by
+now if it were the work of any ordinary wizard, and again it cracked but
+didn't give way.
+
+Then footsteps pounded towards him, and a voice half-shattered from the
+rush of panting yelled, "\emph{Finite Incantatem!}"
+
+The Body-Bind broke. Snape was on his feet in an instant, though he
+stumbled as limbs dead from lack of circulation in an awkward position
+failed to catch him. Regulus's arm curved around his shoulders and held
+him upright, then began urging him towards the doors of the entrance
+hall.
+
+``Come on,'' Regulus breathed. ``Let's get out of here.''
+
+Snape set his feet. His mind was already racing, perhaps as a result of
+having more than enough time to consider his situation while he lay
+under that rippling ceiling, and he knew Harry was safe outside. There
+were many other people who weren't, however. ``No.''
+
+``Severus---'' Regulus began, in dangerous tones.
+
+``My Slytherins have not yet escaped,'' Snape snarled at him, and,
+turning back, cast a stabilizing spell on the nearest wall. It froze,
+though whirls and puffs of dust still drifted away from it. ``I am going
+to get them out. Whether you help me or abandon them is not my affair.''
+And he began to sprint towards the dungeons, ignoring the words that
+Regulus muttered under his breath as he ran after him.
+
+``You know,'' Regulus said, in a grumble that Snape was not entirely
+sure he was supposed to hear when they reached the staircase, ``the only
+reason I put up with things like this is because I love you.''
+
+Snape's shoulders stiffened, but he didn't turn around. There were far
+more important stakes at the moment than deciding how Regulus had meant
+that.
+
+And then the wards around him twanged and shrieked, and Snape dropped to
+one knee. He would have gone pitching headlong down the stairs if
+Regulus hadn't caught him, this time by the edge of the robe. Snape
+could hear Regulus asking frantic questions, but he was in no mood to
+answer them. The wards felt like hot wires stretched across his stomach.
+Tears of pain glimmered at the edges of his eyes but couldn't make it
+down his cheeks. Every single bone in his body had become a case of
+transparent steel filled with molten lead.
+
+He knew what that meant, what it must mean. The wards were connected to
+Minerva. They would never have turned to him and tried to make him
+essentially Headmaster of Hogwarts unless---
+
+Unless Minerva was gone.
+
+Snape sank his immediate disbelief and fear into Occlumency pools. He
+had no time to quarrel with the evidence, either. He \emph{must} get as
+many students as he could out of Hogwarts.
+
+After all, he was responsible for them now.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+He \emph{felt} it.
+
+He \emph{felt} the moment that his Unassailable Curse on the Sword of
+Gryffindor, the most magnificent of the defenses he had wrought to
+protect his Horcruxes---the necessary protection when he had left the
+Sword hanging in a place so full of his enemies---snapped. Someone had
+run the blade through her heart. Someone had fallen. Someone had broken
+the curse.
+
+And all around him, in that moment, was the charged thunder of a
+prophecy, and the Lord Voldemort heard a sound he had not heard in more
+than a dozen years, since the creation of his last Horcrux: he heard
+Death laughing, a jackal's howl. A black dog's shadow passed over the
+corner of his eye, sweeping along the ground and dancing mockingly over
+his vision before vanishing.
+
+No. He could not die. He would not die. He was the Lord Voldemort, and
+he was immortal.
+
+There was still the chance that he could save his Horcrux. The
+Unassailable Curse had been broken, but the shard of soul had not yet
+been destroyed. He would enter the Headmistress's office, capture the
+shard, put it into another object, and carry it away. That object would
+be only a temporary container, of course, because one \emph{must} have a
+suitable trophy to hold the shard of soul. But he would find one.
+
+He must, however, withdraw from this useless and dangerous battle with
+his heir in order to complete his task.
+
+He pulled his magic in and leaped, Apparating through the barriers of
+the tattered and dying wards to the office. He felt the ripple of excess
+magic that accompanied him, but did not understand it until he landed
+and turned.
+
+Harry had Apparated right behind him.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+"Get out, \emph{now!}"
+
+Not one Gryffindor who heard him questioned him. Connor was glad for
+that, at least. They'd drilled endlessly in the Tower for just such a
+moment as this, and the children's faces were terrified, but they were
+lining up obediently in front of the door in the wall which would lead
+them down into the tunnel. Connor was not sure how safe the tunnel was,
+given the spiderweb cracks traveling between the stones, but he knew
+that their final destination, beyond the Forbidden Forest, was much
+safer than the Hogwarts grounds, and he wouldn't want to lead the
+children out along moving staircases and between tumbling pillars,
+either.
+
+Parvati snatched up a little girl who stumbled and began crying, and
+nodded to him. Connor took his place at the back of the line, murmuring
+comfort to those who needed it, and saying that \emph{of course}
+Hogwarts would still be standing when they came back after the Christmas
+holidays, Meredith was silly to think that it wouldn't.
+
+He didn't really believe that, though. In his heart of hearts, Connor
+knew this was the end.
+
+They ran down the staircase inside the walls, faster, it seemed to
+Connor, than Parvati's gleam of light had gone when they first explored
+the tunnel. Down and down, and then Parvati whispered, ``Padma,'' with
+relief in his voice as clear as a shout to Connor. They'd arrived at the
+landing where the tunnel diving from Ravenclaw Tower met the one diving
+from Gryffindor. Connor nodded briskly to the Ravenclaws he could see,
+and bit his lip to keep from commenting on anyone missing. He didn't
+know for sure how many Ravenclaws had stayed for the Christmas holidays,
+so these might be the only ones left.
+
+Luna, who stood in the front of the line with Padma, brushed her hair
+from her eyes and gave him a sorrowful smile. ``Did you know that the
+stones had dreams of falling, sometimes?'' she whispered. ``They thought
+they were going home, to rest in the earth. They didn't know this would
+happen.''
+
+``I know,'' said Connor, making his voice soothing, and then shouted
+again. ``Now, down the stairs, in single file. Divide up the way we
+taught you, younger students spaced around the older.''
+
+Again, not a single person questioned him, though Connor saw some with
+deadly pale faces and some Ravenclaws he knew had caused trouble in the
+past, like Margaret Parsons, who had tormented Harry and his snake in
+fifth year. They did as told, and Connor began to entertain a faint
+sliver of hope that they would all escape alive from the groaning school
+after all.
+
+Ginny walked past him, holding a first-year in her arms and leading a
+second-year by the hand. Ron followed with two more second-years, though
+he'd probably used a Lightening Charm to hold them. Neville gave Connor
+a nervous smile and touched the whistle around his neck that he could
+use to control the potted lilies in the tunnel, if necessary. Connor was
+grateful he'd brought it. He glanced back, counting the number of heads
+and legs still to pass; he was remaining as rear guard.
+
+And then the stone behind those still arriving gave a tortured
+\emph{moan}, and began to fall.
+
+``Connor!'' he heard Parvati scream.
+
+Connor had no time to do anything but think with his muscles, the way he
+did when he dived after the Snitch in Quidditch. He let his legs carry
+him, his hands shoot out and close on the robes of the two children
+nearest the top of the stairs, and he tugged them violently forward,
+spilling them to the ground beside him, halfway over the steps, crying
+out in shock.
+
+There were others he couldn't save, others still screaming and reaching
+for help, perhaps a quarter of the Gryffindors and Ravenclaws who had
+remained. The stone came down on top of them, was coming down, was
+falling.
+
+Connor ducked his head, rolled on top of the two children he'd saved,
+and cast the strongest \emph{Protego} he knew above them.
+
+He heard rocks bouncing, someone shouting, the walls of the school
+shaking themselves apart. He didn't care, couldn't care. He threw all
+his strength and all his heart into the Shield Charm that protected him
+and his two charges, and thought over and over again that it must not
+fall.
+
+Cracks ran through the Charm before it was done, but it held. At last
+Connor raised his head and found himself and the two children on the
+edge of a sea of stone. Mounded, broken walls lay above them, with a
+glimpse of starry sky somewhere over the edges. Under the stones was
+silence, and perhaps a trace of blood. Connor didn't know for certain.
+He couldn't see those who were crushed.
+
+He turned and looked down the tunnel. Still stable, it seemed. He drew
+his wand and began to cast Stabilizing Charms at the stones.
+
+``Connor?'' Parvati whispered.
+
+``Still alive.'' Connor steadied his voice, thrust his shock away, and
+began to concentrate on the living. Gryffindors were good at this, when
+they needed to be. Give up the lives that you couldn't save to save
+those you could. The important thing now was not to let people start
+crying or thinking about how it could have been them, because either
+would prevent them from moving. They \emph{had} to take charge of those
+who had managed to escape the fall and get them out of here. ``Use
+Stabilizing Charms on the walls, all of you who know them, and
+Lightening Charms on your bodies. Luna? Can you talk to the walls, make
+them hold as steady as they can?''
+
+``I'll try,'' Luna whispered, and, moving forward, laid a hand over the
+nearest crack in the stone. ``But they are so hurt. I don't know if
+they'll listen to me.''
+
+``Do what you can,'' said Connor. He felt dust on his lips when he
+licked them, and a trail of blood running down the side of his face. He
+couldn't care. He soared above the minor concerns, as Harry would have
+labeled them, just as Harry would have soared, and focused on the living
+and their safety.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco guided the rest of Slytherin House out the common room door and
+towards the entrance of the tunnel Harry had shown him by remembering
+his mother.
+
+She had once received a visit from a witch Draco was sure now belonged
+to a family who could have killed them. She had risen when the house
+elves announced her, nodded regally, and then turned to Draco. Her face
+had been a cool, calm void that left no \emph{time} for fear.
+
+``Draco,'' she said, ``go into your room, and wait.''
+
+And because she had looked and sounded like that, Draco had. Narcissa
+had come to him a half-hour later, and held him silently, but not
+closely, with one hand stroking his hair. Draco had gazed into her face,
+afraid to ask what was wrong, but she had finally smiled down at him and
+shaken her head.
+
+``Nothing to do with us, dearest,'' she'd murmured.
+
+And it had not been. Draco never heard the witch's name as a guest at
+Malfoy Manor again. When he heard of the death of the entire family in a
+strange mass poisoning incident a year later he'd received a glimmer,
+his first, of the extent of his father's power, and the rage he would go
+into when he found out someone had confronted and threatened his wife.
+
+Now, Draco clung to the fact that there was too much happening for him
+to cower in a corner, or even panic about what might have caused the
+school to fall, or where Harry was, or whether the banging and booming
+in one corner of the tunnels was coming closer to them or moving further
+away. He led the children forward. They came into the corridors. They
+went towards the tunnel, and Draco stood aside to let them enter it, his
+eyes moving back and forth constantly, his hand on his wand as he fired
+Stabilizing Charms at the walls and did what he could to slow the
+breathing of children who looked as if they were about to go into a
+panic attack. The line emerging from the Slytherin common room was
+shorter than it should have been. Draco didn't let himself think about
+that, either.
+
+``Draco!''
+
+He turned. Snape was stumbling down the corridor towards him, with
+Regulus Black at his shoulder, looking half-desperate and half-strong.
+
+Draco didn't let himself collapse just because an adult was here,
+though, since doing that would be to surrender completely. He nodded, as
+if it were an everyday occurrence to have the school falling around
+their heads, and stepped away from the wall. ``If you want to take up my
+guard position?'' he murmured. ``I could do something else. Or would you
+rather check on other students? As you can see, Slytherin House is
+moving.''
+
+Snape took a moment to study him. Draco thought it was out of sheer
+shock at seeing him so well-organized. And then Snape had relaxed, and
+if there was a gleam of pride in his eyes, it had not stayed long enough
+for Draco to identify it.
+
+``Keep where you are, Draco,'' Snape said steadily. ``I have received
+confirmation that Minerva is dead. As such, I am the Headmaster of
+Hogwarts now, and I have other duties to attend to.''
+
+\emph{Headmaster over a pile of rubble.} This was the end. Draco knew
+it, and he suspected Snape knew it, too, or would if he let himself have
+the time needed to think about it.
+
+As matters stood, Draco only nodded and turned his attention to herding
+the students out.
+
+He wouldn't let himself think about Harry, potentially alone,
+potentially in danger. He wouldn't.
+
+SSSSSSSSSS
+
+The wild Dark was gone.
+
+Kanerva hovered a mile above the ground, her winds gathered together to
+form a half-solid body, her head twisting slowly from side to side. As
+far as she could see, though, the blackness was calm and filled with
+stars. It didn't at all resemble the dancing, swirling maelstrom that
+the wild Dark had promised her when it lured her away from the school.
+It seemed as if her sacrifice of blood or a life wasn't required after
+all.
+
+\emph{That is disappointing.}
+
+And more than disappointing. Now that it appeared she had left her post
+at Hogwarts for nothing, Kanerva was filled with a bit of remorse. She
+could have stayed where she was and flown with the tame winds around the
+wards. It would have granted her as much exercise as the futile retreat
+into the air had.
+
+But perhaps she could turn around and go back. And if she were very,
+very good, and flew very, very swiftly, then Harry and Jing-Xi and the
+others might forget she had ever been gone!
+
+Kanerva turned and hurtled back down towards Hogwarts, through a sky
+gone entirely too soft and strange to suit her.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+She \emph{must} stand.
+
+Jing-Xi had come to the reluctant conclusion that there was little she
+could do to help Harry right now. She certainly could not hold back the
+wild Dark, or call Kanerva to her, and Minerva was beyond her help. But
+she could exert her utmost to make sure that the school stood long
+enough for all the innocents to get out.
+
+She closed her eyes and lifted her hands, her hair, her magic. Breezes
+scented with blossoms stormed past her. She felt the stone around her
+waver. It wanted to alter, to answer her and change its nature, but the
+call of the wild Dark and the hammer beating at the bowels of the school
+increased the siren song of gravity.
+
+Jing-Xi drew on her magic as she had not done in years, at least since
+the time she made friends with Kanerva and convinced the young Dark Lady
+to give her a gift instead of trying to kill her. She whirled it around
+her head and then threw it away from her, drawing even on the magic that
+permitted her breath to keep flowing through her lungs, her heart to
+keep beating. If the stones fell in on her, she would not need to
+breathe and have her heart beat anyway.
+
+She had become a Light Lady because she wished to help people. First, it
+had been people in her town alone. Then it had included the students of
+the wizarding school she attended. Then it had been her country. Then
+she had discovered the machinations of the Pact and how she could best
+subtly manipulate them. And now it had increased to take into account
+the students of a school in Britain.
+
+She might burst her heart, with this magic laboring through her and
+radiating from her fingers and her heart. But at least then she would
+know that she had died doing something she loved.
+
+The stone around her answered her call at last, and Transfigured to
+steel. Jing-Xi fell to her knees in the midst of that shining metal, and
+let out a sharp breath.
+
+She knew she would not have much time. Though the wild Dark appeared to
+have abandoned the attack for right now, for unknown reasons, it would
+probably take her use of Light magic as a challenge and return soon
+enough. She must move and get those who would be hurt out of the way
+while she still could. Apart from anything else, she knew the students
+had practiced escape routes, but the wizards and witches who constantly
+moved in and out of the school had fewer notions of the best way to
+leave.
+
+She opened the door, and was gone, to see who most needed her help.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry had never \emph{hurt} so intensely. His scar burned like acid, and
+had ever since Voldemort began their deeper battle. His fingers cramped
+from digging them into his palms. His gut ached from the physical
+equivalent of swallowing enough magic to choke him.
+
+And then he had felt the pulsing tug in his scar, and seen Voldemort
+turn, and reacted without thinking, drawing on the magic that flowed in
+the tunnel between them to make sure he could follow his Apparition.
+Voldemort's passage had shredded the last of the anti-Apparition wards
+around the school, and, riding in his shadow, it had been easy enough
+for Harry to ignore the tatters that grasped at him.
+
+Strangely, given all his pain, he was still able to take in the
+situation in front of him at a glance.
+
+McGonagall lay on the floor with the Sword of Gryffindor in her heart.
+Between her and the desk whirled two shades. One, whom Harry had met
+before and recognized from the color of his beard and robes, was Godric
+Gryffindor. The other looked like Voldemort, or someone halfway between
+Voldemort and an older Tom Riddle, with his features already twisted and
+marked with the stamp of Dark magic. He kept trying to flow past Godric,
+and the Founder kept stopping him. He was seeking for a body to possess,
+Harry guessed, and the fact that Godric was like him both foiled him
+from possessing the Founder and kept him away from solid objects that he
+might have been able to infect with his presence.
+
+Of course, Voldemort was there now, and starting to turn towards the
+battle. And the shade of Tom Riddle dived around Godric and made for
+Harry, seeing him as the best choice for a body.
+
+Harry didn't have time to think, so he acted. He yanked on the magic
+between himself and Voldemort, viciously, hard enough to make his own
+eyes water and his teeth feel as if they were being pulled out with
+pliers. It hurt, but it worked the way he wanted it to, summoning the
+bird. It hovered above Voldemort, and then, when Harry asked, dove down,
+swiping open his forehead with one claw and sending blood flowing into
+his eyes.
+
+Harry didn't know how long the bird would manage to hold Voldemort, but
+in any case, he would have to hope it would be long enough. He faced Tom
+Riddle, still reeling a bit from the backlash of the magic tug, and let
+the momentum invert into an opening of his \emph{absorbere} gift,
+locking onto the shard of soul and drinking and draining the magic that
+kept it alive.
+
+The shade shrieked in horror, and Harry encountered the foulest blockage
+he'd ever found, like trying to swallow rancid meat and rotten eggs in
+one go. He didn't let up, though. He'd swallowed a piece of the soul
+once before, in the Chamber of Secrets, and he would not let the
+Headmistress's sacrifice on the Sword be for nothing. He gulped, and
+took the magic inside, and made it a part of himself, even if it did
+rather sit in the middle of the rest of his magic and jab him with a
+knife.
+
+The shade let out a horrid howl. Harry could see it struggling to
+reform, separated from his body by the distance of a few inches. Harry
+was determined not to let it in. If he did, then the shard of soul would
+lock him in his mind and manage to force another battle that Harry might
+not win. Besides, Voldemort could do anything to his body while Harry
+lay helpless, including kill him.
+
+Harry didn't need a distraction. He had to keep the shade from reaching
+him at all, had to keep the rest of the battle perfectly poised.
+
+Kanerva bursting through the ceiling of the office to attack Voldemort
+and his twin coming through the door were exactly the kind of
+distractions that he didn't need.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Connor came to a stop, gasping, his hand clasped over his forehead. His
+scar had begun to hurt so furiously that his vision went white with the
+pain. When he could see again, Parvati was bending over him anxiously,
+shooing back Padma, who was trying to see.
+
+``Connor?'' Parvati whispered. ``What is it?''
+
+``Voldemort's in the school,'' said Connor, and ignored the flinching
+and moaning that followed his mention of the name. ``He's---he's in the
+Headmistress's office, I think.'' He wasn't sure how he knew that, but
+it was like the knowledge he had had of Voldemort's attempts to compel
+Harry the night he'd flown off the Astronomy Tower; what he knew was
+more important than the \emph{how} of knowing it. "I've got to get to
+the office. I \emph{have} to." He shook off Parvati's hand and took an
+unsteady step towards the wall. ``Luna, can you ask the rocks to open
+for me, please?''
+
+``Wait.'' Parvati caught his arm. ``Connor, we need your help to get the
+little ones outside.''
+
+Connor closed his eyes and shook his head. ``You'll have to do it
+without me,'' he said. ``I'm sorry, Parvati. Something's---wrong. I'm
+not doing this because I think Harry needs me now more than before. It's
+pulling. In my scar. I think something important is about to happen, and
+I think I need to be there.''
+
+Parvati might have argued with him more, but Luna had already touched
+the stones in the side of the wall. They parted, at the same moment as
+they became shining walls of steel. Luna stared at them and smiled. It
+was the happiest look that Connor had ever seen on her face.
+
+``That's better,'' she whispered. ``They were so afraid of falling.''
+
+``Go on, get them out!'' Connor snapped to the others, who were staring
+at him, and they finally obeyed. Perhaps subjecting them to a few orders
+earlier had been useful, he thought, in the moment before the tug on his
+scar intensified and he set off at a clumsy run up the hall.
+
+He thought he heard footsteps following him, but he couldn't look back
+and see who it was. Besides, that might only be the doubled sound of his
+own blood rushing in his ears, which \emph{was} awfully loud.
+
+He arrived at the gargoyle finally, which leaped aside when it saw him.
+Then he was pounding up the moving staircase faster than it could go,
+and opening the door, and spilling into an office already filled with
+struggling shapes.
+
+And then things happened as quickly as the down-rush of a dragon.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Indigena spat dirt and looked around surreptitiously. If Sylvan and
+Oaken saw her angling towards the outside of the school's doors before
+she could meet Evan and his mysterious other person who would help them
+with the defeat of the Yaxley twins, she was dead. They would know that
+her horn hammer was beneath the school, but she wasn't, and they would
+remember hearing Voldemort order her to that position, and they would
+become suspicious. Indigena had the excuse that the power of the wild
+Dark had pressed her away from Hogwarts, even as had happened to them,
+but Sylvan and Oaken were far too suspicious. They wouldn't accept it.
+
+But then she saw the flash of a familiar dark cloak ahead, and, beneath
+it, a pair of familiar dark eyes. Evan nodded to her and held up a hand.
+The next moment, a witch came out of the shaking school and moved
+towards them.
+
+Indigena lifted an eyebrow when she saw who it was. \emph{Henrietta
+Bulstrode? Well, of course. I don't know anyone else on the other side
+of the battle powerful enough and Dark enough to listen to Evan. Or mad
+enough, come to that. And it would explain his reluctance to tell me who
+she was.}
+
+``Hello, Yaxley,'' said Henrietta, with a calm smile that made Indigena
+raise her estimation of the other woman's madness a notch or two. She
+might have been speaking through calm air instead of air thick with
+screams and stone dust and magic. ``Here to help us destroy your
+cousins?''
+
+Indigena nodded shortly. ``It seems that we are on the same side, for
+the next little while.''
+
+Henrietta shook her head. ``We have the same goal,'' she said. ``But you
+serve your Lord.'' Her eyes lit up with intensely private amusement, as
+at some good joke. ``And I serve no one.''
+
+``What are you doing here?'' Sylvan's voice asked then, from behind
+them.
+
+Indigena turned. She could feel Evan and Henrietta readying their wands.
+She had no idea if Sylvan had noticed them yet. Or
+perhaps---probably---he thought that Indigena and Evan had partnered to
+remove a threat from Harry's side.
+
+No such luck, she saw, when she caught a glimpse of her cousin's face.
+Still just as suspicious as ever, and he was already drawing his own
+wand and pulling his cloak in close around his body, to serve as the
+kind of armor that would turn both spells and werewolf teeth aside.
+
+``Indigena, your vines,'' said Evan. His casual tone, as if he were
+commanding a dog, made Indigena bristle, but she did as he had wanted,
+snapping her fingers and making a coil of green rise from the grass
+beneath Sylvan's feet. Evan had told her they would take the twins on
+the grass in front of the castle, so Indigena had made sure to send some
+of her vines slithering beneath it the moment she landed at the edge of
+Hogwarts's grounds. The tendrils had halted at the wards, but once the
+wild Dark had commenced its first attack, they didn't have any trouble
+slipping in and threading themselves among the more innocent grasses.
+
+Sylvan let the vines grab him, arching one eyebrow. ``You will hurt us,
+Evan? But you know that we cannot be harmed.''
+
+Evan gave him a distant, dreamy smile that Indigena had to look away
+from. ``Not by most people, no,'' he answered. ``But by the undoing of
+the spells that made you invulnerable, you can. And by someone who has
+spilled as much blood as you have.'' His voice grew more and more feral.
+``The Children's Massacre, they called it. My initiation. The endless
+killing I have done in all the years I have been alive. I think it may
+yet equal your kills, Yaxleys.''
+
+``You cannot know---''
+
+``Henrietta, my dear, sweet love,'' Evan said. ``Begin.''
+
+Henrietta had stepped forward when Indigena turned around. She had to
+admit to watching in some curiosity. She had no clue how Henrietta
+intended to unwind the spells around the pair. She knew the woman was
+accomplished with runes and Transfiguration, but it was not as if she
+had the ability that Draco did, to possess her opponents.
+
+Apparently, Henrietta had a certain amount of confidence in her
+abilities. "I have been reading a book called \emph{The Changes of the
+Mind}," she said, in a chirpy voice that also made Indigena shudder.
+\emph{She and Evan are well made for each other.} ``It covers mental
+Transfiguration. I believe that changing the patterns in my brain so
+that they correspond to the patterns in yours should be simple enough. I
+have studied it.''
+
+Indigena stared, her heart pounding. \emph{If that happens, she will
+change her mind to fit theirs, and she will think as they do, and she
+will want them to survive---has Evan baited this as a trap?}
+
+A swift glance at Evan did not reassure her. His mouth was slightly
+parted, just a bit open, and he looked as if he were ready to die of
+enjoyment. His eyes shone like dark moons.
+
+Henrietta intoned an incantation Indigena didn't know. She readied her
+vines to grab Henrietta, just in case they did have a suddenly insane
+third killer on their hands.
+
+Her face changed, but she laughed, and she still sounded like herself
+when she said, ``Oh. I see. Absurdly simple. It is really the unwilling
+sacrifices that give the power. The incantations themselves are easy,
+and easy to work backwards as well.'' She nodded to Evan, and held out
+her arm. ``Come here, and I will whisper them in your ear.''
+
+Evan went solemnly over and leaned near her. Indigena could see his body
+trembling beneath his tattered robes. She wasn't entirely sure if it was
+with lust or not. She \emph{was} sure that she did not want to know what
+it was.
+
+Henrietta whispered words into his ear, and Evan turned towards Sylvan.
+Her cousin was struggling in earnest now, Indigena noted. Not that it
+would do much good. They were immune to \emph{threats}, but the vines
+holding them were not threats, any more than ropes or chains in and of
+themselves were. Nor were the incantations that Evan was now intoning
+really meant to do harm.
+
+By themselves.
+
+Indigena watched as black coil after coil fell from her cousins. Oaken
+replaced Sylvan, and the other way around, several times, but they
+didn't seem able to break free of the trap. That was only fitting.
+Indigena thought it right, even just, that her cousins should be
+destroyed by two people as mad as they were.
+
+Because there was no doubt that Henrietta Bulstrode was mad. She let
+Evan Rosier close enough to her to bite her throat out, and she tilted
+her head back and smiled at him in between whispers. Her dark eyes were
+bright with pleasure and power, her long brown curls hanging disheveled
+over her shoulders, and she might as well have finished fucking him a
+moment ago. And Evan kept shooting her glances that Indigena had never
+seen him bestow on another living thing.
+
+\emph{Of course, that probably only means that he'll linger over her and
+make his torture of her a moment to remember.}
+
+Via magic that Indigena did not want to understand, sourced in a
+communion between two debased souls that she could not stand to
+comprehend, the spells flowed backward, as Sylvan and Oaken had
+described happening to their Lord the day they were caught by Draco
+Malfoy and his possession gift. Sylvan screamed and threatened and spoke
+of their Lord and, near the end, even pleaded. Oaken was silent all the
+way through, but his bronze eyes burned as he watched them.
+
+And then the last spell came off, and Evan stepped forward, bent his
+head, adjusted his position a bit to get around Indigena's vines, and
+ripped Sylvan's throat out.
+
+The pleading ended in a sudden spray of blood. Some of it coated her
+darlings, and Indigena wrinkled her nose at the feel of the liquid,
+which was nothing like as nourishing as water. She swiped at her face,
+even though none of the blood was on her skin, and caught one glimpse of
+Evan, laughing, red-mouthed, eyes dark as blueberries, before she let
+the vines go and turned away.
+
+Her plants followed her. She would go down into the dungeons of
+Hogwarts, to be with her horn hammer, and be standing there, innocent as
+always, when her Lord came looking for her. Indigena wanted nothing more
+to do with either Evan or Henrietta Bulstrode.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry saw his brother from the corner of his eye. He saw the diving
+Kanerva from the corner of his other eye, and the bird swooping out of
+her way. He saw, mainly, the shade of Tom Riddle suddenly darting away
+from him, towards Connor, as if it knew how much easier possessing his
+brother would be.
+
+The shade shot over to him, and then came to a stop. Searing white light
+shone from Connor's body, staring in the middle of his heart-shaped scar
+and spreading outward. It appeared to aim itself in an arrowpoint
+straight at the shard of Voldemort's soul, which cowered back with its
+hand over its face.
+
+Harry didn't know what had stopped it this time---maybe just his intense
+love for his brother---and he wasn't about to care. He snapped his hand
+out, and made a final effort, this time sustained by all his conscious
+love for Connor, to draw the soul into him and destroy it.
+
+It stuck in his throat and hurt horribly going down, but he did it.
+Harry felt the final threads of magic supporting the shard of the soul
+tear apart. He heard Voldemort's frustrated shriek from across the room,
+and saw Connor lower his hand, blinking, examining his own skin
+cautiously, as if he couldn't believe that he had managed to defeat
+something like a piece of Voldemort. Then his eyes came back to Harry's,
+and there was understanding and gratitude in them.
+
+And then two other people pressed around Connor and into the room. One
+was Luna, her eyes wide as she gazed at the Headmistress's body and the
+drained Sword on the floor. Harry wasn't sure that she saw McGonagall at
+all, next to the blade.
+
+``It's gone,'' she whispered. ``I knew that it would be, but I wanted to
+see it for myself.''
+
+The second figure was Michael Rosier-Henlin. He didn't hesitate, stop,
+or look around. He threw himself past Harry, and straight at Voldemort,
+shouting something half-strangled. Harry could make out only Medusa's
+name, and Eos's.
+
+Voldemort slapped past Kanerva with two reaching tendrils of power. The
+first one had to go sideways, to reach Michael, and missed its mark,
+Harry thought. It caught him a slap across the face and tumbled him
+sideways, smashing his head into the desk and knocking him unconscious.
+He would probably have a burn on his cheek, a nasty one, but he still
+breathed.
+
+The second tendril went past Harry, and he ducked instinctively, and
+then he was looking at Michael. Then he turned, and saw what it had
+done.
+
+Luna lay against the open door, her neck broken, her eyes wide and
+staring.
+
+Harry tried to speak, to think, to do something. But he could not.
+Luna's death was not something he had ever thought to be \emph{asked} to
+act on or comprehend.
+
+A wind began to boil in the room, and Kanerva's voice whispered, ``Dark
+Lord. Shall we dance?''
+
+Voldemort snarled in rage, and Harry knew they could not stay. Kanerva
+was stronger than he was, and she appeared to be fully committed to the
+battle with Voldemort, given that \emph{she} had attacked \emph{him}.
+The wild Dark must not have held her interest sufficiently.
+
+Harry was still not strong enough to face Voldemort, even with all the
+magic he had swallowed, and he knew the man could not be killed without
+destroying the other two Horcruxes, and he had the living to care for.
+
+He sent his own magic out in two tendrils, one to pick up the
+unconscious Michael, one to snatch Connor, and then he was out of the
+room and bounding down the moving staircase. Connor, floating behind
+him, protested vociferously over not being allowed to walk.
+
+The sight of dead and staring eyes pursued Harry all the way.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+He was furious.
+
+He had never been furious before. He understood that now. Those little
+rages had all been practices for the real thing, and this was the real
+thing, this black ice that slaked his veins with a surplus of fury and
+then broke over him like a red sun.
+
+And the Dark Lady in front of him dared to taunt him, dared to hinder
+him from going after his enemy.
+
+A moment later, though, the Lord Voldemort gained control of himself. He
+had come here to retrieve his Horcrux, to taunt Harry, and to drain
+magic. The first goal was impossible now, the second he had succeeded
+in, and he could still accomplish the last.
+
+And he would tear Hogwarts stone from stone while he was at it, to make
+a fitting cairn for the shard of his soul that had perished here.
+
+He grabbed the Dark Lady.
+
+She was wild. She was mad. She had given herself over to the wild Dark
+on the condition that it would destroy her. It was the kind of thinking
+that in other circumstances, had he not been so much Death's enemy, the
+Lord Voldemort would have admired.
+
+But she was no match for him, the most powerful wizard who had ever
+lived, and with the ability to drain her of her magic. He drank her, and
+her winds grew slower and slower, and her body came back into sight, and
+then he took her head in his hands and \emph{twisted.}
+
+And still he could not be rid of it, that high jackal's laughter in his
+ears.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry was not sure how they had reached the outside of the school. He
+remembered Apparating, and then he remembered going back because Connor
+had explained that some Gryffindors and Ravenclaws were still making
+their way out of the school, and he had caught a glimpse of Snape in
+there, and he had seen Jing-Xi, and he had helped to stabilize falling
+stones and crumpling steel, and then he had felt Voldemort's magic
+falling on them like a block itself and knew they dared stay no longer.
+
+They stood now near the far opening of the tunnel that lay under the
+school, helping spilling students out of the hole: Gryffindors,
+Ravenclaws, Hufflepuffs guided by Helga's spirit, Draco and the
+Slytherins. Draco took his hand in a grip that still stung and hurt now,
+five minutes later. Harry could hear Connor's voice speaking to Padma,
+and the beginning of her tears, and he could see wounds scattered on
+bodies everywhere, and dust.
+
+And not everyone who had stayed at the school over the winter holidays
+had come out again.
+
+Harry raised his head. He could see the black flag of Voldemort's power
+rising to the south and east. He knew that, in his frustration, the Dark
+Lord would probably take the school apart. He knew that Kanerva was
+dead, and anyone who remained there. He wanted to collapse, and he
+wanted to grieve.
+
+But, first, he had to make sure he got the children with him to safety,
+in case Voldemort finished his tantrum sooner than Harry thought he
+would and came after them.
+
+He turned away.
+
+There was a snarl, and the wild Dark came down on him.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 68*: The Beast in the
+Wilderness}\label{chapter-68-the-beast-in-the-wilderness}
+
+I suppose, technically, the ending of this could be counted as a
+cliffhanger, as the action ends but the immediate situation does not
+resolve, so, fair warning.
+
+\textbf{Chapter Fifty-Four: The Beast in the Wilderness}
+
+Harry saw the manticore swoop towards him, its darkness beating around
+it like wings, its mouth wide open. It might suck his soul out of his
+body, for all he knew, like a Dementor. He did know that it wanted him,
+and if he stood there and gave in, out of weariness or fear or simple
+and sheer disgust with everything that had happened, it would have him.
+
+So he remembered the plan he'd crafted for dealing with the wild
+Dark---he'd made it up a hundred years ago---and lifted his voice.
+
+The darkness around him splintered at the sound of the phoenix song. The
+manticore stopped moving, and stood still, just as it had hovered in
+front of him on those nights when Harry sang from the top of the
+Astronomy Tower.
+
+The Astronomy Tower that was now so much shattered rubble among the
+remains of the castle---
+
+Harry shoved the thought impatiently away. \emph{Oh, yes, mourning for
+the castle will help me now. Except that it will not, and I must learn
+to distinguish between what will and what won't.}
+
+He warbled, feathering and softening his voice, and let the blue flame
+race up and down his arms. It was hardly difficult, in the wake of
+everything he felt over the collapse of Hogwarts. He might dwell in
+righteous anger for the rest of his life and never have enough of it.
+
+The manticore dropped to the ground and began to pace around him, eyes
+wide and intent and very green. Harry watched the scorpion tail sway
+above its back, and could guess what would happen to someone who got too
+close, the way that Draco seemed intent on doing now.
+
+On the other hand, he didn't have the breath to spare from the song to
+shout a warning. So he trusted to Draco's good sense, just as he had to
+keep him inside the castle and away from the battle, and moved backward,
+step by step, listening to his feet crunching on the snow, the intense,
+hearing silence around him, and the cadence and lift and dash of his
+voice.
+
+The wild Dark followed. It had started an almost imperceptible purring.
+Harry could feel the sound vibrating in his bones better than he could
+hear it. The scorpion tail still danced back and forth, and the wide
+eyes now seemed drugged. Harry knew the wild Dark would react fast
+enough if he stopped singing, though.
+
+He dropped to one knee, briefly, as though searching for something in
+the snow. Then he stood and waved his arms about, timing the gestures to
+the song. The manticore followed the motions with its eyes, and a whine
+arrived to add to the purr. It didn't understand him, and it wanted to
+understand, Harry knew. He belonged to it, as far as it was concerned.
+It would want all his secrets, his ways of thinking about things, his
+powers, his spirit.
+
+Harry knew Voldemort had managed to charm it with a soul-pattern, which
+he didn't have time to draw. He would just have to entice it with
+something else.
+
+And above all else, the wild Dark desired the Light. Harry's arms
+imitated the motions of phoenix wings.
+
+He felt the moment the manticore realized that. The purr escaped its
+lips this time, and it padded forward again, lion paws large and light,
+dangerous gaze never wavering from him.
+
+Step by step, Harry led it back towards the Forbidden Forest, away from
+the people gathered on the hole outside the tunnel from Hogwarts, and he
+hoped to Merlin that they would have the good sense to get away while he
+bought them time.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+As he rose above the rubble that had been the home of his enemies, the
+Lord Voldemort noted that he rose into silence.
+
+It was---strange. He had expected noise, his magic imploding on itself,
+his own furious cries, and the sound of the roused storm as the wild
+Dark fed on Harry's soul. But what he got was the eye of the storm. The
+Lord Voldemort stopped rising and hovered, borne on a current of magic
+as birds flew on wind. He had the time to pause and figure out what had
+happened. It was not as though Harry and his fellow children could flee
+far or fast.
+
+The silence coalesced into a ripple in front of him, rotating like the
+edge of a hurricane, and then the wild Dark was there. The Lord
+Voldemort would have known that power anywhere, though it currently did
+not have the manticore form it usually bore this year. It had the form
+of a white snake, a dragon without legs, wreathed back on itself and
+watching him with cold blue eyes.
+
+The Lord Voldemort could only imagine that it had come to make common
+cause with him in hunting Harry, which was not that surprising. He had
+promised himself his heir's magic, but the wild Dark would have the
+soul. He nodded, and extended his arm and his magic, which trailed it
+like a heavy sleeve, to point beyond Hogwarts.
+
+``Their trail begins there,'' he said. He spoke aloud, but the wild Dark
+would hear the intentions and the connotations behind his words, which
+were the most important parts.
+
+The snake turned towards him and showed its fangs. The Lord Voldemort
+faltered, his eyes narrowing. \emph{Something is wrong.}
+
+The serpent spoke in Parseltongue, and its voice shook his spine.
+"\emph{I made a promise to one of my servants. I did not keep that
+promise. You killed her, and that is not the death she chose. For
+killing her, you shall pay.}"
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry had pulled the wild Dark into the edge of the Forbidden Forest, so
+that the trees whispered and creaked around them, the bare black
+branches scraping the back of his neck when he stood up from his
+half-crouched position. His arms ached, and he knew he couldn't flap
+them much longer. He still held the manticore's eyes, and he still sang,
+but now he had to try a new tactic.
+
+He stooped down, therefore, and sat in the snow. The blue flame that
+shone around him sparked and began to melt it. But the drops of running
+water smelled sweet, like myrrh, and the water itself made Harry feel as
+if he stood in a shower in the loo off his and Draco's bedroom.
+
+\emph{As you never will again.}
+
+Harry told his mind to shut up. It was inconvenient, truly, the way it
+insisted on making him think in a human fashion even when he was trying
+to do other things. He leaned his head on his right hand and flexed the
+fingers, enjoying the way they bent now with the last of the Horcrux
+taint gone. He turned his thoughts to water and floated the physical
+sensations in it like the ingredients of a soup, making sure the wild
+Dark could see how good it felt to sing the phoenix song and how much
+more aware he was while the music and the fire flooded his body.
+
+The manticore crept a few steps nearer still. Now the lion's chest
+loomed over him, with the scorpion tail lashing and rippling just behind
+it, and the great human face stared and stared.
+
+Harry smiled at it, and the manticore gave a little stamp of its left
+hind paw. Harry knew it was from delight.
+
+The wild Dark knew what he had suffered with the fall of Hogwarts. If it
+could read his emotions, then it could sense grief and guilt, and it had
+been a large part of causing that grief and guilt. But Harry could still
+smile at it, and he could still lie about in front of the wild Dark and
+sing this way. The wild Dark wanted a soul so resilient and stubborn for
+itself.
+
+Harry let more thoughts flow into his mind. Ordinarily, he could not
+have done this. It was the phoenix song which made him able to bear the
+bleaker emotions for now. The Light in him, that shard of pure Light he
+had not asked for from Fawkes's death but which had come to him in any
+case and which it would be stupid not to use, carried him through the
+Midwinters of his life.
+
+The manticore came close enough that Harry could feel the warmth of the
+drool dripping from its jaws. Its breath smelled like wormy meat, soft
+with heat and corruption.
+
+Harry tilted his head back encouragingly. He lay completely supine in
+the snow in front of the manticore now. To a stranger, he might look
+submissive, offering his throat to be torn by those mighty jaws.
+
+He had another plan in mind, and as long as no one interfered, tried to
+rescue him or be a hero, then he thought he would succeed.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+The snake curled around him. The Lord Voldemort held still, and hovered
+on his current of magic, because he could not believe that this had
+happened to him. He and the wild Dark were partners in the destruction
+of Harry. He was to have the magic, and the wild Dark was to have the
+soul. It had never shown any sign of being less than fascinated once he
+began to create the pattern of flesh and blood. Should it not be a
+distance away, taking the soul from Harry's body and leaving the corpse
+for the Lord Voldemort to reclaim and his friends for him to torture?
+
+But the white serpent wound about him, and then fastened its cold blue
+fangs in his neck, and the Lord Voldemort came to understand something
+he had forgotten: the wild Dark did not answer to human standards. It
+might be miles away reaping Harry just as it floated here with him. And
+it might agree to a bargain it would hold until Midwinter night and then
+break its own rules.
+
+He had understood that. He had been sure he understood that.
+
+And then he realized that he had fallen into the common, petty human
+trap of assuming superior comprehension when, in truth, he had tricked
+himself into shutting and locking the cage door behind him.
+
+He cried out, but the wild Dark did not care. He struck with his
+newly-powerful magic, but the wild Dark did not notice. He called for
+his Death Eaters, for Indigena, burning his power through the Dark Mark,
+and the jackal laughter of Death entered his ears.
+
+The Lord Voldemort made himself be still. He knew the wild Dark could
+not kill him. The laws of Horcruxes were absolute. The Unassailable
+Curses he had laid demanded willing sacrifices, and the wild Dark did
+not make sacrifices, it took them. He was safe. It might badly damage
+him, but he would survive, and survival was his ultimate goal.
+
+\emph{I have you,} the wild Dark whispered, and then they rolled, and
+the grip of the night around him was tight and silent, and the Lord
+Voldemort learned again what it was like to be small before a stronger
+force.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry watched the maw of the manticore descend nearer and nearer his
+face, and sang with all his might.
+
+Fawkes had sung like this last year, when he danced among the clouds of
+the Midwinter night and yielded his life. He had given visions to Harry
+as he died, visions of sunlight and moonlight and starlight that graced
+creatures who were \emph{meant} to live in them. And he had given Harry
+his voice as if he had planned the gift all along, though Harry doubted
+it was so.
+
+The gift had come to him, lightly, and Harry had used it as lightly as
+he could. He could offer hope, but he would not compel with it, nor
+change minds. Relieve despair, remind people of his existence and the
+existence of others, but not use it to sir the world like a glass rod in
+a potion.
+
+Given that, how lightly it had come to him, how should he cling to it,
+how become jealous and possessive of it? Fawkes had been anything but
+jealous and possessive. His occasional sparring with Hedwig and Argutus
+had come more from shared physical space than jealousy.
+
+The thoughts raced through Harry's head, faster and faster, as the teeth
+halted a few inches above his face. His bones vibrated with the force of
+his voice and the manticore's purr. He put up a hand, greatly daring,
+and felt the smooth, short fur under his palm. The wild Dark slowly
+tilted its head, poison-green eyes telling him not to grow too
+comfortable with this.
+
+Harry would not call his state of mind \emph{comfortable.} He hung
+between extremes, and all around him exultation and despair, Dark and
+Light, raced like comets. He knew he might die in a moment, but, with
+the part of him that welcomed death for comfort and for his crimes, he
+felt more excited about the prospect than anything else. The air between
+him and the wild Dark pulsed with familiarity.
+
+Few wizards and witches attained this power. Those who did, Declared,
+and after that they were close to one or the other, Dark or Light, but
+never both again. Harry had ridden the Light when it went to take back
+stolen magic from Voldemort, and now he lay on his back beneath the
+teeth of a beast that could rip his throat out and felt exactly the same
+wonder and awe he had felt then.
+
+The wild Dark turned its head further to the side and laid its cheek
+along his. A shock of warmth traveled into Harry, and from it the wild
+Dark's intense pleasure and appreciation. It \emph{wanted} him, all the
+more for the strange thoughts flowing through his mind. If it wanted
+someone who thought ordinary things, it could have found such a person
+and stolen his soul at any time. But this was different. Its purring
+said so. The heavy paw it lifted and laid across Harry's chest, the
+claws that could disembowel him poking lightly at his skin, said so.
+
+Harry knew, somewhere in the depths of his brain, that his plan had
+turned somewhat wrong. He had intended to touch the wild Dark's inherent
+fascination with the Light, and make it focus on his phoenix voice.
+Instead, it seemed he had increased its fascination with his soul.
+
+But in that moment, as he stared into eyes so large that he could only
+focus on one of them at a time when they were this close, he found that
+he didn't care.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+The Lord Voldemort saw curves of darkness surrounding a globe so small
+that it seemed lost in all that immensity. He could reach out and crush
+it in his hand. And he did try, but the white serpent kept his hand
+bound to his side.
+
+"\emph{You are unchangeable.}"
+
+The Lord Voldemort did not understand that. He did not understand what
+he had been brought here to see. Though the realization of smallness had
+impacted him greatly at first, like the destruction of a Horcrux, it had
+faded. The wild Dark could not bring back the dead, and it had made no
+movement to take the Dark Lady's magic from him. Therefore, it would do
+something chaotic and wild to suit its nature, and then it would release
+him, and he could begin the hunt for Harry and the children and traitors
+who had accompanied him.
+
+A cold sigh traveled past his ear, and then the darkness parted, opening
+like a series of shrouds releasing their victims, wing after wing
+whispering away. The Lord Voldemort could see the earth floating now in
+the unclouded light of stars and suns, sparking a few random gleams from
+its seas or high mountains covered with snow. His longing to reach out
+and crush it in one hand increased. If only he could do so, if only he
+did not have to spend so much of his time battling prophecies and his
+heir and those other things that did not know their rightful Lord and
+their rightful place.
+
+"\emph{So small is the earth,}" the white serpent hissed into his ear.
+"\emph{And so mighty am I that I dwarf it, and so does the Light. When I
+make a promise to a follower, then I always keep that promise.}"
+
+The Lord Voldemort said nothing. He felt, in fact, a boredom much like
+the emotion he had felt when a child in Hogwarts or the orphanage, when
+adults scolded him with tears in their eyes or frowns on their faces.
+They wanted him to act like a good boy, like a good child, to stop
+behaving as if he did not know the difference between right and wrong.
+They had never listened to his ambitions, never realized that he had the
+right to power and wisdom beyond his years by virtue of that power. The
+wild Dark would scold him, as they had, and that would be the end of it.
+
+There was a long pause. The wild Dark had sensed his thoughts. The Lord
+Voldemort hoped to be set back on his feet. This was only another one of
+the many repeated episodes that had once characterized his life. He was
+eager to be on to something new, to kill the only one who could kill
+him, according to the prophecy and their connection, and then to smell
+the rest of the world's fear. He could not imagine how mighty he would
+be when he had absorbed Harry's magic back into himself and no longer
+had a constant drain on his power. Would the Lords and Ladies of the
+Pact cower before him, or would they put up a pathetic fight before he
+crushed them and extended his shadow over the wizards and the Muggle
+world alike? How long would the purges of Mudbloods take? How many
+generations until everyone could chant the genealogy of Slytherin's
+heir, and treated the name of Harry Potter, Harry Black, the
+\emph{vates,} as a traitor's too horrible to think on?
+
+And then the wild Dark said, "\emph{By the patterns of Light and Dark,
+my great kin and I exert our influence on the world at destined times.
+And I say now that you, who call yourself my servant, shall not again
+use your power in open battle until the spring equinox and the coming of
+the Light."}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+The first drop of drool splashed into Harry's eyes. He blinked. He
+hadn't realized the moment his view changed from that of large green
+eyes to fang. He reached up and ran his right hand along the edge of the
+nearest tooth. It nearly removed his last two fingers. In a distant,
+drowsy way, he approved.
+
+Also, in a distant, drowsy way, he realized that his throat hurt from
+singing the phoenix song, but he didn't think he had much choice but to
+continue. He sat up a little more and shook his head, still ducking
+beneath the manticore's chin, and turned the current of the music. In
+the back of his mind thrummed the thought that his and the wild Dark's
+mutual fascination had lasted long enough, and now he needed to get on
+with things.
+
+He sang of the way that his voice had attracted the attention of Acies
+in her dragon form, and tried to put the flight of Dark creatures into
+the voice of a creature of the Light. He wasn't sure he succeeded, but
+the wild Dark whuffed an appreciation of his efforts and moved closer.
+It was nearly part of him now, standing in his shadow, his boundaries
+and its flowing and mingling. Harry could feel abysses too great for him
+to endure hovering just beyond his sight or comprehension. He leaned
+closer to them. Why not? He had succeeded in passing beyond the moment
+when he might have rejected the wild Dark and turned on it because of
+what it had done to his home. Now, he needed to feel that he stood above
+a drop in order to make him keep his mind on the task. The wild Dark
+simply didn't seem as awful as it had.
+
+It could offer him that oblivion he had dreamed of, the perfect black
+nothingness and rest he had once thought he would attain with suicide.
+
+The wild Dark took a step closer, purring once more.
+
+It could make the world around him so simple. With him dead, his soul
+utterly absorbed, he wouldn't care about anything any more, not have to
+deal with decisions and difficulties and whether he had done something
+wrong according to his standards or others'.
+
+The wild Dark's breath came from his own mouth, its madness and its
+thoughts passed behind his own eyes.
+
+And that was the promise, or part of the promise, it had made to
+Kanerva, and it had ended up not granting her that promise.
+
+The wild Dark flinched back with a sharp cry, and they hung between
+extremes in a moment when it might have shredded Harry apart for
+reminding it of its failures.
+
+Harry filled his voice with the challenge, the challenge that the Light
+always offered to the Dark, and waited.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+The Lord Voldemort felt boredom travel through him and then ebb like a
+cold wave. That left what the wild Dark had said. He could not use his
+power until the spring equinox, while darkness dominated the world.
+
+He simply rejected the notion, impatient and incredulous at the thought
+of any such holds on his power. He was the strongest wizard in the
+world! The Lords and Ladies of the Pact themselves could not stand
+against him! Muggle weapons would fall apart if he so much as looked at
+them! And the Dark thought it could restrict what he tried to do? It was
+nonsense.
+
+The Dark sighed as if to itself, and the white serpent hissed through
+the place in his shoulder where the icicle fangs still gripped.
+"\emph{Why must I be so badly served?"} it asked in Parseltongue.
+"\emph{Why must those Lords who have arisen in Britain give not their
+whole hearts to me, as they do in other countries, but attempt to hold
+back, cheat, and pay more attention to mortal politics than to me?"}
+
+The Lord Voldemort did not know what it meant. What \emph{he} meant was
+that he would continue to use his power up until the spring equinox, not
+simply past it.
+
+The Dark's voice had gone amused, now; the Lord Voldemort would have
+recognized that particular twist of the hiss in Parseltongue anywhere,
+since he had often used the language to laugh at his enemies. "\emph{It
+is not your choice. When you made the Declaration to me, when you
+promised not to serve the Light or use Light spells without some measure
+of subterfuge involved, you gave me power over you. I have not chosen to
+exert that power. I have liked watching your wildness. What harm you
+brought to others was aimed at Light wizards, and when I am rational, I
+admire it. When I am angry at you, I seek to stretch the wildness
+further.}
+
+"\emph{But now you have killed another servant of mine, who was also
+wild, and with whom I was not yet finished. I can and I will restrict
+your power. Until the Light returns to save you, you will not use your
+power against Harry directly. Magic sustains you, but you cannot use it
+in battle."} The wild Dark paused as if in contemplation. "\emph{And you
+cannot drain.}"
+
+And then the image of the earth faded, and the white serpent, and the
+cold poison in his veins, and the Lord Voldemort stood among the rubble
+of the castle with the hour of greatest darkness passed. He at once
+gathered his magic to spring into the air as if he had wings and fly
+after Harry.
+
+Nothing happened.
+
+He conjured an intricate, glowing sphere on his palm, and it appeared.
+He channeled power to the new eyes he had created, and they responded,
+sharpening and brightening his vision. He reached out to drain the magic
+of the artifacts lingering in the bowels of the castle, and nothing
+happened.
+
+It took him long moments to connect his own powerlessness with what the
+wild Dark had said about the magic it would hold back from him.
+
+A frustrated scream rose from his throat and ripped through the night.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry knelt there, singing, his eyes shut, his blue fire melting the
+snow around him, and listened to the wild Dark pace and mutter, pace and
+snarl under its breath, pace and think.
+
+It leaned close to his ear and snarled straight at him at one point.
+
+Harry ignored it as serenely as he could. He had done what he
+wanted---he hoped. He had turned the wild Dark's attention away from his
+soul by showing it he would not make an ideal possession after all. His
+soul resembled Kanerva's soul, but the wild Dark had not kept its
+promise to her. How could Harry trust it to keep its promises to him,
+any promise that it might make? He would not Declare, he would not yield
+gracefully, because he would not get enough out of doing so.
+
+So he sang the song of Light, and listened to the wild Dark try to find
+some way to refute his dilemma. Or he waited for the moment when it
+would decide that its rules could bind it no longer and change its mind.
+
+\emph{Whatever comes first.}
+
+At last, the manticore's pacing slowed, and Harry opened his eyes to see
+it standing in front of him, scorpion tail slung jauntily over its back.
+It could not oppose what he had thought. No, it had not served Kanerva
+well. And while it could punish Voldemort, that would not turn time
+around or bring her back to life, which were the only second chances it
+could have had. But it still wished Harry would reconsider. He had
+fascinated it. It wanted something from him.
+
+Harry cocked his eyebrow. He had sensed the words as if someone were
+speaking to him in a conversation, but they did not come to him in
+words; they simply awakened in his head and were there as if he had
+known them all before he developed his first conscious thought, rather
+like the colors he saw.
+
+He knew he should not draw this out much longer. The wild Dark could
+lose interest at any moment, or decide to break its rules, or rule that
+its punishment of Voldemort was enough to pay for Kanerva's death and
+take his soul anyway. The wild Dark kept its bargains unless it had a
+better idea. Harry didn't want to give it the moments to have that
+better idea.
+
+He cocked his head to the side and let his song whisper into silence.
+The blue fire faded, and Harry became aware that he was, in fact,
+shivering rather violently and that his throat hurt as if he had
+swallowed snow and run a mile in cold air. The wild Dark gave a low
+whine of distress.
+
+Harry touched his throat and raised his eyebrows. He could not speak,
+but the wild Dark would read his meaning well enough.
+
+The manticore whined again, and then came nearer, paws so light on the
+snow that its claws didn't seem to disturb a particle from its place.
+Its major emotion now was wonder, Harry thought. He would give it the
+phoenix voice? It could really take that song from him, and he wouldn't
+miss it?
+
+Well, of course Harry would \emph{miss} it. But it made a better fit for
+the wild Dark than his soul did, and as it had said, it was not letting
+him go without some kind of a sacrifice from him, a gift.
+
+He locked his eyes with the calm green ones and waited.
+
+The manticore bowed its head and licked its tongue over his throat.
+Harry felt the phoenix song scraped out of him, like remnants of cheese
+removed from a grater, and bowed his head. No, he had not wanted to lose
+the last gift Fawkes had ever given him, but far better that than his
+life or his soul and all the lives within Hogwarts.
+
+Now, of course, it remained to be seen whether the wild Dark would take
+that and go away, or whether it would change its mind and snatch his
+soul after all. Harry had struggled so hard, had thrown so much of his
+will into the song, that he found himself peaceful and drained and not
+caring what happened. Either way, he had fought the best fight he knew
+how.
+
+The wild Dark's scorpion sting slid over his cheek. Harry opened his
+eyes to see the manticore staring at him.
+
+They had shared something wonderful and endless a few moments ago, and
+the wild Dark would not forget that.
+
+It turned away from him and sprang upward, becoming part of the night
+again. A moment later, Harry felt the storm, the same power that had
+helped to destroy Hogwarts and its wards, begin to pass away. To the
+north, too, the sky was clear. Harry didn't think Voldemort would come
+after them this night.
+
+He climbed to his feet and walked back through the trees towards Draco
+and Snape and Connor and the others. He did not think of the fact that
+he had bargained with the monster who had helped to kill so many, or of
+the work that awaited him when he rejoined them, work only he could do.
+He thought of nothing at all.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 69*: The Concussive
+Dance}\label{chapter-69-the-concussive-dance}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Fifty-Five: The Concussive Dance}
+
+Snape exhaled in relief when he saw Harry coming back to them from the
+edge of the Forest. He would have moved the students who stood around
+the tunnel to one of the safehouses---preferably one of the Black
+houses---sooner or later, but Harry's presence was the only magic that
+might be able to protect them from the wild Dark and Voldemort on the
+way.
+
+Although, if the scream and the clearing sky from the north were any
+indication, the Dark Lord would not be coming after them for some time.
+
+Snape shook his head. He was not used to feeling such a heavy weight of
+responsibility. He would bear it for Harry, but knowing that Minerva had
+died and left him Headmaster of the school, responsible for these
+children's safety---
+
+\emph{What was she thinking? There will be many parents who won't trust
+me with the safety of their children. She should have chosen Peter,
+Pomona, Filius, anyone but me.} Snape closed one hand into a fist.
+\emph{I don't know how to do this. And I'm depending on my adopted son
+to lead us. Surely that's the most pathetic sign of all.}
+
+Harry came to a halt in front of him, and Snape found that his voice had
+stuck in his throat. They hadn't seen much of what happened in the
+clearing in the woods; Harry's phoenix voice and the power of the wild
+Dark had woven a mingled barrier of night and flame to keep them back.
+But Harry's eyes were dead, not merely blank but empty, and he touched
+his throat and shook his head when Snape looked at him expectantly.
+Apparently, he'd sung out the phoenix voice and, with it, the voice that
+would let him talk.
+
+Letters of fire sprouted from his fingers to hang in the air and make up
+for that a moment later, though. They didn't waver even as Draco moved
+forward and hugged Harry firmly enough to almost knock him off his feet.
+Harry just shifted to one side as if to compensate for the hug, and more
+letters spilled out of him to join the first line.
+
+\emph{We should bring the children to Silver-Mirror. That will be our
+new central headquarters. The wild Dark no longer wants my soul, and
+won't pursue us. And Voldemort screamed as if something had stopped him.
+I don't know what it was. Perhaps wounds taken in the battle with
+Kanerva. Either way, we must move, and Silver-Mirror is the destination
+that makes sense, the one with the strongest wards and the one that will
+serve as a good central location to gather the others around us.}
+
+Snape nodded unwillingly. Silver-Mirror was at least closer to most of
+their allies' homes than the far-flung Cobley-by-the-Sea, and though
+they could have gone to Grimmauld Place, trying to herd a group of tired
+and crying children through Muggle London was not a challenge Snape
+would have looked forward to. ``And what shall we do once we arrive at
+Silver-Mirror?''
+
+Harry grunted and shifted to the side again as Draco's embrace grew
+firmer. It seemed that Draco wanted him to look at him, but Harry
+refused, keeping his eyes steadily on Snape. \emph{For the night? Bed
+down the children. Heal the wounded. In the morning, try to figure out
+who survived, and send messengers to contact the parents and explain the
+situation. Start rebuilding a government from the ashes of the Ministry
+and the ruins of Hogwarts.}
+
+Snape frowned slightly. He had the feeling that something was wrong. He
+caught Harry's eye, but could see no sign of Occlumency suppression
+there. Harry simply appeared calm and thoughtful, putting aside his
+emotions for the greater good of the people he had to save. Snape told
+himself not to worry so much. Harry had always been good at doing what
+had to be done.
+
+Later, if necessary, he would talk to his son and find out whether he
+blamed himself for the dead of Hogwarts. For now, they both had to deal
+with the living of Hogwarts.
+
+He turned away and studied the circle of tear-streaked faces that lifted
+to look at him. ``We will be Apparating to a house where you will be
+safe,'' he said loudly. ``Those who can Apparate, please hold the hands
+of those who cannot, and begin transporting them.'' He nodded to
+Regulus. ``Go before them and lower the wards---''
+
+``Of course,'' Regulus murmured, and vanished.
+
+\emph{I'll stay here to guard them, if you want to go ahead,} Harry
+signed.
+
+Snape nodded, but said, ``I can't go ahead. Not yet.'' He turned his
+head back towards the school. ``If there are others there, children who
+need my help or might be lying trapped in the ruins---''
+
+Harry's eyes turned bleak, and he nodded in turn. But he extended a
+cocoon of protection over the children around him instead of
+accompanying Snape to the school. Perhaps he understood that Snape would
+call for him if he needed his magic, to shift stones or heal someone who
+would die without his help.
+
+Perhaps he simply knew his own limits, and knew that, while Snape needed
+to look at the shattered wreckage of the building that had been his home
+for decades, Harry himself could not yet bear it.
+
+Snape closed his eyes and pictured the end of the Hogsmeade road. He'd
+appeared there before he realized he could have Apparated closer to the
+school. The wards that prevented Apparition were gone, after all.
+
+No sense in protecting a ruin.
+
+He walked forward, staring. The school had fallen in upon itself, with
+stone folding on stone, and the Towers curling inward like the petals of
+a flower touched by frost. Snape tried to make out what had been the
+roof of the Great Hall, what had been the entrance doors, where the
+Headmistress's office would have been. Nothing, and nothing, and
+nothing. The school looked like what it was, rubble, already touched
+with a light drifting of snow.
+
+Snape closed his eyes.
+
+He wanted to rage. Minerva had made the wrong choice. She'd done what
+she could to insure the children would be safe after her death, yes, but
+she could never have anticipated something like this. He was the wrong
+man to do this.
+
+But she had consigned authority to him, and that meant he would have to
+bear it. And if Harry could do it, he could.
+
+Still---
+
+The nearest thing he'd had to a home in his childhood, and the building
+he'd worked in and loved and hated for so long as an adult. Gone.
+
+Snape forced himself to open his eyes, to see what was there instead of
+the memories that wanted to intrude, and walked closer to the pile in
+the dark and the cold, absently casting Warming Charms on himself as he
+moved. He needed to search for survivors.
+
+\emph{As if anyone could have survived that---}
+
+But someone might have.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Henrietta found her way to Silver-Mirror after a few false starts,
+having checked Grimmauld Place and then Cobley-by-the-Sea first. It made
+sense that Harry would have chosen one of the Black houses as his new
+stronghold. It was his name now, after all, and the wards recognized and
+responded only to him and Regulus. And Silver-Mirror did have formidable
+weapons should an enemy come. Henrietta approved.
+
+Regulus recognized her touch on the wards and let her in. Henrietta
+smiled at him, and then said, ``What do you need help with?''
+
+The Black studied her for a moment. Henrietta studied him calmly back.
+She knew Regulus had never trusted her, since he'd been there when she
+made her first, rather unfortunate, attempts to take power from Harry,
+but he had to know that she would be a familiar face to many of the
+students, as their Transfiguration Professor. And, a moment later, he
+nodded and gestured her to one of the side rooms, which looked like a
+library.
+
+``There are some children we can't get to calm down in there,'' he said.
+``Could you tend to them?''
+
+``Of course,'' Henrietta murmured, and glided away, into the room full
+of terrified second-years. She'd repaired her glamour the moment she
+parted from Evan, and now she looked like Professor Belluspersona again,
+a hard teacher, but known for being calm and kind outside the classroom.
+
+A little girl in a Ravenclaw crest recognized her first, and broke and
+ran to her, sobbing. She babbled out some tale of watching a friend die
+in the fall of stones. Henrietta knelt down, put an arm around her, and
+stroked her hair. Such gestures had never been natural to her, but she
+had learned them as part of the dance she was to play in Harry's
+entourage. Besides, she had abused only her own daughter in the quest
+for power. These children were reflections of Harry to her. If Harry
+cared about their lives and did not want them hurt, then she would
+protect them.
+
+The rest of the children surrounded her, crying and uttering pleas for
+reassurance and asking what had happened. Henrietta began to cast a
+great many surreptitious Cleaning Charms and dry a great many tears. She
+knew she would have a long night ahead of her. She didn't mind. Such
+service had become natural to her since she swore the Unbreakable Vows.
+The good of Harry and his cause was more important to her even than her
+own allegiance to the Dark.
+
+The Ravenclaw second-year who stood closest to her blinked and looked
+up, touching her face in wonder. ``Did a stone hurt you, Professor?''
+she whispered.
+
+``I can't really remember,'' said Henrietta, licking the blood from her
+lips. These children were not to know the truth. They knew nothing of
+falling on Evan Rosier in the snow, and kissing him hard enough to make
+him bite his lower lip, and looking into his dark eyes, and seeing, at
+the bottom of all the madness and the laughter, the terror. He still
+remembered the pain of his violation. Henrietta was the only one who
+could make him fear like that.
+
+But those were not tales for children.
+
+``I think a rock hit you,'' the second-year whispered.
+
+Henrietta kissed her hair, and looked calmly at the smear of red on the
+blonde curls. ``Maybe it did,'' she said.
+
+SSSSSSSSS
+
+Monika stepped back from the pool with a thoughtful look on her face.
+
+Well. Wasn't \emph{that} interesting.
+
+She hadn't thought Lord Riddle would bring down Hogwarts, she had to
+admit, at least not without more of a fight from Harry. She had thought
+he had some attachment to the place, enough to want to dominate it. He'd
+take it for a headquarters, a stronghold, but not actually tumble it
+onto the heads of the inhabitants. It seemed she'd been wrong.
+
+It was a pity that this was probably only a fluke and not the sign of
+something truly interesting about Lord Riddle that she'd missed all
+along, though. Monika didn't think she could be that lucky. Several of
+the other Dark Lords and Ladies in the world were boring. Lord Riddle
+was firmly in their ranks, unexpected behavior notwithstanding.
+
+She had watched the wild Dark chastise him with great enjoyment. She
+knew the wild Dark had allowed her to see, and its amusement had fed
+back into hers. She and the wild Dark enjoyed a comradely relationship,
+most of the time. That was partly because Monika kept her own limits
+always in mind. She would never be so foolish as to challenge the Dark.
+If it required a gesture of submission from her, then she would be sure
+to make it.
+
+But Kanerva was dead.
+
+And Jing-Xi would probably insist on remaining in Britain to help Harry
+and the survivors patch up their wounds, and she might even break the
+Pact's rules in doing so, in order to carry the battle to Lord Riddle.
+
+The Pact would shake.
+
+Monika cocked her head, trying to decide if they would countenance
+interference in Britain. In the end, though, she had to shake her head.
+She doubted it. They didn't interfere when Muggles made a mess of things
+and caused even bigger slaughters in countries belonging to Lords and
+Ladies.
+
+Besides, there were simply too many conflicting personalities in the
+Pact. It was asking much of people who shared nothing in common but
+power to work together. They would argue, they would discuss, they would
+debate, but in the end, that was all they would do.
+
+Monika nodded. \emph{The fall of Hogwarts is unlikely to make much
+difference to my plans.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``Greetings, Seaborn.''
+
+Pamela opened her eyes with a yelp, and then glared. A window hovered in
+front of her, the kind that Lords and Ladies usually used to speak to
+one another over long distances. Alexandre's face floated in it. By his
+expression, he knew, and did not care, that he had woken her from a
+sound sleep.
+
+``Dark Lord, what---'' she began, rubbing at her eyes.
+
+``Hogwarts has fallen,'' said Alexandre, his voice toneless. ``And the
+man who calls himself the sole Dark Lord of the world has swallowed the
+Lady Kanerva's power.''
+
+Pamela froze, her blood tingling. Then she said quietly, ``He will be
+unstoppable, if that is the case.''
+
+Alexandre shrugged. As usual, he had the silvery curl of an unfulfilled
+prophecy around him. He stroked the edge of it like a child playing with
+a napkin for the lack of any other toys. "Perhaps not. The Dark also
+punished him, and bound him from doing any harm for the period of a few
+months, until the Light returns to dominate the Northern Hemisphere.
+Such as using the \emph{absorbere} gift, for example." He looked up and
+caught Pamela's eyes. ``That might convince the Pact that they should
+wait to interfere.''
+
+And by the tone of his voice, Pamela knew what he thought would happen.
+The Pact would argue and debate and dicker among themselves, and they
+would point out that they had the space of some months to do so, and in
+the end, nothing would get done. Their tempers and the dreams of
+personal advantage and the old non-interference laws would, in the end,
+hold them back from helping Harry.
+
+``That can't happen, Alexandre,'' Pamela said flatly, standing. "I'm
+going to call on Coatlicue. I need help to convince them that this time,
+we \emph{have} to move. Harry's not the only Lord-slayer in the world
+any more, and we know that Lord Riddle won't have done it in
+self-defense." She started to turn away. Coatlicue might be sleeping as
+well, or involved in a delicate magical procedure, but that didn't
+matter. Pamela would drag her out of either one.
+
+``I will help you.''
+
+Pamela turned and stared at him, then shook her head. She didn't
+understand the odd truce they seemed to have come to at all. ``Why,
+Alexandre? We serve different allegiances, and I know that you don't
+have a prophecy that tells you the proper way to defeat Voldemort, or
+you would have mentioned it by now.''
+
+He gave her one of those unfathomable smiles. ``Many prophecies that
+speak of how to defeat Riddle are flying around Britain right now. Call
+it---helping my research to help you.''
+
+\emph{If he can throw his voice behind mine and Coatlicue's, our
+arguments will carry greater weight.} And they might join Jing-Xi, too,
+if she had survived the fall of Hogwarts, though Pamela was sure
+Alexandre would have told her if Voldemort had drained her friend.
+
+But she wasn't sure that she could trust Alexandre to continue taking
+their side, which was the whole problem.
+
+They needed him, however, and it would help if the Dark Lords and Ladies
+didn't see this as just another effort by the Light to meddle and
+overstep their bounds even during the time of year when the Dark was
+most powerful in the north. In the end, Pamela nodded and drew a
+connection from Alexandre's window across time and space to Mexico,
+where they would wake Coatlicue. ``Come with me, then.''
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Jing-Xi knew there were probably people wondering if she had survived.
+She knew that Harry and others would need her help. There was a
+government to be rebuilt, wizards of the Light to reassure, and a
+nervous, shaky Pact to convince that this case warranted interference.
+
+But, first, she had other, immediate responsibilities. Light wizards and
+witches did not dash about like crop-tailed Crups yapping about what to
+do in a crisis. And Light Ladies had a certain dignity to maintain,
+always.
+
+She crouched next to a witch who had escaped Hogwarts just as one of the
+ceilings came down, pressing a hand against her leg. The wound stopped
+bleeding, a flow that would have cost the woman her life quickly. The
+moans quieted, and Jing-Xi stroked her hair and willed peace and sleep
+into her before stepping back and nodding to one of the wizards who
+accompanied them.
+
+``Pick her up.''
+
+He moved at once to obey her. Jing-Xi saw the fear in his eyes, and felt
+a moment's sadness. They needed a leader so badly, these survivors. They
+might have fought back and questioned her in any ordinary situation, but
+now they were simply grateful that there was someone more powerful to
+help them.
+
+But then again, argument and debate in this situation were not
+productive. Jing-Xi had found and guided about forty adults from the
+falling school, along with a few students left behind in the mad rush,
+and now they were on a wide plain to the north of Hogwarts, heading
+further north still, into bad weather and a safehouse that Harry had
+established in the Orkneys. Since none of the people with her had seen
+the safehouse, and because they did not want to leave each other and
+Jing-Xi did not want to leave them, they had to go on foot for now,
+instead of Apparating.
+
+But Jing-Xi had been through worse conditions than this. She turned her
+face calmly to the next wounded person and knelt down. Her magic surged
+and sang around her. Even in the middle of the Dark, the Light shone,
+and Jing-Xi was one of those whose duty was to keep it shining.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Connor was---numb, really.
+
+It hadn't hit him, while they were escaping the school, that the school
+itself was going to be gone when they emerged. But now it had, and with
+it came the visions of those children he couldn't save, the young
+Gryffindors and Ravenclaws crushed by the falling rocks.
+
+And old bells of inadequacy rang in the back of his head. \emph{If your
+magic was stronger, if you were really the Boy-Who-Lived, if you were a
+real hero, then you would have found a way to spare their lives.}
+
+Connor tried to shake that away, but the emotion, the guilt, possessed
+and haunted him. He would have liked to stand and move about the room,
+as Harry was doing, and comfort those who had come to Silver-Mirror with
+them and badly needed the comfort. He would have liked to be with
+Parvati, who had her arms around the hysterically crying Padma. He would
+have liked to indulge even in grief for Luna, who had died so suddenly
+and so senselessly.
+
+But he couldn't. He was numb, and he could only sit and stare. He hated
+to focus solely on himself, but, at the moment, it literally felt as
+though he couldn't do anything else.
+
+He closed his eyes, and slumped back in the chair he sat in. Some hero
+he made. Some Gryffindor he was. What had happened to the reserves of
+strength he'd always prided himself on? It wasn't as though his twin
+brother had died, or his girlfriend. He'd seen most of his friends
+escape. Peter had even appeared briefly, to squeeze Connor's shoulder
+and smile anxiously at him before hurrying off to do something else.
+
+And yet his hands were blocks of ice on the ends of his arms, and he
+shook now and then as if the ice were moving up his limbs to devour him.
+
+He wondered if Lily and James had been like this, the first time they'd
+encountered true evil, and then snorted bitterly. \emph{Not likely. Lily
+was so confident I don't think she ever let reality dent her sacrificial
+mindset. And James got along without attending to the darkness in
+himself at all. No, they've never felt like this. And Harry has the
+strength to keep going. This little weakness is mine, all mine.}
+
+And then arms were around him, warm arms that defeated the ice, and
+before he could start or jump up and throw the arms off, a familiar
+voice, hoarse and cracking with strain, murmured in his ear, ``Connor.
+You came through. It's all right. I heard about what you did in the
+school. You're a fucking hero, Connor.''
+
+If anyone but Harry had said that, Connor might have been able to stay
+numb. But, Merlin damn it, he was thawing.
+
+And tears were spilling down his face, and even though he wanted to be
+strong and above it all, he found himself turning and grabbing onto
+Harry with a death grip, returning warm embrace for warm embrace,
+desperately needing his brother to touch him like that.
+
+``I let them die,'' he whispered, through sobs. ``I only s-saved two.
+They---''
+
+``That was two more than you might have saved, if you'd just stood there
+and let the fall of the roof stun you,'' Harry whispered into his ear,
+and rubbed his back roughly. His voice really did sound horrible, but he
+went on speaking despite that. ``You did so well, Connor. I'm so proud
+of you. And grieving is hardly something to despise. The ones who would
+shed no tears over this are the people we're meant to fight. Go ahead
+and weep, Connor.''
+
+It felt so \emph{girly} to do this, but Harry's hand was rubbing,
+rubbing, forcing the tears up and out of him, melting the ice that had
+them locked inside it. And Connor cried and cried until his nose was
+running and his cheeks were wet and the skin of his cheeks hurt from the
+tears running over them.
+
+Then his head felt warm and full, and sometime between one moment and
+the next, Parvati was there, to comfort him and be comforted in turn.
+Connor closed his eyes and clung to her desperately.
+
+They were still alive. And thanks to him, a few more people were alive
+than would otherwise be. He had to think about that.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Her mother had been wrong.
+
+That was all Ginny could think about, as she bustled through
+Silver-Mirror, heating warm water for wounds and for tea, holding the
+hands of those children who needed it, casting strengthening spells on
+the wards, and laying down blankets to create temporary beds.
+
+Molly had wanted to hide her daughter away from the world. She had been
+sure that Ginny would crumple under the pressure of so many
+responsibilities, or fear death now that it had taken Percy. And Ginny
+was the littlest one, the youngest, the baby. Molly might have clung to
+even a youngest son like that (though privately Ginny doubted it; her
+parents had always treated her differently because she was a girl, even
+as they denied that they did).
+
+But Ginny had known that she would be stifled like that, and had pushed
+to break free, first by going to Woodhouse, and then staying in Hogwarts
+to help with the dueling class.
+
+And she had been right to do it.
+
+Even now, in the midst of grief, of reeling shock that the heart of the
+wizarding world had fallen, with so much death hanging around her and so
+many people she would never see again, Ginny had never felt so fiercely
+alive.
+
+\emph{This} was where she belonged, in the heart of a dangerous
+situation, dashing from one small crisis to the next, lending help
+because she was and could be a source of strength. Not imprisoned behind
+walls, but out in the middle of the battle where the refugees had fled.
+
+Saving people.
+
+Ginny gave a smile as she wiped away a Slytherin first-year's tears that
+was part tenderness and part pure personal satisfaction. She preferred
+to think of the end of the war right now, and a Ministry that could be
+rebuilt, and the expressions on her parents' faces when she applied to
+be an Auror, as she would.
+
+She belonged in the heart of danger. Someday, she hoped, her mother and
+father would come to terms with that.
+
+In the meantime, the expressions on their faces were certain to be
+priceless.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Zacharias had never felt so strong in his life.
+
+The run through the tunnel after the spirit of his ancestor had been
+terrifying. The fear---the certainty---that they were losing Hufflepuffs
+behind them as they ran, that children were stumbling and falling, or
+that someone had taken a wrong turn in the darkness, sat on his shoulder
+like a living thing. And then he had stumbled out of the hole and not
+seen Hermione for a long moment, and terror had eaten him alive.
+
+But then he had seen her, and the terror had relented, and Zacharias had
+remembered what he was: the most intelligent wizard in Hogwarts, the one
+who had never yet let fear overtake his reason.
+
+And, now, one potential linchpin in a new Light resistance.
+
+He was the son of the witch who led the British half of the Light
+alliance, and who was currently involved in some rather intense
+negotiations with neutral pureblood families to come to Harry's side. He
+was a close confidant of Harry's, and as good as married to the most
+intelligent witch in the country. He already wielded adult legal
+influence as his family's heir, and he had financial resources at his
+command, and even the romance of being Hufflepuff's heir, should he
+choose to use it.
+
+The world had changed.
+
+Zacharias would be one of those who insured that the change did not
+destroy all of them. He had already decided that. The world needed
+someone who would dig in stubbornly and never let go.
+
+And badgers were very good at doing that.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Owen touched the burn on his brother's cheek cautiously. It had healed
+when he frantically applied medical magic to it, though it would leave
+an ugly scar. Owen was more concerned about the swelling on his head,
+which could indicate a concussion, and the fact that all attempts to
+wake Michael so far had been useless. Regulus Black had taken a cursory
+look at him and announced that there was nothing to be done. Michael
+might never wake up, but he was breathing deeply, steadily, and many
+other people weren't. Without Madam Pomfrey---whom they didn't know for
+sure had survived---they had no one who could say that Michael's sleep
+was dangerous.
+
+So Owen was left to care for his twin in an out-of-the-way corner where
+no one would notice.
+
+It wasn't as though his Lord needed him right now. Harry moved from
+station to station with the grace of a dancer, always where he was most
+needed at the moment. Now he was collecting information from a Ravenclaw
+student on her parents' names and direction, so that he could send an
+owl to them assuring them she was still alive. Now he applied his magic
+to a large wound in Justin Finch-Fletchley's side, making sure it slid
+shut and stopped threatening his life. Now he consulted with Snape, who
+had finally returned from the rubble with the news that no one lived
+beneath it, on the best way to phrase an announcement to the \emph{Daily
+Prophet} in the morning. Harry didn't need taking care of right now.
+
+But no one cared for Michael but him.
+
+Owen turned his head back to his brother and rested his hand on the burn
+once more. Michael murmured and rolled towards him.
+
+``If you wake up,'' Owen whispered, ``it'll be different. I didn't know
+you were so full of hatred as to attack Voldemort like that. I know I
+haven't spent enough time with you, now. We haven't really talked about
+Mum and our sister, and we should. And maybe I can convince Harry to
+give you another chance. But you need to wake up, Michael.'' He watched
+his twin's shut eyes and felt a curl of despair in the center of his
+chest. ``Please wake up.''
+
+Letters of fire flashed in front of his eyes. \emph{He will.}
+
+Harry's hand was on his shoulder then, and the scar on his arm tingled
+with warmth and sweetness. Owen looked up, seeking support despite the
+fact that he was really the one who should be offering it. ``Really? Do
+you think so?''
+
+\emph{I'll go into his mind and drag him out myself if he doesn't.}
+Harry smiled at him and squeezed his shoulder. \emph{We need him here.}
+
+He turned away then, and Owen went back to his brother, a little
+soothed, a little calmed. Things were not perfect, but they were better
+than they had been, and on this dark night, that was all he could truly
+ask for.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco noticed when Harry slipped out of the room, of course. It seemed
+that no one else did. Snape was trying to cope with the demands of
+children still awake, as well as work out where other students might
+have fled and how they could contact them and the best way to tell some
+families that their children were dead. And for others, what mattered
+most was the effect Harry spread with his presence, rather than his
+presence itself: the sense that, really, everything would be all right
+after all, that they would come through this night and see the dawn.
+
+But Draco's focus was Harry. He'd played the adult and the hero and the
+Slytherin leader. Now he wanted to be the boyfriend, the joined partner,
+and the source of strength, and so he followed Harry.
+
+Harry walked out of Silver-Mirror altogether, into the darkness and the
+cold. Draco cast a Warming Charm on himself and kept walking, hoping
+Harry wouldn't Apparate. Harry didn't cast a glance behind him, as if he
+didn't care who followed him.
+
+He halted at last on a broad, flat field of dead grass, and just stared
+up at the stars for a moment. Draco paused, confused.
+
+Then Harry \emph{screamed.}
+
+Black lightning leaped from earth to heaven, a bolt that didn't go out,
+but formed itself around Harry and sheathed him in crackling, constantly
+twisting obsidian walls. Draco shivered. He could feel the pull of the
+lightning from here. Warmth flooded away from his skin, and for a moment
+it seemed as if his magic would follow it.
+
+Harry's wail went on, a more extensive sound that Draco would have
+thought he could make with his ruined voice. It no longer sounded human.
+It was the scream of a great sea creature in terrible pain. It was the
+voice of someone, or something, who wanted very badly to die.
+
+\emph{Or maybe kill his enemies,} Draco thought, watching as the
+lightning split and Harry's arms extended towards the sky. Power rose
+around him, a curtain so dead black that it punished the night for
+existing. Snow at his feet froze into glittering chunks of glass.
+Serpents wreathed Harry, every inch of him, traveling back and forth
+across his body like the hive of the Many who lived in the Forbidden
+Forest. Or had lived. Draco wondered if Voldemort had killed them, too.
+
+Harry screamed, and screamed.
+
+And from the stars, something answered him.
+
+An enormous white serpent with black, feathery wings curled down from
+overhead. Draco cowered. He knew this was the wild Dark, even if it
+didn't look like a manticore. Nothing else had that sense of grace and
+power about it. Nothing else was so inhuman. And nothing else could have
+come from starlight and yet looked like a child of dead worlds.
+
+The white serpent gazed at Harry with cold blue eyes. And then it turned
+away and wreathed its body to the side and up in a loop that made the
+stars jangle like rung bells and the sky seam and crack like lava.
+
+Harry answered it. His magic rose from the ground and then came down
+again like the stamp of a great boot. The earth shook. Draco stumbled to
+his knees in the snow, but never, never, took his eyes off the man he'd
+fallen in love with.
+
+He knelt there as a terrible concussive dance he did not understand
+played out in front of him, the wild Dark looping and slithering and
+writhing runes across the sky, and Harry answering with jar after jar of
+magic, crash after crash of furious thunder. Draco sometimes had to
+close his eyes, and sometimes turn his head away. Harry was never less
+than beautiful in such a state, but grief and guilt and loathing had
+marred the beauty. Draco might observe this, but he could not share it.
+
+He did look in time to see the end, as the white serpent came down like
+another bolt of lightning and briefly caged Harry in ice-blue fangs.
+Draco held his breath. Would it harm him, even now? His hand already
+clutched his wand before he made a conscious decision to do so.
+
+But the wild Dark simply held Harry there. And Harry stood there looking
+as if he didn't care whether he lived or died.
+
+The serpent uttered a freezing hiss that made Draco's hands curl and
+cramp. ``Should you ever Declare for me,'' it whispered, "I would
+welcome such a servant. Remember that, \emph{vates}. Should you need a
+sanctuary, a home, I offer it. For you are not only free, you are also
+wild."
+
+Letters of fire appeared in the air in answer. Draco had to turn his
+head away again, bow it and stare at the ground.
+
+\emph{I'm tired, and I want the end.}
+
+``We all grow weary of our assigned tasks, free one,'' the wild Dark
+said. ``Even I sometimes wish to shine at Midsummer instead of
+Midwinter. But this weariness will pass. Your strength is not yet played
+out.'' It paused. Then it said, ``Someday, it may be. When it is, I hope
+that you will come and consent to fly on my winds. I have lost a
+daughter tonight. There were wonders I never showed her. I wish to
+someday show them to you.''
+
+The writing rippled and changed, hanging in the air like the shades of
+the Aurora Borealis. Draco read it from the corner of his eye.
+
+\emph{There won't be enough left of me to do that, if I decide to end
+it.}
+
+The wild Dark chuckled, a sound that twisted into a hiss at the end.
+"You would be surprised by what measures magic takes to survive, free
+one. And, in the end, you \emph{are} magic. Remember that. You are more
+than all the promises you make. You could turn your back on them, if you
+were a different kind of person, and abandon them. You have done enough
+in this fight."
+
+\emph{Sometimes I want to}, the letters said.
+
+``And then the night ends,'' said the white serpent, and broke apart
+into flakes of snow that settled on Harry's head. Harry stared at them,
+then looked up and towards the east. Following his gaze, Draco saw the
+first traces of false dawn.
+
+He took a deep breath and stood.
+
+Harry whipped around to face him. For a moment, his face was inhuman,
+stretched and scratched with mysteries that Draco didn't know, like the
+shadows of bare tree branches.
+
+And then he gave a little nod, whether in reply to Draco or the wild
+Dark he didn't know, and walked past him towards Silver-Mirror.
+
+His hand, freezing in such a way as to show he hadn't cast a Warming
+Charm, brushed Draco's in passing.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 70*: Messengers of the
+Lightning}\label{chapter-70-messengers-of-the-lightning}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Fifty-Six: Messengers of the Lightning}
+
+Hawthorn sat holding a mouthful of tea between her teeth and watched the
+headline as if the paper might burst.
+
+But it didn't. It just went right on saying what it said, in large
+letters, sprayed across the front page as if someone had painted rather
+than printed them.
+
+{\emph{\textbf{HOGWARTS FALLS}}}
+
+There was no author's name, though Hawthorn would have bet her newfound
+freedom that it was Rita Skeeter. They'd simply left off the name, she
+thought, as she dashed through the article, and shook her head. There
+was one photograph, but it was really all they needed, with Hogwarts
+gleaming with snow in the light of the moon and the stars.
+
+She stood. The article contained little detail beyond the fact that the
+school had come down because of an attack by Voldemort, and that the
+``intrepid reporters'' sent to the site had uncovered traces of Dark
+magic. No ideas about whether Harry had survived, about how many
+children had escaped in the fall, or about what had happened to
+Voldemort when he finished toppling the school---why he wasn't currently
+ruling Britain, for example.
+
+It did make her wonder, for one lonely moment, if Pansy had foreseen the
+school falling, if her beloved daughter had known that many of the
+students who lived around her on a daily basis were destined to die in a
+few years.
+
+For now, Hawthorn would work on the assumption that Harry was alive, and
+to be found in one of the strongholds he'd established. It might take
+her some time to work through all the Floo connections and find them
+all, but she would locate him. Or she could try the phoenix song
+communication spell, of course, but she almost feared to. If the song
+warbled again and again and called on nothing, if Harry lay iin some
+cavern of cold and darkness under that fallen rock---
+
+And then her wrist warbled.
+
+Hawthorn closed her eyes, and shook her head. She'd swallowed the tea,
+but crumpled the \emph{Prophet} in a sudden, too-firm grip. Breathing
+shallowly, she managed to force her eyes open, and ask in silence,
+``Yes? Who is it that's speaking to me?''
+
+``Hawthorn,'' said Harry's voice.
+
+And, though she'd tried to assume he was alive, it hadn't been such a
+default assumption, after all. Hawthorn let loose a quiet \emph{whoosh}
+of breath and was thankful that she was sitting down, at least.
+``Harry,'' she said, voice far too alien to her ears. ``You're alive.''
+
+``I am,'' said Harry. "And a fair number of us managed to escape the
+school's fall. We're at Silver-Mirror. I'm going to send an announcement
+to the \emph{Prophet} in a short time, but we had matters to take care
+of first."
+
+``You need apologize for nothing,'' Hawthorn whispered. ``You have kept
+hope alive, Harry, and that's more than enough to make up for any
+delay.''
+
+Harry kept silent for a moment, as if he didn't know how to deal with
+that. Then his voice smoothed and streamlined. ``Hawthorn. Can you come
+to Silver-Mirror? We are badly in need of competent adults, Dark or no,
+to help us get the children back to their families, and begin
+establishing the first steps of the government.''
+
+``Yes,'' said Hawthorn, standing. Her heart had started beating again,
+and, with it, the notion of ever fearing to contact Harry seemed silly
+and pointless, the kind of thing a child would hide from. ``Of course I
+can, Harry. And I'm bringing a potion with me that you may
+find---interesting.''
+
+She could almost feel his eyebrows rise. He knew that her specialty was
+blood curses, not potions. But he said, ``Whatever may help, Hawthorn.
+We're badly in need of hope,'' and then ended the communication spell.
+
+Hawthorn turned and sped lightly up the stairs to her potions lab. She
+gathered up the notes on the lycanthropy treatment, the vials of potion
+she had---complete but for the final step, which required part of the
+magic from the person being cured---and as much as she could of the
+ingredients to be used for making more vials, shrinking them where that
+was practical and packing them carefully where it wasn't.
+
+She hadn't talked to Harry about the potion yet partially because she
+was still trying to create a variant that wouldn't take such a toll in
+magical strength and strength of will from the patient, and partially
+because she'd wanted to carry the potion to him as a triumph in a dark
+moment, when he was most in need of hope.
+
+\emph{I think that moment's come, don't you?}
+
+She swept the final notes into a book, shut the book, and tossed it into
+her trunk. Then she whirled down the steps to pack clothing. She knew it
+might be a long time before she could return to the Garden, a matter of
+months or more.
+
+She didn't care. This was another chance to matter to Harry's cause, to
+do vastly important work. This was \emph{wonderful.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``It can wait a few hours.''
+
+\emph{You don't really believe that.} Harry stared into Snape's eyes,
+and waited. This was the fifth argument they'd had in the last fifteen
+minutes. Harry suspected that they'd managed to have no arguments before
+those fifteen minutes only because Snape was struggling too hard under
+the pressure of thinking of himself as Headmaster to worry about Harry.
+
+But now he suddenly seemed to realize that Harry hadn't slept yet, and
+he was trying to send him off to bed, even though Harry had just
+contacted Skeeter and she'd be arriving soon to carry the all-important
+news that many people had escaped Hogwarts to the \emph{Prophet}.
+
+Snape snarled at him now. ``I think I can hold off an interfering woman
+for the time it will take you to nap,'' he said, and paced back and
+forth on the other side of a table crowded with maps, half-composed
+letters, and many, many other documents that made this room, Harry
+supposed, their default war room. Once, it had been a study. Snape
+whirled around and stared at him. ``In the past, when you have refused
+to sleep, you have been nearly useless to us in a short time,'' he said,
+and Harry actually smirked at Snape's highly unsuccessful attempt to
+soften his voice. ``We can do this without you, Harry, in the interests
+of keeping our savior safe and healthy.''
+
+\emph{You can't,} said Harry. \emph{If I'm not there when Skeeter
+arrives, she might start spreading rumors that I'm injured, or
+disfigured, or dead. She's on my side as much as she's on anyone's, yes,
+but she also wants news to report. And the sooner we can get this report
+to the Prophet, the sooner we can start replacing panic with strength,
+rumors with real information. I'll sleep later.} He took another look at
+the list of names on the table. They only had a few unidentified ones
+left, those of children either too wounded or too hysterical last night
+to give coherent information about how to contact their parents. They
+should wake up soon---the effects of Calming Draughts and sleeping
+charms only lasting so long---and then they would, Harry hoped, be fit
+to talk.
+
+``Is that a promise?''
+
+Harry rolled his eyes. \emph{Yes. It is.} Snape opened his mouth as if
+to begin badgering him again. Harry narrowed his eyes slightly and did
+some badgering of his own. \emph{Why is it that you look ready to leap
+out of your skin every time Regulus walks into the same room?}
+
+His father now looked ready to kill. Harry leaned an elbow on the table
+and studied Snape with a mild amusement he was relieved he could feel.
+Last night, when he was still full of the rage caused by the damage
+Voldemort had inflicted on so many innocents, he would have struck at
+the slightest sign of a threat. But the concussive dance with the wild
+Dark had helped him in more ways than he knew at the time. \emph{Well?}
+
+``That is none of your business,'' Snape finally said, in a strangled
+tone. ``I will tell you when I am ready to do so.''
+
+Harry shrugged. \emph{And my sleeping habits are none of yours}. He
+ignored Snape's attempt to argue otherwise, putting the finishing
+touches on the letter that he intended to send Miriam Smith and the
+pureblood families she was addressing. They needed a government-in-exile
+\emph{soon}. It was one thing for the British wizarding world to absorb
+the loss of the Ministry while Hogwarts was still standing; there was
+another building to direct hope and terror towards. But now that had
+fallen, too, and Harry was afraid that a substantial proportion of the
+wizarding population might simply \emph{give up.} They were, at the very
+least, incapable of actually stepping up and defending themselves, as
+Candida Coltsfoot had proven all too well in the way she represented the
+Hogsmeade wizards and witches.
+
+Regulus intruded before Snape could say anything coherent, murmuring,
+``Harry, our guest is at the wards.''
+
+And \emph{there} it was; Harry knew he hadn't imagined it. Snape's
+shoulders stiffened, and he looked as if he were keeping his back turned
+to Regulus with sheer force of will. Harry watched in slight amusement
+for a moment, then shrugged. Perhaps it really wasn't any of his
+business.
+
+That didn't mean he wouldn't bring it up if Snape tried interrogating
+him again, though.
+
+He went to see Rita, while he kept the slight, bright amusement drifting
+in his mind. It was a slender reed to hang onto over the sea of emotions
+that he would be feeling otherwise, but he needed to use whatever he
+could. He was keeping just ahead of the tide that would incapacitate
+him. As long as he could do that, then he thought he would do well.
+
+\emph{Voldemort tried to destroy Hogwarts, and our world, and the
+resistance, and me. I can only let him have succeeded in the first of
+those goals.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Rita had to admit, as she looked around the entrance hall of
+Silver-Mirror, that \emph{this} was the kind of headquarters Harry
+should have had all along. The enormous pool of golden fire overhead,
+with drops of light sliding down chains that stretched to the walls to
+light lamps and then crawling back up the chains again to the pool,
+would have made a dramatic background for stories of the Boy-Who-Lived
+and his Alliance of Sun and Shadows. Her photographer would have loved
+to take pictures here and make subtle and important points with them on
+the front page of the \emph{Prophet}. And since Harry had ended up
+claiming the Black name as his own, he could have done it at any time.
+Rita wondered why he hadn't.
+
+``Hello, Rita.''
+
+She turned, and saw Harry coming out of a door in the right wall. And
+she raised one perfectly shaped eyebrow, because she had expected a boy
+frazzled by the loss of his home, or, at best, a leader who had seen
+many of his friends and followers die.
+
+Instead, Harry watched her with calm green eyes, and lifted one eyebrow
+right back to her. He wore robes smudged and stained from the travails
+of a long flight, with spots of melted snow and blood, but he looked as
+if he had passed through those trials and come out the stronger for
+them. Rita was grudgingly impressed, and also felt a stirring of
+interest. \emph{This} was what her readers would want to see, this young
+man, the hero, the Boy-Who-Lived.
+
+If Harry was merely putting on a façade, it was still an impressive one,
+because Rita couldn't tell that it was a façade. She nodded to him, and
+took one of the chairs placed together in the middle of the hall.
+``Harry,'' she said. ``How many people would you say escaped the fall of
+the school?''
+
+``We have nearly sixty people here now,'' said Harry, as if he'd
+expected the question, and sat down in the other chair. ``Those numbers
+might seem small, but remember that many children went home for the
+winter holidays. And there are probably other, smaller groups which
+escaped in other directions. The number of individuals who might be at
+home now, or in St. Mungo's being treated, is countless, of course. I
+hope that they will make their presence known as soon as possible, so
+that we can sort the living from the dead and have hope. Voldemort did
+not succeed in what he tried to do.''
+
+``What would you say was his most important goal?'' Rita scribbled
+furiously, not caring if Harry did look at her with a certain amusement.
+This was one of the most important tools in the battle to wipe off the
+defeated expressions she'd seen that morning in the office, before the
+amulet squeezed and she could tell her co-workers that Harry was still
+alive.
+
+``To inflict a psychic wound on us that we couldn't recover from.''
+Harry folded his hands serenely in his lap. Rita almost regretted that.
+A tug at his sleeve or collar would have said he was human, and would
+have been the kind of telling detail she cherished, though she probably
+wouldn't have reported it to her readers. ``To kill me if he could. To
+take children as hostages, or drain their magic.''
+
+``And did anyone caught in the fall survive it?'' Rita removed the charm
+on her quill that slightly altered the words it copied down. Harry's
+words were too good not to be taken straight as they were.
+
+``No,'' said Harry. ``Headmaster Snape went back to the ruins to check,
+but sensed no trace of life.''
+
+Rita checked at the \emph{Headmaster Snape}, but Harry went on looking
+as if nothing were wrong, so she continued writing. ``And what are your
+plans from this point forward?''
+
+``In the short term, to return the surviving children to their parents,
+and inform those whom we know for certain have lost their sons and
+daughters.'' Harry's smile was sad. "To search for the missing. To mourn
+for the dead. For example, we know that Headmistress Minerva McGonagall
+perished before the school began to fall.
+
+``In the long term?'' He lifted his head, and Rita caught a gleam of
+magic around him, and a smell like mountain snow in alpine meadows on
+cold winter mornings. ``To establish a wizarding government that will
+address the concerns and problems of the new world we have now. To work
+with people who want to help, whether or not they had children at
+Hogwarts or will swear the oaths of the Alliance of Sun and Shadow. To
+ask for international help in evacuations, in finding and securing food,
+and accepting and resettling refugees. I know several wizards in the
+French Ministry who have offered to show me how their offices coped with
+such demands in the war against Grindelwald, when many French wizards
+and witches had to leave their homes. Their help is, of course,
+welcome.''
+
+Rita paused. She wasn't entirely sure that what she said next would go
+into the article, but it was a question that she wanted to ask for her
+own peace of mind. ``Have you ever thought of giving up, Harry?''
+
+She got a baring of teeth, and a gleam from green eyes, and a lift of a
+proud head that would have done a unicorn credit. ``Never.''
+
+Rita nodded. Then she returned to asking how he intended to pursue the
+war against Voldemort.
+
+Amazingly, it seemed that Harry had spoken the truth: he had come
+through one of the worst things that could happen and retained his
+strength. Voldemort's strike to inflict that psychic wound had cost the
+Dark Lord more than he could have possibly gained.
+
+Rita was glad that she lived in a world where such things happened, and
+in a time when she could report on them.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry leaned an elbow on the windowsill and watched as the first round
+of owls flew away. They carried the most urgent news: the letters asking
+for firmer alliances or for practical advice from the French and Spanish
+Ministries, and telling parents their children were still alive. Of
+course parents deserved to know if their children were definitely dead,
+too, or missing, but the news could wait the few hours it would take the
+owls to come back with their messages.
+
+He meant what he'd told Skeeter. They would come through this, pile the
+wreckage back up and climb out of the hole, because they had to.
+Voldemort had made a mistake as he did at everything, because he had
+failed to actually \emph{kill} Harry.
+
+``Harry.''
+
+He turned around curiously. Owen stood behind him, his face weary, but
+stretched in a wide smile.
+
+``Michael's awake,'' he said simply. ``And he's asking for you.''
+
+Arching his eyebrows, Harry followed Owen to his brother's bedside.
+Michael, like so many, lay on a makeshift pallet of blankets in one of
+Silver-Mirror's side-rooms. And now his eyes were open, and more
+peaceful than Harry had seen them in a long time, perhaps since Michael
+first confessed to having a crush on Draco.
+
+He knelt down beside the other boy, and waited for him to speak. Michael
+seemed content to regard him a long time in silence before he did so.
+
+``I realize now how stupid I was to hate you,'' he whispered.
+
+Harry blinked. He hadn't expected that, either.
+
+``You can't cause harm to my family the way Voldemort can,'' Michael
+continued. ``And then I tried to strike back at him for my mother's
+death, and my sister's, and he slapped me aside like a bug.'' He touched
+the burn on his cheek self-consciously. Harry had been trying not to
+stare at it. It looked as though a four-fingered hand had sunk into
+Michael's skin, and because they had no trained mediwizards among them,
+he would probably wear the brand for life. Harry made a mental note to
+contact St. Mungo's as soon as possible. Some of the refugees would need
+to be treated for delayed shock and spell damage. ``And you're the only
+one we have who can actually fight him. So I'm going to do my best not
+to hate you any more, and to help you instead of hinder you. I wanted
+you to know that.''
+
+Harry nodded. He'd used glamour charms to disguise the screech in his
+voice when he spoke with Skeeter, and magic to boost his whisper to the
+point where it could actually be understood, but he still didn't want to
+speak aloud when he didn't have to. He did sign in the air, \emph{I
+understand. Thank you.}
+
+Michael seemed content with the words. He closed his eyes and lay back
+on the blankets, and Owen helped him, hands fussing tenderly around his
+brother. Harry smiled. He was sure he would have done the same thing if
+Connor had been injured in the escape from the castle.
+
+He stood, and went to write the letters to St. Mungo's, and the parents
+whose children were dead. He suspected the one to Luna's father would
+hurt the most. But he couldn't afford to give up and think about that
+hurt. He would keep his head above water, and continue swimming.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Jing-Xi clasped her hands around the cup of mulled wine and drank deeply
+from it. It made quite a change to be sitting inside the warm, dry
+safehouse, protected by house elf magic, and with the knowledge that the
+wizards and witches she'd been escorting now had warm beds and warm
+drinks of their own, from stumbling across rocky islands in the freezing
+wind, trying to remember the right way to locate the wards that would
+tell her where the house was.
+
+She'd expected one of her friends to call upon her sooner or later, and
+so wasn't surprised when the air in front of her turned yellow and
+opened. She \emph{was} surprised to see Alexandre staring at her from
+the window, instead of Pamela or Coatlicue. They were the two she was
+closest to in actual friendship, if one didn't count the odd bond with
+Kanerva that Jing-Xi knew was really only a friendship to her.
+
+``Alexandre?'' she asked. ``What is it?''
+
+``Greetings, Jing-Xi,'' said the Dark Lord, his voice overly formal. ``I
+am glad that you have escaped the ruin of Hogwarts, though of course sad
+to hear that a powerful witch who shares my allegiance is gone from the
+world.''
+
+Jing-Xi set the wine down with a bump. ``What happened?'' she demanded,
+and rose to her feet. Her magic turned the chair she sat on to ivory.
+The only sign that Alexandre might be impressed was his eyebrow creeping
+up. Of course, Harry was the only Lord-level wizard Jing-Xi had ever met
+who showed open signs of awe at her power.
+
+``The Pact has heard the news,'' he said, ``including the news of
+Kanerva's draining and your survival. So they held
+a---discussion---about what to do.''
+
+Jing-Xi bowed her head slightly, staring at Alexandre from beneath her
+eyelids. Her hair constantly stirred around her, movements that had
+become stronger since their mistress perished. Kanerva's winds would
+never leave her, Jing-Xi knew, and she suspected that any stragglers
+left in the world had migrated to join the enchantment that surrounded
+her. ``If they were to speak together, I should have been notified. And
+so should Harry, if they actually want him to obey the laws that govern
+the Pact.''
+
+``They felt they already knew what you would say,'' Alexandre commented,
+face utterly blank.
+
+And just like that, Jing-Xi knew the truth. She said quietly, ``They
+decided against me. Against Harry.''
+
+"Oh, no, do not call it deciding \emph{against} you," Alexandre
+murmured. ``Call it a vote for the continuance of tradition. Call it a
+weighing of one part of the world against the rest. Call it a chance for
+young Harry to prove himself. Even Monika argued tenderly, and movingly,
+that you should have the opportunity to devote yourself to China without
+worrying about the British Isles. Oh, how brilliantly she argued. One
+would think that you had never had a better friend in the world, and
+that Harry cared only about using you to benefit his own selfish
+interests.''
+
+``They want me to leave Britain,'' Jing-Xi said.
+
+``Yes,'' said Alexandre, with a slow, owl's blink.
+
+``And if I do not?''
+
+``They will send Brewer and Elena to retrieve you.'' Alexandre touched a
+curl of prophecy that suddenly showed itself above his right shoulder.
+``Clearly, you cannot be allowed to remain. You are disturbing the
+balance of Lord-level power by staying where you are, and this war is
+not yours to fight. They are fearful that you might be tempted to go on
+the offensive, and break the Pact's dictates, after Voldemort's smashing
+of Hogwarts. They think that you need to be recalled home. If you think
+about it,'' he added, in that inflectionless voice, ``they are really
+and truly protecting you from yourself.''
+
+Jing-Xi closed her eyes in frustration. They were right not to send
+Brewer alone. Jing-Xi could handle the Light Lord of South Africa. He
+never made up his mind on anything unless pushed. She could have talked
+him out of what the Pact wanted, especially by showing him images of the
+refugees and hinting that their wretched condition was his fault in some
+way. His guilt complex was very strong.
+
+But Elena\ldots{}the Dark Lady of Peru had no pity in her. And Jing-Xi
+did not dare allow her to set foot on Britain's shores, whether she came
+with the Pact's permission or not. Where Elena went, people disappeared.
+No one had yet managed to figure out what she did with them, not even
+Coatlicue, who geographically was closest to her. The people of Britain
+had already suffered enough. They did not deserve to attract any of
+Elena's dead-eyed attention.
+
+Which, doubtless, was the reason the Pact had detailed both her and
+Brewer to fetch Jing-Xi back. They knew the threat of Elena would make
+her listen.
+
+``I hate them, sometimes,'' she whispered, and she did not even care if
+Alexandre carried the words back to them.
+
+``Now, come, Jing-Xi,'' Alexandre said. ``How can one make a difference
+in discussions that one is not invited to? Come back and speak in your
+own voice. In time, it might make a difference.''
+
+She raised her head and stared at him. Then she shook her head. ``You
+are the hardest of any in the Pact to understand,'' she murmured.
+
+Alexandre smirked as if she had given him a great compliment. ``Compared
+to prophecies and their life-interaction, I am very simple,'' he said.
+``The Pact did say that they would wait a few days before sending Brewer
+and Elena, to give you time to `come to your senses.' So you might as
+well use the time to tell Harry that you're departing, and why.''
+
+``And that he'll have to struggle against Voldemort on his own,''
+Jing-Xi murmured, her mood growing bleak again.
+
+``The Dark Lord should watch himself,'' said Alexandre. "The air around
+Britain is \emph{alive} with prophecies, all intertwined. The future
+does not favor him. And the Dark has punished him so that he cannot
+fight Harry until the spring equinox."
+
+Jing-Xi had to smile at that. A bleak wind never blew without some
+bright cloud hanging on it. ``I will tell him.''
+
+She stood silent when Alexandre had vanished, considering. She could not
+defy the Pact, not when such defiance earned innocent people punishment,
+or could start a war among the Lords and Ladies.
+
+But perhaps she could work at a distance to do the right thing. She
+would not give up and go tamely away. The Light did not yield so easily.
+
+SSSSSSSSS
+
+Indigena stooped over her Lord and swiped at his forehead with a wet
+rag. When they returned home, her Lord had told her his newest plan with
+a minimum of elaborations. It would fall on the spring equinox, the
+first day that he could strike back against Harry and use his
+\emph{absorbere} gift again. In the meantime, Indigena was to tend his
+body, and make sure that no enemies came near the burrow.
+
+And she would tend her garden and not have to participate in torture of
+any kind, though perhaps some killing.
+
+He had not even questioned her about the deaths of Oaken and Sylvan.
+
+Indigena sat in her garden when she had finished cleaning her Lord and
+setting up new wards that wouldn't permit anyone but her to enter. She
+lifted her head to a piquant breeze warmed by the charms around the
+garden and tinted with the sharp scent of snow, and sniffed it.
+
+It felt as though a year had turned back, and she stayed with her Lord
+because she was the only Death Eater left, and because he was running a
+long, subtle plan that he would need someone to guard him throughout.
+
+She had never felt so content since she took the Mark.
+
+She did stiffen when the wards cast a cascade of scents into her
+nostrils, and she saw Evan standing on the edge of her garden and
+staring at her. But he said nothing. He didn't even smile. He simply
+regarded her with that same intense gaze for long moments, then reached
+under his robe.
+
+In silence, he held up the golden Hufflepuff Cup.
+
+And then he vanished away, and left Indigena with a faint shiver of both
+fear and relief to add to the half-warm, half-cold breeze.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry looked up from his letters when Regulus walked into the room. The
+man had the \emph{oddest} expression on his face. \emph{What is it?}
+Harry asked via green letters, wondering if it had something to do with
+Snape. If it did, he would refuse to help. Whatever lay between them was
+solely between them, and they really should deal with it on their own.
+
+``Harry, there are---'' Regulus cut off for a moment, then shook his
+head. ``There are Unspeakables at the wards,'' he said.
+
+Harry stood. \emph{Come to attack us?}
+
+``They say---'' Regulus cleared his throat. ``They say that they're from
+the Stone. And they're here to offer us an alliance. The Stone survived
+the collapse at the Ministry. It finds you---interesting. And now that
+it's drawn new servants to it and bound them, it wants to offer you its
+help, and the help of those artifacts that it did manage to preserve
+when the Department was attacked.''
+
+As if in a dream, Harry followed Regulus into the main hall of
+Silver-Mirror. There stood two gray-cloaked men, though both with their
+hoods thrown back so he could see their faces. And one of them held a
+gray stone with a dragon's head projecting from it, which Harry
+recognized from the time, long ago, when the Unspeakables had made an
+attack on Woodhouse.
+
+``Greetings,'' hissed the dragon's head. ``I have an alliance for you.''
+Then it paused. ``Was that too formal? Too immoral?''
+
+Harry shook his head. He didn't know what would happen next, and the
+fact was starting to worry him a little.
+
+But, as with the emotions and the new government, he just had to
+continue swimming, and do his best to keep his head above water.
+
+``Not immoral at all,'' he said. ``Please come in.''
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 71*: Christmas In a
+Rush}\label{chapter-71-christmas-in-a-rush}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Fifty-Seven: Christmas In a Rush}
+
+\textbf{\emph{{REACTIONS TO HOPE:}}}
+
+\textbf{\emph{Wizarding populace of Britain torn}}
+
+\emph{By: Rita Skeeter}
+
+In response to Harry Black's speech about hope that ran in this paper
+yesterday, wizards and witches all across the country have owled us to
+let us know how they feel about a new government. Below are printed
+excerpts of their letters.
+
+``I suppose it's the best we can do for now,'' says Mary Hostess, who so
+far has been unable to leave Britain due to her shop in Diagon Alley,
+Mary's Marvelous Mixes. ``But I do hope that the wizarding government,
+whatever it calls itself and whoever heads it, is established now. There
+are a thousand and one things that you never realize the Ministry did
+until it was gone.''
+
+``I don't think Harry Black ought to have a part in the new government
+at all, to be honest,'' said Georgianna Fallfair, who lives in Muggle
+London. "He couldn't prevent the fall of the Ministry, and he couldn't
+even prevent the fall of {Hogwarts}, where he lived and many of his
+friends went to school. It's time that he step aside and let someone
+without such a blemished record take over. It would increase people's
+trust in this new government."
+
+"The Light wizards and the Order of the Firebird are committed to
+working with the {vates}." Cupressus Apollonis, leader of the Irish half
+of the new alliance which has taken to calling itself the Hope for
+Light, sounded calm and confident in his letter. ``We are engaged in
+talks still with many families who feel left aside or pushed out of the
+sun, but we make constant progress. We need Harry Black, his magic and
+his good sense and his reputation. We absolutely cannot function without
+him.''
+
+Miriam Smith, the British leader of Hope for Light, echoed Apollonis's
+sentiments in her communication. "There may have been a time when we
+shied at the thought or him or decided that his crimes were too great to
+permit him inclusion in our fellowship, but that time is past. It {must}
+be. We have suffered too many losses striving against each other while
+He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named wins victories. If nothing else, the fall of
+Hogwarts and the Ministry should have taught us that our internal
+conflicts are petty compared to the threat that faces us."
+
+Breaking with a family tradition of public silence and neutrality that
+has lasted for more than six decades, Peridot Yaxley issued an
+announcement that the House of Yaxley considers themselves at Harry's
+service, with the exception of Indigena Yaxley, who decided to join
+You-Know-Who, and the twins Sylvan and Oaken, who also became Death
+Eaters and were killed in the fall of the school.
+
+Lucius Malfoy, though still laboring under a shadow from his service to
+You-Know-Who, sent a letter in which he declared his confidence in both
+Harry Black and his heir Draco Malfoy and that, ``If anyone can drive
+You-Know-Who from Britain's shores, it will be them.''
+
+However, others cited concerns originating in Acting Minister Erasmus
+Juniper's term in office, including the fact that Britain has been
+condemned for breaking the International Statute of Secrecy and its
+wizards could face sanctions when traveling to other countries---an
+especial concern now, when so many are considering flight to foreign
+wizarding communities.
+
+``I think Black has our world's best interests at heart,'' said Hugh
+Johnson, a father of three from Wales, "but he simply doesn't have any
+idea how to {serve} them. The devastating losses in the past few weeks
+show that."
+
+``Too young,'' agreed a witch who signed her letter only as Faustine.
+``We need to start thinking more about international guidance, and the
+way that Britain's actions reflect our reputation on the world stage.
+Letting Black lead alone will just solidify that reputation as a bad one
+in most eyes.''
+
+It remains to be seen whether the latest effort to build a wizarding
+government in Britain is stable or not\ldots{}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Zacharias shook the Floo powder and soot off his robes, and then
+inclined his head to his mother as he stepped away from the fireplace.
+She had come to wait for him without, of course, making it seem as if
+she were waiting for him. She rose to her feet with her hands clasped in
+front of her waist.
+
+``You did not bring Hermione with you?'' she asked then, eyebrows
+arching. ``I would have thought she would want to spend Christmas with
+her fiancé's family.''
+
+Zacharias hid a chuckle. No need to voice the thought that it was a bad
+idea for Hermione and Miriam to meet in person just yet, as opposed to
+talking through owl post or the Floo connections. ``She's incredibly
+involved in the process of setting up the new government,'' he said,
+kissing his mother's hand. ``And, of course, waiting to see what
+progress reports I bring back from the Hope for Light.''
+
+Miriam nodded as if that was perfectly understandable, now that it was
+explained, and turned to lead him out of the receiving room. ``Most of
+them are at least listening,'' she said. ``The biggest problems come
+from those who want considerations and concessions now, and won't fight
+without at least the promise of them.''
+
+``Harry could promise them all he liked,'' Zacharias muttered. He knew
+the kinds of things his mother was talking about: powerful positions in
+a newly-opened Ministry, individual protection for important family
+assets that couldn't be moved out of Britain, guarantees that Dark
+wizards wouldn't have as much access to influence as the Light ones
+would. ``That doesn't mean that he needs to keep the promises.''
+
+Miriam gave him a long look, then said, ``I'm going to pretend you
+didn't say that, Zacharias. You know as well as I do that someone who
+makes his promises must keep them, or risk falling into the Dark's
+tactics.''
+
+Zacharias tilted his head up and smiled innocently at her. ``But,
+Mother, Harry is undeclared. It's not the same as a Light wizard binding
+himself with oaths in the name of the allegiance we all serve. He can
+wag his tongue and not endanger his honor or his reputation. In the eyes
+of most people here, he doesn't have much honor, surely?''
+
+Miriam hissed under her breath. ``Being among Dark wizards has made you
+forget our ways, my son.''
+
+``No.'' Zacharias folded his arms and gave his mother a smug glance.
+"What it's taught me is that people are often more forgiving than they
+appear---or more careless. They might \emph{say} they'll only agree to
+fight with you for prices that you can't afford to pay, but in practice
+they'll usually grumble and agree to go along for some lesser offer. And
+that's particularly true in the face of a threat like Voldemort, whom
+they don't want to face alone even if they act like they do."
+
+``I didn't teach you to haggle like a fishmonger, Zacharias.'' Miriam's
+eyes were slits.
+
+``No, you didn't,'' Zacharias agreed calmly. ``Hermione did. And when I
+saw, for the first time, how many people assumed she was a pureblood
+just because she knew the right words and wore the right clothes---well,
+I knew a truth you could have spent a hundred years trying to teach me
+in the Light way and I would never have learned, Mother.'' He considered
+changing that statement---after all, he was intelligent enough to learn
+anything he wanted to, truly---but Miriam didn't like him to harp
+constantly on his wits, so in the end he let it lie. "People \emph{can}
+be fooled by the surface. And if they're stupid enough to let themselves
+be fooled that way, then it's not the fault of the person offering.
+They'll go along with the polished surface and be happy. The person
+making the offer is happy, too, at having to pay less, and at having
+fooled them. And so everyone becomes joyful in more, well, flexible ways
+than the old, stiff-necked codes of honor allow."
+
+``I am not so sure that it was a good idea to let you spend more time
+with the girl after all,'' his mother murmured, ``if this is what comes
+out of it.''
+
+``You taught me politics,'' said Zacharias, lifting his head. "You
+taught me honor. You taught me the ancient magic that let me save
+Hermione's life in the battle at Midsummer. I will never forget that.
+But she taught me to live in the real world, Mother. Our training would
+only prepare us for that if \emph{everyone} followed the old dances, and
+they do not. The Dark wizards use different traditions, anyway, and the
+number of Muggleborns coming into the world means that, eventually, we
+won't be able to cow them any more, and we'll be left behind as they
+develop new ways of living. I want to have both power \emph{and} honor.
+That is what will insure the survival of what is pure and potent and
+good in our culture, not insisting that change never happened."
+
+Miriam lingered where she was for a long moment, her eyes focused on
+him. Then she gave a little shake of her head, and said, ``Well. That is
+certainly an impressive speech, Zacharias.''
+
+By that, she meant to convey that it wasn't at all, of course, but
+Zacharias did not care. He'd known what would happen when he came home,
+ostensibly for Christmas holidays but really to meet the Light families
+gathered at the Smith estate and finalize the bonds of their alliance
+with Harry. He'd spent a long time thinking and meditating on it,
+especially since there was little unique that he could contribute back
+at Silver-Mirror.
+
+And he knew from the slight widening of his mother's eyes that she was
+truly impressed.
+
+He gave her a smile as small as the shake of her head had been, and then
+turned towards the formal doors of the Smith Great Hall. ``Shall we show
+them what world we represent now, Mother?''
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry closed his eyes and put the letter gently aside. All it bore was a
+note of thanks from Luna's father, for letting him know of his
+daughter's death and how she had died. But it had affected Harry far
+more than any profound effusion or outpouring of blame could have. It
+reminded him that Mr. Lovegood really was all alone in the world now,
+and it made him blame himself for the death more.
+
+``Why do you have tears in your eyes?''
+
+Harry started and turned to look at the block of gray stone with the
+dragon's head projecting out of it, which sat on the other side of the
+table and watched him with bright, intelligent eyes like flecks of mica.
+The Stone was---interesting---in its attempts to understand the humans
+around it. It seemed concerned with morality and immorality above all
+things, and Harry had caught it in a long conversation with Thomas the
+other day about the differences between the Light and Dark, with the
+Stone listening like an eager pupil. Finally, Thomas appeared to have
+found the perfect audience for him, the one who wanted to hear as much
+as he wanted to tell.
+
+``The letter made me sad,'' he said simply.
+
+``But why?'' The Stone's dragon head twisted, trying to see the
+parchment itself. ``It concerns someone who's dead. Why do humans spend
+so much time thinking about the dead? Why not the living?''
+
+Harry was not sure he was the best person to explain this, but he spread
+his hands and said, ``Imagine that humans are all tied together by means
+of their emotions. Can you imagine that?''
+
+"It is \emph{true}," said the Stone, with a small amount of bewilderment
+in its voice. ``There is no need to imagine it.''
+
+Harry nearly smiled, but the memory of Luna's death and the fact that
+the Stone might want to know this kind of thing for very important
+reasons kept the expression from his face. ``Well. When a human dies, as
+long as someone loved her and was close to her, those connections
+remain. They're ripped and shredded the way that someone's guts are
+ripped and shredded when someone tries to disembowel her. They keep
+reaching out to the dead person, even though she's gone. Eventually,
+most people do come to care more about the living around them again, but
+it takes time, because those torn connections are so visible. Can you
+see that?''
+
+The Stone hissed, a small amount of steam wafting past its teeth. ``That
+does make more sense,'' it said after a moment. ``But I wonder why some
+of you mourn more than others, and how you continue fighting for the
+living without tripping over the dangling guts of your grief.''
+
+``I don't think that anyone can give you the answer to that one,'' said
+Harry simply. ``Because no one knows.''
+
+``I will ask Thomas. He knows everything else.'' The Stone grew
+sculptured wings that sprouted from its sides and flew away, swooping
+around the edge of the doorway and towards the library, where Thomas
+usually was.
+
+Harry closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair for a moment. It was
+rare these days that he could simply be alone, without someone dashing
+in to ask his opinion on a solution or demand his help in a crisis. In
+fact, someone would probably appear now that he'd thought that.
+
+But no one did for a little while, and that meant he could think, and
+think, and think.
+
+Wonderful things had happened in the past few days. Hawthorn had arrived
+with a possible cure for lycanthropy, assuming they could fine-tune it
+so that it wouldn't be so deadly to anyone without an immense amount of
+magical strength and willpower---and even then, Harry wasn't sure if it
+would work for someone born a Muggle. The Stone had handed over several
+artifacts from the Department of Mysteries that Thomas was studying, so
+that he could best work them into more elaborate defenses for the
+safehouses. Dark and Light wizards were coming together in the face of
+disaster and striving to establish a wizarding government---though Harry
+supposed that might be for the purpose of arguing more conveniently than
+they could do in the present situation. Jing-Xi had had to depart, but
+she had told Harry that she planned to argue the Pact into submission
+with the help of her friends, and she had given him the good news about
+Voldemort not being able to harm anyone with his draining ability until
+the spring equinox. There was hope everywhere.
+
+And then a single letter could come, and make him remember the dead.
+
+Harry shook his head fiercely and rose to his feet. Yes, someone was
+probably on her way to interrupt him even now, but a message or a crisis
+could wait a few minutes. He had to get out of this house briefly, or he
+would go mad.
+
+He lowered the wards for the instant it took him to Apparate outside,
+and, once there, he jumped to the cliffs of Cornwall and
+Cobley-by-the-Sea. Harry closed his eyes and listened to the Atlantic
+slamming again and again on the rocks far below. His breathing calmed,
+but he knew that meditation and simple relaxation wouldn't help much. If
+it could have, then his Occlumency and his slow slipping into sleep with
+Draco every night would have been enough.
+
+He needed a magical release, and so he opened his eyes and sought it.
+
+This time, he chose a white lightning bolt, if only in homage to the
+black lightning bolt of Midwinter night that no one but Draco had seen.
+He whirled it around his head, feeling it crackle with energy in his
+hand, magic that tingled and jolted up his arm but then met his natural
+defenses and slid away like a dog with its tail between its legs again.
+Then he tossed it away from him.
+
+It writhed and danced in the air, and then broke apart into flakes like
+snow, though where they fell into the sea, they provided sparks of
+dazzling light instead of spots of cold. Harry sent his breath up in
+front of his face, and formed it into a small dragon in imitation of the
+Stone, which he tossed in several different directions before it found
+its wings. It squeaked indignantly at him and swooped down the cliffs in
+search of food and warmth.
+
+His magic had increased since he'd ripped power away from Voldemort the
+night of the Hogwarts attack. What that meant, in practice, was that he
+was more restless and easily irritated than before, more prone to
+needing time to himself and to exercise his magic, and more drawn to the
+songs of Light and Dark that he could hear echoing just beyond the
+earth.
+
+He still prayed never to become a Lord, never to think of himself as so
+superior to people that he would destroy them without a thought. But he
+could see now why some of them, like Kanerva, like Monika, were so
+utterly detached from the world around them. It was easy to think of the
+magic that seethed beneath his skin as the important thing when it was
+in every breath he drew.
+
+\emph{Not so. It never was so.}
+
+If he released it, like this, then he didn't have so much of it, and so
+he stopped thinking that way for a while. So he released ascending rings
+of white light, and turned the grass beneath his feet to glass so that
+the magic could have the pleasure of transfiguration, and breathed so
+hard in the direction of the ocean that the waves actually lifted and
+swayed to his breath.
+
+Finally, Harry decided that enough time had passed, and Apparated back
+to Silver-Mirror. Regulus was waiting, patiently, to confer with Harry
+about whether they should accept representatives from groups claiming to
+be acting in ``the public interest.''
+
+Harry was glad it was Regulus who found him. Of anyone in the house, he
+seemed the most congenial, the one most likely to hold off on snapping
+out of either impatience, preoccupation with his own problems, or
+genuine concern for Harry.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Snape did not find Regulus Black's presence congenial.
+
+As usual, the man was doing no more than standing behind him while Snape
+brewed a potion, but that was quite enough. He stood, and he did not
+speak about inconsequential matters, which would have made him no worse
+than many a student chattering nervously about detention; nor did he
+make obvious coughs to announce his presence, which would have meant he
+wanted Snape's attention and Snape could easily deny it, and thus be in
+control. He stood and stared, and Snape knew the mind behind those eyes
+was working through a procession of thoughts that he did not like, did
+not approve of.
+
+Finally, he could stand it no longer. He put down the vial of
+Veritaserum---which would be essential to the new government, deny it
+though Harry might---and turned to face Regulus. ``Why are you here?''
+he asked sharply.
+
+Regulus smiled at him. That caused Snape to falter. Regulus had
+retreated when questioned before this, or simply shook his head and gone
+on staring, as if Snape should know the reason and he wouldn't voice it.
+Now, the smile, and it was going to begin a conversation Snape did not
+want to have.
+
+``You know the reason,'' said Regulus. ``What I told you when the school
+was falling. I love you.''
+
+Snape closed his eyes. He would not say that he was nauseated, but that
+word came closest to describing what he was feeling: the swooping
+sensation in his belly, the hair standing up on the back of his neck,
+the desire to lunge forward and find a loo before he emptied the
+contents of his stomach.
+
+``You cannot be,'' he said at last.
+
+Regulus shrugged. Snape knew that, though he didn't open his eyes to see
+it. He knew Regulus so well he could predict his actions with his eyes
+shut, and he had never wanted to know anyone that well---at least,
+someone who was not Harry. ``No one says that love has to have rules,
+Severus. And this love has been peculiar enough already, with the way
+I've felt it and the way I've pursued it and the obstacles that have
+tried to get in its way. I don't see why the object has to be normal.''
+
+It took Snape several tries before he could speak. During all of them,
+he kept his eyes firmly shut. ``Regulus, you will do yourself an injury
+if you love me.'' He got the words out, though they clung to the sides
+of his throat like bread soaked with gravy. "We lead separate lives. You
+are the brother of the student who made me most miserable throughout my
+years of school. We were separated for fourteen years, and when you
+returned, you had a much younger body than mine. You \emph{still} do."
+It had not escaped his notice, though it seemed to have escaped
+Regulus's, that, physically, Regulus was twenty-two, while Snape himself
+was thirty-eight, very nearly. "We do not \emph{know} each other. Any
+love you have of me is based either on memories so old they are
+inevitably distorted by now, or on a fundamental misunderstanding of who
+we are in relation to one another. Especially of who I am."
+
+``I know all the difficulties,'' said Regulus easily. ``I don't care. I
+even know that you're jealous of me for Harry's taking Black as his last
+name. I don't care about that, either.''
+
+Snape opened his eyes. ``I am not jealous.''
+
+And then he wished that he had had the sense not to look, because
+Regulus's gaze captured his, earnest and calm both at once, so deep a
+gray that Snape could almost forget Sirius Black had had the same eyes.
+He did not manage to glance away. He screamed about that, deep in the
+back of his mind.
+
+Regulus murmured, "I wouldn't \emph{expect} much from you, Severus,
+other than acknowledgment. I anticipated this battle. I know it will
+take time. But I want your acknowledgment, and your pledge that you will
+not turn a cold shoulder to me, the way you have been." He waved a hand
+to encompass the time they'd been in Silver-Mirror since the attack on
+Hogwarts, never looking away from Snape.
+
+``I cannot be who you wish me to be,'' said Snape flatly. ``Not someone
+worthy of receiving love, nor capable of giving it.''
+
+``You seem to do just fine with Harry.''
+
+Snape took a deep breath. He trusted this man as a friend, at least, and
+he had never known Regulus to betray a confidence when they were both
+Death Eaters.
+
+\emph{Now who is speaking from distorted memories of a time dead and
+gone?}
+
+But he pressed forward. It might be that, if he did voice the most
+powerful and nagging of the doubts that were trying to overcome him,
+Regulus would understand the futility of forcing the issue.
+
+``Harry needed my help. He was younger than I, someone horribly abused,
+whom I could---save and rescue.'' And those words stuck in his craw even
+more than ``love'' had. ``I did stupid things in the name of that love,
+and it was only a combination of good luck and his own compassionate
+nature that made him forgive me. The power dynamic between us was always
+tilted towards me.''
+
+And here came the words he did not want to speak, but had to, if Regulus
+was ever to understand why his quest to have Snape as a lover was
+hopeless.
+
+``You are stronger than I am. You came through imprisonment and torture
+that would have stolen the sanity of most other men, and you are still
+sane. I cannot---I cannot stand for someone to have that type of control
+over me. I cannot have a lover who is stronger than I am.''
+
+He turned away, his cheeks so hot that he felt as if he had swallowed
+fireweed, and once again been preparing the Veritaserum.
+
+Regulus said nothing for long moments. Snape strained his ears for some
+sound of the other man's going away, and told himself he was not.
+
+Then arms closed around his middle, and Regulus's voice whispered in his
+ear, ``I don't care.''
+
+Snape successfully kept himself from responding, because he was not
+capable of responding, not the way Regulus desired, but his despair and
+sickness increased, until he felt as if he fell down a long, dark pit,
+the bottom of which he could not see.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+It was a rushed and hurried Christmas, in Draco's eyes, but in the wake
+of the Hogwarts attack, it was hard to see how it could have been
+anything else.
+
+Gifts had been left behind in their mad flight, and they had had no time
+to make or procure more, with the frantic hurry to set up a new
+government that had taken over Silver-Mirror in the past few days.
+Christmas mostly meant a slightly richer meal than normal, with more
+people sitting at the table instead of scurrying off to eat hastily in
+their own corners while they read books of law or drafted letters or
+spoke via the phoenix song spell to other people, and a chance to see
+his father.
+
+Draco didn't know why he had expected to find Lucius \emph{affected} by
+the news of the Hogwarts disaster. Of course he would not be. His own
+son and heir was among the survivors, and he was now perfectly
+positioned to craft the kind of life that would make people forget his
+villainy: advising said son and heir and, through him, the
+Boy-Who-Lived.
+
+The fact that Draco never intended to let his father manipulate him
+again was somewhat beside the point, really. Lucius still intended to
+try. Draco knew that from the gentle smile he received, and the gift his
+father gave him without even a comment to prepare him. Draco drew back
+the blue cloth from a small object and saw there a miniature of his
+mother.
+
+The picture was unmoving; presumably, it had been a portrait done
+immediately after or before her marriage to Lucius, because it was still
+a custom to present a new bride or groom like that, in the full blush of
+that beauty and happiness that would never come again, unchanged even by
+movement. His mother wasn't smiling, and her blonde hair was coiled
+closely around her neck, and her blue eyes were bright with something
+Draco would not have called happiness. But there was still something
+\emph{radiant} about Narcissa, like the light shining on ice. Nothing
+could diminish it, not even her death, and not even the circumstances of
+the gift.
+
+And not even the fact that his father had almost certainly handed it to
+him intending to shock him and see how much he still grieved for
+Narcissa.
+
+Draco looked up and faced his father with his calmest, coolest, most
+unmoving gaze. ``Thank you, Lucius,'' he said, without any emotion at
+all, and then turned to seek out Harry.
+
+He could feel Lucius's eyes on his back, and his father puzzling out why
+that had not worked the way he wanted it to. He didn't look around. He
+was not about to give the bastard the satisfaction.
+
+Carefully, with hands that did not sake, he threaded the miniature
+around his neck on its ribbon. According to ancient tradition, he should
+be wearing Harry's portrait there already, and not his mother's, but
+also, according to tradition, his father should never have let the
+portrait out of his sight.
+
+\emph{If he wishes to play games, he should know that his opponent can
+cheat just as well as he can.}
+
+Draco stood near Harry, because he had to. Harry was hugging his brother
+at the moment, and chatting amiably enough with his girlfriend. Parvati
+still irritated Draco, with her automatic assumptions that no one Dark
+was really good enough to be Harry's boyfriend, but though she met his
+eyes and frowned, she didn't offer any insults. That was enough to make
+Draco be quiet in his turn.
+
+He watched Professor Snape and Regulus Black stand on the other side of
+the room, and pointedly not talk to each other. He shook his head. Snape
+reminded him of Harry, sometimes, in his determination to ignore the
+consequences of someone else's feelings for him. That just meant that
+Regulus should be more like Draco, of course, and Draco could do nothing
+to help him if he refused to be.
+
+Zacharias Smith and Hermione Granger stood in another corner, heads
+close together, talking about something that seemed to require a hundred
+hand gestures. Draco snorted to himself. The Light part of their
+alliance was slowly but surely coming together, and he had to give Smith
+credit for a good portion of that, as well as the influence of Granger,
+who kept him sane and rational.
+
+Weasley---the girl---was looking flustered as she carried food back and
+forth from the table to the kitchen. Apparently she'd had a screaming
+match with her parents earlier over her decision not to leave
+Silver-Mirror. Draco was sorry for missing it.
+
+Augusta Longbottom held court at the feasting table; she'd not come to
+retrieve her grandson after all, but to stay and help with the
+establishment of the new government. She wore no glamour. Draco saw more
+than one nervous glance darted at her and the spots covering her skin,
+but if the Longbottom matriarch noticed them, she clearly did not care.
+She was much more interested in speaking to the people who had come to
+her and actually wanted to know more about half-human wizards and
+witches.
+
+Hawthorn Parkinson watched Lucius with a gaze that made Draco nervous,
+even though her eyes were no longer amber. He was almost certain she
+wouldn't take revenge on him as long as that could harm the war effort.
+But no one had spoken about what might happen after the war.
+
+Padma Patil stood with her head bowed, shivering, against the wall.
+Draco felt his mouth tighten in exasperation. It was sad that her
+girlfriend had died, but she was being no use to anyone here, too caught
+up in her mourning. It might be best for her if her parents came and
+took her home, as they had been asking to do.
+
+He caught the eye of one person he didn't want to see at all: Michael
+Rosier-Henlin, leaning next to his twin. Michael stared at him with a
+hungry gaze for a moment, and then averted his face. Draco scowled. He
+didn't care what Harry said about the brat having changed since his burn
+and his awakening. He had not changed, in Draco's opinion, but simply
+learned to bury the things that made him objectionable. They would still
+come out in a time of peace.
+
+But, as always, Draco's gaze returned to Harry: the center of it
+all---\emph{his} center, at least---and the one person without whom they
+truly could not go on. He reached out and rested one hand on Harry's
+wrist, squeezing it.
+
+Harry turned to look at him only briefly before continuing his
+conversation with his twin. But his hand turned and squeezed Draco's
+fingers back, lingeringly, in the way that said they would share a bed
+tonight with more passion and attention than Harry had been able to
+spare since the escape from Hogwarts.
+
+Draco settled back, satisfied, to continue observing the antics of
+people more stupid or less informed than he was. That made quite a large
+number of the souls in the room, given the wonder of who he was.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 72*: A Parting of
+Ways}\label{chapter-72-a-parting-of-ways}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Fifty-Eight: A Parting of Ways}
+
+"It's \emph{not} neutral ground."
+
+Harry sighed and waved the letter around in front of his face. In truth,
+he hardly needed to cool himself off; not even the wards around
+Silver-Mirror could keep off some of the December chill, and the fire
+had sunk, since it had been some hours since he built it up. He slid off
+the chair to do that now, and watched as the flames blazed, and tried to
+tell himself that he didn't miss being able to blaze with them.
+
+``I don't really care if it is or not,'' he told the fire. ``Minister
+Gansweider agreed to meet there, and she's the trusted representative
+for the International Confederation of Warlocks. So we'll go to the Isle
+of Man, and meet with her in Paton Opalline's home, and hope that we can
+settle this ridiculous conflict over the International Statute.''
+
+``Harry.'' Draco came and dropped to his heels beside him. His voice was
+harsh enough that it seemed set to scrape all the enamel off Harry's
+teeth. ``I just want you to reconsider accepting her offer. It could be
+a trap. She wouldn't have any good reason to be well-disposed towards
+you. She met with Juniper, remember? And she shares a country with
+Monika. Why would you do this?''
+
+``The message from the Confederation was official,'' said Harry,
+clinging to his temper. Draco had been trying to talk him out of meeting
+with Minister Gansweider for the past two days, and every single time he
+brought up the same points, as if Harry had not thought of those himself
+even as he considered Gansweider's first letter. Harry hated being
+treated as if he were stupid when he'd done nothing to warrant it.
+``They endorse this. And if she attacked me in the home of my allies,
+I'm sure the Opallines would have something to say about that.''
+
+``You can't be sure that they'd be able to prevent injury to you in
+time,'' Draco pointed out.
+
+Harry jerked himself to his feet and turned furious eyes on Draco, who
+actually blinked and seemed to realize, for the first time, that Harry
+was angry. And he \emph{was}. He could feel his magic hammering like
+wings around his heart, snarling like a dog on a leash, eager to be let
+out and attack Draco.
+
+He was not to \emph{that} point of losing control yet, thank Merlin, and
+he managed to restrain himself to a tight, "I don't want to talk about
+this further, Draco. I've already agreed to the meeting, and I'll be
+taking guards along, and I'll have dozens more there with me. This
+dispute with the Confederation needs to be \emph{settled} if at all
+possible. I don't \emph{want} to have it hanging over my head when we're
+trying to fight Voldemort. And you know that some people are only
+holding back on supporting the Hope for Light or the Alliance of Sun and
+Shadow because they're afraid, rightly, of what the international
+wizarding community could do to us. Settling this benefits everyone
+involved."
+
+``I worry about you,'' Draco said softly.
+
+There was a time when Harry's guilt at the hurt in his eyes would have
+made him apologize at once. Now, he mostly resented the fact that Draco
+made him feel guilty at all, and the resentment fed the anger.
+
+``I know that,'' said Harry. "You've made it abundantly clear. And
+instead of accepting my decision or bringing up new reasons to worry,
+you keep making the same points again and again, as if I weren't
+intelligent enough to figure them out on my own. If you can't contribute
+in a \emph{new} way to the war effort, Draco, please at least refrain
+from repeating things like this."
+
+And then he turned away, because one more moment there, and he knew he
+\emph{would} attack Draco.
+
+He didn't want to leave the house, even in as bad a mood as he was in,
+because he knew that Draco would send people after him. So he opened the
+door that led to one of the Black wonders kept safely hidden in
+Silver-Mirror, the wind-pool for which the house was named. He stepped
+onto the balcony that led out over the pool and stared down.
+
+It looked the same as it had the first time he saw it---almost. There
+was still the silver-blue-white vortex of circling wind, leading to no
+bottom, and the birds of varied shapes and sizes riding and diving and
+plunging and playing in it. But now he could see the walls of the magic
+that formed the pool, containing it, and shivering with a sensual
+awareness of air that resembled, in some ways, the alien intelligence of
+the Stone and the Maze.
+
+Harry closed his eyes and leaned his head on his hands. His magic
+continued responding to the walls of the pool, though, and wrapped him
+in a cool breeze when one of the birds veered close to him, curious to
+see what he was.
+
+Being near immense sources of magic soothed his own magic, when he could
+think of nothing else that would calm it. But Harry hadn't missed how
+his restlessness continued to increase.
+
+His magic wanted to be \emph{doing} things again, not simply remaining
+in Silver-Mirror and organizing the new government, as necessary as that
+was.
+
+Well, when they went to Gollrish Y Thie, it would have something to do.
+Harry was almost hoping that the Minister of Austria \emph{would} try
+something, unlikely as that seemed and as much of an international mess
+as she would make. Then his magic could be used and, afterwards, lie
+dormant again, instead of quivering around him like wings, ready to
+spread every single time someone startled or irritated him.
+
+At least they were going to travel. There was that.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco shut the door to the room of the wind-pool quietly. He had
+intended to go in and confront Harry, but judging from Harry's slumped
+shoulders and the way they shook, now wasn't the best time.
+
+He hadn't meant to be unproductive or obstructive by bringing up those
+points about the Minister, he thought resentfully as he leaned back
+against the wall and shut his eyes. He'd only meant to emphasize things
+that Harry seemed to be ignoring. Why had Harry immediately decided that
+\emph{he} should be the one to attend this meeting and explain the new
+government to the Confederation and its representative, for example?
+Someone else could have gone and done it. That would leave Harry safely
+out of danger, show Minister Gansweider exactly how important she was in
+the grand scheme of things, and give honor and prestige to one of
+Harry's followers who wanted it.
+
+Merlin, Draco would have liked to do it himself.
+
+At least the Opallines, Minister Gansweider, and Harry had all agreed on
+the Isle of Man as a meeting place, but Draco still didn't think it was
+neutral ground. And he wondered if the Minister of Austria hadn't
+intended some insult to Harry, wanting to meet in a house that she
+\emph{had} to know was built of the bones of a dead dragon. Harry
+wouldn't think to look for that kind of gesture, but to Draco, it was
+like breathing.
+
+He would be with Harry. He could make sure that nothing happened to him.
+
+\emph{And that has been so effective before,} his conscience jibed at
+him.
+
+Draco shook his head and straightened up with a frown. They were meeting
+Minister Gansweider on New Year's Day. That left him some time to plan,
+and to ask Snape to have potions on hand just in case of an accident.
+
+Whether that accident happened to Harry or was caused by them once they
+saw the Minister start behaving in a threatening way---as Draco was sure
+would happen---Draco wanted to be prepared.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Evamaria came in to the Isle in a carriage drawn by swans. Lady Monika
+had insisted. She had bred the birds to be impressive, with wingspans
+more than twenty feet wide and beaks lined with razor-sharp teeth and
+webbed feet edged with cruel claws and black feathers that smelled of
+jasmine, and she said this would lay a mark on the minds of their
+enemies that just Apparating in couldn't.
+
+Evamaria had agreed with that, but she wished she had known how long the
+flight from Austria to the Isle of Man was likely to be, how cold, and
+how lonely. It gave her too much time to think, for one thing.
+
+Her hands clasped two treasures in her lap, representing her opposite
+purposes for being here. One was a ball of colored glass that would
+allow the International Confederation of Warlocks to listen to any words
+spoken during the meeting, so that they would know Evamaria and Harry
+were not trying to cheat them and reach some private agreement between
+Austria and Britain which would still contravene the International
+Statute. The other was an earring that she would don when the swans
+began their descent to the Isle. It linked her mind intimately to her
+Lady's, which let her know what Monika thought of the meeting and told
+her how to direct her words. Neither had been created with magic known
+in Britain, so the sense that anyone would notice and guess the purpose
+of the devices was slim.
+
+Slim, but not nonexistent, and in the meantime Evamaria had to dance
+between the requirements of the Confederation, which mostly wanted a
+timeline for the war and the British wizards to stop revealing
+themselves to Muggles, and her Lady, who wanted to see if there was a
+chance she could steal Harry's magic.
+
+Evamaria sighed and leaned back against the side of the carriage. It
+resembled a sled in form, silver covered with curlicues of white wood,
+created by the miners that Monika had bred to serve her out of rats. And
+the four swans that flew in front of it, pulling it along with flap
+after flap of their wings, were beautiful, that was certain, as long as
+one didn't look too closely at their beaks and feet. Such a deep black,
+darker than Evamaria's hair, darker even than Monika's, with some of the
+dusky sheen of blueberries.
+
+She hated her divided allegiance sometimes, the struggle to do right by
+her country while keeping her Lady happy. And certainly the people in
+the International Confederation lucky enough to come from nations where
+Lord-level wizards didn't make their homes didn't understand her
+position. They seemed to think that she should defy Monika and end up a
+breeder if she needed to, just to support some of the Confederation's
+inflexible decisions.
+
+In reality, Evamaria engaged in a delicate balancing act, and she had
+known from the moment she became Minister that it would probably cost
+her her life, unless she was lucky enough to lose the next election. It
+was what one \emph{did}, a tradition in Austria since Monika had risen
+to full power. She should have been killed while she was still a girl,
+not yet in control of herself, but she had escaped the hunters too long,
+and then given herself to the Dark, and then it was all over.
+
+But Evamaria would do what she had to do, make the compromises that were
+required, and if that made her less ``pure'' and ``good'' than some of
+the simpletons in the Confederation, she must live with it.
+
+The carriage began to curve down, and she could see the sea between
+Britain and Ireland gleaming now, and the large house made of dragon's
+bones on it. Evamaria shook her head as she clipped the earring, a
+bright boss of pearl and silver, on. The Opalline family had apparently
+been revealing themselves to the Muggles on their island. The Prime
+Minister of the Muggle United Kingdom had so far prevented the media
+from reporting on the story, and the local Muggles remained
+convinced---most of them---that it was some huge, elaborate conspiracy
+or joke of a magician.
+
+Apparently.
+
+Evamaria thought it a bit strange that no one had questioned the
+Opallines beyond that, but then, she had learned long ago never to
+overestimate the intelligence of Muggles.
+
+"\emph{You are almost landed,}" Monika murmured into her ear. Evamaria
+was uncertain if she had overheard her thoughts, or was linked to the
+swans and so could track their movements in some uncanny way.
+
+``Yes, my Lady,'' Evamaria said, as the swans circled the dragon-house
+once and then sought for a landing place on the other side, on the
+slopes of Snaefell. Monika had assured her that they would know how to
+find one, that she need not guide them.
+
+"\emph{Serve me well.}"
+
+Evamaria nodded in resignation. That was her life, truly, a study in
+resignation and doing the best she could.
+
+Monika was aware of all the potentially rebellious thoughts that raced
+through her Minister's head, she knew. But they didn't matter. Monika
+did not \emph{have} to do anything about them. She was always in
+control.
+
+Evamaria set herself to endure.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry stared at the swans as they came down. They were beautiful
+creatures, and even if their eyes did, from a distance at least, blaze
+scarlet like Voldemort's or like hot coals, he couldn't help but admire
+them.
+
+They were also wound with webs.
+
+Harry bowed his head and did his best to pretend that he hadn't noticed.
+Yes, he had to free all the creatures bound by webs, but he didn't have
+to do it \emph{now}. And trying to unbind the swans would only cause an
+international incident, given that the Austrian Minister would have to
+find another way to get home. And interfering with Monika's magic would
+probably give her an excuse to strike at him.
+
+Still, the need to unbind the webs itched and burned at him.
+
+To pass the time and distract himself, he took one more glance around,
+to make sure that everyone was in the proper place. Paton and Calibrid
+stood with him, one on either side, since it was their home and they
+would be the ones who would welcome an international visitor to Gollrish
+Y Thie under ordinary circumstances. That made a neat excuse to keep
+Snape, Draco, and the others back.
+
+He did have Connor with him, at his right shoulder. It would be a good
+learning experience for him, Harry thought firmly. His brother was an
+adult, legally, and in normal times would have been forming contacts
+among other Light wizards, learning how to function in the world as the
+heir of Lux Aeterna, and what it meant that he was of Potter heritage
+but a halfblood. It hadn't happened so far, and given that Connor was
+more interested in ordinary life than politics, Harry could hardly blame
+him, but no time was like the present to learn.
+
+He ignored the thought that he might just have wanted someone to suffer
+along with him.
+
+The carriage landed on the doorstep of Gollrish Y Thie, near the
+dragon's gaping jaws. Calibrid straightened a little. Harry gave her a
+warning glance. After he had explained the way that Monika tended to
+treat the people bound to her, she had been eager to contact her
+relatives who lived in Austria and do what she could to make the Dark
+Lady's life difficult. She had backed down on the plan, especially when
+she found out that Monika wasn't the one visiting them that day, but she
+still seemed primed to cause an incident if Harry wasn't careful.
+
+Paton, luckily, was the calm counterpart to his daughter, as always, and
+he stepped forward as Evamaria Gansweider alighted from the carriage,
+catching her hand and helping her over the ice-rimed stones that Harry
+remembered negotiating so carefully the first time he'd visited Gollrish
+Y Thie two years ago. He said something Harry couldn't catch, but which
+made Evamaria jerk her head up and look at him.
+
+``I had no idea that you knew German,'' she murmured in English,
+sounding hesitant.
+
+Paton smiled, and bowed over her hand for a moment, then finished
+leading her up to the doorstep before he responded. ``I traveled on the
+Continent for a year before I returned home,'' he said calmly. "All the
+heirs of my family do so. It seemed imperative to learn at least
+\emph{some} of the tongue of each country where I have relatives---and
+those are a formidable number, as I suspect you know."
+
+``Old Blood,'' said Evamaria, and Harry had to change his initial
+impression of her. Her eyes might not be the most vibrant in the
+world---in fact, they were haunted with shadows of an old pain which he
+found disturbing---but her face could light up when she took an interest
+in something, as she was evidently doing now. ``I had no idea that you
+extended it so far, from simply knowing and controlling your family to
+becoming involved with the lands where they lived.''
+
+``We have many things to do with our time, since we do not make war,''
+said Paton, and then bowed to her. ``Welcome to Gollrish Y Thie,
+Minister Gansweider, and our home. My name is Paton Opalline, and this
+is my daughter and heir, Calibrid.'' Calibrid made a little curtsey,
+though Harry could see her eyes daring Evamaria to comment on the fact
+that she had no magic of her own. Evamaria chose not to comment, but
+then, if she were at all politically astute, she would have known that
+before she came. "And this is Harry Black, once Harry Potter,
+\emph{vates} and adopted son of the Opalline family and Severus Snape,
+whom you came to see."
+
+Evamaria turned towards him, a motion so swift that it made the heavy
+earring in her right ear sway, and then came to a stop. Harry found
+himself studied in a way he didn't enjoy. That gaze said this woman had
+dealt with powerful wizards before, and had disliked it every single
+time. Just by means of their power, they were to be feared, avoided when
+possible, placated when necessary.
+
+With a start, Harry realized the gaze had been so deep and long that
+he'd passed the surface of her mind and started reading her thoughts. He
+lowered his eyes at the same moment as Evamaria averted her face
+sharply.
+
+``My apologies, Madam,'' Harry murmured. He had no idea what attitudes
+towards Legilimency were in Austria, but it was still a \emph{faux pas}
+for one leader to make when meeting with another at a politically
+delicate moment. ``My name is Harry, and I would prefer that you call me
+that to all the titles in the world.'' Perhaps that would reassure her
+that he wasn't like other powerful wizards, to be feared and avoided. Of
+course, a touch of that idea was probably helpful to a
+Minister---Scrimgeour had had it---but it would do no good if it
+crippled their interaction.
+
+Evamaria sighed. ``And yet, you meet me with an army at your back,'' she
+said, and Harry lifted his head in time to see her gesture at his
+friends and family with a languid hand that nevertheless shook a little.
+``Is this the way to do things, Harry?'' She paused as if anticipating
+that he would strike when she spoke his name, but relaxed and went on
+when he didn't. ``If you trust me, at least, and it seems as if you
+would like me to trust you.''
+
+``My apologies,'' Harry said, and stood straighter and made his voice
+cool. He wouldn't let his desire to make her comfortable drive him into
+a moment of weakness that could cost Britain or the Opallines---or
+him---greatly. ``But I thought it best, since I did not know if you came
+under the Confederation's aegis or Monika's.''
+
+Evamaria winced; if he hadn't known better, Harry would have sworn that
+her earring had stung her. But when he concentrated on it, he received
+no feeling of familiar magic. It seemed to have been enchanted to look
+pretty, and no more.
+
+``I come under the aegis of both, always,'' said Evamaria, ``since I am
+a member of the one and live in the same country as the other. What and
+who do you represent, Harry? The whole of your country? Or only a small
+and select group of wizards, this Alliance of Sun and Shadow I have
+heard about?''
+
+``The Alliance is made of my main supporters, that is true,'' said
+Harry, as clearly as he could. He really \emph{didn't} want to frighten
+her, so he tried to make his voice truthful, neutral. ``But many more
+have joined us, and others may join us depending on the outcome of this
+meeting. The whole of the country does not support me, of course.
+Juniper did not, and some people who are afraid of me don't, and
+Voldemort and his followers are a long way away from doing it.''
+
+Evamaria gave a bleak smile at the last statement. ``Of course not,''
+she murmured. ``But if you make a promise today, you will do your best
+to see that the whole of the country follows it?''
+
+``Yes,'' said Harry. ``At least, if it concerns international law. I
+will not promise to lie down and bare my throat to your Lady if she
+comes hunting me. I have my people to defend and my work to do.''
+
+Evamaria nodded slightly. ``And you consider the war with Voldemort to
+be your most important priority?''
+
+``No.''
+
+Harry heard several gasps behind him. He was sure that he would see
+Snape scowling if he looked, probably thinking that he shouldn't have
+said that. But he ignored it, and held Evamaria's eyes, and tried to
+speak to her the way one Minister would speak to another. At least, the
+way he thought one Minister should speak to another. Pureblood dances
+often did not extend across national boundaries and it was not as though
+Harry had spied on the Confederation's meetings.
+
+``My first priority is making sure my country thrives,'' he said. ``So I
+am rebuilding the government, and trying to get those to safety who wish
+to go, and trying to make an accurate tally of the dead and missing from
+Hogwarts. I will fight the war, yes, but I will not allow Voldemort to
+ravage my people in the meantime.''
+
+Evamaria gave him a wistful look. Harry wondered if she was thinking
+about what she would do under similar circumstances, if Monika was
+ravaging Austria, or if it was a simple glance of kinship between two
+people confronted with powerful and greedy Dark wizards.
+
+``I can understand that,'' she said. ``And certainly the Confederation
+does not wish to see Lord Riddle reach beyond these shores.'' She
+hesitated a moment, then added carefully, ``Nor does my Lady's Pact.''
+
+``They don't act like it,'' Connor muttered.
+
+Evamaria chose to ignore that, even if she heard it, which Harry hoped
+wasn't the case. ``But that doesn't mean that they want to continue to
+expose the British wizarding world to Muggles either, Harry, and so
+perhaps encourage the hostility of Muggles all over the world. Perhaps
+you can handle relations amicably here. It will be less the case in
+countries where no single powerful leader like you exists, or where the
+Muggles may be more prone to violence.''
+
+Harry nodded. It had been what he thought Evamaria would say, and in a
+certain light, he could even see the sense of it. So he had thought up a
+compromise which was not perfect, but sounded good. \emph{The Pact and
+the International Confederation of Warlocks ought to find it perfect,}
+he thought.
+
+``I will ask my people to restrain their efforts in front of Muggles
+until the war is over,'' he said. ``We do not need to be hunted on two
+fronts, by Voldemort and by British Muggles who may become horrified
+when they find out how far our world extends, and what we have
+suffered.''
+
+Evamaria cocked her head. ``Do you have a good idea of when the war will
+be over?''
+
+Harry met her eyes and shook his head. He thought it not beyond the
+realm of possibility that the Confederation had sent her with some
+device that could hear what they said, even though he couldn't sense any
+magic like that on her. And of course there were always Pensieves so
+that they could listen to what he'd said later. So he was not about to
+reveal anything concerning the Horcruxes. ``It could be weeks. It could
+be months, or years. I certainly hope it does not take the latter period
+of time, but it might.''
+
+Evamaria considered for a moment. Harry could tell that she was liking
+the solution more and more as she thought about it. It required no great
+sacrifice on the part of anyone outside Britain, and it delayed the
+resolution of the problem for a while, during which the politicians
+could take a breath, not confront a Lord-level wizard, and pretend to be
+doing something solid.
+
+For Harry, it would pull the Confederation off his back, insure safe
+travel to the Continent for those who needed it, and deprive his enemies
+of one weapon they might use against him. Yes, he would have to take up
+the problem again soon enough, but at least it was not one that he
+needed to deal with right \emph{now.}
+
+``The Confederation will like this,'' Evamaria said at last. ``Yes,
+Harry, I believe that we might have found a solution.'' She held out her
+hand.
+
+Calibrid cleared her throat.
+
+Harry turned towards her. His heart beat wildly in his throat, but,
+oddly enough, his head was calm. He had thought this might be a problem
+from the moment he'd decided on the solution, but he had wanted to wait
+and see if it would. And now it seemed it would, from the way that
+Calibrid was looking at him.
+
+``I think Muggles need to be a part of our world,'' she said. "And if we
+put that off, it becomes easier and easier to do so. There might never
+come a day when we can be as open as we've tried to be in the past few
+months with the Muggles on our island. And you know that our kindred all
+over Europe are revealing themselves to Muggles, though those countries
+have functional Ministries that can and do \emph{Obliviate} most
+memories. We are not willing to stop, Harry. Nor will the Opallines
+accept a declaration that applies only to Britain."
+
+``And neither will you,'' Harry said, already understanding that. ``Even
+though you live in Britain.''
+
+Calibrid shook her head, eyes ablaze with clear light. ``It's nothing
+against you specifically, Harry,'' she said. ``But we cannot abide by
+this agreement, even though I understand that you have excellent reasons
+for making it.'' She paused for a long moment, then said, very gently,
+``And you know that we cannot directly join in nor care for the war,
+since we are Old Blood and sworn to peace.''
+
+``I know,'' said Harry. The Opallines had been useful as a spy network,
+but the only one who had ever fought directly for him was Fergus
+Opalline, who had become a werewolf and so, in his family's eyes, was
+driven to savagery and violence by things that weren't his fault.
+
+``Has the time come for a parting of ways?'' There was sadness in
+Calibrid's voice, but also determination.
+
+``It seems so.'' Harry held his hand out. ``At least it's an amicable
+one.'' He waited, watching her, and then added, ``At least, it's come
+unless you wish to change your mind and your methods about Muggle
+integration into the wizarding world.''
+
+``No. We've kept magic and wonder from them for too long. It's time to
+let them know it still exists.'' Calibrid took his hand, and held it for
+long moments before letting it go. ``My father and I have discussed
+this, and he has at last come around to my way of thinking. We must
+withdraw ourselves from the Alliance, as we would inevitably betray
+you.''
+
+Paton cleared his throat. ``None of this stops you from being an adopted
+son of the Opalline family, Harry. Never think that. We would like to
+see you here from time to time, and if you need assistance from us that
+does not relate to concealing ourselves from Muggles, then feel free to
+request it.''
+
+``I will,'' Harry said quietly. ``Thank you.''
+
+``The Confederation will not be entirely satisfied with this,'' Evamaria
+said thoughtfully. ``On the other hand, I cannot say I am surprised, or
+that no one anticipated this outcome.'' She nodded to Harry, and
+produced a blank scroll of parchment from her pocket. ``If you will fill
+this with a description of our agreement, and sign it, I will sign it as
+well, and we can come to an end of this matter.''
+
+``For now,'' Harry said, holding her shadowed eyes and wondering if he
+would see them across a battlefield one day.
+
+The Austrian Minister nodded. ``For now.''
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Evamaria leaned against the back of her swan-carriage as it rose into
+the air again, sighing. She had done relatively little, but she was
+exhausted in any case. Being so near a powerful wizard induced headaches
+in her.
+
+"\emph{Does that include me}?" Monika's voice murmured in her ear, and
+then Evamaria heard laughter. Of course it did, and her Lady knew that.
+
+With gratitude, Evamaria removed the earring and laid it in her lap. The
+swan-carriage was bound for the island in the Atlantic where the
+Confederation's leaders were currently meeting, so that Evamaria could
+hand the scroll with the agreement directly to them and survive another
+interrogation. She would have a long day yet, longer still as the swans
+carried her back and forth across waters and lands where the sun still
+shone.
+
+It didn't matter, though. Evamaria would rather face a dozen
+interrogations then spend a dozen minutes in the presence of a
+Lord-level wizard.
+
+They ruled too much, imposed too many choices, and did not know enough
+about free will. She wished for a world without them.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 73*: Resistance}\label{chapter-73-resistance}
+
+\textbf{Warning: Cliffhanger.}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Fifty-Nine: Resistance}
+
+``Indigena.''
+
+She was not sure whether she had grown to hate or love the way he
+whispered her name, as if it were a revelation. She told herself it was
+simply that he had no other name to whisper, and it was either her he
+must converse with, or the young basilisks who had finally hatched and
+begun to crawl about the burrow---and if they had names, they were in
+Parseltongue, which Indigena had never succeeded in understanding. She
+wiped the dirt off her hands and descended into the burrow, turning
+towards the throne room.
+
+To her surprise, though, he wasn't there, lying on the pallet in the
+corner the way he usually did. Instead, Indigena found her Lord near the
+warm cave where the basilisks had hatched. He was scratching one of
+them, the one with the swaying red plume of the male, under the chin.
+The female lay nearby with her golden eyes firmly shielded by the false
+eyelids, or Indigena would not have dared to approach so close.
+
+``My Lord?'' she asked.
+
+He turned to face her, and she could make out amusement in the sharp
+lines around his mouth, and the way his lips parted and the forked
+tongue flickered between them.
+
+``I have found a way,'' he said.
+
+It took her a moment to understood what he was talking about, and when
+he did, her heart beat considerably faster. A way around the wild Dark's
+ban, a way to attack Harry indirectly. Of course, the plan he hatched
+each time he lay on his pallet and shut his eyes was also a way to do
+that, but it would take a long time, and probably not be fruitful before
+the spring equinox in any case. Indigena knew her Lord's impatience to
+take a shorter route.
+
+She crouched down in front of him and murmured, ``Tell me.''
+
+``I have seen many things that Harry does not know I have seen.'' Her
+Lord now scratched the basilisk's chin with one hand and stroked its
+plume with the others, and it gave a deep, rumbling sound like a purr
+that Indigena had not known serpents could make. Voldemort hissed at it,
+and it hissed back, the sounds slipping and slurring and making Indigena
+shiver with an ancestral, nameless fear. ``And what he goes through now
+is what I went through when I was young, not long after I had left
+Hogwarts. His magic is restless. Acting up. It needs to be fed, and
+Harry is not feeding it.''
+
+Indigena frowned. \emph{That seems like a stupid thing to do.} ``Are you
+sure he's not holding off and trying to bait you into a trap, my Lord?''
+she asked aloud.
+
+``No.'' Voldemort laughed again, and the female basilisk hissed as if to
+echo him, the sound trilling up and down the scale. ``In this case, he
+does not know the magic should be fed, and even if he knew, he would try
+to resist the idea. It needs blood, death, and hatred. And can you see
+my heir settling for such things, even if he wished to offer his power a
+meal?''
+
+Indigena shook her head ruefully. Harry might have changed since the war
+began---the convoluted plan he'd enacted to fool the wild Dark showed
+that---but his morals were still not flexible enough to let him do what
+her Lord described. ``I can't see it, my Lord.''
+
+``And neither will he,'' Voldemort said, voice singing and smug. ``Past
+a certain point, a Lord's magic begins to demand food. Blood and hatred
+and kills are the things that feed it most effectively, though it can be
+fed with constant use in the name of compassion.'' Voldemort's voice
+deadened on the last word. "That is the point at which most of us
+Declare for Dark or Light. A Declared Lord or Lady does not need to feed
+the magic, because it has a connection with something greater than
+itself---which is really what it is hungering for, more greatness than
+confinement in a single body can afford it. But Harry will not Declare,
+and he will not kill, and he has used his magic little in the name of
+his---\emph{compassion­}---in the last little while, though it has
+increased since Hogwarts. His magic is pushing him more and more. He can
+control it now, but he will reach a tipping point where he must kill,
+Declare, or die."
+
+``I have never heard of that, my Lord,'' Indigena murmured. Of course,
+she hadn't made a study of Lord-level wizards, but Voldemort had never
+mentioned it before, either, and that seemed like a confidence he would
+have shared with her during the ten months she cared for him.
+
+``The lives of the powerful are mysterious and little-known to the
+weak.'' Voldemort scratched the male basilisk's chin again, then reached
+down and grasped its throat, nearly choking it to death before letting
+it go. The young serpent put his head down tamely near her Lord's feet.
+``But one can see it in the fading that we do, if we do not die,
+becoming part of the paths of Light or Dark at last. I will not suffer
+that fate, as I will not die.''
+
+Indigena said nothing, keeping her eyes on her hands.
+
+``But we have a yearning, all of us, to be closer to the forces of magic
+in the world, and those forces call us, the Light and the Dark,
+attracted to the power we carry and wanting it to be part of them. The
+Declaration stills the yearning for a while, but at last even that is
+not enough. Hence the fading.'' Voldemort's eyes burned and rolled over,
+balls of flame that altered with his moods. ``Harry has no one to
+explain this yearning to him. Until recently, he was not strong enough
+to near the point where it would be important. But since
+Hogwarts\ldots{}''
+
+He let his voice trail off, but Indigena understood. Harry had swallowed
+magic from Voldemort, and the attempt to make his enemy weaker was now
+the very thing that would doom him.
+
+``So you will lure him nearer, my Lord, and then try to push him past
+his tipping point?'' she asked.
+
+``Yes.'' Voldemort's hand rose and fell on the basilisk's back in steady
+strokes. ``I cannot drain, according to the wild Dark.'' Indigena
+shivered with the force of the hatred in those few simple words. ``I
+cannot act against Harry.'' Pale fingers spidered across blue-black
+scales. "But my pets can create a situation to which he \emph{must}
+come. And if he uses his \emph{absorbere} gift, if he drains, his
+choices are two: Declare or begin killing to feed his magic. And either
+way, he may then be destroyed."
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry turned over, and ended up staring at the ceiling. He stifled a
+sigh as Draco shifted next to him. They were sleeping in the same bed
+again, after a few nights of not doing so because of his anger at Draco,
+but now Harry found himself wishing the separation could have lasted
+longer. His insomnia had no component of guilt when he was alone.
+
+His magic pooled and danced under his skin, poking him with sharp sticks
+beneath the ribs, insisting that he be up and doing something. Harry had
+hoped that visiting the Opallines would do it, but that hadn't helped.
+Nor had going to the cliffs above Cornwall and releasing it in random
+but harmless acts of power. Harry had no idea what it \emph{wanted} at
+this point, and the bird hadn't appeared to scar him and screech
+disapprovingly at him, either.
+
+Harry slipped out of bed at last, and made his way down the stairs
+towards Silver-Mirror's kitchen. At least he could get something to eat.
+Sometimes the magic quieted in the wake of food, as if it had to analyze
+this new presence in his body. But it often returned stronger and
+livelier in a short time, energized by the meal the way that swallowing
+magic sent his power to new heights.
+
+Harry was willing to deal with the extra restlessness if it happened.
+Mostly, he just wanted a few hours of calm, restful sleep.
+
+A light on in the kitchen, though, told him that he wasn't the only one
+awake. Harry paused near the doorway and watched the bobbing
+\emph{Lumos} charm, wondering if it was someone he could reveal himself
+to without trouble.
+
+Then the charm came closer, and showed Snape's face, and Harry wove the
+\emph{Extabesco plene} around himself, vanishing from Snape's every
+sense. The only worse person to know about this strange condition he had
+would be Draco.
+
+And Snape wasn't alone, either. Harry blinked as Regulus's voice said
+from behind Snape, ``Severus? Are you sure you only want a sandwich? You
+were brewing in your lab all day, and I hadn't thought you came out for
+lunch or dinner.''
+
+"I'm not hungry, \emph{Mother.}"
+
+Harry's eyebrows climbed. Snape's voice was vicious and mocking, not the
+kind of tone that Harry would have expected him to use to Regulus at
+all. And now he accepted the sandwich that Regulus came up and handed
+him with bad grace, a glare and then a turning away that was obviously
+meant to dismiss Regulus's existence from his mind.
+
+Regulus either didn't mind or had expected this. His voice was warm,
+filled with tolerant humor, as he replied. "You know that I don't love
+you like a mother, Severus. I \emph{especially} don't love you the way
+\emph{your} mother did. So stop with the excuses." He hopped up on the
+table and sat there the way that Harry had often seen Sirius sit on the
+table in the kitchen at Godric's Hollow, swinging his legs as he ate.
+Harry felt a sting at his eyes, and quickly glanced away.
+
+He heard Snape's voice when he replied, though, his voice bleeding out
+as though a chunk of broken glass had stuck in his throat. ``When will
+you believe, Regulus, that your love for me is impossible?''
+
+``When I stop feeling it,'' Regulus answered through a mouthful of
+crumbs. Harry heard him licking his fingers, and could just imagine the
+sneer on Snape's face. ``Until then, eat up, dear.''
+
+Snape snarled. ``I find that I am not hungry after all,'' he announced.
+Harry glanced back to see him walking towards the door of the kitchen.
+
+Regulus waved his wand lazily, and a shimmering barrier sprang up in
+front of Snape, stopping him. Snape folded his arms. Harry wondered if
+he was the only one who saw his fingers writhe into the cloth along his
+limbs, as if he were cold, and clutch so hard that the knuckles turned
+white and the fabric tore. His voice still had the sound of hatred when
+he replied, though, which Harry supposed was a successful attempt at
+self-control---better than spinning around and hexing Regulus, at any
+rate.
+
+``I will thank you to let me go.''
+
+``No, you won't,'' said Regulus, still around the mouthful of his
+sandwich. ``You've never thanked anyone for anything much, even when it
+saved your life or your sanity.'' He leaned forward, and Harry saw his
+eyes shining with a clear, determined light. He was not near to tears,
+though with the words he spoke next, Harry would not have blamed him if
+he were. ``We mattered to each other as Death Eaters, Severus. We
+experienced far darker things then than we have in this war. Why won't
+you admit that we mean at least as much to each other now as we did
+then?''
+
+"Now is \emph{not} then," said Snape. Harry shook his head and started
+to move away from the door. It didn't seem as though they would be
+leaving the kitchen soon, which he had hoped would happen, and so he
+would go out and fling magic at the winds. Perhaps it would help. At any
+rate, he shouldn't be overhearing this conversation.
+
+``Of course it's not,'' said Regulus cheerfully. ``Now we know each
+other much better, and we're old enough not to make stupid decisions,
+and we don't live under the domination of a murderous madman.''
+
+"Are you \emph{quite} sure that we both have made good decisions?"
+
+"Well, I know \emph{you} haven't, very often, so I'm offering you a
+chance to do so."
+
+Harry slipped outside Silver-Mirror at last, and shut the door behind
+him as quietly as he could. The \emph{Extabesco plene} prevented anyone
+from sensing him, but he could still create noise if he disturbed an
+object too loudly.
+
+It was snowing, a punishing, driving storm that rode winds which seemed
+determined to knock Harry down. He cast a low-level Warming Charm,
+because he hoped that forcing his magic to fight the cold on a more
+elemental level might use some of it up, and raised his hands.
+
+The wind dived and curtsied around him when it felt his power, dividing
+like skirts and then swinging back again. Harry felt himself relax,
+mostly because some of the energy had drained out of his muscles and
+into the air. He would never have Kanerva's ease around the sky---that
+had come from a study of it that had lasted longer than Harry had been
+alive---but the air absorbed each blow he could offer it and created
+enough interesting pattern-effects that his magic's attention drifted to
+it and stayed there.
+
+Harry played until a shimmer in the snow caught his attention. He
+paused, and dropped his concealment. If this was a trick or trap or spy
+of Voldemort's, it was possible that it might flee when it saw him. If
+it was a messenger from his allies, a lost owl perhaps, it deserved to
+find its way to him.
+
+The shimmer didn't move when he appeared, though. Harry moved forward
+and crouched over it. When he bushed away the snow from it, a layer of
+warm magic protecting his hands from both the cold and any defensive
+weapons the object might offer, he saw more silver.
+
+And more, until Harry realized that he knew the color, so much like a
+mixture between silver and mother-of-pearl.
+
+With a cry, he washed more of the snow away, at the same moment as
+warmth struck through his hands and lit a coal at each fingertip.
+Argutus's curled body didn't move at first, but then shifted a bit
+closer to the warmth. Harry picked him up gently, though he staggered as
+he did so. He could wear Argutus when the snake did his own coiling
+around Harry's body, but he had forgotten how big he was, more than six
+feet long now.
+
+``How did you get here?'' he whispered, and cradled him closer to his
+chest. He had assumed Argutus dead in the fall of Hogwarts when Snape
+came back and reported that nothing lived under the stones. He had
+wanted to mourn, but there had been only small and scattered moments
+here and there when he could have done so. And if he began serious
+mourning, he wouldn't end it in time for the next crisis.
+
+That Argutus could have lived, and then crawled all the way across
+Britain to Silver-Mirror, and then survived the intense cold of the
+winter nights, was too incredible to believe.
+
+Yet somehow he had done it, and he stirred now and lifted his head
+sluggishly to regard Harry, and hissed in weak Parseltongue, "\emph{I
+knew---I knew that you were here. My scales---showed me the vision of
+it. I followed the vision, and I used my magic to live as much as I
+could. The vision---the magic of the vision heated me and filled my
+scales with warmth and light as it happened. But then the images stopped
+when I reached Silver-Mirror, and I could not move any longer."} He
+dropped his head abruptly to Harry's shoulder, and gave a little shiver,
+and Harry guessed that he had gone unconscious.
+
+His entire body blazing with heat now, Harry looped the enormous tail
+around his shoulder and neck like a rope, and strode towards the door of
+Silver-Mirror. His magic danced helpfully around him now, intent on
+pumping life and sunlight into Argutus. He should not have come so far,
+and so bravely, only to die when he was literally on the doorstep of
+salvation.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Argutus was going to live.
+
+That was the first thing Harry had understood for a few hours now, as he
+held Argutus on the kitchen table and warm him and then retracted the
+warmth, again and again, trying to drive the deadly torpor out of the
+Omen snake's body and not overheat him. A small temperature variation
+could kill a snake. And Argutus had been lying in the snow Merlin knew
+how long, and had slithered miles in cold before that, sustained only by
+his magic. From what Harry could understand of his hisses, sometimes
+sleepy and sometimes agitated, Argutus had very nearly depleted his own
+power to reach Silver-Mirror. It wasn't natural to keep a vision shining
+for that long. And that meant he could have drawn on energy he badly
+needed to survive.
+
+But now it was two hours later, and Argutus was lively and excitable and
+eating a chicken that Harry had asked for and received. He would find
+out later where it came from, and make some recompense to the owners.
+Argutus swallowed the mangled body in one gulp, and went back to talking
+without seeming to notice the weight of his swollen neck as it draped
+across the table.
+
+"---\emph{tried to follow you, but you'd gone into the tunnels by then,
+and you didn't pause to wait for me.}" He lifted his head and flicked
+his tongue against Harry's cheek.
+
+``I'm sorry about that,'' Harry whispered, and smoothed one hand down
+his back. The scales glimmered, but they were duller than usual, which
+made it sheer chance and good luck---and probably the fault of the
+nearly full moon---that Harry had seen him shining in the snow. Harry
+suspected it would be a long time before they shone like illuminated
+milk again.
+
+"\emph{You had other things to think about, but it would have been nice
+to come back for me.}" Argutus flicked his tail. "\emph{Now, stones
+shook and fell, and much dirt shook down on top of me, but was I one to
+complain? Not me! I burrowed deeper, and slid along in the dirt with
+only my head above it.}"
+
+Harry frowned, and then felt a hand clasp his shoulder. He reached back
+and squeezed Draco's wrist without taking his eyes from Argutus. ``How
+could you do that? I didn't know it was an ability of Omen snakes.''
+
+Argutus gave him a lofty look. "\emph{Not the lazy ones who slither
+around in the woods and only ever think about mating and food, food and
+mating, all the year long. I learned from the runes that Draco did. The
+rune circles he made?"} he added, when Harry just stared at him blankly.
+"\emph{He always made one of them wrong for the effect he wanted. But he
+could not have known that the rune would be useful when a snake danced
+it, forming it with his body. Or at least me. I am the cleverest snake I
+know, after all, and the most magical.}"
+
+Harry reached out a hand to slowly stroke Argutus's spine, his fingers
+shaking slightly. The Ministry had put few restrictions on the sale and
+breeding of Omen snakes, since they weren't poisonous and were
+considered ``Light'' creatures. They would surely have tightened down
+those laws if they had known the snakes were actually capable of
+learning magic.
+
+``That's wonderful, Argutus,'' he whispered. "You \emph{are} a clever
+snake. I've never known one like you."
+
+Argutus flicked his tongue out and wriggled his body at the same time,
+which showed he was intensely happy. "\emph{So I hid in the dirt until
+the tunnels stopped shaking, and then I left the tunnels. But the cold
+slowed me down, and I had to sleep for a while. In the meantime, it
+seems that someone---}" he tilted his head to look at Snape with a
+superior flick that made the chicken bob "---\emph{examined the ruins
+and declared that I was dead. And then you left. It wasn't until I woke
+and saw the vision that I knew where I had to go.}
+
+"\emph{And then, what an adventure! I crawled across the whole of
+England---}"
+
+``Not quite,'' Harry managed to murmur. He knew Argutus was clever and
+wonderful, but he didn't want him to get a head as big as his neck.
+
+Argutus gave him a wounded look. "­\emph{Across most of it,}" he said
+huffily. "\emph{And I was chased by dogs, and cats, and I got snowed on,
+and rained on, and I had to catch horrible-tasting things to eat. And
+Muggles hit me with brooms or tried to shoot me with things that went
+past me very fast. Except for one who tried to pick me up with a stick
+and take me somewhere. I don't know what he wanted, but he was an idiot
+if he thought I would coil around the stick. It would have broken under
+my weight, and all the food he had was dead.}"
+
+``You don't mind sausages and cornflakes and other things that aren't
+alive,'' Harry murmured. He didn't try to define what he was feeling as
+he scratched with magically heated fingers in between Argutus's scales.
+All he knew was that he felt better than he had since the fall of
+Hogwarts.
+
+"\emph{They are at least hot.}"
+
+``Not cornflakes.''
+
+"\emph{You must bring down the aftermath of my tale of heroism and
+courage.}" Argutus flicked his tail again. "\emph{All I know is that if
+I were allowed to coil under the Sorting Hat, I deserved to be made a
+Gryffindor. And now I have come back to my human friend who doesn't even
+appreciate me.}"
+
+Harry laughed at that, and bent down to put his face next to Argutus's
+snout. ``I do so appreciate you.''
+
+Apparently, he put enough emotion in the hisses, or used just the right
+wording. Argutus cocked his head for a moment, then said, "\emph{Oh.
+That's all right, then.}" Then he flopped limply across Harry's arm.
+"\emph{Carry me to bed. I'm tired. And don't bring Draco with you if
+you're just going to smell hostile at each other. I need a peaceful
+sleep. Brave adventurers always have a peaceful sleep.}"
+
+Harry carefully arranged Argutus around his neck and shoulders and arms,
+then turned to face Draco. Draco had a complex expression on his face as
+he watched him. Harry knew there were other people in the
+kitchen---Snape and Regulus, for one thing, because Snape seemed to
+relish the opportunity to be in public where Regulus wouldn't talk to
+him, and Regulus had no intention of leaving---and he wished there was
+some way he could speak in Parseltongue and have Draco understand him.
+He didn't wanted to bring up their private difficulties in front of
+everyone.
+
+Then he realized that he might not have to.
+
+``Come with me?'' he murmured, his fingers locking around Draco's wrist.
+He tugged him gently in the direction of the stairs.
+
+Someone whistled. Harry flushed brilliantly, but kept his eyes trained
+on Draco's, wanting to see what he would say. He might be angry about
+what had happened over the past few days, and refuse the invitation. He
+might be angry about Harry going outside Silver-Mirror into the cold and
+the wind alone. He might be angry about any number of things.
+
+At least, though, Draco was interested enough to take his hand and nod.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco knew how silly it was to be jealous of a snake---especially a
+snake that he himself had bought for Harry in the hopes that it would
+cheer him up---but he was. He hadn't been able to get Harry to smile in
+days, and Argutus came crawling in, Merlin knew how, and managed it in a
+few minutes.
+
+But at least Harry seemed willing to talk, and led him straight to their
+bedroom, and warded the door with locking and silencing spells. Then he
+put Argutus gently down on the bed and sat beside him, one hand resting
+on a coil, but his eyes resting on Draco.
+
+Draco stared neutrally back. He wanted to fold his arms, but Harry would
+probably see that as hostile body language and take it badly.
+
+``Listen,'' said Harry, calmly. ``I snapped at you because I was angry
+and restless, and I truly didn't believe there was any danger from
+Minister Gansweider. And, lo and behold, there wasn't.''
+
+Draco blinked. ``That's your version of reconciling?'' he demanded.
+
+``Why, yes.'' Harry raised his eyebrows in an absolutely infuriating
+way. ``Why wouldn't it be? I'm explaining why I was angry at you, why I
+snapped. And I am sorry for it. But I won't fling myself down at your
+feet and beg for forgiveness the way I would have, once. We're past that
+point.''
+
+``I never asked you to grovel,'' Draco argued.
+
+Harry snorted.
+
+"I \emph{never} did." Draco frowned at him. ``I just wanted some
+acknowledgment, sometimes, and for you to admit that you were wrong.''
+
+Harry's eyes had an odd shine to them, one Draco had noticed over the
+past few days. At first he had thought it was repressed tears, but given
+that Harry had seemed enraged then, and was calm now, he'd been forced
+to discard the theory. Harry raised a hand to him now, and closed his
+eyes, and sat in silence. Though he fumed, Draco waited.
+
+``Something odd is happening with my magic,'' Harry said at last,
+opening his eyes again. ``I'm constantly restless, and I want to---to do
+something, to attack something. Using it helps, but of course I can't
+use it continuously, and that means it builds up again. The day I got
+angry at you, I almost attacked you with my magic.''
+
+``And you didn't think to mention this?'' Draco drawled.
+
+``Oh, yes, because you've always told me why you were angry with me
+immediately, and explained yourself reasonably,'' Harry snapped back.
+``The problem is, Draco, I have no idea what's happening. No idea at
+all. I've swallowed magic before. I shouldn't be experiencing these same
+symptoms now when I never did before. And I shouldn't still feel---well,
+still feel like I want to join the wild Dark.''
+
+"You could have \emph{asked} someone," Draco pointed out.
+
+``Who?''
+
+``Jing-Xi---''
+
+He cut himself off at the complicated, bitter expression on Harry's
+face. ``The Pact has forbidden us to communicate,'' said Harry. ``By any
+means---owl, or Floo connection, or message spells. They're afraid that
+she'll offer me some advice she shouldn't. They have people watching to
+make sure we don't try to speak to each other.''
+
+``Someone else must know,'' Draco said. ``You can use the Black library.
+Look it up. Tell someone what's bothering you.'' It frustrated him that,
+even after all this time, Harry's first impulse when something bad
+started happening was to keep silent.
+
+``I would have had to explain what I was looking for,'' Harry said. ``I
+wanted your help, but I was also too angry at you to talk to you about
+it before tonight.''
+
+"\emph{That's} counterproductive to the war effort."
+
+``Yes, so I've seen now.'' Harry glared at him. ``The difference is, I
+did apologize and admit that I was wrong. Are you going to do the same
+now, Draco, or is this doomed to be one-sided?''
+
+Draco sniffed. He still didn't think he'd been in the wrong, and he
+didn't fancy apologizing. But now that he'd brought up the war effort,
+he wasn't that justified in clinging to his anger. He would become the
+one, then, inadvertently sabotaging the war effort by distracting
+Harry's attention and upsetting his emotional balance. So he gave a
+short nod.
+
+``Not everything about this is resolved,'' he said, when Harry closed
+his eyes in relief.
+
+``Of course. I know that.'' Harry gave him a not-quite-smile. ``Now that
+we're, hopefully, more like adults, we know that we can argue and not
+have it destroy us completely.'' He scratched Argutus one more time, and
+then froze, staring at him. Draco leaned forward, wondering if an Omen
+snake could possibly die of cold after a few hours. But Harry seemed to
+be staring at Argutus's scales, and not the snake himself. Leaning
+closer still, Draco saw a glimpse of light and color moving on them.
+
+Argutus gave what sounded like a hiss of pain. Harry hissed back, and
+put his arms around him.
+
+``What is it?'' Draco demanded.
+
+Harry replied in Parseltongue. Draco rolled his eyes, strode forward,
+and grabbed Harry's chin, jerking it up. ``In English, please.''
+
+``Argutus damaged his ability to show visions when he was trying to
+survive the cold,'' Harry replied, sounding bewildered. ``I didn't think
+he could show omens right now at all. And I can't tell what's
+happening.'' He pointed to what looked, to Draco, like a bunch of
+swarming small shapes with two blue-black threads pouring through them.
+``I don't---''
+
+And then he went still, and closed his eyes, and raised a hand to his
+forehead. Draco saw a few drops of blood leaking out of his scar before
+Harry covered it with his hand.
+
+Draco wrenched the hand away. ``I thought Voldemort couldn't attack you
+until the equinox.''
+
+``Not---attack.'' Harry still sounded in pain as he whispered. ``But he
+can open the connection between us and leave it like that. It's not an
+attack. He's---ah---inviting me into his mind---''
+
+Abruptly, Harry's eyes flared open. ``Basilisks,'' he whispered. ``He's
+using basilisks at Cobley-by-the-Sea.''
+
+He tried to jerk away from Draco, but Draco still held him fiercely,
+forcing his voice to be sane and rational. ``Are you sure that's what
+he's doing, Harry? Does he even know where the safehouse is? He---''
+
+``That's where the flesh-eating rain fell,'' Harry said desperately,
+pulling against his hands. ``And he would have known all about the
+location of the Black houses from when the Blacks were loyal to him.
+It's not hard for him to guess that I'd use the Black houses as
+safehouses.''
+
+``We can't go dashing off,'' Draco tried to reason.
+
+"I have to do \emph{something!}"
+
+And a silver mist sprang up from Harry's skin and whirled around him,
+and Draco felt the house start to shake with the force of accumulated
+magic, and suspected that it was not going to be as easy to hold Harry
+back this time.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 74*: The Spiral
+Dance}\label{chapter-74-the-spiral-dance}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Sixty: The Spiral Dance}
+
+Harry had never felt anything like this before. His magic clamped around
+his limbs and clothes like the mouths of a thousand small, eager
+puppies. He tried to stand against the pull, but it spilled him towards
+the door like a stream bearing a pebble. The magic was excited at the
+thought of battle with Voldemort, or at least with the basilisks he'd
+sent. It would chop them into small ruinous pieces, and drain the magic
+that sustained them. It had no responsibility to them in the way that
+Harry had to other magical creatures because he was \emph{vates}. They
+were bred by Voldemort, tools and creations of the enemy.
+
+Harry snapped out of his daze when he heard that. \emph{No}, he thought
+firmly. \emph{Just because they were made to be one way doesn't mean
+that I have the right to hurt and kill them.}
+
+His magic wasn't listening. The walls whirled apart. Harry didn't know
+if that were really happening in the wake of magic like a wind or if he
+simply saw it that way from the amount of motion he'd been forced into.
+He \emph{did} know that he didn't have nearly as much control as he
+wanted.
+
+Around and around and around and around; higher and higher and higher
+and higher. Harry couldn't catch his breath, and the cold invaded his
+lungs and scarred them, though not as much as the laughter of his magic
+seemed set to scar his brain.
+
+Was this what it was like to be a Dark Lord? Half out of control
+\emph{all the time}, listening to one's magic howling its eagerness to
+tear the world apart? Of course, Voldemort's magic seemed to obey him
+better than this, but Harry had to wonder if that came from the
+viciousness of Voldemort's personality. He and his power acted in
+concert, so there was no need for his magic to struggle against him.
+
+Harry would have been better able to fight the pull if he didn't think
+it so tempting. The air above him bulged and swayed, and he could hear
+the music of the Light and Dark running beyond it, sounds like streams
+of hoofbeats from galloping golden and dark green horses. He could join
+them, and no one would blame him, not when they saw the way his magic
+was reacting. Didn't he want to join them, to Declare and resign control
+of his life to a greater force?
+
+\emph{No.}
+
+The magic paused around him as if surprised by his answer, and Harry
+seized control of himself again with a gasping lunge. Suddenly he hung
+suspended in midair because he wanted to, and the magic bucked and
+danced beneath him like a wild horse barely bridled, but still with the
+bit in its mouth and the reins around its ears.
+
+Harry clutched at the reins, suspecting he wouldn't get a second chance
+to take them back if the magic broke free this time. And he knew he
+couldn't go back or down, not right now. The magic was set on going to
+the safehouse at Cobley-by-the-Sea, and so they were going there.
+
+But what they did when they got there---
+
+Well, that might be more on Harry's terms than the magic's own.
+
+The force beneath him shifted and tried slyly to buck him off. Harry
+gripped the reins tighter, and turned grimly towards the Cornwall coast.
+
+He understood that, when they arrived, he would have to find some way to
+use his magic. What that would be, he didn't know yet.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Argutus lashed all over the bed, hissing words that were
+incomprehensible to Draco. He was more concerned with the fact that
+Harry had risen, hung for a moment in a gap between roof and sky filled
+with blinding, swirling silver light, and then simply vanished. He
+shivered and ran his hands up and down his arms, then snapped out of the
+trance and turned towards the door of their bedroom, flicking his wand
+to remove the spells locking it. He needed to tell Snape that Harry had
+gone.
+
+Snape burst in the moment the door was opened, though, so Draco supposed
+he already knew. ``Where is he?'' he demanded, spittle flying from his
+lips.
+
+Draco pointed towards the shadows dancing in Argutus's scales. ``He said
+that the vision in his snake's skin showed an attack on the safehouse at
+Cobley-by-the-Sea,'' he said. ``Voldemort. With basilisks. And his magic
+has been acting up, trying to resist his control. I think it's carried
+him there, and he'll probably need to fight the basilisks and Voldemort
+to get it back under control again.''
+
+Harry had, for a moment, amid those whirling silver blades of wind and
+light, looked alien, more like a Lord than Draco's partner. Draco hoped
+that he never looked like that again. He liked power, as any
+self-respecting Dark wizard did, and he liked being near Harry's magic,
+but not when it was trying to remove him from the mortal wizarding world
+altogether.
+
+``We must go at once to the safehouse,'' said Snape, without blinking,
+and turned to go down the stairs. Draco followed.
+
+He staggered as a weight took up residence on his shoulders, though.
+Argutus had flung himself at Draco. Draco fell to one knee, and that
+gave the Omen snake time to slither up to his shoulder and wind a coil
+around his neck, so tightly that Draco's lungs labored for a moment in
+instinctive fear.
+
+``He seems intent on going along, sir,'' he said, when he could look up
+and see Snape watching him.
+
+Snape narrowed his eyes. ``As you must,'' he said, and charged down the
+stairs once again. Draco had to use the banister to follow, given the
+way that Argutus's weight unbalanced him. He wondered how Harry bore
+carrying him.
+
+He set his mind on that as a question that he would ask Harry when this
+was all over. He \emph{would} be able to ask it, because they
+\emph{would} both survive this. Draco was determined on that.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry didn't know how to describe the journey he and his magic took
+across Britain to Cobley-by-the-Sea. He could have spoken intelligently
+about the stars they passed, drifting and flickering like meteors, and
+perhaps he could have counted them if he'd dropped the memory into a
+Pensieve. But he couldn't describe, not for certain, the way the sky
+turned black and red like dried magma on a bed of fresh, hot lava and
+then peeled away, revealing more flesh-colored sky beneath it, or the
+way that his horse kicked and stamped and at once tried to buck him off
+and keep him on so that it could be smug about its rider.
+
+He might have passed through the paths of Light and Dark. He didn't
+know. He did know that the wind in his ears, the force that kept his
+heart beating through regions of immense pressure, the cold that bit the
+base of his skull even as his body overheated elsewhere, was all magic.
+
+And when he came out of the magic and had to assert control over it,
+then a battle would begin.
+
+Harry was not at all sure that it was a battle he would win.
+
+The pressure that had built under his skin made perfect sense now,
+perhaps because it wasn't under his skin any more. It stormed around
+him, eagerness to do something and will to do it and longing to change
+the face of the world. Confined in a body whose limbs moved to Harry's
+will instead of its own, of course it had wanted to burst free. And now
+it had, but it still centered on him, and made him the one who would
+drown in its whirlpool, the one who rode its back. If it hurt someone
+else, or escaped from his control altogether and ravaged the country
+like a wild thing, it would be Harry's fault.
+
+Harry took a deep breath, and winced as flying shards of ice stung blood
+out of his mouth. He would have to get used to that, remember it, and
+absorb it. He had absorbed enough other responsibilities, hadn't he? He
+could take on this additional burden.
+
+Except that he didn't want to. The grief and the hopelessness, mingled
+with the fact that he had to be endlessly patient with other grieving,
+hopeless people, had built up to the point where he just wanted it to
+\emph{end}. Not, perhaps, in death. He was amenable to being talked out
+of suicide. But if he could have made someone else into the person
+people trusted to solve their problems, he would have. And flying into
+his magic, escaping into the clouds and the winds and the paths, sounded
+so \emph{good}. He would no longer care about what his magic had done
+when he lost his mind and his conscience and went flying in the midst of
+pure awareness, would he?
+
+He knew that would be evil. He knew it objectively. But it seemed that
+good earned him nothing, either---not an end to the burdens he had to
+carry and the miseries he caused or exacerbated or had to heal, nor a
+glimpse of joy. The joy he had was provisional, in the future. He always
+had to deal with suffering \emph{now}, and most of the people who could
+contribute help were reluctant to do so, still dwelling in the middle of
+principles that didn't want them to help certain wizards or certain
+magical species.
+
+He was just tired of being the one who had to persuade \emph{everyone.}
+
+And he knew that wasn't true, that other people had helped him, and so
+he couldn't even experience frustration and resentment unalloyed. He had
+to remember he was being selfish at the same time, and that bred more
+frustration and resentment, and that added to the magic swirling around
+him. Other people could whinge and be selfish and then get back to the
+business of working with and for others. But a moment of selfishness on
+his part would have consequences too catastrophic for Harry to indulge
+in it.
+
+But it was that very lack of selfishness that made his magic lunge free
+of him and cause more trouble.
+
+Harry saw the whole cycle with clear eyes, now. No matter what he did,
+it led to more wrongness. And an attempt to withdraw his magic from the
+world and end the cycle would lead to more wrongness still.
+
+There was nothing he could do that wasn't morally corrupt. And there
+might be nothing he could do against Voldemort when they arrived at
+Cobley-by-the-Sea and had to fight the basilisks, either.
+
+Harry thought, and thought, and thought. The emotions were pinned under
+glass, now, and he gave more attention to them than to the shifting and
+bucking of his magic. His power was content to wait until they arrived
+at the safehouse, in fact. It would fight him there, in a place where
+the stakes were greater.
+
+So. If helping other people was too unselfish and not helping them was
+too selfish, then he hung between two morally corrupt alternatives, and
+he could not satisfy everyone no matter what he did.
+
+\emph{Very well. Then I can make the choice I want to make, and live
+with the people yelling at me. Just because I anger someone doesn't mean
+I need to mourn it for the rest of my life.}
+
+Harry chose.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco arrived with a stagger at the edge of Cobley-by-the-Sea's wards.
+Regulus had come with them, and in fact had Side-Along Apparated Draco,
+since Argutus's weight made it uncertain that Draco would arrive in one
+piece when Apparating on his own, and the Omen snake refused to be let
+go or left behind. Draco looked up, blinking, and then stared.
+
+Glittering cascades of magic hung around the house, the remains of
+broken wards. The few visible windows were broken. Large holes in the
+earth showed how the basilisks had avoided the wards. Draco grimaced.
+\emph{They dug up from beneath.}
+
+``Where are they?'' he whispered.
+
+``And where's Harry?'' Regulus added, sounding suspicious and relieved
+at the same time, as if he thought that they could do something since
+they'd arrived at the safehouse before Harry had. \emph{Unlikely}, Draco
+thought. Harry had departed in the middle of a blaze of magic, and he
+was the Black legal heir. He had nearly as much power over the houses as
+Regulus did. If he wanted to turn the broken wards against them, Regulus
+would be the only one who could resist.
+
+Draco wouldn't say that he was \emph{afraid} of Harry, exactly, even
+now, but he had seen him rise, and he had felt the magic dancing around
+him, a winter storm with hatred in its teeth. He wouldn't want to face
+him alone, either, or to anger him when he was in this mood.
+
+``We should search inside the house,'' Snape stated, drawing his wand.
+``We can see little from here, as most of Cobley-by-the-Sea is
+underground. The survivors may have fled into some distant corner.''
+
+Draco relaxed at the reminder of how much of the house was buried under
+the cliffs. Then he looked at the two large holes, and thought of
+basilisks traveling through cracks in the stones, and shivered.
+
+Then the night around them turned to obsidian streaked with diamond.
+
+Draco lifted his head. A small shape was visible high overhead, looking
+like a Gloryflower horse, but carved of jet rather than silver, and
+without wings. It whirled twice, and then bore down on the house like a
+diving hawk.
+
+At the same moment, someone moved on the edge of his peripheral vision.
+Draco whirled around, and then stumbled as Argutus suddenly left his
+shoulders in a wave of silver and white, making directly for Indigena
+Yaxley.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Indigena had not known that the basilisks would be so wasteful of their
+prey. From what she knew of the snakes, they slew and then ate, or at
+least circled back on their prey when the killing was done and ate.
+
+But it seemed that her Lord had commanded his pets to simply kill,
+without thought of what came after. They had swarmed up beneath the
+wards, which they broke with rams of their snouts, and collars of magic
+that her Lord had created and bound about their necks. And they crawled
+around the safehouse staring in through the windows, killing or
+petrifying everyone they could, until their victims retreated into the
+cliffs and they had to find some way through the rock.
+
+Indigena's vines had been vital for that, which was one reason that her
+Lord had sent her along. The snakes might be powerful, but even they
+would find it difficult to burrow through solid rock, unless something
+went along in front of them and broke up the stone. So her plants dived,
+and found small cracks, and widened them into larger cracks, and then
+the wham of the basilisks' noses and tails made them into holes that,
+hopefully, would take them into the heart of the cliffs.
+
+Indigena had known that Harry would arrive soon, since her Lord had
+crafted this attack to draw him. She had even though that other people
+might come along with him. But she hadn't expected to be attacked by an
+Omen snake.
+
+She jumped away, first, but found that the damn snake was too quick,
+lunging after her and wrapping itself around her body. Then the muscles
+clamped down and began to squeeze, which made Indigena lose her breath.
+A moment later, she was annoyed. Thanks to the springy plants under the
+surface of her skin, even a serpent as powerful as an Omen snake
+couldn't simply bear down and break her, but it was uncomfortable, and
+some of the more delicate leaves would probably crumple and cast odd
+shadows.
+
+She tried to take the thorns out of the sheaths on her back, only to
+find that the Omen snake had already bound them. The moment the sheaths
+grew thicker in one place, in fact, prefatory to the thorns bursting
+out, the snake's coils tightened exactly \emph{there}, and Indigena
+heard her bones creak in warning.
+
+She moved her left hand. If possible, she would sting him through the
+scales with her thorny rose. The scales themselves were much less thick
+than the wrinkled blue-purple hide that covered the basilisks, smooth
+and soft and nearly opalescent. She should be able to cut them apart or
+slide beneath one.
+
+And then a silvery shape took form around her, and attracted still more
+of her attention away from either Harry soaring through the sky or the
+snakes tunneling through the earth.
+
+The shade of Aurora Whitestag wrapped around her hand and held it still,
+her face shut and obstinate. Indigena tried to pull away; the ghost's
+chill was making her skin tingle and then shut down with frostbite, the
+cold heavy as sleep. But Aurora wouldn't let go, and the snake was
+clamping down, now, with terrible relentlessness. Indigena found it
+increasingly hard to breathe.
+
+She closed her eyes, sank her toes into the earth, and sent her roots
+worming down. Stone listened to her less than soil and the green
+tendrils of her darlings did, but it was still more her weapon than it
+would be the natural habitat of a ghost or a snake.
+
+A moment later, she dropped straight down a tunnel that opened beneath
+her, and then wrapped the stone more and more tightly around her. The
+Omen snake would have to let go soon, or be crushed between her skin and
+the rock.
+
+To Indigena's dismay, the change in scenery didn't seem to have
+discouraged Aurora, who projected from the tunnel wall like some strange
+gargoyle and went right on squeezing her wrist.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry knew what he needed to do. His senses warned him of Draco and
+Snape and Regulus nearby, and even a presence that felt like Argutus,
+but he had made the decision to be unselfish. That meant that he needed
+to focus on the people most in danger right now, and that meant the men
+and women darting through the safehouse in search of refuge from the
+basilisks.
+
+The black horse dissolved beneath him. He dropped straight through a
+roaring gulf of wind, which still turned red and black and peeled away
+on either side of him, burning flakes that drifted past his shoulders
+and set his hair on fire. Ice answered from within his body, and clouds
+of steam rose around him. Harry wondered idly if anyone could see him
+from the ground below.
+
+He sent a cord of magic out before him, binding the roof of
+Cobley-by-the-Sea and ordering it to turn from solid stone that would
+break his plunge by killing him into a kind of syrupy mixture that would
+do credit to pancake batter. A moment later, he floated waist-deep in
+it, and then he took a deep breath and sank down through it, his magic
+dancing around him, changing the mixture moment by moment back into
+stone, so that it wouldn't destroy the integrity of the house.
+
+Harry smiled a bit. He had counted on the need to perform multiple tasks
+at once to keep his magic from turning on him, and it seemed that it had
+worked.
+
+But it wouldn't work forever, and that meant he needed to find the
+basilisks. He dropped lightly to his knees on a staircase inside the
+house and began to speak in Parseltongue, calling the basilisks to come
+to him. They were unlikely to obey, of course, since Voldemort and not
+Harry had bred them, but they might come in outrage at being called.
+
+Shadows stirred at the bottom of the staircase, and Harry saw a shine of
+scarlet from the plume and blue-black from the scales just in time to
+shut his eyes. It would probably come around the corner and seek to kill
+him with a gaze, rather than shielding its eyes with false lids.
+
+An outraged hiss came from the foot of the stairs---it was cursing him
+in Parseltongue---and then the steps shook as the immense serpent began
+to ascend them. Harry could feel it coming, could almost hear the poison
+dripping from its fangs, smell its cold dusty breath, and sense its
+eagerness to kill him.
+
+Harry opened his eyes then, but kept his head bowed, so that he wouldn't
+die or freeze. His gaze was focused on the surging coils, relentless as
+the waves of the sea, and he searched for a particular glimmer---
+
+There, like diamond patterns of sunlight on the surface of water, low on
+the basilisk's side. There was the edge of the web that Voldemort had
+woven as extra insurance to keep his serpents bound to him.
+
+Harry grabbed it and ripped it free.
+
+And then the world around him churned and vanished into a cascade of
+fire, with his magic running beside him in the shape of a red horse and
+snorting in startlement. Always before, Harry had been prepared when he
+unwound a web, at least to the point of knowing its general shape and
+what he should do to unbind it. This time, he had no clue, and that
+concentrated the magic's attention wonderfully.
+
+Harry knew he stood a good chance of falling from the high-wire he was
+trying to walk. But the virtue of this complicated dance, where he had
+to split his attention between cutting the web, defending himself from
+the basilisk's physical attacks, and saving the people in the house, was
+that his magic \emph{had} to use itself fully, and couldn't spare time
+for mischievous rebellions.
+
+The red horse running beside him turned its head at that thought, as if
+trying to appreciate his cleverness but not finding the wherewithal to
+do it.
+
+And then a broken world of images grabbed Harry fully.
+
+He ran up a sheer cliff of white light, flowing with silver sparks from
+a waterfall of fire. That was the steepest part of the web, and Harry
+took it apart all around him, destroying the cliff just beneath his
+feet, loosening strand after strand that confined the basilisk's
+intelligence and made him think it imperative to listen to some strange
+little creature with two legs and a heavy accent.
+
+Harry rolled to the side as fangs struck the step where he'd stood. Then
+he jumped, the magic granting his body enough lightness to do so, and
+landed on the ridge of one shifting coil. He ducked his head and closed
+his eyes as the swaying head, fangs bared, deadly gaze open, barely
+passed over him.
+
+The rest of his magic, the part that had been most intent on getting
+free from his control, ran through the halls of Cobley-by-the-Sea and
+gathered up those it could find who weren't lying still or dying
+helplessly from the basilisk's poison. It shoved them into rooms and
+barricaded the doors, and strengthened the floors enough that a snake
+would hurt her snout before she could batter them open, and give it up
+as a bad job. It made itself into the black horse that Harry had ridden
+to Cornwall, and raced off to find the female basilisk.
+
+The waterfall broke, but Harry grabbed hold of a gleaming silver rope
+and swung into a new corner of the web, a clear angle ashine with its
+own stickiness. He cut it apart with the swung of a sword, and the
+ground roared and dropped him into an abyss bright with white dots, like
+a black tablecloth sprinkled with salt.
+
+He grabbed hold hard of one coil, and tucked himself into the folds of
+the king snake's body. Just in time; the basilisk had begun to roll, in
+the same maneuver that had crushed Sylarana to death in the Chamber of
+Secrets. Scales pressed hard on Harry and then released him as he came
+upright again, but he had hidden so close that they had hit the floor
+instead of him. The basilisk realized what he had done and hissed in
+frustration, head turning again, and Harry decided that it was time for
+a different tactic.
+
+It had found her. The magic flirted its tail and then showed its heels
+to the female basilisk as she came after it. She was tired of not eating
+the humans she had killed, and hoped that a meal of horse would make the
+difference for her waning strength.
+
+Harry caught himself in the middle of the abyss, and demanded that there
+be light. A harsh glare around him showed him that he was in the knot in
+the center of the web, a clustered clot of jelly that could not be
+sliced through as he'd cut the other corner. Harry prodded it
+thoughtfully for a moment, and then opened his \emph{absorbere} gift and
+swallowed the knot, foul magic and compulsion and all, in a huge gulp.
+
+Harry closed his eyes to avoid the killing gaze and jumped, pushing hard
+with his feet against the dancing body. He rose, and rose, and rose, and
+luckily the magic was keeping track and didn't carry him past his
+target, the basilisk's snout. He grabbed it, and then turned around, and
+then he was riding in front of the snake's eyes, blinding it with his
+body.
+
+The black horse cantered down a hallway, saw a staircase ahead, and
+\emph{leaped}, helped by a surge of power that meant its host had
+swallowed some new magic. It landed with a skid and a clatter of hooves,
+and then turned another corner. The female basilisk had to take the
+stairs, and showed her displeasure in a series of hisses that made the
+corridor come alive with gravelly echoes.
+
+Harry caught a corner of the black knot as it disintegrated, and swung
+out into light again, a sliding golden world between twin ridges of
+diamond. He would hit something if he kept swinging, so he took his own
+power on trust and plunged once again into freefall. This time, he
+created a series of iron teeth that spread out from him, chewing at both
+gold and white, trying to separate every single strand of the web from
+every other.
+
+Harry felt the jaws opening beneath him, and knew that his dangling legs
+were dangerously close to the great fangs. He forced both strength and
+grace into his muscles and sprang backwards, over the basilisk's head
+and onto its neck, just behind the head. The red plume rose above him
+like a giant fern, and the male basilisk went mad, rubbing himself
+against the walls, trying to get him off.
+
+The horse knew it had almost reached its destination, and thrilled to
+the thought, even as it thrilled to the magic running through it like
+blood. Splitting itself this many ways, doing so many different things
+at once, pushed it to the limit, and that had been all it wanted,
+really---to do great things. Teeth snapped just behind its tail, and it
+squealed and jumped, flinging itself through midair, blurring to a
+shadow as it moved, knowing exactly where it was going.
+
+Harry knew the web had mostly broken, but one piece of it still
+remained: the knot that held the basilisk most in thrall to Voldemort,
+the one that made it recognize him as parent. Harry hovered in front of
+it, this dense black ball with all the weight of lead, and waited.
+
+He rolled upside down now, so that he was clutching the underside of the
+basilisk's throat. Drops of poison scattered past him, and the king
+serpent opened and closed his mouth again and again. Then he turned his
+head, alerted by the vibrations in the stones of the approach of his
+mate.
+
+The black horse passed out of existence, and slammed back into its host,
+giving him a jolt of strength.
+
+Harry struck with all his power and annihilated the knot in the
+basilisk's mind that made it think Voldemort was its master,
+disintegrating the web. He rode the falling pieces back into his own
+consciousness.
+
+Harry twisted out of the way just as the basilisk gave a confused little
+hiss, free and not knowing what to do with it. Then, eyes still closed,
+he flung himself at the female basilisk, all three parts united now, and
+ate her web, ripping it free from her body and mind in one complicated
+maneuver.
+
+The magic strained wildly to take in the new food and keep from being
+killed by the golden eyes of the monster it faced and keep its master
+upright. And then he slid down the female's neck to the ground, and the
+magic flipped itself exultantly through Harry. It was content to be
+under control, as long as Harry would keep doing things like this to
+keep it occupied.
+
+Harry turned and faced the confused basilisks, who had their necks
+entwined and were swaying back and forth as they tried to figure out
+what to do. He hissed soothingly in Parseltongue, ``I know something you
+can do.''
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Indigena hated intelligent snakes. She hated the way that a basilisk
+could make her feel like prey with a look, and she hated the way that
+this Omen snake managed to unbind himself and drop to the bottom of the
+tunnel the moment that she began to truly crush him.
+
+Indigena tried to close the tunnel beneath her, then, and trap and crush
+him there, but he still didn't give her the chance. Instead, he swarmed
+up and past her face, using her head as a stepping stone out of the
+earth.
+
+She swore, and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them,
+Aurora still projected from the side of the tunnel, but had let go of
+her hand.
+
+``What's the matter?'' Indigena asked her, because she was tired of
+\emph{so much}. ``Changed your mind about killing me?''
+
+Aurora cocked her head. ``You still place too much importance on
+yourself,'' she answered. ``I died thinking of ways to stop you. I
+didn't die thinking of ways that I could kill you.''
+
+And she faded into the rock, which left Indigena to climb out of it on
+her own.
+
+When she reached the ground, she found three wands leveled at her, and
+no sign of the immense storm that her Lord had said would signal Harry
+losing control of his magic. She sighed. Another plan gone wrong.
+
+She saw the traitor Snape's wand rising higher, and the dark look in his
+eyes. He wouldn't care about Harry's morals, but kill her out of hand.
+In a way, Indigena approved. It was the only way to get rid of those who
+had chosen to commit their lives to a mortal enemy.
+
+But she couldn't have that, so she opened flowers along her skin and
+breathed out a drifting cloud of perfume. For one moment, her enemies'
+faces went slack, and their wands trembled and tumbled down.
+
+Indigena seized the moment to Apparate. Let no one accuse her of wasting
+time, at least when she wasn't trying to hold back from torturing
+someone.
+
+She arrived at the burrow prepared to tell her Lord that his plan had
+failed---she would have remained where she was and sent a message
+through the Dark Mark if it had succeeded---only to find that he already
+knew. From his raging, Indigena managed to pick out that he had lost
+control of his basilisks, and Harry had exercised his magic unbinding
+the webs.
+
+Indigena took a seat in a corner, and nursed her aches and bruises, and
+wondered if her death was near.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry sighed as he watched the basilisks swim away. With a little
+persuasion, he had managed to make them understand that they couldn't
+stay in England; people would hunt them. And their gazes would only
+cause them trouble, because they would likewise be hunted, and cause
+deaths that would bring magical creatures as well as people down on
+them. So they'd agreed, at least, to let him transform their eyes into
+less deadly objects. They could still petrify, but not do murder, with
+them.
+
+Harry had advised them to find an uninhabited island where they could
+hunt and live alone, so that they wouldn't have to contend with wizards
+trying to kill them for scales or ordinary Muggles shooting them from
+fear. They had agreed with only a few weak arguments about being free to
+hunt wherever they wanted. They knew, because Harry had told them so,
+that they might be the only living basilisks in the world right now, and
+that, for various reasons, not least because his allies would never
+tolerate it, they couldn't stay with him.
+
+So they slid into the sea off the cliffs, long bodies ducking easily in
+and out of the brine, their hisses filtering up to him in a crooning
+song of celebration and mourning. Harry watched them until he saw their
+scales become indistinguishable from flakes of foam on the waves, and
+then turned away with a sigh.
+
+Draco, Regulus, and Snape were pounding around the side of the house.
+Snape and Regulus paused when they saw him, but Draco kept coming, and
+so did Argutus, who'd flowed around the corner just behind them. Harry
+accepted the hug around his middle from arms and then around his legs
+from an Omen snake who seemed determined to make him fall over
+altogether.
+
+``I hate that you did that,'' Draco whispered into his ear.
+
+Harry rolled his eyes. \emph{I suppose an ``I'm so glad you're all
+right'' is too much work for him.}
+
+But he managed to say simply, ``I know you did,'' and then dip a
+shoulder to accept Argutus's weight as he climbed his body. ``My magic
+is back under control now,'' he added.
+
+Draco pulled back, blinking at him. ``How did you do that? From what I
+saw when you were rising, I would have said no one could control it.''
+
+``I broke the webs on the basilisks.''
+
+Now Draco paled. ``And let them go free to---''
+
+``I told them to swim the sea and find an island,'' Harry pointed out.
+``After I changed their eyes so that they couldn't kill anyone with a
+look anymore. And the work of breaking the webs at the same time as I
+preserved the lives of the people still alive in Cobley-by-the-Sea was
+what my magic needed to calm down. Now it thinks I'll offer it plenty of
+excitement, so it'll stay with me.'' He smiled a bit. "I think Voldemort
+was counting on me to either Declare or self-destruct. He didn't count
+on the fact that the magic of a \emph{vates} might well find the work of
+unbinding webs to be the most exhilarating of all."
+
+"I was \emph{worried} about you," Draco said.
+
+Harry sighed. \emph{I wanted to ignore it, but if I don't stop it, it'll
+go on and on.}
+
+``Draco,'' he said, taking him by the shoulders and staring into his
+eyes. "I know that. I \emph{understand} that. I know you hate it when I
+fly away without telling you about it or taking you along. But the
+simple fact of the matter is that my magic wasn't about to take no for
+an answer, and trying to take you along would have destroyed you. My
+magic sometimes leads me where you can't follow. My not discussing
+everything with you for six hours beforehand is not a deliberate fault,
+it's just what has to happen. I love you, but that doesn't mean I'll
+always stay out of danger. \emph{Please} stop scolding me and acting as
+if every time I go alone, it's a deliberate snub to you and proof that I
+don't care about you."
+
+Draco just stared at him.
+
+Harry shrugged. He'd \emph{known} that at least one person would react
+like this. No matter what he did, he was too selfish/too unselfish. And
+that had been part of what was bearing him down, the horrible, crushing
+weight of trying to find some way to act which would respect everyone
+and injure no one, and the impossibility of finding it. Someone was
+always upset with him no matter what happened.
+
+So he had chosen to act as unselfishly as possible, in the way that
+would let him win this war, and if Draco blamed him for it in the
+meantime, then Harry would live with that blame. He would have to. He
+couldn't act as he had been, out of control and worrying more about what
+people would say if they found out than getting hold of his magic.
+
+He turned to Snape and Regulus, who had watched the scene in silence,
+and said, ``I think it's time that we discuss going after the third
+Horcrux.''
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 75*: The New
+Ministry}\label{chapter-75-the-new-ministry}
+
+\textbf{Warning: Mild slash at the end of the third scene.}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Sixty-One: The New Ministry}
+
+Connor took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He was all over sweat,
+his hands clenched in front of him and his arms aching from the way that
+he gripped his knees, but he didn't care. He'd been in his room for
+hours, practicing and struggling with the magic that wanted to force him
+away from his goal. But he wouldn't give up. Not now. He was going to
+make it all the way through, and then he was going to be \emph{useful}
+to Harry.
+
+He forced himself forward.
+
+It hurt. He could feel the drag on his muscles, the sheer and stubborn
+clutch of cloth and flesh, and the burning as he held his breath and
+strained for the goal. But he didn't care. He'd done harder things than
+this. He'd brought Harry back the night that Voldemort tried to enchant
+him. He'd won Quidditch games when the opposing Seeker was excellent;
+playing Cho Chang had been no mean feat when the Gryffindor team was
+exhausted from practice and Cho had a broom that was newer than his.
+He'd gone into his parents' trial and told everyone that Harry was the
+Boy-Who-Lived, even though he knew what that would mean.
+
+He strained, and strained, and when he felt his feet slipping backwards
+as if on a smooth marble floor, he dug them in and lunged forward.
+
+And then he reached it.
+
+It was like nothing he'd imagined, a freefall into enormous pain. Connor
+gasped and shielded his face with an arm, despite the fact that there
+was no one around who could have seen him. And then his arm fell away
+from his face as if it wasn't meant to bend that way and hit the floor
+with a little click, and Connor opened his eyes, and his face was
+different, and the mirror he'd set up across the room in hopes that this
+would happen showed him a wild boar.
+
+Awed, Connor tossed his head, and nearly toppled himself forward; he
+hadn't realized how \emph{heavy} his head would be in this incarnation.
+He wobbled on his legs for a moment, and that steadied him. Then he went
+back to admiring the sharp shine of the tusks as they extended past his
+jaws.
+
+He had known he would be strong. But behind the tusks, feeling the
+weight of them from this side, he had a bone-deep knowledge of how
+deadly they really were. It was no wonder that dying by tusk used to be
+one of the most common deaths for Muggle hunters. A boar could defend
+himself.
+
+His instincts were urging him to charge the mirror, and drive off the
+competitor for his territory. Connor turned away from the mirror so that
+he wouldn't be tempted to do that and get covered with glass shards, and
+then focused on changing back into his human form.
+
+As Harry had said and Peter had promised, this was much easier than the
+other way around. He knew his human body better, and even though he
+grimaced as his bones cracked and his shoulders relaxed from their hunch
+and his tusks sank into his face, he also accelerated through the pain
+like he was on a Firebolt, while the first change had been more like
+riding through it on a Nimbus. And then he knelt on the floor, and
+panted, and sweated, and \emph{exulted.}
+
+Now, at least, he had a skill that no one else in Harry's army did, and
+he could defend Harry in unexpected ways if someone showed up to capture
+him. He stretched his arms over his head, and reached for the cloth that
+he'd put nearby, like the mirror, to clean himself off once he was done
+with the transformation. He had been sure that he would achieve it
+today, though Peter had cautioned him to wait for some time, warning him
+that he didn't want to attempt it two days in a row.
+
+But Connor could do what other people thought he ought not to be able to
+do, and that meant that he'd done it \emph{now}.
+
+He wondered when, exactly, he should change into his new form and chase
+Parvati up and down the hall.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco didn't understand.
+
+After the mess at Cobley-by-the-Sea, Harry seemed both more relaxed and
+more intolerant than before. He brought out maps of Thornhall, which
+Lazuli Yaxley had given him, and laid them flat on a table in one of the
+Black studies while he spoke about Indigena's garden and how they would
+go after the Horcrux hidden there. He had either managed not to think of
+what the end of a Horcrux hunt would inevitably mean, or he was ignoring
+it like a pro. He laughed when Peter suggested that he, Snape, and
+Regulus go alone, but had to admit that he wouldn't be able to enter the
+garden himself, as he didn't have a Dark Mark. They consulted with
+Hawthorn, too, since, if worst came to worst, she would be able to enter
+the garden as well, and she knew more about plants than the rest of them
+did.
+
+Draco could see from the light in multiple eyes that the former Death
+Eaters were already considering which one of them should be the
+sacrifice.
+
+With him, though, Harry blew hot and cold. He was happy to talk to Draco
+about almost anything other than the danger he was in. If Draco once
+began to express himself on how he felt about that, Harry Apparated
+away. It was an effective way to prevent an argument, but it was driving
+Draco slowly and steadily mad.
+
+Today they were in front of the maps of Thornhall again, with Hawthorn
+diagnosing, based on eyewitness reports of what plant stalks grew above
+the wall, which traps were probably where. Harry sat at the head of the
+table, listening with an intense, thoughtful expression on his face.
+Connor was beside him, face flushed with the triumph of finally
+achieving his Animagus transformation, and Draco thought he paid more
+attention to that than the strategy they were discussing. Thomas sat
+next to Connor, his nose buried in a book about cures for plant poisons,
+and Peter stood beside him, eyes half-closed and face carefully blank.
+Snape and Regulus were on the other side of the table. Even as Draco
+watched, Regulus reached out an arm as if he would drape it over Snape's
+shoulders, and Snape shifted carefully away.
+
+And there was Draco, sitting beside Harry, but being ignored as
+thoroughly as if he were another chair.
+
+``There's no way to be sure which ones are in the middle,'' Hawthorn
+said with a small sigh, sitting back and shaking her head. "And, as you
+know, the artifacts that the Stone brought to us didn't include a
+Time-Turner, so there's no way that we can go back in time to the moment
+before Indigena cast the spell. What we \emph{can} do is bring artifacts
+that will slow the passage of time if one of the plants stings or stabs
+us, and give the victim extra moments to recover." She nodded to Harry.
+``It's seeming more and more as if the best solution is for you to stand
+just outside the garden, prepared to call the shade of Tom Riddle to you
+when he bursts free, but not entering it.''
+
+Harry murmured something. Draco thought it had rhymes in it, but he
+couldn't make it out. Of course, at this point in his relationship to
+Harry, he had grown used to not understanding things, though he hated
+it.
+
+``What was that?'' Hawthorn asked.
+
+``Nothing,'' Harry said, with a shake of his head, and bent over the map
+of Thornhall again.
+
+A brief, annoyed look covered Hawthorn's face, which was only slightly
+less intimidating now that her eyes weren't amber. Draco took a kind of
+cold comfort in the fact that he wasn't the only one feeling left out.
+
+``When do we begin this attack?'' Peter asked. Draco glanced at him. He
+was rocking on his heels, face shuttered, but his hands wrapping around
+each other, fingers tapping against the heels of his palms over and over
+again. \emph{Does Harry know that he's planning on being the sacrifice?}
+
+``We need a day before the spring equinox.'' Harry rubbed a hand down
+the side of his face, eyes intent. ``But other than that, any day will
+do.'' He looked up and met Peter's eyes, and Draco revised his opinion
+of Harry's intelligence upwards again. It seemed that Harry \emph{did}
+know Peter was thinking about making himself the sacrifice, but the look
+in his eyes---Draco had lost his ability to read the emotions there, if
+he'd ever had it. The way that Harry looked at people who might give up
+their lives for him had always been too complicated for an easy
+resolution.
+
+``Hmmm,'' said Peter, and fell silent.
+
+Harry sighed and sat back. ``Of course, if we can find out more about
+the garden, and research the cures to the most likely poisons, we'll be
+better off waiting.'' He nodded to Thomas, who didn't seem to have
+glanced up from his book once, as if he didn't realize that other people
+were moving around him and talking. ``Lazuli is trying to find records
+of the plants that Indigena bought over the years, seedlings and the
+like. Of course, that won't tell us everything; she used her magic to
+change them and cross them with other species. But I'll have Neville
+look at them. He can tell us things that we can't know, with his genius
+in Herbology.''
+
+``What about Sprout?'' Hawthorn asked. ``Surely she should be here, too,
+adding to our knowledge.''
+
+Harry sighed. ``They finally dug out enough of the stones at Hogwarts.
+She's dead. A tunnel collapsed on her while she was trying to lead
+several children who'd got lost out.''
+
+He said it with some mourning, some sobriety, but not the deep grief
+that Draco had heard him expressing just a short time ago. It seemed
+that Harry really had adapted, woken up from the depression consuming
+him, and shaken himself into a new kind of existence.
+
+\emph{If only that didn't involve cutting me out of his life,} Draco
+thought, unable to keep the resentment from his mind, or, it seemed, his
+face, because Harry turned abruptly in just that moment and met his
+eyes.
+
+Draco glanced away, sullenly, but he had the feeling that Harry had
+already seen far too much.
+
+``We'll work on learning the garden,'' Harry announced, and reached out
+to grasp Draco's hand under the table. Draco nearly wrenched it free in
+sheer surprise, but Harry held it firmly, even entwining their fingers.
+"If we can have another week, or another two weeks, I don't mind that.
+I'd much rather that we \emph{know} the garden before we enter it,
+especially as I can only send my magic over the walls."
+
+``How is your magic, by the way?'' Regulus asked, leaning around Snape
+to stare hard at Harry. ``Exercised, since that night at
+Cobley-by-the-Sea?''
+
+Harry smiled. Draco hated that smile. It was confident and powerful,
+which was a good thing, but it was also---it was also a smile that
+didn't include him, because he didn't know how Harry had come to the
+conclusions that allowed him to radiate that confidence and power.
+
+``We're going to be raising a new Ministry,'' he reminded Regulus
+gently. ``Who do you think will be responsible for lifting the stones
+into their places and making sure they're properly fitted together
+according to the plans? My magic wants big, grand tasks, so I'll make
+sure that it has them.''
+
+Regulus blinked, as though he hadn't been expecting that, though owls
+bearing notices about the new Ministry had been coming and going from
+Harry to his Light allies all week. ``Oh. And you're sure that we should
+raise a new Ministry while Voldemort's still at large?''
+
+Harry nodded. "People need to see the symbol. As long as the new
+government operates exclusively from the Smiths' home, and the Apollonis
+house, and Silver-Mirror, they can think that \emph{we're} the ones in
+charge of it, and no one else. But a Ministry will give them somewhere
+else to concentrate their belief, their hope, and their ire.
+
+``Besides, Voldemort still can't attack me directly until the equinox.
+I'm going to wreathe the new Ministry in wards that mean any magic he
+uses against it will be the same as attacking me directly, since the
+wards are linked to me. Yes, after the equinox it'll be in the same
+danger every other place is, but that's why I hope to destroy the
+Horcruxes before the equinox.''
+
+Regulus nodded, as if that made sense. Draco supposed it did. He was
+simply so resentful that he didn't want Harry explaining sanely like
+that, because---well, why wasn't Harry as disturbed by their loss of
+constant contact and accord as Draco was?
+
+``If that's all?'' Harry glanced around the table with raised eyebrows,
+and received several nods. ``Thank you all for your contributions.'' And
+he stood up, hand still firmly gripped in Draco's, and dragged him
+towards the stairs.
+
+Draco followed. Perhaps it would be Harry's turn to scold and yell and
+fire off accusations, and Draco would be the one who coolly got to walk
+away. He'd like that.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry hadn't meant to let the problem go on this long, really. He
+wouldn't have let it lapse if Draco had showed the signs of learning the
+lessons the way he was supposed to. Harry had thought that spending time
+around Draco except when he was scolding would show Draco just how
+unwelcome the scolding was.
+
+But now it seemed that he was learning resentment of Harry instead, and
+that wasn't something Harry wanted. He wanted them to become a
+functioning team again, partners in every sense of the word. It
+\emph{needed} to happen. It needed to happen because Harry wanted that
+back again, that sense of agreement and mutual dependence with Draco
+that he hadn't felt in nearly a month, and it needed to happen because
+the war effort needed them together, matched, presenting a perfect
+front.
+
+Harry was wise enough not to mention the war effort reason. It wasn't as
+important as the other one, anyway. But the fact remained that it was
+there, part of the equation, and part of the reason that he had been
+trying to agree with Draco when Draco wasn't trying to control his life.
+They \emph{needed} to be together. He \emph{needed} Draco, and there was
+nothing shameful about that need, any more than there was about the need
+to keep breathing.
+
+He sat down on their bed, and reached across to clasp Draco's other
+hand. Draco avoided his gaze, sullenly staring at the corner of the room
+where Argutus had taken to making his pallet instead.
+
+``Well,'' said Harry. ``I suppose I'll have to take up Padma on that
+date she asked me on after all.''
+
+That got Draco's attention, of course, as few other things would have.
+His head snapped around, an ugly expression of jealousy twisting his
+features. ``What?'' he barked.
+
+Harry sighed and lay down, then drew Draco into his arms before he could
+protest. He kissed him, and Draco stiffened for a moment, as if he
+expected that the kiss was more a persuasive technique than something
+Harry was doing because he wanted to.
+
+It was \emph{both}. Harry wondered if he should just explain that in
+plain and simple terms. Draco didn't seem able to understand it
+otherwise.
+
+``I was joking,'' he whispered. ``There's been precious little
+playfulness in our relationship of late, Draco. I'm trying to bring it
+back.''
+
+``Saying that you might accept dates with other people isn't the way to
+do it,'' Draco muttered, and tucked his head under Harry's chin so that
+he couldn't be kissed any more. But he didn't move away, at least, so
+that was something.
+
+Harry continued speaking, quietly and calmly. "I know that you're
+worried for me. I know that you love me. And I love you, in return, and
+I've tried to be patient with the scolding. But I'm at a point in my
+life right now where I \emph{literally} can't take it, Draco. I can't
+bear it, for your sake or my sake or the sake of the war. And I don't
+think I should have to. Maybe someday, when things are calmer, I'll be
+able to listen to you chide me with nothing more than a fond smile on my
+face. But not now, Draco." He paused. ``Do you understand?''
+
+``No,'' Draco whinged. Harry rolled his eyes, but listened. It was what
+he'd come here to do, after all, and have done. ``You can't simply
+charge off into danger, Harry. It's a continuation of bad habits.''
+
+``So is your whinging.''
+
+"I \emph{do not---}" Draco was trying to pull away so that he could look
+Harry in the eye.
+
+``I let you come with me into battle,'' Harry said quietly. ``I did it
+even when the vampire hive queen came to Hogsmeade, and we didn't know
+if it would be safe for you to go. Remember? And I do it without
+whinging and without complaining, Draco. Yes, I worry for you. Yes, I
+take every precaution that I can to keep you safe. And yes, I freeze
+when someone snatches you. But that doesn't mean that I insist you tell
+me your every movement before you leave our rooms, or before we go into
+battle.''
+
+``That's different,'' Draco said.
+
+``Why?''
+
+``I won't charge off recklessly.''
+
+Harry snorted. "But you have plenty of other bad habits, Draco. Why
+should I indulge your bad habits when you make a point not to indulge
+mine? As you said, running off without my head on straight is a habit I
+really need to break. And worrying over me like a mother Augurey with
+one chick is a habit \emph{you} need to get rid of."
+
+"But you \emph{need} me to do that," Draco said, and this time he did
+jerk back so that they were eye-to-eye. ``No one else looks out for you
+the way I do, Harry. And how many times would you have died if not for
+me?''
+
+``Snape looks out for me,'' said Harry comfortably. "And I don't like
+even that, though he's my guardian and my father. Connor looks out for
+me, and I resent that because \emph{I} was trained to protect
+\emph{him}, and I think he has more bravery than sense. Hawthorn does
+what she can to protect me, and has since I started giving her the
+Wolfsbane. Peter, likewise; he broke out of Azkaban and risked having
+his soul eaten to come and warn me about the phoenix web and the extent
+of Dumbledore's duplicity."
+
+``I've still saved your life!''
+
+``And likewise,'' said Harry, his mind going back to their battle at
+Woodhouse their fifth year. ``Remember? Greyback tried to eat you, and I
+stopped him. And then Whitecheek tried to eat me, and you stopped her.
+We're mutually bound to each other, Draco. We owe each other debts. You
+have to stop acting as though you have the right to scold me when you
+won't permit me the same thing; you get sulky and fight back when I get
+upset with you, but you likewise get sulky when I do something like
+Apparate away from you.''
+
+``You should stay here and finish the argument.''
+
+``In what way?'' Harry cocked his head. "With promises not to do it
+anymore? You'll discard those, and for good reason. With explanations?
+You don't believe those. With demonstrations of how I can take care of
+myself? You don't believe \emph{me}."
+
+Draco scowled at him.
+
+"We \emph{both} have the right to be upset," said Harry. ``I don't know
+how else to convey that to you.''
+
+Draco opened his mouth, then shut it and took a deep breath. Noticing
+the spots of color high on his cheeks, Harry was content to wait. It
+sounded as though Draco was about to say something that wasn't easy for
+him, and he had always needed some time and preparation before he did
+that.
+
+``I hate this,'' he said, in a voice low and passionate enough that
+Harry felt his temperature jump. "I just---there's nothing I can
+\emph{do}, Harry. Haven't I changed enough? Isn't there a point at which
+I'm allowed to do as I like, because---because what else can I do or
+be?"
+
+``Changing never stops, Draco,'' Harry said. ``Maybe it could, if there
+was nothing about you that ever hurt you or irritated other people. But
+this irritates me. I can keep leaving during the arguments. I don't like
+to, but I can do it. Or you can change. Or we can work on this
+together.''
+
+Draco blew his breath out again, and considered his words carefully.
+Harry was glad of that. More of the wounds between them had come of
+ill-considered language and snapped insults than anything else.
+
+``I suppose that's true,'' he said at last, with supreme reluctance.
+``But do we have to talk about it right now?''
+
+``You would rather do something else?'' Harry asked, and had to grin as
+Draco abruptly rolled and pushed him flat on his back.
+
+"Yes, \emph{damn it}," Draco snarled. ``I've missed being able to talk
+with you like a normal human being, but I've also missed having sex,
+Harry.'' He bent and pressed his lips against Harry's firmly enough that
+Harry opened his mouth without protest, and he sighed slightly as their
+tongues tangled together.
+
+He enjoyed it, but he could keep his enjoyment of it from taking him
+over and making him desperate for Draco's touch. Maybe that was the
+meaning of what he'd learned after fighting the basilisks. He could work
+to keep things in balance, now, and for him, work still came before
+pleasure.
+
+But pleasure had its place, and so he lay kissing Draco, and willingly
+shed his robe when Draco tugged at it, silently asking him to, and
+gasped when Draco took him in his mouth.
+
+There was---this was far from being a solution to their problems, Harry
+thought, his head thrashing as thoughts and sensations spun through his
+head and danced around each other. But it was a start. And at least
+Draco hadn't exploded into screams, and Harry hadn't felt the need to
+Apparate away before the conversation was finished.
+
+And at least they might be able to work on finding a way forward now---
+
+Draco \emph{sucked} hard, and Harry arched his back with a gasp. He was
+babbling nonsense. He didn't care. It was nonsense that both of them
+needed to hear, right now.
+
+He could do this. He'd learned to stop thinking he couldn't, and that
+might be the most valuable thing in the world right now.
+
+Not the most urgent, though, which was the need to experience more of
+what Draco was doing, and then just a little more, and then a bit more.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+They had talked long and often before they'd chosen the site for the new
+Ministry. In London, near Diagon Alley, would have been ideal, but Harry
+had said time and time again that he didn't fancy showing off any magic
+in front of Muggles, even accidentally, given the oaths that he'd sworn
+to with the International Confederation of Warlocks. So, in the end,
+they had chosen a magically protected valley in Wales, rather like
+Woodhouse, but without magic \emph{quite} as sentient, and which Harry
+had purchased from its owners instead of taking by force of war.
+
+Snape rehearsed the facts over and over again in his mind to keep
+himself from being distracted by Regulus's warm breath on the back of
+his neck. Why the other man insisted on standing right behind him was a
+mystery of the universe that Snape didn't think he was meant to figure
+out.
+
+He watched as Harry nodded to the crowd watching him and strode out to
+the pile of rocks quarried and chosen to form the sides of the new
+Ministry's walls. He'd made a short speech welcoming everyone and
+thanking them for their support of the new Ministry. Snape wondered that
+his son couldn't see the greedy gleams in most of their eyes. They
+didn't care about the ideals that the Ministry supposedly stood for, or
+even the dead people this building would in part be a memorial to. They
+just wanted to have pieces of the power and positions that its rising
+promised.
+
+Harry wanted to form a new world with this Ministry, but Snape didn't
+think he would get one. The people making up that world were the same
+self-centered and selfish wizards and witches as ever, after all.
+
+``Severus,'' Regulus whispered, and Snape had to work hard to suppress
+the urge to shiver.
+
+"\emph{What}?" he said, in a tone so cutting that he hoped Regulus would
+give it up.
+
+``Have you thought about what's going to happen after the war?'' Regulus
+sounded genuinely interested, which Snape thought all the more bizarre
+as Harry began to raise the stones. Why wasn't he paying attention to
+the magic going on in front of them, a feat that none of them had ever
+seen and would probably never see again? ``I can't imagine that you'll
+return to Hogwarts and teach.''
+
+"And why \emph{not}?" Snape sniped. The first rocks were hovering off
+the ground now, swinging about as though clutched by the strands of an
+invisible spiderweb. Snape could, just, feel the immense power of the
+magic that ran through them, to support that much weight, and so
+delicately. ``Do you think I'm that bad at teaching, that whoever the
+new Headmaster was would not rehire me?''
+
+``Severus.'' Regulus was patient, and when would he learn that Snape
+didn't like to be called by his first name? ``You're the Headmaster now.
+You could appoint someone else to teach Potions, and take care of the
+children. But I don't know if that responsibility is really what you
+want.''
+
+``You're right,'' said Snape. The first blocks were swinging into place
+now, settling on each other. Harry left empty spaces in the middle of
+them, delicately arched windows. Should Voldemort attack this Ministry
+in the same way he had attacked the last, he would not be able to block
+all the entrances. The windows would provide quick escapes for those who
+needed them. If Regulus would just leave him alone and let him enjoy
+this sight, Snape thought, everything would be all right. "I want to
+brew potions, and look after Harry. \emph{Alone.}"
+
+``Bah,'' said Regulus comfortably. ``Draco will be there, and Harry's
+brother. And you could use some other company, too.''
+
+Snape held his tongue until the first tunnel of magic sprang into being
+around the window, raising gasps from those who watched. Even Snape, who
+had known this would happen, was faintly impressed. Harry was holding
+all those stones in place still, maneuvering the current ones into
+position, and setting up permanent, elegant defenses at the same time.
+These tunnels would be the means of protecting the escape routes, while
+at the same time providing many-colored slides to the ground. And since
+Harry was weaving them so powerfully of his own magic and his own
+essence, Voldemort couldn't attack them until after the spring equinox.
+
+The final form of the Ministry was truly visible, now that the first
+window and first slide had emerged as a pattern. And now the enchanted
+lines of light that marked the plans for Harry to follow sparked to
+life. The final Ministry would be an enormous tower, Snape thought,
+built of this strong marble veined with blue and delicate shades of
+green. Windows everywhere would let the light in, while curved tunnels
+and staircases embraced the darkness. The symbolism wasn't subtle at
+all, but then, subtlety would have been lost on the imbeciles around
+them.
+
+Snape wondered if it was lost on Regulus.
+
+He hissed, as he strained his eyes to watch the stones high above the
+ground rotating like lazily circling birds, "It would please me if
+\emph{you} left me alone, Regulus, at least."
+
+Regulus's hand came to rest on his shoulder, unexpected and warm and
+making Snape jolt forward.
+
+``You don't believe that,'' Regulus breathed.
+
+``I do,'' Snape said, loudly enough to make the neighbors look over. And
+Regulus \emph{wouldn't take his hand off Snape's shoulder,} damn him.
+
+``Let me talk to you about this for a little while longer,'' Regulus
+proposed, ``and then you'll believe me.''
+
+Snape glanced tiredly back at him, even as another gasp of awe rose up
+from the throats around them. ``When are you going to give it up,
+Regulus? I am not loveable. I am not worth pursuing.''
+
+Regulus dipped his head and gave him a kiss on the back of the neck.
+Snape closed his eyes, and wondered where the dizziness spinning his
+head around had come from.
+
+``Let me change your mind about that,'' Regulus whispered.
+
+And when would Snape find the \emph{heart} to say no, and when would
+Regulus find the \emph{wits} to believe him?
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+It made sense, didn't it? It just made sense.
+
+Peter hadn't been in the habit of hiding from the truth about himself
+since his seventh year at Hogwarts. Sure, he'd been in the habit of
+hiding from the truth about other people, or he would never have spent
+twelve years in Azkaban under the delusion that the people who had sent
+him there cared about him. But himself---himself, he knew, and he knew
+the risks he took and what they would cost him. And he'd always been
+willing to pay the prices.
+
+And now---well, now, he had clearer eyes, and he could see other people.
+
+He saw other people busy, and healthy, and happy. Hawthorn was beginning
+to thrive again now that she was free of the werewolf curse. She
+deserved a life that would be happier than the one she'd had so far.
+
+Lucius had not changed that much after Narcissa died, except in quiet
+ways. He would never give up his life willingly for Harry, Peter knew
+that much. Of course, there was the fact that one could decide to die
+for the Horcrux instead of for the person trying to destroy the Horcrux,
+but Lucius wouldn't do that, either. The man was simply too accustomed
+to thinking in terms of gambits for power, not sacrifices.
+
+Severus and Regulus had each other, now, or would as soon as Regulus
+overcame Severus's stubbornness. Peter knew he could do that. He'd seen
+Regulus do the impossible on a daily basis when they were all Death
+Eaters together, back when the world was even darker than it was now.
+
+Henrietta---well, Peter had found and read one of her letters to Evan
+Rosier once, a mixture of poetry and wooing that would draw that madman
+close if anything could. It was blindingly obvious what Henrietta
+planned to do, especially the way that she sometimes looked at Peter
+with kind, wild eyes, as if she understood. So Peter nodded to her, and
+they saluted each other in odd ways, and left each other alone.
+
+Draco or Connor was capable of dying for Harry, but Harry would break if
+he lost either of them. It could not be allowed to happen.
+
+There were so few other people close to Harry, so few others who could
+be trusted. They would die for the Horcruxes, they would die for Harry,
+but they couldn't be counted on \emph{not to hesitate.} The death they
+pictured was death in battle, where they didn't know it was coming
+beforehand, not this premeditated sacrifice.
+
+All of which made Peter the best choice to destroy Ravenclaw's wand,
+really.
+
+He loved Harry. He had felt sorry enough for him, and determined enough
+to right the wrongs done to both of them, to break out of Azkaban and go
+to him, but it had long since become more than that. Harry was someone
+else who had lived through shadow and out of shadow and into light. He
+had given Peter strength when he needed it, strength for both his own
+life and to handle the challenges that healing and helping Harry flung
+at him. He could do this.
+
+And Peter had no truly close friends, or someone in love with him. He
+was one of Harry's allies, and the former Defense Against the Dark Arts
+professor, and, in some ways, the last of the Marauders. And nothing
+other than that, so he could more easily let go of his grasp of life. It
+was not that \emph{no} one would miss him, but he would cause less of a
+hole by his passing than many others would.
+
+Sometimes, he thought Harry knew what he planned, the way he watched him
+with dark, sober eyes, and was mature enough now not to let the
+knowledge plague him.
+
+Other times, he was sure Harry had no idea, or he would have interfered,
+nosily and messily.
+
+And it \emph{would} be interference. Peter had decided, of his own free
+will, to become the sacrifice, to take his own life, and that fulfilled
+all the requirements for breaking the Unassailable Curse other than the
+actual death itself.
+
+Peter leaned his head back, and breathed.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 76*: Top Heavy}\label{chapter-76-top-heavy}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Sixty-Two: Top-Heavy}
+
+Connor heard a squeal, and charged out of the side-corridor where he'd
+been hiding, head lowered. Parvati uttered another gasp, skittered ahead
+of him, and then began to run. Connor locked his trotters in place
+briefly so that he could stand still and adjust his momentum, and raced
+after her.
+
+His hooves clicked and rustled on the stone in quite a different way, he
+was vaguely aware, than they would if he were running through a forest.
+His tusks occasionally scraped a wall, but Connor was sure that someone,
+Regulus or Harry, could heal the gouges in the stone that they left.
+Gouges in things weren't as important as gouges in people, anyway.
+
+He turned a corner, and found Parvati standing with her wand pointed at
+him. Connor slowed to a stop and snorted menacingly. He realized the
+bristles around his shoulders were standing out like a lion's mane, and
+was delighted. He uttered another snort, and then deliberately reached
+out with a hoof and pawed once, twice, a third time.
+
+Parvati broke and ran again. Connor squealed in turn and lowered his
+head, focusing on her legs. He would see how close he could get before
+care for her forced him to stop and not use his tusks.
+
+As it turned out, he didn't get that close. Parvati had cast a glamour
+over a dip in the floor, a small hole that was meant to provide light
+and air to the room below. Connor's forelegs plunged into it, and the
+weight of his head made him tip further forward. In seconds, he hung
+trapped, kicking and snorting, his hind legs flopping helplessly on the
+floor just above the hole.
+
+Parvati paced back towards him, turning her wand in her fingers, smile
+smug. ``Need some help, Connor?'' she inquired sweetly.
+
+As it turned out, he did. Connor could change back, but he knew his legs
+would slip into the hole if he did so, and he'd probably tumble straight
+through and to the floor below. And he didn't fancy breaking his leg,
+or, for that matter, his back. He gave her a plaintive look.
+
+``Say you're sorry for chasing me.'' Parvati was tapping her wand
+against the heel of her hand now, and trying, very obviously and very
+hard, to keep from smiling.
+
+Connor blinked at him. She was the one who had asked him to chase her!
+
+She shook her head and clucked her tongue when he gave her his
+incredulous look. "No, Connor, not fair. You \emph{scared} me. You say
+sorry politely, or I won't help you now."
+
+Connor cast his eyes down and uttered several soft, wet snorts that he
+hoped conveyed the meaning well enough, since he couldn't use words. He
+felt her hand descend and smooth over his face for a moment, pushing
+aside bristles and short dark fur.
+
+"\emph{Wingardium Leviosa}," said Parvati, and lifted him out of the
+hole, setting him gently on his trotters beyond it. Then she paused and
+eyed him suspiciously, as if realizing that he could chase her again,
+and leap the hole now that he knew it was there. Connor changed back to
+human instead, to show good faith.
+
+Parvati at once came over and hugged him. ``Thank you,'' she whispered
+against his ear. ``It helps me forget my loneliness.''
+
+Connor nodded and smoothed a hand up and down her back. Padma had
+decided to go back to their parents that morning. Connor understood why;
+she'd originally left them for Luna, and now that Luna was dead, she
+didn't feel as if she had to stay merely because of her sister and the
+war. There was nothing that she could contribute specifically to the war
+effort, anyway, while Parvati felt as if she could. Parvati had argued,
+but hadn't been able to hold her sister back.
+
+``As long as I'm here, you'll never be lonely,'' Connor promised, and
+ran his fingers through her hair. She tilted her face back for a kiss,
+and he was more than happy to give it.
+
+But the back of his mind ran along on dissatisfied tracks. Now that he'd
+mastered his Animagus form, he needed something else to do. And
+comforting Parvati, as nice as it was, wasn't enough to take up his day.
+She needed some time by herself, too, after all, so he couldn't be with
+her every single moment.
+
+Owls \emph{had} arrived from the Light members of Harry's new alliance
+and new Ministry, asking to meet the Light wizard closest to Harry. But
+Connor had been reluctant to accept the invitations. He knew so little
+of pureblood politics that he'd probably offend someone accidentally and
+cost them the war. Or he'd make a fool of himself, and that would make
+people think \emph{Harry} could be taken advantage of, if he sent such
+foolish messengers, and that would cause unnecessary conflict and
+friction. But Connor wasn't sure how much he could learn, either. It
+wasn't as though anyone had time to teach him the dances right now.
+
+And then a thought occurred to him, and he smiled.
+
+``What is it?'' Parvati asked curiously, pulling back to stare at him.
+
+``Just an idea I had.'' Connor kissed her cheek. ``I was remembering
+that I have a twin, too, and I haven't asked for anything from him in
+quite a while. I think he can help me be more useful.''
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry gave him a strange look. ``I'm not entirely sure that the
+Switching Potion actually works like that, Connor,'' he said slowly.
+``One can transfer pain, I know, the way that it was once used to
+transfer labor pains when the mother would have been overwhelmed by
+them. And one can transfer emotions, or curses lodged in the flesh, or
+dreams, the way that we did when you took Voldemort's visions for me.
+But knowledge? I don't know if you could learn the pureblood dances that
+way.''
+
+"\emph{Please.}" Connor couldn't believe he didn't see how useful this
+would be. ``It's not as though the knowledge would leave you while you
+educated me. It---''
+
+Harry had raised his eyebrows, which meant he was about to interrupt.
+"Of course it does, Connor. That's why it's called the \emph{Switching}
+Potion. It doesn't leave behind a residue. For the length of time the
+switch lasts, it's supposed to remove the emotions, or pain, or whatever
+they are, entirely from the head and body of one person and put them
+into the head and body of another person. I wouldn't know the pureblood
+dances while you had them."
+
+Connor gnawed his lip. He had to admit he hadn't thought of that. But
+then he perked up. There was an obvious solution, and Harry was a bit
+dim-witted for not seeing it, wasn't he? ``Then just lend the knowledge
+to me for the duration of one meeting with your Light allies,'' he said.
+"You won't need them for just a few hours, would you? You're surrounded
+by people who love you and won't expect you to be on your best behavior.
+But the Light allies will expect that from \emph{me.}"
+
+``I suppose that might work.'' Harry sounded doubtful. ``I'm willing to
+try, at least. But remember, I can't recall reading that the Switching
+Potion was ever used to transfer knowledge.''
+
+Connor beamed. "That's all right. If you try, and it doesn't work, well,
+it doesn't matter. I'll just keep avoiding them. But if we try and it
+\emph{does} work, then I can learn something, and even when the
+knowledge is gone, at least I'll remember what it felt like. Maybe that
+will tell me what books I should study. Just as long as we can work on
+this, Harry?"
+
+He looked, and saw an answering spark in his brother's eyes. For a
+moment, it went out, as though Harry had remembered something, but when
+Connor asked, Harry just shook his head and said, ``Nothing. Thinking,
+that's all.''
+
+That was \emph{such} a lie. But Connor couldn't help people who insisted
+on being liars this way. Harry would have to be the one who came around
+and decided to tell Connor what he was anguished about. ``We need
+hippogriff feathers, don't we?'' he asked. ``And two red stones. One of
+them with your magical essence, and one of them with mine.''
+
+Harry nodded. ``I'll be the one brewing the potion, of course,'' he
+said.
+
+Connor shrugged. Being good at potions had never mattered to him, not
+when the man teaching it was a sadistic wanker. Being good at things you
+hated was for Hermione, not him. ``Of course you will. But I can help
+gather some of the ingredients, and you need me to hold the chip of red
+stone and concentrate on what I want to do.''
+
+``And it still may not work,'' Harry added, but this time a different
+kind of spark had lit his eyes, the pleasure of experimentation and
+adding to his knowledge. ``But we'll try it, and see if it does.''
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+The potion had worked. And carrying all that extra knowledge in his head
+was an unpleasant experience, not that Connor would have believed that
+if someone had told him before he took the potion. It felt as if he had
+a---a \emph{lump} on his forehead that other people could see, like a
+unicorn's horn. He bowed to Cupressus Apollonis, in the way that the
+rituals said a guest entering an older wizard's house was supposed to,
+and felt as if the knowledge would slosh over the rim of his head like
+water from a kappa's hollow.
+
+Cupressus paused, and his fingers briefly flexed. Connor knew that was a
+sign of uncertainty. He suspected he'd absorbed some of Harry's
+knowledge of individual people along with the pureblood dances. The
+request they made of the Switching Potion hadn't been that specific,
+after all. Connor had concentrated on knowledge that would let him
+survive the political dances approaching, and the potion probably
+thought that included perceptiveness and notice of mannerisms as well as
+the proper depth of bows and what fork to use.
+
+``Mr. Potter,'' Cupressus murmured. ``I thought you had not been trained
+in the formal pureblood ways?''
+
+``It's true that my parents didn't see fit to raise me that way,''
+Connor said calmly, lifting his head. ``Perhaps my father was ashamed of
+having a halfblood child.'' \emph{Insult yourself first, show that
+you're at home with what you are, and that's one weapon that your
+enemies can't use against you.} ``But I have made some effort to learn
+of my heritage in the years since.''
+
+``Only proper for the master of Lux Aeterna, I suppose,'' Cupressus
+murmured, eyes locked on his face.
+
+Connor nodded serenely.
+
+``But few traces of this knowledge have shown before,'' Cupressus said,
+probing delicately, like the jab of a pike's nose.
+
+Connor let himself chuckle, because the knowledge pressing against his
+brow said that would be all right. It felt as if the knowledge were
+right behind his heart-shaped scar, in fact, an even odder sensation
+than the ones he'd already experienced. ``Well, of course they haven't.
+We wanted to keep it safe and secret until there was a moment when our
+allies would benefit from knowing that I could dance.'' He cocked his
+head. ``And, of course, this will encourage you to trust me more, and
+that might bind you more tightly to Harry's side.'' This kind of
+dangerous honesty was expected at gatherings of Light wizards and
+witches, his new instincts told him.
+
+A genuine smile crossed Cupressus's face, and he gestured Connor ahead
+of him, into a room covered with windows, mirrors, and small glass
+decorations that flashed back the light at him. ``And why did you
+Declare for the Light, Mr. Potter, when your brother is so firm in his
+devotion to both sides?''
+
+Connor consulted the rituals. They told him that such a question would
+usually be impolite---but when asked of someone who'd given no reason
+for such insults, it said that the asker respected the guest. Cupressus
+wanted to know, and was counting on Connor to be adult enough to share
+his reasons for his Declaration.
+
+``My parents, flawed as they were, managed to give me a set of morals
+that were worthwhile,'' Connor answered, as he sat down on one of the
+white divans at Cupressus's gesture, and then accepted a glass of wine
+that a woman, probably Cupressus's wife Artemis, handed him. She didn't
+speak yet, but that was only proper, since Connor was a guest and
+Cupressus was the most powerful wizard in the room. "Not their extreme
+idea of sacrifice, of course, though I believed in that until the end of
+my third year of Hogwarts, when I saw someone make a sacrifice that
+taught me what \emph{real} Light was and awakened me from my daze." He
+took a sip of wine to hide the lump that rose in his throat even now at
+the thought of Sirius. \emph{He would never have had to do that if I had
+just paid more attention.} ``But other things---compassion, that we
+share the world with more people than just ourselves, that the future as
+well as the past is important---stuck with me, and those seem to me to
+be the essence of Light.''
+
+Cupressus smiled slowly. ``We could have much to talk about, you and
+I,'' he murmured, ``many interesting arguments to conduct. But today you
+are a guest in my house, and, as such, we will not debate.'' He reached
+out and touched his wife on the arm, guiding her in front of him. ``This
+is my wife, Artemis. Artemis, Connor Potter.''
+
+Artemis made a little curtsey, every movement bespeaking the trained way
+she'd been taught to move. No one was that graceful naturally. Connor
+waited until she'd fully risen before he set aside his wine and dipped
+his head to his knees from his sitting position. It was a profoundly
+respectful move, and he could feel Artemis's pleasure in it.
+
+``I wondered,'' said Cupressus, gently guiding his wife back to a divan
+beside him, ``whether you would be amenable to meeting a few more
+guests?''
+
+``I had expected it,'' said Connor, and grinned at him around the cup
+he'd picked up again. ``I think there were some invitations waiting for
+me from the Smiths and other families, after all.''
+
+``I think Miriam is quite enough for tonight,'' said Cupressus, and
+rose, touching something on his neck. Connor squinted, and caught a
+gleam of gold. His newly acquired knowledge told him it was a
+message-medallion, resembling the one that Harry had and could use to
+call Rita Skeeter. It probably sent a tingle of warmth to Miriam Smith
+to tell her that Cupressus wished to speak to her. ``After all, you
+already know her son. You should be right at home. And you may come into
+the true receiving room, now. We call it the Chamber of the Stars.''
+
+Connor saw why as soon as he stepped past the doors. The whole room was
+white, but white in the ethereal manner of moonlight or starlight,
+without a trace of the blinding golden sunshine that had filled the last
+room. Chairs sat everywhere, covered in delicate white cloth that Connor
+couldn't identify. But they were arranged so that they faced the window,
+which looked on a scene of summer constellations---that much, Connor
+knew from Astronomy. There was a sense of brooding peace here which
+relaxed Connor's muscles at once, and which he'd never felt anywhere
+else.
+
+``This is a room where only our trusted guests, those truly devoted to
+the Light, can come,'' said Cupressus, and gestured Connor to a chair at
+the apex of the pattern the furniture formed, like the pattern of geese
+in flight. ``And I feel that you truly are, young man, though
+admittedly, we have exchanged few words so far.''
+
+Connor felt a tingle of pleasure. This wasn't something that Harry's
+knowledge could really help him with, since Harry had never been invited
+into this room and didn't know the history of the chair-pattern or these
+particular constellations, but he found he didn't mind. He felt as if
+\emph{he} had earned this, rather than his brother earning it for him,
+and it was damn good. He took the seat with earnest grace and dignity,
+and Cupressus and Artemis sat on either side of him. A moment later, a
+house elf escorted Miriam Smith into the room.
+
+Connor thought he would have known her for Zacharias's mother even
+without the introduction. The strong lines around her nose and mouth
+were the same, and her eyes were high and piercing, a cool hawk's gaze,
+less merciful than judgmental. But that was all right, he thought, as he
+stood to greet her. The Light needed hawks, too, along with those who
+would spare their enemies because they begged nicely.
+
+``Madam Smith,'' he said, taking her hand.
+
+Miriam examined him as if looking for a sign that he was making fun of
+her. Connor knew why. Miriam only deserved the formal title if Connor
+was treating her as the leader of Hope for Light, and she didn't know
+that Connor would consider her that way.
+
+After a time, however, she seemed convinced that he meant his courtesy;
+perhaps it was the soft, reverent kiss he pressed to the back of her
+hand. She thawed visibly, and gave him a slow nod, as if to say that he
+would do, then gestured him back towards his seat, taking the one on the
+other side of Cupressus.
+
+``What would you say the place of the Light is in our new world, from
+your point of view, Mr. Potter?'' she asked.
+
+The dances told him to be cautious. But they also encouraged dangerous
+honesty, exceptions to the rules that were made when emotions were
+strong. Connor thought he knew the true difference between Light and
+Dark pureblood dances, now. The Dark dances could be altered or broken
+when the person doing it thought the risk worth the gain in power or
+prestige it would produce. Light wizards and witches would do it to give
+other people more of a voice in the conversation, unbound by convention,
+or to show how much they respected and admired them.
+
+Given that, it was easy to meet Miriam's eyes and say, ``I think that
+we'll have exactly as much of a place as we're willing to work for.''
+
+Cupressus and Miriam exchanged a flickering look so quick that Connor
+might have missed it without Harry's perceptions behind his eyes. Then
+Miriam said, ``That is---interesting, Mr. Potter. I would have expected
+something more diplomatic from you, something more loyal to your
+brother.''
+
+And so she took a risk of her own, and left the road open. Connor could
+retreat and modify his words, or accept the chance, keep pressing ahead.
+
+Connor chose to keep pressing ahead. He knew that Miriam Smith had been
+a Hufflepuff, because Zacharias, of course, had \emph{had} to brag how
+every recent descendant of Helga went to her House. It was possible that
+she didn't understand the way that a Gryffindor nearly always thought
+the risk worth the taking.
+
+``I love my brother,'' he said. "But I know his shortcomings, and one of
+them is that \emph{he} doesn't understand nearly as much of Light
+history as he should, either. He is more than happy to welcome Light
+participation in his political endeavors. But he doesn't think like
+someone to whom the allegiance is important, because to him it's
+\emph{not} more important than the Dark. So, to counteract the influence
+of Dark wizards---including, I'm sorry to say, in corners where Harry
+won't think to look for it, because he can be naïve about things like
+bribery and corruption---we'll have to keep alert. Not break the
+alliance, of course, but show that we're committed to both our side
+\emph{and} it. And that's actually an advantage for us, since we're more
+used to thinking in terms of cooperation than most of the Dark wizards
+are."
+
+``Very interesting,'' Cupressus said, his eyes half-lidded. ``Then you
+think Light-Dark conflicts will still happen?''
+
+``Of course.'' Connor waved a hand. He didn't know if these words sprang
+mostly from himself, or from a combination of his knowledge and Harry's,
+and he didn't truly care. He was enjoying himself too much. ``Sooner or
+later, a time will come when Harry's defeat of Voldemort is ancient
+history. That won't stop another Dark Lord from trying to rise, even if
+it doesn't happen for a few generations after this one. Rather than
+relying on stories to stop Dark-Light conflicts in the future, we'd be
+better advised to set up laws and traditions and rituals right now that
+will last to our children and beyond and can be binding. We have a
+unique chance, with the Ministry fallen. We should use it to its
+fullest, not get involved in petty arguments.''
+
+``You are considerably wiser than I thought you were, Mr. Potter,''
+Miriam murmured. ``I am glad to see that at least one of Harry's closest
+advisers is on the side of the Light.''
+
+Connor beamed at her, and ignored the impulse in his head that pointed
+out he couldn't be like this all the time, because Harry would have to
+drink the other half of the Switching Potion when he went back to
+Silver-Mirror and take up the knowledge again. He tended to handle
+things as they came up. This had been a spur-of-the-moment plan, and it
+was working well. If something arose in the future that required
+knowledge of dances and Light psychology like this, he would figure out
+another way to achieve it.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``Connor? Can I talk to you?''
+
+Connor couldn't actually identify the voice before he turned, which was
+unusual; even with as many people as were in and out of Silver-Mirror
+these days, he had thought he knew them all. But he understood when he
+turned and saw Michael Rosier-Henlin jogging up the hall behind him. If
+Michael had spoken to him since he awakened, Connor couldn't remember
+it.
+
+``Michael.'' Connor nodded, and tried to restrain the thoughts of the
+knowledge in his head, which was insisting that Michael had acted in bad
+faith as a sworn companion. Yes, he probably had, but Connor wasn't
+Harry, no matter how much he might think like him right now, and some
+people just weren't meant to be sworn companions. It wasn't a horrible
+fault that Michael had failed at it.
+
+``I wanted to know if I could talk to you, sometimes,'' Michael said,
+halting in front of him and panting as if he'd run a long way. He had a
+pale, tired face, Connor thought, but he didn't think that was the
+aftermath of nightmares. He knew what that was like too well. Right now,
+he just looked as if he lay awake all night worrying.
+
+``Why?'' Connor asked. ``We're not friends, and I'm not even really
+friends with your brother.'' Harry had Owen Rosier-Henlin working on
+ways to fit pureblood Dark ritual into the Ministry. Connor understood
+that right now better than he had this morning, but he didn't think it
+was interesting.
+
+``I know that,'' Michael said, and shoved his hands into his robe
+pockets, and bowed his head. ``I just---I suppose it's nothing. I felt
+as though you were the person who could understand me best.'' His ears
+flushed red. ``But it's not important, and I'm sure that you have things
+to do.'' He turned hastily away.
+
+Connor called after him, and that wasn't Harry's compassion, just his
+own. ``Wait! What do you mean, understand you?''
+
+Michael hesitated, then turned around and spoke very quickly, as if he
+had decided that, since he was going to expose his heart, he should do
+it all at once. "Well, I'm a younger twin, and I failed at being a sworn
+companion, and because I was antagonistic towards Harry no one trusts me
+with responsibility. And you're a younger twin, and you had
+responsibility taken away from you, but you've done well with it, and
+Harry trusts you, and \emph{everyone} trusts you, and---I wanted to know
+how you did it, that's all, how you got forgiven." He flushed again,
+obviously humiliated. ``But I know that---''
+
+``I'd like to talk to you,'' Connor said quietly.
+
+Michael stopped and blinked. ``Really?''
+
+``Yes.'' Connor nodded. He could feel interest stirring in him. He liked
+helping people, and this was really the first time he'd ever had a
+chance to help a person with a problem like this. It wasn't as though
+the Yaxley twins had ever approached him and asked for help in being the
+younger twin of a more educated and famous older brother, after all.
+``And I understand what you mean about being alone. That was the way I
+felt at the end of my third year and the beginning of my fourth at
+Hogwarts.''
+
+Michael once again turned crimson, and raked a hand through his hair.
+``I suppose it seems pathetic, someone at eighteen asking for help in
+things you figured out when you were thirteen,'' he muttered.
+
+"It was \emph{hard} work," Connor assured him, mind going back to those
+days immediately after Sirius's death when he was simultaneously
+determined to change himself and determined to do it without leaning on
+Harry. "I would have welcomed help then. And I've never really had a
+chance to talk to someone about it. I'll help you, if you'd like. You'd
+be helping \emph{me}, by listening."
+
+Hesitantly, Michael nodded. ``Tomorrow morning, then? I mean, if you
+don't have anything else to do then.''
+
+Connor grinned, looking forward to the prospect of talking to someone
+who wasn't Parvati, Peter, or Harry. ``Sure! Meet you in the kitchen
+after breakfast? I don't think many people come in there during the
+early part of the morning. Harry always holds his meetings in the study
+now.''
+
+Michael's face did darken at the mention of Harry, but Connor had felt
+the same way when he was struggling to overcome his training. Then he
+smiled and said, ``Sounds good. See you later, Connor.'' He waved at him
+and walked on up the corridor, a slight spring in his steps that hadn't
+been there a short time before.
+
+Connor went on his way to the library where Harry would be waiting with
+the other half of the Switching Potion, well-pleased with himself. He
+liked it when \emph{he} could make a difference, and not just his status
+as Harry's brother.
+
+He slowed to a stop outside the library, because Harry was---shouting at
+someone. That was unusual. Harry was calm almost all the time, and when
+he wasn't, it seemed that he had the influence of the pureblood dances
+to give him a way to restrain his temper.
+
+\emph{And right now, he doesn't have them, since they're in your head.}
+
+His skin tingling with a premonition of disaster---how in the world
+\emph{would} Harry react without part of his training?---Connor slid his
+head around the corner and peered cautiously into the library.
+
+Harry stood in front of a table spread with maps, his arms folded and
+his magic writhing about his shoulders and head in a set of black, cold
+spikes that reminded Connor of his own bristles as a boar. Draco stood
+in front of him, face blotchy, but pale except where the hectic color
+showed.
+
+"Take that \emph{back}," Draco hissed.
+
+Harry closed his eyes as if trying to calm himself down, but Connor
+could see already that it wouldn't work. It never did when the pulse was
+beating in his brother's throat that way. And, sure enough, words
+slipped out a moment later, sounding as if forced out between Harry's
+teeth, but there nevertheless.
+
+"I want to. But I am so \emph{tired}, Draco, of the way that you never
+seem convinced I love you no matter what I do! We have sex, and you want
+me to talk to you. I talk to you, and you want me to make you promises.
+I make you promises, and you're convinced I'm going to break them. And
+then I \emph{have} to break them, and you accuse me of being a selfish,
+self-centered prick---"
+
+"Sometimes, that's what you \emph{are!}" Draco shouted. He looked
+half-surprised. Connor supposed that he hadn't got this far in an
+argument with Harry before, because usually by this point Harry had
+walked away or tightened himself into a rational state of mind. But he
+couldn't right now, because his rational state of mind was with Connor.
+``And don't you accuse me of being the only problem here. You know that
+I ask for perfectly reasonable things from you, you always knew that I
+was going to ask them, and then you act like they're surprises---''
+
+``And you knew this was going to be a war, and you're asking me to
+abandon it for you!'' Harry shouted.
+
+``I'm asking you to treat me like a person!'' Sparks of wandless magic
+were leaping around Draco now. Connor cautiously drew his wand, just in
+case Draco set something on fire and he had to put it out, but he didn't
+plan to interfere unless something like that happened. This was probably
+a fight that Draco and Harry had needed to have. ``You're more important
+than the war to me, Harry. Can you honestly say the same thing about
+me?''
+
+Harry threw up his hands. The spikes shifted to accommodate them, and
+then rushed backward as his shoulders seemed to sink into his spine.
+``If I said it honestly, would you believe me?''
+
+Draco snarled at him.
+
+``Yes, you are more important to me than the war,'' Harry said. ``It
+feels like you are. Is that what you want me to say, Draco?'' He fell
+silent for a moment, biting his lip, and Connor could see the emotions
+fighting in his eyes. They won out. "But I \emph{have} to fight this
+war. If I don't, I'm more evil than Voldemort is."
+
+``I'm not asking you to give up fighting the war,'' Draco said. His
+voice had deepened again, losing the high pitch it had had when Connor
+first heard him yelling. ``Just pay more attention to me.''
+
+``I do! When you ask for it.''
+
+"And \emph{that} is the problem, Harry." Draco leaned forward and made a
+motion as if poking Harry in the stomach, though he wasn't silly enough
+to actually come closer. ``Why don't you offer me comfort,
+companionship, talk, what I need, when I don't ask for it? Why does it
+always have to be right after I've been traumatized, or because I ask? I
+do it for you all the time. And then you accuse me of whinging.''
+
+``I'll never be able to love you the way you want,'' Harry hissed, with
+an edge of Parseltongue to the words. ``I wasn't raised for it, wasn't
+trained for it---''
+
+``That's just an excuse!''
+
+"It's the \emph{truth!}" The black spikes abruptly expanded into a
+corona of red and golden light around Harry's head and shoulders. "I
+don't know what I'm fucking \emph{doing} half the time, Draco! And then
+I do something, and it's wrong, and I do something else, and
+\emph{that's} wrong---"
+
+``I've tried to tell you what I want! I don't think you need to be
+perfect!''
+
+``Maybe not, but it seems like it.''
+
+"Well, that's \emph{not true.}" Draco folded his arms. ``You're the one
+who's mistaking me now, Harry.''
+
+"I \emph{always fucking am!}" Harry turned his back on Draco this time,
+but kept speaking over his shoulder, as if he couldn't bear to leave the
+fight completely alone. Connor thought that was a hopeful sign. Maybe.
+``I know it's not true, Draco, everything's not true and my perceptions
+are always mistaken, but it feels as if I'm always putting too much or
+too little effort into this, you want more spontaneity and then you want
+more planning---''
+
+"I could do with some more \emph{attention.}"
+
+``And how much is enough?'' Harry yelled, and turned back again as if
+drawn with a magnet. His hair was on fire. Connor didn't think he
+noticed. "I \emph{don't know how to do this!} I never \emph{have!}
+There's no dance for it, there are no rules, or if there are, they
+change every time we talk---"
+
+"You don't need \emph{rules}," Draco said.
+
+``There's the request for spontaneity.'' Harry looked simultaneously on
+the edge of tears and horrified at himself for being there.
+
+``You don't need them,'' Draco repeated, an undertone of bitterness in
+his voice. "I thought you understood that, at least. I tell you when I'm
+happy, Harry. Isn't that enough? How much reassurance do you
+\emph{need}?"
+
+``Evidently, a lot more than I get, given that I'm still getting
+everything wrong,'' Harry whispered.
+
+``I just---I just wish you would give me more, that you'd be committed
+to helping me for my own sake, because you want to, and not because you
+think that you have to do certain things, or that courting couples do
+certain things.'' Draco let out an angry, half-whistling breath. ``I'm
+so low among your priorities that you don't even care how to figure out
+what I want.''
+
+``And every time I try, you say it's wrong!''
+
+"Not \emph{every} time, you're exaggerating---"
+
+"And \emph{so are you!}" Harry waved his arms around as if he were
+directing a concert. "I \emph{do} think you're important to me, Draco.
+But I don't know how to express it, because the means I choose to do so
+aren't sufficient! Do you have any idea how exhausting it is to keep
+trying and never make any progress? Obviously, because you think that I
+don't love you, don't value you, I've made \emph{zero} progress. And
+there's nothing I can do, nothing I can yield---"
+
+``I don't want you to give up the war.'' Draco hissed again. "Weren't
+you listening to me, Harry? I already \emph{said} that!"
+
+"Then what \emph{do} you want?" Harry shouted.
+
+Draco checked at that. He took a few deep breaths, then said, ``For you
+to value me.''
+
+``I do.'' Harry's eyes were intent on his face.
+
+``For you to show it.''
+
+Harry's jaw tightened. ``How?''
+
+And Draco exploded again. ``You should be the one deciding that, Harry,
+not me! If I have to tell you, it's not what I want.''
+
+Harry just stared at him, then said, so softly Connor could hardly hear
+him, and wondered if Draco could, "And everything I decide on to
+demonstrate it is wrong, not what you want, and if I don't show it, then
+that's wrong, too. Can---can you help me, Draco, please? Because I
+\emph{don't know how.}"
+
+``No, Harry.'' Draco turned away and stalked to the doorway. ``This is
+something that you need to figure out on your own, because I'm tired of
+constantly helping you, protecting you from yourself, from your
+mistakes. You'll need to decide how to make it up to me.''
+
+Harry leaned his head back and shut his eyes, breathing shallowly.
+Connor stepped fully into the room. Draco started and gave him a nasty
+look.
+
+``Eavesdropping because your own life isn't exciting enough, Potter?''
+he sneered.
+
+``Eavesdropping because it's rather hard to ignore such an astonishing
+display of idiocy from the both of you,'' said Connor, because he could,
+and because it felt good to have them gape at him as if he'd turned into
+a dragon, and because it was true. "Both of you want to never make a
+mistake again, and everything to be perfect, and it's never going to
+\emph{happen}, you know? Harry will always be broken and scarred in some
+ways, and Draco, you'll always be a whiny little prat."
+
+"How \emph{dare} you---"
+
+``Oh, yes, Malfoy, that's an incredibly original line,'' Connor said
+with an eyeroll, and then stalked across the library to the table that
+held the vial with half the Switching Potion still in it. He pressed it
+into Harry's hand, and Harry swallowed nervelessly. A moment later,
+Connor felt the knowledge leave his mind like snow melting, and Harry
+shut his eyes and grimaced. Connor turned around with a shake of his
+head. ``I may not be completely right, but I know more than either of
+you do.''
+
+``You don't know shit,'' Draco snarled at him.
+
+``Remember the bit about being a prat,'' Connor told him, and walked
+away, shaking his head. \emph{Merlin, they are both such children
+sometimes.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 77*: Interlude: As Sleep That Lies By
+Death}\label{chapter-77-interlude-as-sleep-that-lies-by-death}
+
+This Interlude's title is from Swinburne's ``Laus Veneris'': ``So lie
+we, not as sleep that lies by death,/With heavy kisses and with happy
+breath\ldots{}'' The poem's title itself means ``Praise of Venus.''
+
+\textbf{Interlude: As Sleep That Lies By Death}
+
+\emph{January 17th, 1998}
+
+Have you answered the question I asked you yet, Evan, Evan, my Evan?
+
+I did not think so, or you would have written me back before now. Let me
+remind you of the question, in case you have forgotten, and tell you the
+legend again---though since you know the poet I am thinking of, you
+already know the legend. But you need the story again, to know the
+places in which we stand.
+
+Long ago, when she lost her power over the hearts of men, Venus, goddess
+of love, did not perish, but was driven underground, to dwell beneath a
+hill. There, her world was still as it had been, hot and heavy with the
+breath of sleep and desire, but she went no more above the surface, and
+walked no more under the sun. The light came from the shining of her
+hair, of her fair skin, of her incomparable eyes. For the ruin that the
+Muggles' Christianity brought down could make her a shadow, but it could
+not destroy her, any more than it could bring down the sun and the moon
+and the dark between the stars.
+
+To Venus came a Christian knight, Tannhäuser, who did not believe in the
+legend, but who found her, and who fell down before her, and kissed her
+feet. He was her lover for a year, and lived marked with her kisses,
+tangled in the embrace of her serpents. So your poet says, Evan, and
+though I believe in my own ways, if it {did} happen, that is the way it
+{would} happen.
+
+One day, he desired the sunlight, and, desiring, came forth from the
+hill, and, desiring, rode to Rome. There, he prayed for redemption. But
+his great heavy-crowned leader said that Tannhäuser would be a Christian
+again only when the leader's staff bloomed. Tannhäuser rode away again
+in sorrow.
+
+And then the staff bloomed, heavy cream-like flowers with golden
+centers, drooping blossoms, blooms breaking off under their own weight,
+and filling the air with a perfume like burning incense. The knights
+rode hot after Tannhäuser, to bring him back, but he had vanished within
+Venus's hill. He never returned to the sunlight again, but sank into
+desire, and there stayed.
+
+Tell me, Evan, tell me true, as you think of that legend: Who won the
+battle for Tannhäuser's soul?
+
+You know the legend. You know the poem. Poetry burns in your blood. But
+more than legends or even poetry, you know {desire}, Evan. It clouds
+your head like the perfume of the flowers clouded the Muggles', desire
+to kill, to revenge yourself, to rape, to hurt, to make others listen to
+your songs as you slit their throats.
+
+But look into the legend, Evan, and look into your own desire, and tell
+me, if I choose to reject you, that you will have any more choice than
+Tannhäuser would have, did Venus choose to set him outside her hill. Who
+holds the power here? Who desires, and who is the source of the desire?
+
+I may yet choose to reject you, Evan, and turn all the sunlight of your
+world to blood.
+
+\emph{Henrietta Bulstrode.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 78*:
+Circumambulation}\label{chapter-78-circumambulation}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Sixty-Three: Circumambulation}
+
+Harry pulled his head slowly out of the Pensieve, and chewed his lip for
+a moment, thinking. Then he shook his head. No, his memories of the
+fight had told him nothing useful. He became so angry when he heard
+Draco's words, and so ashamed when he heard his own---
+
+Of \emph{all} the mornings for Connor to take his self-control away---
+
+--that he made no progress. So he would have to try some other method of
+figuring out what Draco wanted. Watching his expressions and the
+gestures he made gave Harry no clues.
+
+Perhaps older memories were the key. Draco had said what he wanted at
+some points in the past. Harry had thought he'd done a fairly good job
+of satisfying those wants, only to realize that Draco's dissatisfaction
+and scoldings had never decreased, and so apparently he'd never done
+\emph{that} good a job.
+
+But that didn't mean that Draco's laundry lists of longings in the past
+were wrong, only the way that Harry had gone about trying to answer
+them. He pulled another string of memory from his head with the tip of
+his wand, and watched as it filled the bowl. Then he plunged his head
+down, and found himself standing in Hogwarts, whole again, watching in
+silence as two fifteen-year-olds spoke. It had been the weekend after
+his parents' trial, when he'd gone and talked to Draco because Vera had
+suggested it would do him good.
+
+And yes, Draco's words about what he wanted were there.
+
+\emph{``I want everything you can give me. All of what you are, Harry. I
+want to know things you don't even think are important about yourself
+yet, like what kind of tea is your favorite. I want to know that no one
+else means as much to you as I do. I want to be the only person you want
+in your bed. I want to know that you understand the things I believe in
+even if you don't agree with them. I want you to yell at me without
+holding anything back, even your magic. I want you to know my moods well
+enough that you know without my speaking when I need to be held, or
+fetched a sweet, or left alone. I want to have that kind of closeness to
+you that depends on choice more than it does need, and makes everyone
+jealous who sees it. I want sunlight love. I told you that, once, last
+year.''}
+
+Harry pulled his head slowly out of the Pensieve, shaken and feeling as
+though someone had punched him in the stomach. Chills raced up his spine
+and ended up coiling in his belly. He couldn't even have said why he was
+so upset if someone asked him.
+
+Well. That was a lie. Of course he could. He had never been \emph{that}
+good at hiding from himself, only at not taking certain actions.
+
+\emph{He wants---he wants barriers broken. He wants the kind of
+no-holds-barred emotion that I usually only show him during the joining
+rituals. He wants all these little, small things.}
+
+\emph{Why?}
+
+That was the question Harry kept running into. And that wasn't even to
+comment on whether Draco's wants had stayed the same over the two years
+between now and then. Perhaps he wanted different things now. Perhaps
+his desires had sharpened, and changed, and left Harry behind, and this
+memory was valueless.
+
+Harry was not sure what would scare him more: the idea that Draco
+\emph{had} changed, so that he still had no idea where to start on
+repairing the breach, or the idea that he hadn't, which would mean Harry
+had to give him---this.
+
+\emph{He might not be afraid of what I'm like when I'm holding nothing
+back, not even the magic. But I am. I'm like Voldemort in the midst of
+my hatred, or in the midst of that insane Dark rage. I'm like I was with
+the wild Dark, so committed to achieving what I want that the method I
+have to use to get there is nothing to me.}
+
+\emph{I don't know if I can do what he wants. When it terrifies me, when
+it could hurt others, can I do it?}
+
+And that was, perhaps, the main question he had to answer, though he had
+assumed it would be about what Draco wanted. And he couldn't answer it
+all at once. Harry took the memory out of the Pensieve, put it back into
+his own head, and went away to think.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Cupressus stood in one of the windows of the new Ministry and closed his
+eyes.
+
+He could never have done this in the old building. For one thing,
+\emph{that} had been underground, far away from the presence of wind and
+sun that made this one so beautiful, so full of the light and the Light.
+For another, all the windows had shown false visions, and not the real
+ones of sky and air and shimmering rainbow wards.
+
+And, finally, that building had been heavy and old with corruption.
+Cupressus knew the corruption could enter into the new Ministry, too,
+along with those wizards and witches who would seek to recreate the old
+order here, but at least they had a chance to discourage it from ever
+seeding, instead of having to rip it out root and branch.
+
+He turned away from the window and walked into the office that had been
+set up for him. The walls were decorated with portraits taken from his
+home, three of them showing his ancestors and one a Muggleborn witch who
+had turned to the Dark and been the fiercest opponent of the Apollonis
+line at the turn of the century. Cupressus thought it best to keep his
+enemies close, as well as to remind himself that just because someone
+was of the Dark didn't mean that that person was weak or corrupt.
+
+He nodded at Black Jennifer, who just scowled at him and turned her back
+to stroke the white cat she'd been painted with, and then sat down at
+his desk. Before him was the first, and most worrying, batch of
+correspondence: people wanting to know whom they should contact for a
+job in the Ministry, and accusing Cupressus of holding all the good jobs
+for himself.
+
+Cupressus gave a thin smile. If they once understood how much arguing
+went on inside Hope for Light, they would not be accusing him of that.
+
+But he could not help the public perception of the new Ministry by any
+means than answering and countering the criticism. He slit open the
+first envelope, and watched, completely unsurprised, as bubotuber pus
+poured out. He had recognized it from the smell. His enemies would have
+to be more subtle than that.
+
+He realized his smile had grown more genuine as he thought of the
+challenges ahead, and didn't try to fight it.
+
+Black Jennifer gave an audible sniff and mouthed a Dark curse at him
+when he looked in her direction.
+
+``The blessing of the Light on you,'' Cupressus returned, and began
+writing an answer to the first letter, politely informing Mortimer
+Belville that the bubotuber pus had stained his letter so badly that
+Cupressus couldn't make it out, and, besides that, the Ministry was not
+in the business of making job offers to traitorous Squibs.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry looked around. Regulus had said that venturing into the world of
+this painting would affect him strongly, but so far Harry had seen
+nothing that might do so. The trees above him were black and bare, as
+though winter had come early here. The ground was like iron, but there
+was no trace of snow. In front of Harry, a stone path rambled on for a
+few paces before it sputtered and disappeared as broken rocks among the
+tree-roots.
+
+And then the world turned sideways.
+
+Harry struggled and scrambled for a hold on the tree-trunks nearest him.
+\emph{He} was standing where he was supposed to be, his brain reassured
+him, even as his eyes tried to tell him he should be falling. He could
+handle this. His magic crackled around him as Harry fought to adjust his
+visual perception so that he could still be alert.
+
+And then a golden, monkey-like creature leaped to the edge of a branch
+along/above him and down/across the air at him.
+
+Harry was starting to see why Regulus had sent him into this Black
+painting when he said he wanted to test his magic.
+
+Harry sent his magic springing out to catch the monkey in a net of white
+lightning, but failed. He'd sent the light in the wrong direction, he
+realized a moment later, when he ended up on his back with the monkey on
+top of him, trying to bite his throat. His magic hadn't compensated
+enough to truly adjust to the way he viewed the world.
+
+So it would have to compensate \emph{more}.
+
+Harry envisioned new muscles growing above his arms, spreading into the
+net, holding the monkey still with main strength. He didn't think he
+could hurt it, not and maintain the title of \emph{vates}; this might be
+the magical creature of a strange world, but it was still a magical
+creature, and probably the one who had managed to disorient him this
+way, rather than the whole world of the painting changing. That it
+slipped through his net again and again just meant he had to try harder.
+
+He could feel the pleasure and satisfaction flowing under his skin as
+the magic flowed; it liked being used. It liked being taken out from
+under the barriers and set free in the world, much as the Many snakes
+had rejoiced at being free of their web.
+
+\emph{Is that what Draco wants of me?}
+
+It was an interesting question, but one that he had no time to think on
+as the monkey-creature turned the whole painting-world completely
+upside-down, and Harry's mind started screaming that he should fall
+towards what now resembled the floor of a canyon. But he spread part of
+his magic in a blinding hood over his eyes, and this time concentrated
+on the image of the monkey freezing into a statue. It would still have
+its flesh, its fur, its blood and bone---he didn't intend to turn it
+into stone or ice---but it would have to be \emph{still.}
+
+And then it was, because the magic willed it to be, and they hung there
+a moment more before Harry found himself on his back under the upright
+trees, panting, his head aching from how hard he'd fallen. The monkey
+sat on his chest, its teeth poised a few inches from his throat.
+
+Harry coughed dryly and sat up. When he turned, he saw Regulus behind
+him, grinning through the doorway in the air that the portrait frame
+made.
+
+``I trust that you had a good test?'' he asked.
+
+Harry smiled. ``Yes. Thank you.'' His magic was content again, rumbling
+and stretching around him like a great cat, and bouncing in his muscles
+as if to say \emph{What are we going to do next?} The scope of the task
+was important---it couldn't be easy---but this wasn't nearly as hard as
+building the new Ministry had been. Harry was coming to think that it
+really just wanted \emph{new} things to do, more than daring or heroic
+things. It wanted to be free and have its will accommodated, if not
+completely bent to.
+
+\emph{Like Draco?}
+
+The thought would have to come later, as he had some of the more
+reluctant Light families to meet with now.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Snape looked up as someone rattled the locked door of his potions lab.
+The wards he'd put on the door sparked and whispered and carried back an
+image of the person who stood outside it to him. It was Regulus, and he
+clutched a spindly green plant that happened to be fairies' breath, the
+very ingredient that would serve best in the new potion Snape was trying
+to brew: a truth serum without the drawbacks of Veritaserum, such as the
+mental haze which identified it to its victim at once.
+
+``I am busy,'' he called, pitching his voice for impressive effect.
+
+``I know that you're in there, Severus,'' Regulus said, as if he had
+heard neither the voice nor the numerous requests Snape had made over
+the weeks for Regulus not to call him by his first name. ``And I have a
+gift for you. I don't think your potion can go much further, anyway, not
+without this gift.''
+
+Snape ground his teeth. It was true, though, that he needed either
+fairies' breath or some other plant that resembled it very closely to
+stabilize and sweeten the brew, and none of the others he'd looked up so
+far were common, or, for that matter, grew in Britain. Trust Regulus to
+have access to either a potting or a mysterious Black garden that would
+contain the exact kind of plant he needed.
+
+``You may have five minutes,'' he said, and lowered the wards, and
+opened the door.
+
+Regulus stepped in, looking around admiringly as though he had never
+seen the potions lab before. He paused, staring hard at one lower shelf.
+Snape looked at it, but couldn't see anything remarkable about the way
+he'd arranged the vials there.
+
+``You moved the red potion,'' Regulus said. ``The one that looked like
+blood with light glowing through it. Did you use it as an ingredient, or
+was that something that someone drank?''
+
+Snape stared at him. \emph{How in the world does he know the contents of
+my lab that well?}
+
+And he knew the answer, and he hated the answer, and he was
+uncomfortable with the answer. Regulus was interested in him, so
+therefore he paid attention to the details that surrounded Snape,
+including the details of his surroundings. It was more than even Harry
+usually did, if only because he tended to be preoccupied with his own
+thoughts.
+
+It terrified Snape.
+
+``Neither,'' he snapped. ``I moved it to the top shelf.'' Regulus looked
+up at the top shelf and started to arch his eyebrows in polite
+disagreement, but Snape cut in before he could note the obvious lie.
+``Give me the fairies' breath, since that's what you came here to give
+me.''
+
+Regulus snapped his gaze over to him, grinning. Snape couldn't see why,
+until Regulus murmured, ``That's far from the only thing I'd like to
+give you,'' and he realized he'd handed Regulus a perfect straight line.
+
+``I do not understand,'' Snape said, with all the cold, understated
+dignity in the world, ``why you must do this.'' He accepted the plant
+from Regulus, and rubbed it against the cauldron's brim, shaving off
+several of the leaves. They fell into the potion, crinkling from the
+intense heat, and partially browning from it as well. Snape picked up
+the steel rod that he would normally use to stir, thought a moment, and
+then used the rod to stab and pick up one of the leaves, removing it
+from the liquid. Five was probably one too many. He set the stem with
+the rest of the leaves aside, because he didn't need it right now.
+``There are others you could pursue, Regulus, should you decide that
+your loneliness needs to be relieved by companionship. I am far from
+your only choice, but I am the only one who will not be fond of you in
+return.''
+
+``I don't want them,'' said Regulus comfortably, and leaned against the
+table on which he'd placed the fairies' breath, now and then twirling
+the stem. Snape clenched his jaw against the impulse to tell him to stop
+playing with it. Regulus would manage to turn that into a joke, too, he
+was sure. "I want you. And I love you. I don't love them. So that
+\emph{does} make you rather my only good choice, you see."
+
+Snape finished the last counterclockwise stirring motion he needed to
+make, and laid the rod carefully down on the table. Then he turned to
+face Regulus, and said, ``I do wish that you would give up this
+pretense.''
+
+That at least set Regulus back on his heels, but he blinked, having the
+gall to act as if he didn't understand. ``Pretense?''
+
+``That you---find me worth pursuing.'' Snape still could not bring
+himself to use Regulus's ridiculous word, because that would be giving
+credence to something he thought should not be given credence to. ``It
+is not true. It does you no credit to claim that it is.''
+
+Regulus snorted. ``You're an expert on many things, Severus, including
+potions. But I don't think that you have any right to tell me what's
+impossible and what's not impossible when it comes to my own emotions.''
+He reached out as if he would touch Snape's cheek, and Snape ducked his
+hand.
+
+``This is childish,'' he said, because that ought to get Regulus's
+attention if nothing else did. ``We are both grown men, and you endured
+years of torture for doing what you believed to be right. You should be
+above such silly tricks as convincing yourself that you are in love with
+me, and then trying to convince me of the same.''
+
+``I don't joke,'' Regulus said softly, and the teasing had vanished from
+his face, and Snape couldn't look at what was left. ``Severus---''
+
+Snape waved his wand in a complicated motion, and Regulus found himself
+set outside the lab, with the door locked and warded against him. Snape
+turned back to his brewing. He wouldn't permit himself the soundproofing
+wards he wanted to set up. For one thing, they wouldn't let him hear
+\emph{anything} from outside the lab, cries for help from Harry
+included, but far more important, they would be an admission of
+weakness, and he was not about to allow that into his life.
+
+He heard the knocks and the calls, but he forced himself to ignore them,
+and after a time they went away. The tremors in his hands that prevented
+him from brewing faded within five minutes.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry glanced around nervously. The meeting with the reluctant Light
+families had gone well, for a certain sense of ``well.'' They still
+weren't satisfied with one of\\
+the new Ministry's basic requirements, which was that there be a good
+proportion of non-human representation on the Wizengamot. They argued
+that, since so many old Wizengamot members had survived the Ministry's
+collapse, replacing or adding to them was superfluous.
+
+Harry had hinted, as delicately as he could, about the southern goblins
+and their control over Gringotts, the centaurs who had said they would
+fight for him, the Many snakes only he could talk to and whose poison in
+the eyes couldn't be cured, the northern goblins who owed him a debt,
+and the enormous power of freed house elves. That had been enough to
+shut a few of them up, and others had started agreeing that it might be
+no bad thing to allow a few of the goblins and centaurs, at least, into
+the replacement for Courtroom Ten.
+
+Then they had left, and now Harry was alone, in a room on
+Silver-Mirror's second floor too small and oddly-shaped, with
+close-crowding octagonal walls, to make a good bedroom. It \emph{had}
+been a study, but when more people started attending their strategy
+meetings, they'd had to move their meetings to a bigger room anyway. So
+Harry was standing now in a room of solid stone with the Black wards on
+watch in case anyone came up the stairs. Surely he could be alone here
+if he could be alone anywhere in Silver-Mirror.
+
+So it was only his own fear that held him back.
+
+Harry swallowed. He wished he could have Connor with him, and that
+Connor could drink the Switching Potion to take Harry's emotional
+barriers away for a little while. His brother would have done it, and
+cheerfully. Harry knew how to brew the damn thing now, and respect the
+restrictions, such as the person who drank the first half of the potion
+not being able to drink any other potions for five minutes after that
+draft, and having to drink absolutely no more than half.
+
+But it would have been a cheat. He had to get used to dropping his
+emotional barriers on his own, and not fearing what would come out, if
+he was to get close to Draco and heal the biggest emotional sore between
+them.
+
+\emph{Just---}
+
+Just that, he was terrified of doing this, because in the past, bad
+things had always emerged. Fury. Insanity. Hatred.
+
+He told his magic to watch and guard, in the end. No matter what might
+come forth from his mouth and eyes while he tried this experiment, no
+one could come through a solid barrier of his power and get hurt. The
+magic, still in a good mood from the way he'd treated it earlier, purred
+in agreement and then turned the door of the room into what looked like
+another stone wall with pure power. Harry nodded, and closed his eyes,
+and sat down so he wouldn't fall down.
+
+Then he began.
+
+This was the opposite of the procedures he'd gone through before, when
+he sank his emotions in Occlumency pools or froze them as ice, so that
+he could get through an ordinary day without inconvenient feelings
+ambushing him. Now he envisioned a hot sun shining in his mind, turning
+the Occlumency pools to drifting magical vapor. He shivered as a
+sensation brushed over his skin like cool mist, and then dissipated. And
+he was left with his emotions high and dry, for the moment.
+
+It felt---well, like a punch to the gut, really. Harry doubled over,
+gasping. His magic stirred near the door, but he told it sternly that he
+was in no danger and forbade it to come to him. It settled back on its
+haunches, cocking its head like a great dog, and watched him closely.
+Harry was sure that it would arrange to interfere if it \emph{did} think
+he was in danger.
+
+Meanwhile, he tumbled through a huge cascade of tiny emotions, which
+popped up, pricked him like pins, and then vanished back into his mind.
+His face flushed with irritation and paled with hurt, so regularly he
+could feel the blood coming and going like a tide in his cheeks. He felt
+mild humor and tenderness and exasperation and interest and indifference
+and---
+
+Merlin, how did ordinary people get through the day, feeling like this?
+It was the same sick-making sensation he'd had yesterday when he
+realized that he wasn't going to be able to stop himself from snapping
+at Draco, given that Connor had taken his emotional barriers with him.
+Harry had \emph{rules}. He knew how things worked when the pureblood
+rituals were with him, and his Occlumency. And this, this sea of chaos,
+frightened him.
+
+Yet if he closed himself behind the barriers again, he stood a chance of
+losing Draco. And anything was better than that, except possibly the
+loss of Connor.
+
+He gasped and hissed and waited for the flux of emotions to subside. He
+only grew truly worried when minute after minute passed and they didn't.
+
+Gnawing his lip, Harry thought, \emph{I know that people like Connor and
+Draco must live this way, since they don't know Occlumency and they
+never had my training. But Snape doesn't; he uses his pools to close off
+the emotions that might incapacitate him if he had to live with them
+from day to day. Why does no one ever care about the way that he uses
+his emotions, but they care about the way I use mine?}
+
+His cheeks turned red again with the flow of irritation, and he winced
+when he realized he was grinding his teeth. \emph{Is this really what
+Draco wants me to do? Is this what he wants from me?}
+
+The memory he'd sent into the Pensieve that morning suggested that not
+only did Draco want that from him; he wanted \emph{other things like
+that} from Harry. A giving of himself, where ``himself'' didn't include
+magic and patience and love, all of which Harry had assumed would make
+Draco happy. Little things, unimportant things, or at least things that
+didn't matter that much to Harry, though he could respect them as
+mattering to other people.
+
+\emph{Why?}
+
+Burying his head against his knees as he gratefully restored his
+Occlumency pools, Harry knew he would make no progress forward until he
+was able to figure out the reason why.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``And you just---decided that you were going to change one day?''
+Michael stared at Connor in evident disbelief. "How do you \emph{do}
+that? I've tried, and it's hard. I say that I'm not going to say
+something stupid when I see your brother or Draco, and I try, but then
+it doesn't work."
+
+Connor smiled and traced his fingers over the kitchen table, through the
+wet mark that someone's cup of pumpkin juice had left there. ``It was
+hard,'' he said. ``The hardest thing that I've ever done in my life. The
+trick is not to mind the difficulty.''
+
+Michael bit his lip and shook his head. ``I'm not sure that I
+understand.''
+
+``Think of it as---like a heavy load,'' said Connor, returning to a
+metaphor that Remus had given him, and which Peter had refined during
+the summer they spent together in Lux Aeterna. "You're a mule, and
+you're pulling a cart filled with rocks up steep mountain trails. You
+\emph{have} to keep on moving. You can't let yourself tip backwards, or
+the weight of the cart will catapult you down the mountain, and that
+would kill you. And you can't stop pulling until you get to the summit,
+because people are counting on you to pull this. So you set your
+muscles, and you tug, and you heave, and you strain, and you sweat. And
+you keep pulling, because \emph{that's} the way forward. There's no way
+forward that's not difficult." He shrugged, somewhat embarrassed by the
+awe in Michael's eyes. ``So you get used to the difficulty. The weight
+never goes away, but it gets less important.''
+
+``It's so hard, though, with my own twin ignoring me,'' Michael
+whispered.
+
+``Harry did that to me in the beginning of fourth year,'' Connor said
+calmly, "until I was chosen for the Tri-Wizard Tournament and he
+\emph{had} to worry about me. But I understood. He'd always been devoted
+to me, and then he found out that that was wrong, and so he gave more of
+his time to Draco. It was like a recoiling. And I hadn't been very nice
+to him the year before, about Sirius. Things \emph{had} to change, and
+that meant things were strained between me and him for a little while."
+
+``My brother's ignored me for a lot longer than that,'' Michael whinged.
+"And for things that aren't my fault, either, for mistakes that I
+\emph{haven't} made."
+
+``I thought you fancied Draco?'' Connor raised an eyebrow and nobly
+refrained from commenting that he couldn't see how anyone in the world
+would fancy Draco. \emph{Love}, yes; that was the only emotion that
+would make someone put up with the arrogant prat, and it was perfectly
+obvious to Connor that Harry felt it. But fancying wasn't strong enough
+to get someone past the cast-iron irritating shell, surely.
+
+``You can't choose who you fancy.'' Michael crossed his arms and put on
+a superior look.
+
+``But you can choose to approach them about it, and flirt with them over
+it,'' said Connor. \emph{These are lessons that he should have known
+already.} ``You shouldn't have done that. And then you've made things
+worse by blaming Harry---''
+
+"You don't think it's his \emph{fault}?"
+
+``No,'' said Connor. "I think it's yours, for making more of this than
+you needed to make of it, and I think it's Draco's, for first
+encouraging you and then nearly choking you to death when he should have
+let you down more gently. And maybe it's Harry's fault for keeping you
+on as a sworn companion as long as he did, but another part of getting
+people to forgive you is to blame them for the \emph{right} reasons.
+He's not the one who made you fancy Draco."
+
+``He never pays as much attention to him as he should,'' Michael said
+softly, clenching his fists. ``He still doesn't. And he doesn't pay
+attention to the little people, either, the ones like my mother and
+sister who depended on him for protection.''
+
+``If you insult my brother, I won't help you,'' Connor told him.
+
+Michael looked up, eyes wide in what seemed like betrayal. ``I thought
+you wanted to be my friend?''
+
+``Yes, but so far you haven't done anything worthy of being called a
+friend.'' Connor rose to his feet, giving him a cool look. "You have to
+change so that other people will \emph{like} you, too, you know."
+
+He left the kitchen, and Michael gaped after him.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry paused. He'd come into the kitchen to make himself some toast, but
+Draco was the only other person in the room, and Harry had avoided being
+alone with him since their fight.
+
+Sure enough, Draco turned around from putting away the jug of milk, saw
+him, and immediately bristled.
+
+``Have you decided anything important yet?'' His voice was steady and
+paper-thin as the set of Black knives meant to slice expensive fruit
+that Regulus had shown Harry and admitted no one in the family had used
+in the last hundred years.
+
+``One important thing,'' Harry said, keeping his emotional barriers up
+and locked tight. Now wasn't the time to let them down. It would be
+false to end the argument when he still didn't know how to give Draco
+what he wanted. And more yelling was---not right. ``Not the others.''
+
+Draco's mouth puckered as if he'd swallowed a lemon. ``This is one thing
+I hate about you,'' he said, softly, viciously. ``Always so controlled.
+As if you can't bear to step off your pedestal and engage in petty anger
+like the rest of us mortals.''
+
+``I thought you hated it when I got angry,'' said Harry. His rage and
+his sorrow were great enough that he could feel his barriers buckling,
+and this time there was no Connor and no Switching Potion to save him.
+\emph{Damn it.} He stepped backward, prepared to retreat. He couldn't
+solve the argument yet, so what was the point of making it fester
+further?
+
+Draco crossed the kitchen so quickly that he left Harry blinking against
+what seemed to be a dazzle of afterimages. His glass of milk sloshed as
+he seized Harry's arm with his free hand and drew him close. This near,
+Harry could see the lines where his teeth were clenched inside his
+cheeks, and smell him, the scent of sweat and rage and excitement.
+
+"I hate it with you withdraw from me, treat me like a piece of
+furniture, treat me like I'm \emph{not there,}" Draco said. ``That's
+what I hate. And you're doing it again, handling me like a child.''
+
+``But you also hate it when I get angry,'' Harry said, and, damn it, his
+own voice was rising. He had never known anyone else who could do this
+to him when he intended to keep calm. Not even Connor's ridiculous
+provocations about Slytherins in third year had managed it. He looked
+sideways and hissed between his teeth. ``I'm trying to understand what
+you want, I'm trying to give it to you, but I can't---''
+
+His head reeled back. Draco had tried to punch him. Given the angle at
+which he stood, though, his blow landed somewhere between a backhand and
+a slap.
+
+Harry \emph{snarled.}
+
+His magic broke free from him and galloped around Draco's legs, binding
+them in yellow manacles. Draco tried to move, toppled over, and had to
+catch himself on the kitchen table. His eyes were wide with shock as he
+stared down at his legs.
+
+``Is this what you want?'' Harry hissed, stalking around him. "For me to
+come close to \emph{hating} you because you won't give me a straight
+answer? For me to want you to \emph{shut up}, do \emph{anything} but
+keep talking? For me to wish that I'd rather be a bird than a human, if
+being human means dealing with you?"
+
+``Yes.''
+
+Harry blinked, caught more off-guard by that than by the strike. Draco's
+eyes were intent on him now, and Draco was leaning forward, at least as
+much as he could with his legs locked together like a pillar.
+
+``At least now you're seeing me,'' Draco whispered.
+
+Harry moved his hand like a blade, cutting through the bonds, and then
+turned and walked away, his hunger forgotten. His magic and his anger
+beat in him like twin pulses, and the grand plan he'd worked out---to
+find what Draco wanted and give it to him---was forgotten in the
+onslaught of the need to \emph{fight,} to scream and yell and
+\emph{hurt} Draco.
+
+He hated that impulse in himself. It was a cousin of the pleasure he
+took in inflicting pain on his enemies, and, likewise, not one he wanted
+to indulge.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco moved his legs cautiously, then touched his hand and winced. His
+knuckles had collided with Harry's cheek, yes, but awkwardly; he'd
+skinned them. It certainly hadn't made Harry wear the badge of righteous
+anger he'd imagined when he struck him.
+
+But it had been worth it, both the physical pain and the emotional pain
+that washed around the center of his chest like warm water carrying
+chunks of ice.
+
+Harry had been focused \emph{solely} on him. He hadn't been holding back
+and treating him as if Draco were fragile and had to be left behind, out
+of battle, or as if Draco could never see the depths of him because he
+would think they were frightening or evil. He'd said exactly what he
+thought for a moment, rather than tempering his words to suit Draco's
+grief, Draco's mood, and the political needs of the moment. He'd
+\emph{looked}, and \emph{seen}, and \emph{felt}, and \emph{heard.}
+
+It hadn't lasted, of course. The acknowledgement of that need to have
+Harry look at him had made Harry back up and run.
+
+Draco smiled. He didn't think it was a nice smile, or even a happy one,
+at least to someone looking at him from outside. That hardly mattered.
+Harry hadn't hidden himself behind ice walls after all, the way Draco
+had worried he would manage to after their argument. He wasn't perfectly
+controlled, and that meant Draco was more \emph{in} control. He'd begun
+to think of Harry almost as a statue, someone who could always do the
+right thing---by his lights---and who had a schedule for times when he
+talked to Draco, times when he talked to his brother, times when he
+fought the war or planned the attack on the next Horcrux, and times when
+he had sex with Draco. And then he'd managed to pierce Harry's perfect
+little shell twice in two days.
+
+Harry wasn't perfect. He could still come apart at the seams. He could
+still do stupid things, wrong things. He could still be irritated.
+
+And he would probably be pushed to the breaking point, soon.
+
+Draco could wait a bit longer. He would provoke if he had to, but
+really, he would prefer Harry to lose control on his own.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry sat on the roof of Silver-Mirror with his eyes closed. Around him,
+snow settled with a slow, heavy finality.
+
+Tears stung and burned his eyes. He hated that. His chest heaved as if
+he were going to shout or cry at any moment. He \emph{hated} that. He
+wanted to find someone else, like Connor, and scream at him about the
+unfairness of the universe in general. He \emph{really} hated that.
+
+Of course the universe was unfair. He'd always known that. What good
+would complaining about it do?
+
+Of course, he couldn't stay the same he'd always been, and change was a
+part of life, as he'd explained to Draco so pompously a few days before,
+never-ending. He hadn't expected to find it so hard, when he knew it so
+well.
+
+Harry gave in to one impulse, and tucked his head under a folded arm
+like a bird under its wing when it sheltered from the cold.
+
+He would have to---to break. The image reared in his mind as a cliff he
+would need to fall down, and hope to Merlin that he was still alive, or
+at least in a number of closely-scattered pieces, when he reached the
+bottom.
+
+But he couldn't just yet, because they were going after Ravenclaw's wand
+in two days' time.
+
+Two kinds of necessities tore at him, and because he didn't think that
+he could stop them right now, Harry sat there and let them---hating
+himself all the while for weakness, and near to hating Draco for his
+part in this, and hating the world for being the way it was.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 79*: Intermission: Starlit
+Meetings}\label{chapter-79-intermission-starlit-meetings}
+
+\textbf{Intermission: Starlit Meetings With Evan Rosier}
+
+Henrietta stood comfortably under the bare boughs of the trees. Evan had
+sent her a description of the Apparition location in his latest letter;
+she had gone even though it could be a trap. She was fairly sure, at
+least, that he would not try to make her arrive at a place that didn't
+exist and Splinch herself. That would not be bloody enough, nor
+satisfying enough, for him.
+
+She stood a little straighter as a shadow moved at the far edge of the
+grove. The copse was of pines, which meant it still bore greenery this
+late in the year, and the needles on the ground concealed the sounds of
+Evan's feet as he walked. For all that, Henrietta had no doubt it was
+him as she watched him come past the two outer circles of trees into the
+innermost one. It \emph{would} be.
+
+He wore a ragged dark cloak starred with snow, and he held a knife in
+one hand. Henrietta eyed the knife approvingly. It was dark, and so did
+not show much blood---obsidian. The hilt was silver, which she found a
+touch dramatic, but then, one could hardly accuse Evan of being balanced
+and sane.
+
+``Greetings,'' she said, and watched her breath foam on the air in front
+of her.
+
+``Henrietta.'' He walked so delicately, she thought, lifting and
+lowering his feet like a moorhen trying to pick her way through puddles
+of water. ``I suppose that you find it funny to write to me of Venus and
+Tannhäuser? I know you are not Venus. You do not keep a hill, and you do
+not answer the call of your own desire.'' His eyes met hers,
+blueberry-dark, but blackberry-shining. He was not amused, she saw.
+``You have a master. What he requires of you, you do.''
+
+``Evan,'' Henrietta whispered, and knelt, flinging back her long hair
+from her neck. She felt a snowflake settle in the hollow of her throat,
+and had to close her eyes at the sensation. It felt so much like a
+knife-blade. "I serve no master. I am not a \emph{tame} Slytherin. He
+who thinks he has me tame to hand would be well-advised to watch out,
+lest I turn like a serpent and bite him."
+
+He was silent, watching her.
+
+``If you really think I am a pawn and no more,'' Henrietta whispered,
+``cut my throat, now. You can, after all.''
+
+Evan moved a few quick steps forward, so that he stood just before her.
+Henrietta gazed up at him fearlessly. She knew that, if he killed her
+now, all her plans would be for naught. But as she felt the cold
+pressing against her and the blood beating behind the fragile shield of
+her skin, she did not care.
+
+The knife came down to rest on her collarbone. Henrietta turned her head
+and kissed the hilt. The cold made the metal cling to her lips for a
+long time before Evan pulled the blade away.
+
+``You would let me,'' Evan said.
+
+Henrietta listened carefully. \emph{Yes.} His voice was steadier than it
+had been, just as the madness behind his eyes had receded. He had been
+in decline when she met him in the Forbidden Forest last year. He no
+longer was. He had changed, and she knew the source of that change. When
+she looked up, there was someone else behind his eyes.
+
+She was not wrong. She could not be wrong, because she was not.
+
+``Yes,'' she said.
+
+Nothing about her was a lie. She was fearless, and he knew it, and
+something in him feared her fearlessness.
+
+But the rest, the part of him that had been there when she raped him,
+was inexorably drawn, and he leaned down and kissed her, then took his
+knife and slit her lower lip open. Henrietta licked at the blood, and
+laughed.
+
+He backed away, never taking his eyes off her, and Apparated just before
+he reached the pine trees.
+
+Henrietta stretched her arms slowly, exultantly, over her head. Harry
+would never approve of what she was doing, but Harry would never know,
+until it was too late. She served no master.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Indigena could not shake the feelings that had overcome her lately. She
+stood shivering at the edge of her garden, and watched the snow drift
+down outside the wards, and knew that not all the Warming Charms in the
+world could make her complacent about heat again.
+
+The world was a sheer black cliff, with broken rocks waiting for her at
+the bottom. If she fell down the cliff, she would die on the rocks, and
+she could not forbid that fate and she could not escape it.
+
+She closed her eyes and thought of nothing for a moment, nauseous,
+dizzy.
+
+When she opened her eyes, Evan Rosier stood at the edge of the garden.
+
+Indigena stumbled back, and then stopped herself, though she shook. She
+would not flee from him. She had bargained with him before, and escaped
+with both her sanity and her life. And here she was strong, with the
+earth straining beneath her feet to be of use to her, and the thorns
+twitching in their sheaths on her backs.
+
+She lifted them above her head, to make herself even stronger, and
+demanded, ``Why are you here? What do you want?''
+
+Evan stroked a knife he held, obsidian with a silver hilt, and didn't
+respond. Indigena eyed the knife mistrustfully, wondering why it looked
+familiar. After a time, she knew. It was such a blade as her Lord had
+once described when lingering lovingly on torture techniques he'd used
+in Africa. It was used to joint enemies, to cut out their bones so that
+the flesh might be more easily made tender and thrown on the fire.
+
+Indigena looked back at Evan's face. And he was smiling sideways, as he
+usually did, but there was something else in his eyes.
+
+``Where did you get that?'' she whispered. ``How did you know that?''
+
+``You will never know,'' he said. His voice had deepened and coarsened,
+and Indigena could hear an echo in it if she listened. ``You will never
+know because the hound is in the way, and then there is only one of us
+left. I intend to be the one standing. Take my brother, and welcome to
+him.''
+
+``I have no idea what you mean,'' said Indigena, and then wondered why
+she'd said it. It was a ridiculous thing to say. Besides, she had long
+since decided that she couldn't decipher Evan Rosier's madness, unless
+she herself had set the plan in motion.
+
+``Of course you do not,'' said Evan, and his face wrinkled into a smile
+that was almost kind. ``You have not lived in his flesh.''
+
+He turned and vanished. Indigena stood there, and wondered if she should
+go below and tell her Lord about this. But he would still be in a
+trance, working hard on the one plan that would slowly snare Harry by
+the equinox without unnecessarily risking more of his power or
+resources.
+
+And when Indigena turned around, there was a black dog at the other end
+of the garden.
+
+Watching her, the dog lifted her head in a soundless howl. Indigena had
+no doubt it was a bitch, though how she knew that was not open to her.
+The fact simply arrived in her skull as if pushed there like a brick,
+and then the dog paced along the edge of the garden, watching her all
+the while with bright silver eyes, and leaped, and vanished into
+starlight and snow.
+
+And Indigena understood that it might not make much of a difference at
+all, what she knew, or where she stood, or what thorns she had growing
+out of her back.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 80*: In Night's Poisoned
+Garden}\label{chapter-80-in-nights-poisoned-garden}
+
+\textbf{Warning: Gore.} Also, emotional turmoil. This is not a nice
+chapter.
+
+\textbf{Chapter Sixty-Four: In Night's Poisoned Garden}
+
+Harry looked slowly around the kitchen. No matter how he looked, though,
+the view never changed. The people standing around him and staring at
+him still stayed the same, and so did what they carried.
+
+Peter, Regulus, and Snape stood slightly apart from the others, near
+each other. They were the ones who would have to enter Indigena's
+garden, after all, thanks to that Unassailable Curse that forbade anyone
+who didn't bear a Dark Mark from coming in. Each of them carried
+numerous vials of the antivenin that Snape had brewed, once Thomas,
+Neville, and Hawthorn had declared which poisonous plants they thought
+most likely grew there, and which hybrids. Peter's face was nervous,
+pale, with a slight sheen of sweat on the forehead. Snape, of course,
+disdained to show such weakness. Regulus now and then glanced with
+affectionate anxiety at Snape, though Harry could see Snape was tensing
+himself to ignore those looks.
+
+Draco stood behind him, so close that Harry could feel his heat through
+his clothes, but not trying to touch him. He had announced that he
+wanted to go to the garden, though he would be unable to do much but
+stand outside the wall with Harry and wait for the moment when Peter,
+Regulus, and Snape uncovered the Horcrux. His eyes had dared Harry to
+say no. Harry had just raised his eyebrows and asked why he
+\emph{wouldn't} be going along. Draco had looked flummoxed for a moment,
+and Harry had taken the chance to squeeze his hand.
+
+They would get there. Not today, but they would get there. The black
+mountain wall, smooth as glass, loomed in Harry's mind, waiting for him.
+
+``Harry?''
+
+He shook his head, blinked a bit, and looked up. Regulus had turned to
+regard him, with enough kindness to prove that he didn't just see Snape
+as part of his world. Harry nodded to him to say what was on his mind.
+
+``Are we ready?''
+
+Harry rubbed tense hands over his robes, slicking the sweat from them.
+Of course, more sweat covered them in seconds, but he tried to ignore
+that, just as he tried to concentrate on something other than the fact
+that, if they uncovered the wand, someone would still have to die to
+break the Unassailable Curse on it.
+
+He nodded. ``We're ready. Let's go.''
+
+He was very careful, as they moved out of Silver-Mirror and prepared to
+Apparate to Thornhall, to keep from seeming as if he were stepping in
+front of Draco to defend him. He wouldn't do that anyway right now,
+since there was nothing here to protect him from, but he was relearning
+the value of small things.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Peter felt the tingle of magic as he, Regulus, and Severus stepped
+through the arched entrance of the garden. Part of that was the Warming
+Charms and other spells that enabled these plants to survive in the
+middle of winter, of course, but the largest part would be the
+Unassailable Curse, noting that everyone who stepped through the arch
+had a Dark Mark on his arm.
+
+Actually, Peter was a bit surprised that Regulus could pass. When he
+turned, he saw Regulus rolling back his sleeve to study the Grim on his
+skin. He shrugged, then looked up and met Peter's eyes.
+
+``I suppose that she wants me to come in here,'' he said quietly. "Or
+perhaps Indigena wasn't specific with the wording, and the spell counts
+anyone who \emph{once} bore a Dark Mark as welcome."
+
+Peter nodded, then turned away. He couldn't speculate on Lady Death's
+motives. He couldn't speculate on anyone's motives but his own, in fact.
+And he knew that he had nerved himself to die as the sacrifice for the
+wand. No one else was going to take that from him.
+
+His armpits were damp, and his breath came and went in fast pants. It
+was not that he truly \emph{wanted} to die. But his life was required in
+the service of something larger than himself. So it went.
+
+The garden ahead of them creaked and rustled softly. The nearest plants
+were made of long, thin, black thorns, but some still had leaves, dark
+green and shiny as holly. When Peter listened, his ears tried to make
+voices out of the rubbing of the foliage. He shook his head and told
+himself sternly just to listen for the bell-sounds and music that might
+signal some of the rarer, more magical plants.
+
+``We're separating?'' he asked Severus and Regulus, nodding to the two
+paths that wound away from them, one to the left and one to the right.
+They were of identical width, and both made of crushed gray stones and
+white sand.
+
+Regulus frowned. ``I don't think that's a good idea. If one of us finds
+the wand, the others would need to be able to come to him as soon as
+possible. And this might be a maze, or we might have to force our way
+through plants that would kill us.'' He touched the vials of antivenin
+in the pocket of his robe.
+
+Peter gnawed his lip. ``On the other hand,'' he said, ``I know what the
+ash wood the wand is evidently made of smells like. And as a rat, I
+could fit through the human-sized traps more easily than you could.''
+
+``But the plants might stab at any movement,'' said Severus, folding his
+arms around himself as if he were cold, and moving away from Regulus
+when he held a hand out. ``Small or large, if you move around their
+roots, they could strike.''
+
+``Or they might not,'' said Peter, as patiently as possible. "We don't
+\emph{know}, remember? That's the perilous part about coming into this
+garden like this." He nodded to the left-hand path. ``I could take that
+one, for example, and become a rat, and try to find the wand and dig it
+out. And then I could drag it back. You could explore the rest of the
+garden. If you found it, you could shout for me. I'd hear you.''
+
+Regulus and Severus exchanged glances. Peter could see that the plan
+appealed to both of them, though for different reasons. Severus had
+forgotten about the practical advantages that Peter's Animagus form
+could give him; Regulus wanted to stay near Severus, whom Peter hoped
+would crack soon. It was becoming painful to watch them dance around
+each other.
+
+\emph{I might never be alive to see that cracking.}
+
+It was hard, learning to live with the consciousness and foreknowledge
+of death.
+
+``I suppose we can do it,'' Severus said. He seemed to loathe being left
+alone with Regulus, but he had never been one to deny good sense, and
+Peter knew that his plan sounded like the sheerest good sense.
+
+``Good,'' said Peter. ``As I said, call for me if you find it. I'll
+bring the wand, if I find it, to the meeting of these paths.'' And he
+changed before either of them could start arguing, for any reason.
+
+The world collapsed around him, and then loomed, the way it always did.
+Peter sniffed, and his nostrils filled with a world of scents he could
+never imagine living without while he was a rat, but which he was used
+to losing again, the moment he became human. He skipped forward, paws
+skittering lightly across the roots of the large thorns, and vanished
+into the world of the undergrowth.
+
+The ground rippled up and down beneath his feet, tiny mounds of good
+digging dirt and dipping thorns that would make a burrow uncomfortable,
+leaves that stank of cat fur and ones that smelled clean and tasty,
+flowers that Peter's instincts insisted were out of season and darkness
+that would make an excellent shelter from the reaching paws of felines.
+Peter took note of the fact, however, that no rats or mice or other
+burrowing creatures had been burrowing or eating. That was a bad sign.
+No matter how pleasant the country, if someone didn't live here already,
+Peter would not have wanted the plants for neighbors.
+
+He shook off the ratty thoughts and lifted his head, flaring his
+nostrils and twitching his whiskers, concentrating on the smell of ash
+wood. He did think he sniffed a faint trace of it to the left, and
+altered his trail, ducking and weaving around the bases of several
+thornbushes that swayed, but didn't try to stab him.
+
+Already, he was wondering if he should actually take himself back to the
+crossing of trails if and when he found the wand. Perhaps it would be
+better to kill himself where it lay, so that neither Severus nor Regulus
+could argue, or try to make himself the sacrifice. Peter wanted them to
+live and enjoy each other's company. And Harry was waiting on the other
+side of the wall, his connection to Voldemort open as much as he dared.
+In the best case scenario, he would appreciate a warning when the
+Horcrux was made vulnerable, so that he could start swallowing the magic
+and the shard of Tom Riddle inside, but Peter was also sure he could
+sense it.
+
+\emph{Maybe---maybe---}
+
+Of course, all that depended on him being the one to find the wand in
+the first place. Along with the smell of ash wood, Peter applied himself
+to looking for any sign of recent digging.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Snape ducked as a whistling branch, spiked with thorns like nails, swung
+above him and crashed into the bush on the other side of the path. He
+shivered, impressed. The sheer strength of the thing argued that it
+couldn't be stopped by conventional means, and Rhangnara and Hawthorn
+had warned them that burning some of the plants in Indigena's garden
+might have a chance to release poisonous fumes.
+
+Still, it was easy enough to cast a spell across his face so that he
+wouldn't breathe in the fumes, then cast \emph{Incendio} on the plant.
+The long branch, coming around for another strike, writhed like a
+beheaded snake and died in the flames. Regulus, on the other side of it,
+uttered a breathless laugh.
+
+``Not so strong, are they, Severus?''
+
+Snape tightened his jaw and tramped through the ashes to join Regulus on
+the continuing trail. So far, they had faced a plant covered with
+flute-like flowers that tried to sing to them and lull them to sleep,
+numerous thorns, a series of vines that crawled along at ground level to
+snare their ankles and trip them, a tree that nearly tricked them into
+walking into a crack in the trunk, and now this. Snap would not say that
+their opponents so far had been \emph{weak.}
+
+And there had been no sign of Ravenclaw's wand, no sign of its being
+buried or stuck obligingly in the crook of a bough. Snape was beginning
+to believe that Peter would stand a better chance of finding it after
+all.
+
+When he looked up, Regulus was using his wand to poke at a large shrub
+covered with shiny leaves and dark purple flowers. Snape hissed under
+his breath. \emph{This is only another reason he shouldn't be let out
+without a minder.} He stuck out his wand and pushed Regulus's away from
+the shrub. "What do you think you're \emph{doing}?" he snapped.
+
+Regulus made wide, innocent eyes at him. ``Severus,'' he said, in a
+deliberate whinge. ``I just saw what I thought was a wand in there.'' He
+nodded to a stem that had the same length and thickness as a wand, if
+one were drunk. ``I was trying to knock it down without disturbing the
+bush, that's all.''
+
+Snape wanted to say, ``A likely story,'' but that was too predictable,
+and he wanted to tell Regulus to stop calling him Severus, but it wasn't
+as if the man ever listened anyway. ``Regulus---''
+
+And then Regulus let out a sharp breath and took a step forward,
+ignoring the way that the flowers reared up and flared like reaching
+arms with tendrils, as if they would pull him close, lock their blossoms
+over his face, and drain the life from him. "\emph{Severus,}" he
+breathed. The teasing had vanished from his voice. ``Look.''
+
+And so Snape did, and he saw the small mound of dirt at the foot of the
+purple-flowered bush, with a figure worked on the top of it. The figure
+\emph{could} have been a raven with wide-spread wings. Or it could have
+been another bird. An eagle, perhaps, the symbol of Ravenclaw at
+Hogwarts.
+
+``We don't know that it means anything, Regulus,'' he hissed, and
+shifted his wand from one hand to the other to calm his nerves. ``She
+could have created several of them to serve as decoys if someone managed
+to make it this far. Or she could have wanted to make someone start
+seeing hints in shadows where there are none.''
+
+Regulus ignored this sensible counsel, because it seemed that that was
+what he \emph{did.} Instead, he knelt and used his wand to carefully
+brush away dirt from the top of the mound, disturbing the bird-like
+figure. Snape plunged his free hand into a robe pocket, searching for
+the vials of antivenin. This would be the point where a tendril came out
+of the mound and poisoned Regulus, he was certain.
+
+But nothing happened, except the dirt breaking apart to reveal a wand
+beneath it. The wand was made of ash wood, and shimmered with a faint,
+dark line that Snape had seen before: crawling along the edge of the
+Sword of Gryffindor, and surrounding the ring that Harry had seized and
+broken.
+
+Regulus looked up at Snape with triumph in his eyes. ``We haven't
+destroyed it yet,'' he whispered. "And she probably has protections that
+will come to life if we try to move it. But the \emph{true} defenses,
+the ones that Voldemort used, are probably broken. She had to move it
+out of its original hiding place in the orphanage, remember? I bet he
+had spells as formidable as Slytherin's shade on them, but he had to
+remove them or tell her how to break them so she could go there and move
+the Horcrux."
+
+Snape couldn't disagree with that line of reasoning. Lazuli Yaxley had
+kept a close watch on Thornhall when she could, and her shadow-mate and
+her sister Peridot had done the same when Lazuli was occupied. They
+would have noticed Indigena Apparating in constantly to adjust the
+defenses on the wand, and she had not. It seemed that Indigena had
+brought the wand here, trusted to the plants to protect it and later the
+Unassailable Curse, and had not bothered to build up the defenses.
+
+``We can remove it. I'm not going to touch it, though,'' Regulus
+whispered, and pointed his wand at Ravenclaw's wand. "\emph{Wingardium
+Leviosa!}"
+
+The Horcrux floated into the air. Regulus gave Snape a triumphant look
+from half-lidded eyes.
+
+Then vines lashed up from the ground, grabbing Regulus, binding him and
+bowing him backward, so that in moments he hung with his head pointed
+towards the dirt and his shoulders and limbs twisted at impossible
+angles. Snape barely kept himself from lunging forward with a snarl.
+Instead, he crouched beside Regulus and tried to figure out how to
+reverse the vines, which every second wound tighter, and bent his head
+towards his spine.
+
+``I would not do that, traitor,'' said Indigena Yaxley's smooth voice
+from behind him.
+
+Snape glanced coldly over his shoulder at her. She had stepped out from
+between two bushes, and had her own wand in her hand, pointed directly
+at him, as well as the thorns swaying above her shoulders. They could
+plunge down and yank his heart out of his chest, as Snape well knew.
+That was what had happened to Percy Weasley.
+
+And she had Regulus.
+
+Snape was astonished to find out how close he was to losing his
+self-control over this. He did not love Regulus. He knew that. He could
+not be loved. He knew that.
+
+But Regulus was bound and straining at his feet, small crack by small
+crack, towards being completely broken, and he felt as if he were
+floating on a piece of pack ice in the middle of a flow of magma. The
+pack ice was his self-control.
+
+He stood. Indigena raised an eyebrow, and the vines holding Regulus
+flexed and bent him further.
+
+``If you attack me, or he struggles, he dies,'' said Indigena softly.
+``They will literally rip him apart, snap his neck and his spine.
+Otherwise, his death will be slow and torturous, unless you hand
+Ravenclaw's wand to me and leave this garden.'' Her green-streaked hair
+had arisen to join the swaying of the thorns above her shoulders now.
+
+``How do I know you would free Regulus if I left the garden?'' Snape's
+voice was a muted thing, just barely running ahead of the rage.
+
+Indigena gave him a slow smile. ``I have honor. You may trust me.
+Traitors have no honor.'' Her eyes flicked to his left arm. ``You were
+given a chance to resume your loyalty, and it did not happen. I am the
+one who is taking a risk by trusting you.'' She paused, and when Snape
+didn't move, added, ``I am only interested in serving my Lord. I would
+have let you be if you had not found the wand, or attempted to remove
+it. I have been here since you first entered the garden. It is at my
+command that my darlings did not injure you more than they have so
+far.''
+
+Snape felt sick. To know they had been watched all along, allowed to get
+this far only because the garden's mistress had found them
+amusing\ldots{}
+
+And then the world changed.
+
+A tremendous bay broke across the garden. It shuddered in the ground
+around them, in Snape's bones, in the blood that coursed along his
+veins. He turned towards it, and that took more courage than it had ever
+taken him to do anything. All his instincts, the instincts of creatures
+once hunted by predators that had bellowed like that, were screaming at
+him to run, and keep running. The terrors of the vines ahead were
+nothing compared to the claws and teeth behind.
+
+He saw an enormous hound, a true Grim of the kind that Sirius Black had
+only dreamed he could imitate, standing in a thicket ten feet away. Its
+eyes were as silver as the symbol in the center of Harry's palm. Its fur
+was as black as the Mark on the inside of Regulus's arm. As Snape
+watched, Lady Death raised her head and howled again, making him stumble
+to his knees.
+
+Indigena gave a wordless, gibbering shriek beside him, as if the mere
+sight of the dog had frightened her too much to do anything.
+
+And then she fell to her knees with another shriek as a gray rat bit her
+on the ankle, and Snape turned and saw what else had happened.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+The bay had reminded him.
+
+\emph{Come when I call}, she had said, sitting on the throne in the
+desolate country, after she had given him the information about the
+Horcruxes. \emph{Give me what I crave when I crave it. When I call you
+on to die, then you cannot refuse me.}
+
+And now the call had come, the hunting bay that she had imitated for him
+when he asked.
+
+Regulus closed his eyes. He had made the bargain, his life for
+knowledge, death for wisdom. At least he had lived long enough to learn
+what love was again, and choose an heir, and know that he was leaving
+the houses and treasures that had depended on him in capable hands.
+
+He somewhat regretted that he had \emph{not} lived long enough to see
+love returned, but that was not something he could expect, not with
+someone as stubborn as Severus was. It would have been worth it, to
+break those masks, had he had the time.
+
+It had been worth it, to have lived as he was.
+
+He dedicated his life to the destruction of the Horcrux, in one breath,
+and thought of Harry in the next.
+
+And so, with love riding his mind, controlling his movements as it had
+from the day that he descended to the guarded cave and stole the locket
+Horcrux, Regulus Black wrenched himself backwards and sideways, and
+heard his bones snap like castanets in the moments before darkness took
+him.
+
+The Dark was deep and soft, and rolled him in velvet blankets, and an
+enormous cold tongue, the tongue of a mother dog licking a puppy,
+scraped him from head to foot, and so he ended.
+
+His second-to-last thought was of Harry, his last thought of Severus.
+
+Regulus Black died content.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry reeled to the ground. It wasn't the scar in his head flaring with
+pain, the way he had thought it would be if Snape, Regulus, Peter, or
+all of them together managed to find the Horcrux and break the
+Unassailable Curse, but the silver dogs-head in the center of his left
+palm. The metal was cold, unbearably colder than the flesh around it,
+freeze-drying it as Harry watched.
+
+``Harry! What---'' Draco was beside him, wrenching at his wrist.
+
+Harry sucked a deep breath into his lungs and heard the dog crying,
+baying, barking as if down a trail. Regulus had said Lady Death would
+call him. From the sound of it, she just had.
+
+He could not mourn. Not yet.
+
+They stood on the northern side of the garden-wall, and now Harry leaned
+against it, trusting some of his weight to Draco, and opened the
+connection in his scar as wide as it would go, with a mental shout. If
+the pattern was followed that had occurred the other times Horcruxes
+were just destroyed, the shade of Tom Riddle would come forth now, and
+Harry \emph{had} to keep him from possessing a body, had to draw him
+near enough that Harry could swallow his soul.
+
+\emph{Come to me, Tom. It's the one you hate, your heir, the one who is
+going to be responsible for destroying your body in a very short time.
+You want to take me if you can, don't you, and use my own power against
+me? I've already destroyed three of you, and destroyed a fourth with
+help. This is the fifth. Don't you want to be the one who survives?}
+
+He could feel a cold presence in the garden moving closer and closer to
+him, and threw even more of himself into the call. He didn't entirely
+abandon the physical sensations of his body, though; he could still feel
+the chill in the center of his left palm, and Draco's hand, steady as
+rock, on his shoulder, and his warmth supporting Harry all along the
+right side.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Indigena could not stand. Every time she got herself steady enough to
+fire off a spell, the rat running about her nipped her again, stumbling
+her with the little shock of pain, and darting nimbly enough to escape
+the curses that she plunged into the dirt. She called a vine to take
+care of the rat, but the creature turned a somersault in midair, evading
+the reaching tendril neatly, and then bit her hand hard enough to make
+her drop her wand.
+
+Add to that the instinctive terror of the dog's howl, and the fact that
+said dog \emph{hadn't gone away}, but remained in the thicket, panting
+and watching her with cold silver eyes, and she could not get her
+bearings.
+
+She knew Regulus Black was dead, and because she had not commanded the
+plants to kill him, or even tighten since she began the conversation
+with Snape, he must have killed himself. He would have dedicated his
+death to breaking the Unassailable Curse, and that meant the curse was
+now broken, and the Horcrux was vulnerable.
+
+But it bubbled and boiled with blackness, and the darkness rising from
+it, forming into a vision of her master who might be about thirty years
+old, had his choice of bodies. The rat, Snape, Indigena herself---even
+one of the plants would do, and her Lord could come and make provisions
+to keep the new Horcrux safe until the spring equinox, would he would
+gain the power to draw the magic and the shard of soul back into himself
+if he desired.
+
+The shade did briefly turn his head to the northern wall of the garden,
+but then sniffed and focused on Snape. Indigena was glad. Snape was
+still kneeling in shock, staring at Regulus Black's body, as if he had
+not known his companion could do that. He was going to be easy prey.
+
+And then a white shape formed in front of her, and danced around the
+shade of her master, blocking its path.
+
+Indigena hissed. \emph{Aurora!}
+
+Her Lord had told her how the shades of the school's Founders had kept
+the shard from the Sword of Gryffindor from reaching and taking a body
+for a critical amount of time in the Headmistress's office at Hogwarts.
+Being shades themselves, they could contend with the younger part of her
+master in his own world, but he could not possess them. And, from the
+looks of it, this shade, though spitting and hissing and making
+continual dives, could not get around the determined vengeance-ghost of
+Aurora Whitestag. She began to drive him towards the northern wall of
+the garden.
+
+Indigena, finally recovering from a bit of her fear as the black bitch
+stood where she was and the rat scampered over to the broken corpse of
+Black, began feeling for her wand. Perhaps she could fire off a spell
+that would distract Aurora. The ghost had come to exist because of her,
+after all. There was at least a chance that Aurora would welcome the
+opportunity to take vengeance on her more than she would want to stop
+Tom Riddle.
+
+But Indigena remembered the words that Aurora had spoken to her about
+stopping instead of killing, and felt a moment's spark of uneasy wonder.
+
+And then a bellowing roar, a cry of anguish and pain, stirred the garden
+as the dog's bay had.
+
+Indigena whirled around, picking up her wand at the same moment. Severus
+Snape had snapped back to reality, and he was looking at her with eyes
+full of dark fire.
+
+And Indigena knew why the dog had remained.
+
+And she was reminded that just because traitors had no honor did not
+mean that they had no magical strength.
+
+Snape was near her equal in magical power, and just now, his rage had
+carried him beyond that. He raised his wand and spoke a curse before
+Indigena could steady her own grip, much less fire off a defensive
+spell, and the world became dark. He had blinded her, not with the
+simple, reversible \emph{Caeco}, but with a spell that destroyed her
+eyes. The boiling, acidic pain struck a moment after the realization,
+and Indigena could hear herself screaming in a high, thin voice that
+didn't sound like a member of the House of Yaxley.
+
+Even as she stumbled backward, a cold, dark part of her brain, always
+rational, whispered that this was no more than she deserved for standing
+by when her Lord tortured Snape in the Chamber of Secrets.
+
+Another curse, and Indigena's feet were gone, sliced off from her by the
+bony jaws of what felt like machines, or perhaps conjured scorpions; she
+had known a spell that did that, once, before she became so involved in
+the study of plants as not to care for animal magic. It hurt, it hurt,
+it \emph{hurt}, and she opened her mouth and let loose another wail of
+pain.
+
+And then Snape spoke, and something small and spiky crawled into her
+mouth and snipped off her tongue. Indigena choked on her own blood,
+spitting a large gob of it to the ground before she could continue.
+
+Her wand was useless to her now, and she let it drop, but there were
+still her darlings, and she was hard to kill, given all the plants
+curling beneath her skin. She told her thorns to lash straight ahead.
+They oriented on Snape and traveled in that direction; they could still
+sense him even if she no longer could.
+
+\emph{Snap}, and \emph{snap}; he had cut them off in mid-flight, and
+only empty, soft tendrils fell to rest on her shoulders. Indigena
+mourned more because of that than all the rest.
+
+And then he cast a cold spell at her.
+
+Indigena's mind clouded. She fell on her back, and the leaves under her
+skin withered close to her muscles. She was so \emph{tired}. She wanted
+to curl up and go to sleep under the warm earth. She could do that, and
+still rise. After all, she'd managed to do it in the wake of Hawthorn's
+linked blood curses, which should have killed her.
+
+The air around her smelled sweet, and she heard thunder curling in her
+ears. Then she heard something else: the sound of boots walking.
+
+Step, and step, and they were beside her. Indigena rolled so that her
+face pointed in that direction, though with destroyed eyes and tongue,
+she could not face her executioner and could not offer up a final moment
+of scorn for the way that he had betrayed his true allegiance.
+
+The curse that killed her began deep in her internal organs, rupturing
+them one by one and then driving them out through her skin in a messy
+spray of blood and flesh and slick things. Indigena had seen it used,
+and so she knew what was happening as she fell away from honor and pain
+into the endless bay of a hound.
+
+Strangely, though, the final sensation she knew was not pain, but
+relief, and the vision that accompanied her was one of Minister
+Scrimgeour.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry would have fallen if not for Draco. Merlin, why wasn't the shade
+coming to him? Harry had both a solid body and magical power that
+resembled his own to offer him. He called, and called again, and only
+felt the dark presence of the shade buffeted towards him after long
+moments in which he could feel nothing but his palm and Draco.
+
+Not that it was a bad thing, to feel that much Draco.
+
+And then a pair of shapes came over the garden wall, one dark and one
+white, and Harry didn't pause to see who had helped him snare the shade
+of Tom Riddle. He simply lashed, drinking, the jaws of his
+\emph{absorbere} gift rising and falling with a regular crunching
+motion. He needed to chew, he needed to masticate, and he needed to
+swallow. His belly ached with a savage pain, but he would get used to
+that later. He could even throw up, once this moment was past.
+
+Tom Riddle fought him, of course. From what little he could see, Harry
+thought this was an older Tom Riddle, which might explain why he hadn't
+come directly for Harry as the younger specimen from the ring had; he
+was more experienced, and too sensible just to dash straight for the
+nearest source of power. But he was still restricted by his need for a
+body, and by the fact that he couldn't drain Harry's magic the way Harry
+could drain him, and by the experience Harry had of swallowing bits of
+soul like this before.
+
+Harry leaned forward, trembling, all his magic working at the feast.
+Shards of dark power dropped directly into his stomach, and he broke out
+into cold sweat and then began to physically retch, though he only
+brought up bile since he'd had the sense not to eat anything before they
+left for the garden. But all the time, Draco maintained hold of him, and
+Harry drew, and the piece of Tom Riddle floated towards him, screaming.
+
+And then Harry bit off his head.
+
+The rest of the magic folded up and fell into its proper place, tucking
+itself into him like a parasite. Harry shuddered. It was like swallowing
+a tapeworm. But he had managed worse, and he would manage worse in a few
+days, when he fell off the mountain, and so he finished it.
+
+When he stood, he nodded to Draco. ``Thank you,'' he said, and then
+looked up at the white shadow that hovered above the garden wall,
+wondering if that was a piece of the shade he would have to eat, too.
+
+To his shock, Aurora Whitestag's face smiled back at him. Then she bowed
+her head, extended her hands in front of her, and dimmed like morning
+fog before the sun, thinning and vanishing. Somehow, Harry doubted that
+she would ever return.
+
+And then the cold in the center of his hand struck again, and he said as
+softly as he could, ``Regulus is dead.''
+
+Draco stared at him. Then he said, ``Are you certain?''
+
+``I think so.'' Harry began to pick his way around the garden wall.
+``Come on. We should find them.''
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Peter met them at the entrance of the garden, practically pulling Snape
+behind him. Harry saw why he had so much trouble as soon as Snape faced
+them fully. He had Regulus's body in his arms, and he wouldn't loosen
+his grip on it by one iota, even when Peter kicked him.
+
+``Indigena Yaxley is dead,'' Peter said, in a horrible flat voice.
+``Severus killed her. And the Horcrux is gone. And I don't know what to
+do with the rest of my life.''
+
+He looked so lost that Harry gave him one hard hug, then stepped away
+from him and approached Snape.
+
+His father didn't look up from Regulus. Only when Harry softly spoke his
+name did he glance away from the dead face. Harry caught a glimpse of
+the way Regulus's spine was twisted then, and winced.
+
+Snape's face was full of the self-recrimination of one who had realized
+a beautiful truth too late.
+
+Harry leaned forward, and put his arms around him, and said nothing.
+There was nothing to be said, except for something far away in the
+garden, where a black hound called a fourth time, and then was silent.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 81*: In a Sea of
+Mourning}\label{chapter-81-in-a-sea-of-mourning}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Sixty-Five: In a Sea of Mourning}
+
+Snape could not see, nor hear.
+
+Well. He could see one thing, hear one thing. He could see Regulus's
+gray eyes, wide and glazed in death. The idea that peace came to the
+dead was a laughable thing. He could feel the broken shards of Regulus's
+spine jabbing into his arms. He had not died \emph{peacefully}, but
+given up his life in an incredibly horrendous and painful way. It was
+beyond Snape's understanding why someone would speak of this as an
+ending of pain.
+
+He could hear the voices chattering and washing around him, sometimes
+speaking his name, sometimes speaking Regulus's, trying to give comfort
+the best they could. But none of them had been in his position, knowing
+love given too late, and so he ignored them. Most of his life, other
+people had assumed they could understand something about him, that they
+had something in common with him, and that was the reason behind all the
+sympathetically outstretched hands. But they had nothing in common with
+him, and so Snape refused to admit them and their words. He sat where he
+was, and stared into Regulus's face, and waded into a sea of
+self-recrimination.
+
+It was familiar. It felt like home. After all, he had stayed there for a
+good long time after Voldemort had first fallen. And who was there now
+to rescue him? Anyone who reached out of sympathy wouldn't understand.
+Anyone who presumed they understood what it was like to lose love so
+early would not be right.
+
+Snape sat, and did not care what went on around him, or even the way
+that Regulus's body stiffened in his arms. No, this was not Regulus, who
+had gone on, but it was all that remained. And this lonely shell was all
+that Snape deserved, a fitting and bitter symbol of his failures.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Connor watched the door of the bedroom, gnawing his lip. He didn't think
+that he \emph{could} intrude. He had nothing to say to Snape's grief. He
+hadn't known Regulus well, though he'd liked him. And Snape hated
+Gryffindors, and hated him. He would not welcome Connor Potter's
+comments on the way that he moped.
+
+On the other hand, this was worrying Harry, who had gone in and talked
+to Snape for a few hours, and then come out shaking his head and saying
+nothing had changed. Connor didn't want his brother worried.
+
+No one else was in there.
+
+Finally, Connor opened the door of the room. Unsurprisingly, he thought,
+potions vials covered every available flat surface. They sometimes
+bubbled and sometimes glittered, but didn't move when Connor edged into
+the room. He supposed they were all balanced enough so they wouldn't
+fall over.
+
+Snape sat on his bed with Regulus's body draped across his lap. Connor
+wrinkled his nose a bit. Was it starting to smell already? He didn't
+know if dead bodies decayed that fast, but he wouldn't be surprised.
+Maybe it was potions ingredients he was smelling.
+
+``Sir?'' he tried.
+
+Well, he got more of a reaction than Harry had reported. Snape's head
+snapped up like a snake striking, and he \emph{glared}. Connor kept
+himself from reeling at the glare. He had done nothing wrong. At least,
+if Snape yelled at him to get out, then that would be forcing him to do
+something other than stare at Regulus's body.
+
+"Get \emph{out}," Snape snarled, right on cue.
+
+``Are you going to stop staring at Regulus and let them prepare him
+properly for burial?'' Connor demanded, because he might as well. ``Or
+burning,'' he added, remembering Harry's account of Sirius's funeral.
+``I know that they burn the Black bodies, to return them to the stars.''
+
+If anything, Snape's glare became more poisonous still. "Get
+\emph{out}," he said, the way he might have said it to a student who
+insisted on lingering in the dungeons classroom when a potion full of
+poisonous fumes had just spilt. Of course, there was no more dungeons
+classroom because there was no more Hogwarts. Connor wondered for a
+moment if he would live to see it rebuilt.
+
+Then he shrugged and told himself that of course he would, and to stop
+being stupid, and looked directly into Snape's eyes. ``You do know that
+they'll have to burn the body eventually? Harry has the right, as the
+Black heir, and so does Draco, since his mother was Regulus's
+cousin---''
+
+And then he was facing the end of Snape's wand. Connor had the sense to
+stop talking, but not the sense to run. Why would he? He could take
+anything Snape could throw at him. He glared back at Snape, thought of
+transforming into a boar so he would at least have a tail to switch, and
+thought better of it.
+
+"Get \emph{out}, now," Snape whispered.
+
+It was the undertone to his voice, like dark water running beneath
+stone, that convinced Connor, more than any threat could have done. He
+nodded, and stepped out, and closed the door behind him. \emph{Then} he
+allowed himself to shake a bit.
+
+``You didn't, Potter.''
+
+Connor rolled his eyes. Draco was leaning against the side of the
+corridor, and looked torn between scornful and incredulous.
+
+``There was at least the chance he would respond to me,'' Connor said.
+``And he did. He didn't seem overjoyed with the suggestion that you and
+Harry would have to take the body for burning, though.''
+
+Draco's hands clenched one around the other. ``How can you do this?'' he
+demanded sharply. ``Do you have any idea what he's lost?''
+
+``No,'' said Connor. ``And I don't think that you have, either. After
+all, Harry admitted his love to you, and he's still alive.''
+
+Draco turned away as if the argument weren't worth bothering with, but
+said over his shoulder, "Leave him alone, Potter. For \emph{his} sake. I
+personally wouldn't care if he flayed all your skin off---it's what you
+deserve---but I wouldn't want him to wake up and find out he'd done
+that."
+
+Connor gave the closed door a dubious glance. He still thought someone
+should go in and talk Snape out of his idiocy, but he supposed it
+couldn't be him.
+
+The sight of Regulus's face, so still, and the knowledge of what his
+fate had cost Snape, had given him an idea, though. Connor wasn't sure
+Parvati would agree to it, but he needed to ask her. So he went to her
+bedroom, and knocked, and, when she opened the door, stepped inside and
+shut it behind him.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco snorted as he made his way down to the kitchen. \emph{Fucking
+Potter. Always has to follow his idiotic ideas exactly when he should
+stay out of things. Well, I'm not going into Professor Snape's rooms.
+He'll need to work this out on his own, and I think we should leave him
+alone until he does.}
+
+He found Harry sitting at the kitchen table, talking quietly with Peter
+Pettigrew. The man had his head in his hands, and didn't look up. Harry
+leaned forward, eyes on him, and went on talking. After a moment to
+consider if it was his business or not, Draco decided it was. He was
+unaware of what sins \emph{Peter} had committed that made him a
+candidate for sympathy. It sounded, from the story, as though he'd done
+everything he could in the garden, and it simply hadn't been enough to
+prevent Regulus Black's suicide. Draco didn't think anyone could have.
+
+``---not meant to be a sacrifice for that Horcrux, then,'' Harry was
+saying. "That doesn't \emph{matter}, Peter. I appreciate what you
+decided to do. Deciding to give your life up in advance, and holding
+that \emph{secret}\ldots{}" He shook his head and squeezed Peter's hand.
+``But that doesn't mean the rest of your life is valueless.''
+
+Draco blinked. Now that he thought about it, he remembered his idea that
+Peter's behavior had been odd lately, and that he might have decided to
+make himself the sacrifice. He wondered if Peter had told that to Harry,
+or if Harry had wormed it out of him on his own, and edged a little
+closer to listen.
+
+``But it's so hard,'' Peter whispered. ``To think that my life was
+ending, to see it as a black cliff beyond which nothing more could lead
+me on, and then to learn that, actually, there was no chasm at all,
+because someone else took my place. I feel like I gave all my energy to
+a blow, and then the spell hit nothing.''
+
+``I know,'' said Harry, with so much passion in his voice that Draco
+felt caught somewhere between wonder and jealousy. ``I've leaned on a
+purpose like that, too, Peter, and then had to find something else to do
+with my life when I found that purpose had faded, or was wrong and
+not---mine in the same way I thought it was. You were there when one of
+the key moments in that change happened. Remember?''
+
+Peter's face changed as he evidently remembered the Shrieking Shack.
+Draco bit his lip to keep from snarling. That was, perhaps, the part of
+Harry's life he resented missing the most, though he'd seen it both
+while sharing Harry's mind and in Pensieve memories. Harry, Connor, and
+Peter were the only ones who knew what it was \emph{really} like to
+watch the prophecy turn out not to have marked Harry as guardian at all,
+to reel in those stunning moments of truth that the rest of the world
+had only slowly come to know. Draco knew that, short of acquiring a
+Time-Turner, not even Harry being more open could change that for him,
+but it didn't stop him from resenting it.
+
+``But---you didn't think you were going to die,'' Peter whispered then.
+
+``I had to get used to thinking of a life of my own,'' said Harry, "a
+life that included Draco, and Snape, and you, and Regulus, and more
+people than just my brother. No, I didn't believe I would die in a few
+days at the time. I believed I could die \emph{any} day, that my life
+might be required of me to defend Connor, and that was all right. In
+fact, what other purpose had I been born for? But it took a long time to
+move on from that. So I don't expect you to change your mind overnight,
+Peter. Merlin knows \emph{I} didn't. I just object to the idea that
+you'll never adjust, that your life would have to become a sacrifice to
+be worth anything." His voice altered. "And that you did anything wrong.
+Regulus killed himself because he \emph{wanted} to. He had a moment to
+choose, and he did it. I don't think he died unhappily. He had
+foreknowledge, in a sense, and he was still one of the most joyful
+people I've ever seen. I wish that for you."
+
+Peter licked his lips for a moment, then said, ``There is still one
+Horcrux left.''
+
+``And, currently, I have no idea how to get it away from Evan Rosier,''
+Harry said easily. ``So you could be the sacrifice. If you were in a
+position to choose that, then---yes. I couldn't gainsay you, because you
+would have chosen it of your own free will.'' Draco wondered if Peter
+saw the soft shine of tears on Harry's cheeks, or if he was too caught
+up in his own emotion. "But I wish you wouldn't think that's the
+\emph{only} reason you're still alive, Peter. What happened if you aimed
+for it, and then someone else got there before you again?"
+
+Peter opened his mouth as if he would say something, and ended up
+closing it. Draco shifted impatiently. He wanted to intrude and say that
+Peter should mourn more for his friend than his own lost opportunity to
+lose his life---but, at the same time, he didn't know if he had the
+right to intrude on a conversation this intimate. He was not Connor.
+
+``I miss him,'' Harry said. "I'll always miss him. And I wish Snape had
+been more courageous, or easier to court, but then he wouldn't be my
+father. Merlin knows \emph{that}. But, please, Peter, don't feel that
+your still being alive is a waste." He sat back and surveyed Peter
+earnestly. ``You won't, will you?''
+
+Peter hesitated a long moment more before he shook his head. ``How can
+I?'' he whispered. ``I don't---I didn't think what my life could mean,
+to other people besides myself, or that others had had the same
+experiences.'' He wrapped his arms around Harry's shoulders and hugged
+him tight. Harry hugged him back. From his angle, Draco could see his
+knuckles turning white as they dug into Peter's robes, which made him
+close his hand in envy. He let out his breath, and tried to remind
+himself that just because Harry was sharing his grief with Peter didn't
+mean there would be none left to share with Draco.
+
+``I'm sorry that Regulus is dead,'' Harry whispered. ``But I'm glad
+you're alive. I hope you can be.''
+
+Peter said nothing, just drew back, clenched Harry's shoulder for a
+moment, and then walked out of the kitchen by the other door, so that
+Draco didn't have to move. Harry sat where he was, eyes closed and
+breath heaving in and out of his lungs. Draco watched him, curious and
+concerned. Would he sit where he was and resume his barriers, the way he
+had before? Would he go up to Snape and try to comfort him, as he'd
+spent the morning fruitlessly doing?
+
+No. He stood up and walked towards the door Draco stood next to, an
+unusually determined expression on his face, but he made no effort to
+wipe the tears from his cheeks, and this wasn't the way to Snape's
+rooms. Draco drew back, watching in silence.
+
+Harry halted when he saw him, though, and his face reflected honest
+surprise. ``You're here,'' he said. ``I thought you were in our room.''
+
+Draco shrugged, as though his being here were nothing more than a
+fortunate accident, but his mouth betrayed him. ``You were looking for
+me?''
+
+``Yes,'' Harry whispered. "I wanted to---Merlin, Draco, he's
+\emph{gone.}" And then he moved forward, leaned his head on Draco's
+shoulder, and began to cry, in a quiet way more intense than the tears
+he'd shown so far.
+
+Draco lifted his arms and put them carefully around Harry's shoulders.
+He did not dare to hope, not yet. He had hoped and been disappointed so
+often before.
+
+But there was a tiny spark of something down at the bottom of his belly,
+which could have been hope if he would have admitted to it. Harry had
+sought him out, while there was still someone mourning fiercely,
+uncomforted, and before he was at the absolute end of his tether, for no
+other reason than sharing his grief.
+
+There \emph{might} be hope, just as there might be an answer to
+defeating Voldemort somewhere in the Black houses and treasures that
+Harry had inherited.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Snape did not look up, because the world beyond the end of his hands did
+not matter. He heard the door open, and footsteps cross the floor, but
+that was well enough. They were not Potter's footsteps, and so he did
+not have to lift his wand and fire off a curse. He curled tighter around
+Regulus's body. The shards of bone jabbed into his arms again. Perhaps
+they had cut the cloth and made him bleed, and that was why it was
+harder to hold the corpse than it should have been. He did not care
+enough to look. He stared into Regulus's face. He had closed the eyes
+sometime in the last half-hour. The glazed look had begun to get to him,
+because Regulus had never looked that lazy, that unalert, when he was
+alive.
+
+\emph{Perhaps he would have, if---}
+
+But Snape's mind cut away the weave of images and situations that could
+have led to such an occurrence. He wasn't interested in them. And he
+wasn't interested in the voice of the person who had settled beside him,
+either. They could say whatever they liked, and leave again. They would,
+of course. Snape could not imagine who in the world would care for him
+now, after he had rejected and lost his chance with Regulus. Surely
+anyone else would decide that he could not be trusted with the treasure
+of affection. Why should they? Who wished to love someone who
+continually learned the truth too late, long after he should have
+learned it?
+
+``He was like a child when he first appeared in my head.''
+
+\emph{Harry. Of course.} And Snape had his answer for someone who would
+try to love him even after he had wasted Regulus's time and heart. He
+simply didn't care. Harry would try to reach for him, and this time
+Snape would not grasp his hand, but sit in silence until it fell.
+
+He knew it was selfish, self-concerned, horrible. That did not matter.
+Grief \emph{was} selfish.
+
+"I had only heard of him not long before. And when I understood what
+Voldemort had done to him, I was horrified. A curse, months of horrible
+pain, and then Transfiguration into a wooden dog---though I didn't find
+that out until later. Not only depriving him of a body, but making him
+feel pain even then. He never exactly \emph{confirmed} it to me, but I
+think he could still feel pain when he floated in that connection we
+had, thanks to my scar. He only didn't feel it when he retreated into
+the dog, and then there was only stillness, nothingness. He survived
+boredom, nothing to sense and no one to talk to, for thirteen years. I
+think I would have gone mad."
+
+Snape had known all that. He wondered why Harry thought that telling him
+now would make any difference.
+
+"And yet he remained so like a \emph{child}, even when he'd regained his
+memory, which he didn't have when he appeared in my head." Harry's voice
+was full of wonder. "That innocence, that amusement with life. I've
+never known anyone else who had that. It wasn't as if he was
+\emph{untouched} by darkness. I saw that when he came back from Death's
+country, how much it had unnerved him to see her. But it wasn't entirely
+new to him. He lived through it." A hand drifted out and touched Snape's
+arm. ``And he knew you, then.''
+
+Snape tried to draw his arm back. The hand followed, as if Harry didn't
+notice the attempt to pull away, or didn't care. \emph{Probably the
+latter,} Snape thought, and a small ball of resentment formed in his
+stomach.
+
+``I can't conceive of the strength it must have taken, to last through
+such darkness, and then the darkness in between, and then to volunteer
+to go into the darkness again, in Death's country, not knowing if he
+would ever come back,'' Harry whispered. "And his childhood was hardly
+good, either, given his parents and the conflicts with Sirius. And he
+knows how Sirius died, he was there when he died, and he had to bear
+with the knowledge that he suffered and Regulus himself couldn't do
+anything to prevent it. And he was kept away from me for half a year in
+my fourth year, from the autumnal equinox to the spring one, and I think
+Voldemort tortured him, though he never said. And still he
+\emph{lived.}"
+
+``Of course he did,'' Snape said, compelled to answer by the tone of awe
+in Harry's voice. ``If he had not, he could hardly have done---this.''
+He gestured to the broken corpse in his arms with the hand that Harry
+held, hoping that would make him release it. No such luck.
+
+``I didn't mean lived as in survived,'' said Harry. ``Anyone could have
+done that. I mean lived as in he picked himself up, and forgave the
+latest tragedy, and went on living with a heart that he didn't allow to
+scar.''
+
+Snape turned his head to stare at him. Harry's eyes stared back at him,
+earnest and bright green and showing no sign that he understood the
+ridiculousness of what he had just said.
+
+"He certainly did not \emph{forgive} Voldemort," said Snape, his own
+voice half-alien to his ears. ``He worked against him from the day that
+he understood how important the locket Horcrux was. And Voldemort was
+the source of too much suffering and misery in his life.''
+
+"I didn't say that he forgave \emph{him}," Harry countered calmly. "He
+hated the people it was reasonable to hate. I said that he forgave the
+\emph{tragedy}. There are too many people who start hating life when
+something bad happens, who assume that the whole world is like that, and
+harden their hearts against more living. They assume that one burned
+hand means they'll always get burned, and never extend it again, stupid
+though it is to think the whole world's fire. Regulus didn't do that."
+
+"And \emph{I} did." Not even Snape could tell if the predominant tone in
+his voice was anger or self-loathing.
+
+``Yes.'' Harry's hand tightened on his wrist, so that he really couldn't
+pull away. "And so did I, and so did Lucius, and so did James, and so
+did Lily, and so did Peter, for a while, when he did nothing but sit in
+Azkaban Prison and assume that the whole world hated him and blamed him
+for something he'd been \emph{ordered} to do. He didn't summon the will
+to push against the phoenix web, really crack it, and escape until he
+read that I was suffering from the same kind of thing. He and Regulus
+and Hawthorn are the only people I've ever known whose lives are wasted
+and struck down by grief after grief, and yet who go on living like
+that. And Peter came near to losing the capacity today." Harry's voice
+hardened a bit. ``He'd become too wrapped up in the notion that he had
+to die in the garden, and that nothing else he did was useful.''
+
+Snape stared at him.
+
+``What?'' Harry asked.
+
+``You were not supposed to agree with me,'' Snape whispered, though he
+was not sure who had written the script he and Harry were straying from.
+Perhaps he and Harry had written it, during the other times that he had
+been comforted or watched Harry comfort others in grief and
+heart-sickness. ``You said---you said that I did not have the
+capacity.''
+
+``The fact that you're sitting here, and planning to sit here for the
+rest of your life if necessary, shows that you don't,'' Harry answered.
+``And you've certainly lived enough of your life like that. I don't know
+what you did during your time as a Death Eater, you realize? I have more
+idea of what Lucius did, though he took care to cover his tracks, and
+he's certainly never had a heart-to-heart talk with me about it. I don't
+know what really made you turn your back on Voldemort and come to
+Dumbledore. I only know a little about what made you choose to side with
+me. You have your emotions, but you keep them so tightly closed up I
+have no notion of what's happening in your head, sometimes.''
+
+Outraged, Snape tried to pull free. This time, he tugged hard enough
+that Harry fell to one knee in front of him, but his hand stayed right
+where it was. Snape suspected it was magic maintaining the grasp, but he
+had no way to tell.
+
+``You have no right to speak to me like this,'' Snape snarled. ``Do you
+understand what I've lost?''
+
+``No.'' Harry's eyes glittered with intensity, and something like anger,
+as he leaned forward. ``I understand that you didn't say that you loved
+Regulus in time, and so he never knew if you did. I understand that
+you're unlikely to confess that love to me at all,'' he added, when
+Snape opened his mouth. "And I understand that I've made the same
+mistakes myself, so the moral high ground from which I can lecture you
+is very small. But I \emph{also} understand that I'm not going to sit
+here and watch you waste the rest of your life away."
+
+``I would give up the body for burning eventually,'' Snape said. He felt
+this point needed emphasis.
+
+``But part of you will always be sitting in this room, holding onto
+it.'' Harry's grip tightened to just this side of painful. ``I don't
+want that, thanks. I want you back without thinking that you carry yet
+another scar on your heart for which you can find no redemption.'' His
+eyes slid to Snape's left forearm and the Dark Mark for a moment, then
+returned to his face. "And it's not that people aren't willing to
+forgive you. You feel there can \emph{be} no redemption, and you carry
+that around with you and make people feel bad for offering it." He took
+a deep breath, and his hand tightened still further, pressing tendon to
+bone in Snape's arm. ``I want my father back.''
+
+``You have no right to do this when the wound is so deep,'' Snape
+hissed. He felt as if someone had found his heart and were sprinkling
+salt over it, with lemon juice to follow.
+
+Harry looked at him again, and Snape realized one thing that was
+different about his eyes, beyond the fact that usually Harry would have
+pulled away by now. Harry had no Occlumency pools in place. So
+compassion was there, but it was fighting irritation and exasperation
+and grief of his own.
+
+Snape wanted to ask what had prompted that change, but Harry gave him no
+chance. "We've established that already. \emph{No one} has the right to
+do this. Regulus, maybe, but he's \emph{dead.}" Snape flinched. Harry
+didn't miss it. He dropped his other hand to push Regulus's long black
+hair back from his face, to show the horribly twisted neck, which Snape
+so far had been successful in not looking at. "He's \emph{dead}," Harry
+repeated. "He won't come back. And you won't pull yourself out of this
+on your own. So there go the two people with \emph{rights} over this
+situation. It'll have to be someone who cares about you and can risk
+your anger but who doesn't care that much right now about whether he's
+morally justified in doing this." He leaned forward, eyes searching
+Snape's. "You \emph{will} become a recluse if someone doesn't shock you
+from it."
+
+``I would give up the body, I said,'' Snape snarled.
+
+Harry ground his teeth, and for a moment a pair of spiked, bony wings
+appeared on his shoulders. Then he said, "And this isn't about that, or
+anything else that you'll readily agree to. This is about emotional
+isolation, as we both know. Are you going to come out of here and start
+living again? Or will you lock yourself into place and orbit around
+Regulus the way you once did around your time as a Death Eater? I know
+that I was able to make you pay attention to \emph{something} besides
+that when I came to Hogwarts. But, so sorry, I'm all out of emotionally
+crippled boys who need mentor figures to rescue them from abusive
+parents and Headmasters. I \emph{need} your help, Father. I need you
+here with me. I can't do this on my own." He shut his eyes as if to keep
+the tears from creeping down his face, but his voice was still clear.
+"Come \emph{back}. I'm sorry that Regulus never had the chance to see
+your heart unshielded, as he should have, but that's what makes it
+necessary to live with the consequences of one's mistakes, instead of
+just forgetting them or chewing over them."
+
+Snape had his wand drawn. He didn't remember drawing it. He fired a
+spell at Harry. He didn't know what it was; the image of pain formed in
+his head, and it emerged from his wand as a line of poison-green light.
+
+Harry lifted a hand and caught the curse in his palm on the silver
+dogs-head, which reminded Snape too much of the huge hound standing in
+the thicket and bellowing for Regulus. He had killed the woman who had
+killed Regulus, but it was never, never going to be enough. He watched
+in numb silence as Harry wriggled his fingers and dissipated the curse.
+
+``This is silly,'' Harry said. "\emph{Both} of us. You \emph{know} he's
+dead. You're one of the best at accepting the inevitable I've ever seen,
+and finding new, workable solutions to problems---when they don't
+concern \emph{you}. So now I'm asking you to become skilled at that,
+too." He raised his head and shook his fringe out of his eyes, though it
+fell back so that only one eye and his lightning bolt scar were really
+staring at Snape. ``This isn't sixteen years ago. You can't hide in
+Hogwarts and pretend that no one remembers you or what you did for the
+Light. You've done too much against Voldemort. You've done too much for
+other people. And I'm going to talk about it, and talk about it, and
+talk about it, until I drag you out of here. I would prefer your willing
+cooperation, but I don't need it.''
+
+"What happened to your being \emph{vates}?" Snape snapped.
+
+The insult once would have made Harry back off. This time, his eyes
+simply narrowed. ``One person's free will ends where it harms others,''
+he said. ``Thus I didn't have a problem with defending Hogwarts against
+vampire queens who would have eaten everything in sight. And your
+remaining the way you are would harm me. Therefore, you don't get to
+remain the way you are.''
+
+Snape felt a great helplessness upwelling in him. Harry was right.
+Sixteen years ago, no one had cared to remember what he did, except
+Dumbledore---and that only because the Headmaster had wanted to use him
+at a later point in time. And Regulus, Snape supposed, but he had
+thought Regulus was dead then.
+
+This time, he had someone both interested in remembering what he could
+be and uninterested in his excuses. And Harry, he knew, would keep
+dragging, keep pulling, keep yanking and tugging until he got him out of
+his shell.
+
+Snape could not say he was \emph{recovered}, yet. But going along---for
+now---and healing slowly, at his own pace, would be preferable to trying
+to stay a hermit crab and having Harry continually pulling at him.
+
+Slowly, he relaxed his arms and released Regulus's body.
+
+Harry understood what the gesture meant. He knelt where he was for a
+moment, staring hard into Snape's eyes. Then he nodded, and lifted
+Regulus's body, gently, with \emph{Mobilicorpus}, and made for the door.
+
+``When will you hold the funeral?'' Snape asked.
+
+Harry turned around. ``Not for a day or so. I'll have to make the
+preparations. I'll inform you, I promise.'' He lifted an eyebrow for a
+moment. ``And as for your other question, yes, I do intend to remain
+like this.''
+
+``Who showed you how to do that?'' Snape asked. He was not sure he could
+live without his own Occlumency pools now. They were as much for the
+protection of other people from his bitterness as they were for him.
+
+Harry gave him a thin, hard smile. ``Draco.''
+
+That didn't make sense, because Draco was no Occlumens, but Harry had
+left before Snape could ask him anything further. Snape closed his eyes
+and leaned back against the wall.
+
+Behind him lay the love he had refused and let go until too late. In
+front of him lay a life without it, a life of learning to recover from
+his mistakes.
+
+Snape was not sure, in that moment, which frightened him more.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 82*: Mountain Fall}\label{chapter-82-mountain-fall}
+
+\textbf{Fair warning: The ending of the sixth scene through the end of
+the chapter contain very heavy slash. Don't read it if this will offend
+you.}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Sixty-Six: Mountain Fall}
+
+``Accept this one,'' Harry said, and heard his voice soar as if someone
+else had propelled it. \emph{Well, I never thought I would be saying
+these words.} ``Regulus Black, younger child of Canopus Black and
+Capella Black, younger brother of Sirius Black, proper heir of the Black
+line.'' He paused to take a breath, and the white fire running up and
+down his arms roared as if in triumph. Remembering the way it had
+twitched at Sirius's funeral, Harry could only guess that it was glad to
+be burning the Black heir so designated by his parents. "Pureblood
+wizard, member of Slytherin House, former Death Eater, legal father of
+Harry Black, who died in peace and contentment and for all things larger
+than himself. \emph{Accept him now.}"
+
+The magic was ringing through his bones; it had turned them to silver in
+a glass case. Harry began to shiver, and could not stop. But the words
+still flowed from him; he was not sure that he could have stopped them
+now, either, even if he wanted to.
+
+``From fire we come, to fire we return.'' And how strange was it to say
+\emph{that}, to accept, by doing so, that he was a Black and not a
+Potter? Harry pointed his wand at Regulus's body. "\emph{Regulus
+abscondit!}"
+
+Down came the lightning, straight from the stars, leaping for Regulus's
+body. The body \emph{burst}, and from it flowed the silver light that
+Harry remembered at Sirius's funeral, the roar too intense to be called
+mere fire. This was fire transcendent, fire insistent, fire royal,
+rearing so high that Harry could feel some of his eyelashes and the
+minor hairs scattered along his body singe and burn and fall off.
+
+And there, there in the middle of it, was Regulus.
+
+Regulus as he had been, Harry supposed, young, though he had never seen
+him. The image became a small carved wooden dog, and then Regulus as he
+had been in the last moments before the garden: proud, unafraid, perhaps
+suspecting his death but nevertheless going unflinching to meet it. And
+then the light dripped down into the Black coat of arms, and the words
+\emph{Toujours pur.}
+
+Harry shivered. He had not felt what he did then during the first
+funeral---but then, of course, he had not been a Black. He wondered if
+Narcissa had felt this, too, when she burned Sirius. A whirlwind of cold
+grew under his heart, answering the heat, reaching for it. For a moment,
+Harry felt as though he stood in a pyramid of silver light, expanding
+until it reached the white fire, whereupon it exploded, and flooded the
+world with light.
+
+And then the white light leaped, and \emph{passed} upward. Harry could
+feel it flying for a moment, the ripples of radiance traveling through
+him like the workings of his own muscles, the wings that spread out from
+the sides woven of his hair.
+
+``Named for fire, born in fire, given to fire,'' he whispered. He was
+sure he whispered, but his voice came out as strong as a shout anyway.
+``Let the fire end him.''
+
+The lightning was among the stars again; Harry saw it though his eyes
+were shut. He felt the \emph{crack} as it traveled from star to star,
+going, of course, to Regulus first, but then moving to Capella, to
+Canopus, and finally to Sirius.
+
+And he did not tell anyone because he was not sure he heard it, and in
+any case it would have been cruel to the grieving Snape, but he thought
+he heard a sound, for just a moment, like two brothers crying out in
+joy.
+
+And then it was over.
+
+Harry opened his eyes slowly, and, for the first time since Regulus's
+funeral had begun, noticed the other people. They had done this on the
+flat ground outside Silver-Mirror, among the snow that still covered it.
+Draco stood behind him, one hand grasping Harry's shoulder tentatively,
+as if he wanted to hold him up but doubted he needed the support. Snape
+stood just beyond that, his face shadowed, and Peter next to him. No one
+else had as good a claim to be part of the funeral rites---though
+Narcissa would have had, were she still alive---and so no one had asked,
+though Harry thought the whole wizarding world would not have been out
+of place in honoring Regulus. He had died to save them, after all.
+
+He opened his mouth, even though he knew there was no post-funeral
+oration he needed to give---Narcissa certainly had not---and then went
+to his knees, a soundless scream rising from his throat.
+
+Draco knelt at once. ``Harry?'' he said, voice tight. ``Is something
+wrong?''
+
+``The houses,'' Harry whispered, eyes closed. ``The houses are claiming
+me.''
+
+He could feel Draco's frown, but he couldn't explain further, the houses
+had stolen his voice. What had happened was the dropping-into-place of
+the houses within his mind. Wayhouse shone in a cascade of mingled wood
+and amusement. Silver-Mirror was there, of course, closest behind him
+and most solid. Cobley-by-the-Sea sang to the rhythms of the ocean it
+sat beside, far more strongly than Harry had ever suspected when he
+visited it. And Number Twelve Grimmauld Place waited for him, beating
+like the heart of a spider. The treasures in them glowed like embers to
+his mind's eye. Secrets sleeted through him, including ones that he
+wouldn't be able to explain except to his own heir. Harry guessed the
+final confirmation of him as Black heir had had to wait for the fact of
+Regulus's burning.
+
+Heavy weights settled around his shoulders, but none so heavy as the
+weight of belonging. Harry felt tears of contentment sting his eyes, and
+then told himself that was stupid. He shouldn't be crying because he
+felt as if he \emph{belonged}. Shouldn't belonging be a good thing?
+Shouldn't he have felt this way from the moment that he decided to take
+Black as his last name?
+
+But he hadn't. And now, rising to his feet, he truly felt like Harry
+Black. He shook his head, took a deep breath, and fixed Draco with a
+stare. "What will happen to your ties to \emph{all} the Malfoy
+properties when your father dies?" he murmured.
+
+Draco's face cleared. ``Ah.'' For a moment, he lingered, gazing deep
+into Harry's eyes. Harry looked back. The Occlumency pools were still
+gone from his mind, and he knew that Draco could see every one of his
+emotions.
+
+Draco just didn't trust them to last beyond the moment, thought that
+Harry would finish with the ceremonial parts of the ritual and the grief
+and then collapse back into being his closed-off self again.
+
+Draco was in for a surprise.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry snatched a moment alone as soon as he could, but he told the
+truth; it wasn't to brood, it was to settle the Black houses in his
+mind. He stood on the roof of Silver-Mirror, breathing, watching the
+stars, and pondering whether he should take a star name as his middle
+one in place of James. It was pleasant, to watch the constellations and
+the brightest lights and wonder which one would suit him best, as if he
+had nothing more pressing in the world to worry about.
+
+And when the moments had passed and the Black houses no longer felt like
+loose teeth in his head, he could confront the vision that waited in his
+mind, and had ever since he had the fight with Draco just before they
+went after Ravenclaw's wand.
+
+In his mind loomed a smooth, black, glassy cliff. At the bottom lay
+broken rocks, and the scattered bones of those who had taken this
+journey and then lost control of themselves when they hit the bottom.
+
+It was the fall that Harry had been dreading, the one that would smash
+his shields completely and leave him living in the world like an
+ordinary human being.
+
+It was the way forward.
+
+If he loved Draco, this was the way it would have to be. And Harry knew
+he did, but they could not---they could not share as they had been. That
+was the best way Harry could phrase it, though he knew other, more
+complicated things lay beyond that phrasing. He took a deep breath and
+then let it out, still staring at the fall, still imagining that
+obsidian puncturing his bones, his lungs.
+
+He carefully layered Occlumency around the one portion of his mind where
+he truly could not afford to neglect it, his scar connection with
+Voldemort. Actually, the defenses always should have been strongest
+there, he thought clinically. Voldemort would try to break through,
+perhaps, but he would find himself lost amid endless pools, which
+reflected themselves like mirrors and turned any seeker hopelessly round
+and round in a maze of drowning.
+
+That left no Occlumency for the rest of his mind.
+
+And that left him hopelessly at the mercy of his emotions, as he had
+tried to be when he was talking with Peter and Snape yesterday. But
+now---but now he didn't have the knowledge of their grief to bolster
+himself, and he would have to make his way forward leaning on the
+knowledge of what \emph{he} wanted and the knowledge of what he wanted
+to give Draco.
+
+It was exciting, and yet Harry could still feel the wind blowing around
+him, and imagine, all too well, the bones at the bottom of that cliff.
+
+He had to trust that his own practice at life so far would be enough to
+let him fly. And he had to trust Draco, who had asked for those things
+he wanted. Surely, if he had not wanted them, he could have changed his
+mind and told Harry that. Harry had to trust him, rather than worrying
+about what hidden motives he had.
+
+He had to stop hiding from himself.
+
+Terror shook him, and the dizzy vertigo that was half-exhilaration when
+one leaned over a high ledge.
+
+Harry leaped down the mountain.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Connor paused when he heard his brother coming down from the roof.
+Something was---well, different. It might have been as subtle as his
+sense of Harry's magic in the air, but something was different.
+
+He stepped back around the corner, not sure if he wanted to leap out and
+surprise Harry, the way he sometimes had when they were children. But
+Harry had never been easy to startle once they passed the age of four or
+so. He would smile at Connor as if he were the most adorable child in
+the world, and then pass on.
+
+Well, if things had changed, Connor might get a different reaction.
+
+He waited until Harry reached the bottom of the stairs and started to
+turn the corner into the hall, and then leaped out with a blood-curdling
+yell, waving his arms around his head as if he were some sort of yeti.
+
+In moments, he found himself slammed backward, held pinned against the
+far wall by enormously powerful magic. He tried to breathe, but it was
+hard with a solid block of air in his mouth, preventing his windpipe
+from flexing. He heaved at the air, but, Merlin, he couldn't swallow it.
+He could feel his heart fluttering like the heart of a netted bird.
+
+And then the grip relaxed, and he slid to the floor, and Harry snapped,
+"Don't \emph{scare} me like that, damn it!"
+
+Connor snapped his eyes up. That didn't sound like Harry. Harry would
+normally never get so angry over a simple trick, the way that Draco
+might have. It wasn't as though he considered it an assault on his
+dignity, when his dignity was always in his own keeping.
+
+Harry leaned nearer, and nearer, and Connor saw into the heart of his
+green eyes as if they were open air, like the kind he was currently
+breathing deeply, with gratitude. He could see Harry's emotions there,
+rich as mineral deposits, dream-like in the way that the branches of
+imaginary forests were.
+
+``Harry?'' Connor whispered, not sure this was his brother.
+
+Harry rolled his eyes and snorted. ``Of course I am.'' He waved his hand
+again, and Connor was back on his feet, and the minor bump on his head
+that he'd sustained when he slammed against the wall was healed. ``Just
+don't do that again, all right? My reflexes are so sharp they might hurt
+you badly, and you're old enough that---well, it looks really bad,
+Connor. Like you're still a child.''
+
+``I grew up,'' Connor pointed out absently, more occupied in studying
+his brother. ``What happened to you?''
+
+He wouldn't say the smile Harry gave him was \emph{happy}, exactly, but
+it was more self-aware. ``I grew up, too,'' Harry murmured, and then
+pressed past him and towards the stairs from the third floor.
+
+Connor stared after him, and decided that he would leave Harry alone for
+a while so that he could adjust to this new brother.
+
+Besides, he wanted to go and see if Parvati had thought of an answer to
+his question.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Henrietta paused and leaned out of her room when Harry went by. The
+rhythm of his footsteps had changed. She knew that, because she had
+learned the ordinary rhythm, which was what obsessed, completely untamed
+Slytherins who served Lords who could not be called Lords did.
+
+Harry walked a bit more heavily at this moment, and he was heading down
+the corridor with a determined look on his face, as if he were off to
+punish a portrait that had displeased him. Henrietta wondered which
+portrait would be stupid enough to argue with a face like \emph{that}.
+Well, perhaps she would feel sorry for the portrait, but she would
+rather admire the lines in Harry's face, and the way that he sometimes
+muttered under his breath as if thoughts were running through his head
+he couldn't share.
+
+He passed out of sight. Henrietta continued watching the way he had
+gone, thoughtfully, then pulled her head back into her small private
+study.
+
+\emph{Well}.
+
+She had always known what she had would have to do, of course. Even
+before she had come up with the plan, the truth had been written there,
+in the curl of old hatred, in her bones and blood that descended from
+Dark wizards and witches who had always followed the same traditions.
+The fact that she was born human made her have to breathe, and the fact
+that she was born Dark and Bulstrode meant she had to perform this dance
+this way.
+
+But she had only hoped, an odd, fragile, slender hope, what Harry might
+be after it, when she was not there to watch him with the same eyes.
+
+For the first time, she now felt true hope, that even when she was not
+in the world to serve him in unobtrusive ways, still he might serve
+himself and not turn into the kind of Lord she would have been ashamed
+to serve.
+
+Thoughtfully, she dipped her quill back into the inkwell and began her
+letter to Evan over. Her mood had changed, and that meant she needed to
+write a different letter.
+
+Harry would not like what she was doing, when he found out about it.
+That didn't matter. What mattered was that Henrietta did what he needed,
+gave him the kind of service he \emph{had} to have. Sometimes that would
+be the same as what he wanted, and sometimes it wasn't.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Snape actually stepped out of the library where he had sat brooding and
+reading, and caught Harry's chin, tilting his face up.
+
+He had not meant to, but he had caught one glimpse of Harry's expression
+as his son went by, and that had been enough to concern him, to tug him
+out of the grief that seemed to have intensified since Regulus's
+funeral. Anyone who thought holding a ceremony and burning the body was
+an antidote to grief had never watched a Black heir ascend in white
+lightning to the stars.
+
+``Harry,'' he said quietly, staring into eyes that were entirely, and
+worrying, devoid of Occlumency. ``What have you done to yourself?''
+
+``What I should have done a long time ago,'' Harry said, evenly, but as
+if he were standing on a very fragile bridge, a thread of light above a
+deep abyss. "My Occlumency is still guarding my mind from Voldemort,
+Father. That's what it \emph{should} do, what you trained me to do in
+the first place when he broke into my head in second year. But I've used
+the rest of it for too long to suppress my emotions."
+
+Snape's fingers tightened a little; he couldn't help it. It was too
+close to some of what Harry had said to him yesterday, when they talked
+about Regulus and his grief. ``And so you believe that using Occlumency
+to suppress emotions is wrong, now?''
+
+With a wrench, Harry freed his chin from Snape's fingers and stepped
+back a safe distance. From the spark in his eyes, though, Snape was not
+sure which one of them the safety was for.
+
+"I didn't say that it was wrong \emph{for you}," Harry snarled. ``Just
+wrong for me, for right now. It would have been all right if I had a
+different partner, maybe, or someone who was content to wait out the war
+and then have my full attention when it was done.'' For a moment, an
+annoyed look wrinkled his nose. "He just \emph{couldn't} wait," he
+muttered. Then he focused on Snape again. "My words implied
+\emph{nothing} about you, just about myself."
+
+His face turned a bit red the next moment, but he didn't apologize. He
+just held Snape's eyes and added, ``Do you understand, sir?''
+
+And Snape understood, then, how Draco could have taught him about
+Occlumency despite not being an Occlumens himself.
+
+He hesitated. Part of him would have liked to walk Harry into the
+library, sit him down, and ask him if he really knew what he was doing.
+Harry had gone so many years with some type of control over his
+thoughts, whether that be phoenix web, Occlumency, or his own severe
+self-possession from the training. Did he want to give that up all at
+once? Could he afford it, when they were in the middle of a war that
+Snape would not see Harry marked by more than necessary?
+
+But he did not know if it was wrong. The training itself had been wrong,
+and the phoenix web. The Occlumency had aided Harry much more than
+either of those, but Snape had to remember, now, those times that Harry
+had misused it, suppressing his emotions for too long during the
+Woodhouse rebellion last year, and locking his feelings in ice, and
+shutting himself off from those who could have helped because, without
+emotions, he saw only the danger and the damage to them, not himself.
+
+He had not been wrong to teach Occlumency to Harry. But Harry was the
+one who must make the decision about how to use it.
+
+Slowly, Snape nodded. ``I do understand,'' he said. ``I hope that you
+make as good use of the lack of pools as you have made with them.''
+
+Harry's face relaxed, and he reached out and clasped Snape's wrist in
+what was not quite a handshake. An oddly formal gesture, but then, Snape
+thought, Harry still called him sir, too. Formality seemed to be the way
+he related most comfortably to Snape, and there was no reason to rip
+that away.
+
+And then Harry changed even that by saying softly, ``Thank you,
+Father,'' and walking down the hallway.
+
+Snape stared after him. Absurdly, the first thought that occurred to him
+was to wonder what Regulus would have said, and the second, riding the
+knife-pain of the first, was to decide that Regulus would have liked to
+hear Harry call Snape ``Father,'' whether Harry had taken the Black last
+name or not.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco started when the door opened. Harry stepped in and shut it quietly
+behind him, then must have told his magic to cast locking and warding
+spells according to its will, because Draco didn't recognize the lines
+of colored light that crawled over the door from any incantation.
+
+``Harry?'' he asked. Other times that Harry had been like this, moving
+this slowly, this calmly, this deliberately, he had had something
+upsetting to say, and would sit down and explain it in that rational
+manner that made Draco want to snarl at him.
+
+Harry turned around.
+
+Draco felt as if he'd been slapped. The amount of openness in Harry's
+eyes almost hurt, especially because he could see the shivering terror
+behind it. Harry stepped forward, and knelt in front of him---Draco was
+sitting on the bed---and took his hand. The gesture was manifestly not
+one of submission, though, Draco thought, dazed, or oath-swearing, not
+when Harry's magic hovered around him like the trailing edge of the Dark
+Lord's cloak.
+
+``I've thought about what you said,'' said Harry, his fingers gently
+stroking the back of Draco's palm. "And I've come to the conclusion that
+there really \emph{is} one thing you want, more than all the others."
+
+``Harry---'' Draco tried to warn, though his throat was so thick he
+wondered if he could get the words out. He wanted this \emph{so much},
+but not if Harry was only giving it to him to gratify his desires, or
+because Harry thought it was something he needed, like comfort after his
+mother's death.
+
+``Listen, for once!''
+
+Draco lapsed into silence, blinking. Well, that was certainly different,
+both the sharp tone and the lightning that cleaved wings into Harry's
+shoulders. The lightning was gone as quickly as the similar white bolt
+that had consumed Regulus's body, but Draco could feel the charge
+lingering in the room with them, and knew Harry had been irritated.
+
+\emph{Irritated. When was the last time he felt that, instead of the
+rage that he felt when Hogwarts fell?}
+
+Draco leaned back on the pillow, and gave a slow nod, though he never
+released Harry's hand. ``I'm listening.''
+
+``I want to give you all of me.'' Harry's head cocked, the same gesture
+he used when he didn't understand something simple Draco tried to
+explain to him, but his eyes were intent and oh, so frightened. It was
+the fear that convinced Draco Harry did, in fact, know what he was
+doing. He would never have been so frightened if he were merely handing
+over something he thought Draco needed. ``All the time. I just---that's
+what you want, Draco, isn't it?''
+
+And even the plea at the end, the fear that he'd made a mistake, did not
+deter Draco, because Harry wasn't sounding as though this mistake were
+the end of the world. He just wanted to know if this was the answer to a
+question he'd wanted answered for a very long time.
+
+Draco leaned forward and kissed him, hard enough to bruise. And Harry
+kissed back, pushed back, urged him down and then slid a knee in between
+Draco's legs. Draco arched and half-shrieked. He'd felt Harry's magic
+before, of course, but never like this. Even during the Halloween
+ritual, Harry had used it directly on Draco himself, to make the
+experience of having his cock sucked more intense. This felt as if the
+magic were under Harry's own skin, spines and spikes of pleasure that
+kept rubbing in the most unpredictable places, and might make anything
+feel good.
+
+Harry pulled back and stared down at him, panting, and his eyes were
+full of lust.
+
+Draco couldn't remember when he'd seen that outside a ritual.
+
+For a moment, he was so excited that he couldn't even make a decision
+about what he wanted. Did he want to come quickly and then build up to a
+more intense orgasm later? Or did he want to draw this out, to see if he
+could tease what remained of Harry's self-control into shivering broken
+pieces? Or did he want to take Harry and see him give himself fully and
+freely over, as he hadn't done since the first time they made love,
+during Draco's Declaration to the Dark?
+
+\emph{No}, he decided at last, staring into Harry's eyes. \emph{None of
+those. None of them are tests enough for what I want.}
+
+``Fuck me,'' he said.
+
+Harry nodded. There was no pause to ask if Draco was sure, because if he
+wasn't sure, why would he have said it? There was no helpless response,
+the way that there had been during their Halloween ritual. Harry trusted
+him enough to think that Draco was telling the truth.
+
+Draco couldn't remember when Harry had trusted him that much.
+
+Harry snapped one hand in a casual, dismissive motion, and both their
+clothes were gone. He \emph{could} use his magic that way, of course,
+but Draco had never seen him use so much power for so trivial a purpose.
+He could feel the blast of concentrated air along his skin as the cloth
+vanished, and already, his erection was hard enough that pain as well as
+pleasure coursed along his groin.
+
+``Please,'' he whispered. "Merlin, Harry, \emph{fuck} me."
+
+And Harry heard the undertones in that word, too. \emph{Don't hold back,
+don't do things that can only be attributed to a ritual forcing you
+through the steps, don't make slow and tender and patient and gentle
+love just because it's the kind of thing that you're more comfortable
+with.}
+
+Harry nodded, and leaned forward to kiss him one more time, and then
+whirled his magic around both of them like a cocoon. Draco's sight of
+the room vanished behind heavy blue-gray curtains, leaving him only
+Harry to look at.
+
+Harry, with his shining green eyes with terror at the back of them, and
+black hair that looked wind-ruffled, and skin glistening with sweat
+already, and cock glittering with pre-come and a lubrication that the
+magic had put there, apparently by forcing it through his skin.
+
+Draco keened a little. He didn't think he could help it, and he didn't
+think anyone with an ounce of human feeling would have blamed him. He
+spread his legs, but that was the most help he was going to give Harry.
+
+He waited.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry knew he could do this. It was like flying against dragons. He was
+afraid, but it was the right thing to do, and, in the end, it would make
+\emph{him} as well as Draco feel good. The last time, it had been to
+stop the clamor and pressing of the dragons' wild thoughts on his mind.
+This time, it was to begin healing the breach that he had caused.
+
+He did not delude himself into thinking the wound would be that easy to
+heal, or, for that matter, that he would get everything right. The wish
+to get everything right the first time had been what held him back for
+so long. He knew better now.
+
+He leaned over Draco and kissed him, fiercely enough that his lips
+ached, and he felt Draco's lip bend backwards over his teeth. A few
+small drops of blood resulted. Harry gnawed at the split in Draco's lip,
+and then pulled back long enough to hold his eyes. Draco looked
+astonished, but delight was struggling to surface somewhere under the
+shock.
+
+He moved his magic in precise, controlled sweeps, nothing comforting
+about them, nothing safe or sure. One spell coated his cock, one filled
+Draco with lubrication, and one did the work of fingers in widening the
+entrance to Draco's body. Draco blinked again, and the astonishment
+shone alone in his eyes for a moment. Harry didn't let it stop him. The
+roar of blood was loud in his ears, but he was sure---he had to be sure,
+so he was sure---that he would be able to hear Draco telling him to stop
+if it hurt, if he was too forceful, and that Draco \emph{would} tell him
+to stop.
+
+If it hurt.
+
+Harry pressed inward. This time, he rejoiced in the shove of his hips,
+the force of his longing to push, to dominate---something he'd never
+been allowed to do before, certainly not the first time he had sex with
+Draco or in the Halloween ritual or in any time since. The darkness in
+the pool at the back of his mind roared, and Harry felt it pour through
+him. Like his magic, he was coming to realize, it didn't require blood
+and killing to be happy. It just required that the work be---intense.
+
+Draco made sharp squeaking noises at times, but Harry hesitated only
+once, when he was fully inside and Draco still heaved and huffed and
+sounded upset. It was trouble to wait, when his blood pulsed through him
+and told him to \emph{move}, but he sat still nevertheless, eyes on
+Draco's, until he received a nod.
+
+And then he let himself \emph{move}.
+
+He'd never done this before, and his mind was a firestorm of conflicting
+impressions: the warmth surrounding him, the whirl of his magic and his
+blood through his veins, Draco's eyes wide open and staring into his
+face, the blond hair plastered flat to the pillow with sweat, the
+endless motion of his body. He couldn't hold himself back, and he didn't
+want to. There was nothing to fear here. There was a great deal to
+trust. He only had to give himself to that, and he would.
+
+Thrust and shove and push. This was not so hard, after all. He
+instinctively knew how to do it. And it instinctively felt so good that
+he wondered absently how he \emph{had} held himself back for so long.
+
+\emph{Perhaps that's one of the true evils of my mother's training.}
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco didn't think he'd ever felt so smug or so satisfied, and Harry had
+done nothing more than move inside him for two minutes.
+
+\emph{He did it. He wants me. I'm the only one he wants in his bed.}
+
+That fulfilled an old, old want, and laid an even older fear to rest.
+Was Harry only doing this because he had to? Would he have done the same
+thing if anyone was in love with him and requesting it?
+
+But, no. His eyes saw \emph{Draco}, and it was \emph{Draco} he wanted.
+His eyes never wavered from their steady gaze. His body never faltered
+in its task, even when Draco skidded up the blankets a bit, or when
+Harry pressed deep and hit his prostate, making him give a wince that
+would have panicked the old Harry.
+
+\emph{How did he do this?}
+
+Then Draco forgot about that, because, Merlin, Harry's hand had come to
+rest right where he wanted it, on his cock.
+
+He saw Harry's lips move, though the pleasure was exploding through his
+head so hard that he couldn't hear the words. A moment later, the
+surface of his eyes seemed to split, and Draco passed easily into his
+mind. Harry had forged a bond between them, of sorts, enough to allow
+Draco to feel his emotions and see his surface thoughts. Draco didn't
+know if Harry was feeling the same from him.
+
+Harry's pleasure was \emph{heavy}, admitting the pleasure of his partner
+as an equal but not overwhelming component. Draco found himself thinking
+of bears, of intense, dark couplings in secret caves without light.
+Harry's magic was everywhere, stinging, singing, springing, coiling
+inward and coming down with a howl that Draco echoed a moment later
+when, entirely by surprise, his orgasm came on him.
+
+He thought, as he thrashed and spent himself and Harry's fist grew slick
+enough to nearly slide off him, that that was the shortest time he'd
+ever lasted.
+
+It was also the best he'd ever felt.
+
+Harry pushed him flat, and then began the kind of hard fucking that
+Draco had thought they'd have from the beginning, though he certainly
+wasn't complaining about what had happened so far. In favor of
+brutality, Harry had adopted intensity, and it had worked. Draco grinned
+a bit. Trust Harry to give him what he wanted, but not exactly in the
+way Draco had thought he would.
+
+He lifted his legs and wrapped them around Harry's waist, while Harry
+thrust into him, gasping and mumbling little curse words that Draco
+wished he wouldn't bite off. He'd thought for a while that Harry had a
+naturally dirty mouth during sex. The glimpse he'd just had into his
+partner's thoughts confirmed it.
+
+\emph{Partner.}
+
+Yes, they really were now.
+
+Draco stretched up and kissed Harry, and that was when Harry came. He
+stiffened for a moment, then pushed forward earnestly again, and again,
+and again, gasping and moaning into Draco's mouth, his head rolling
+slack on his neck, and after a moment his mouth was too busy gasping in
+air for him to say anything at all. The singing of his magic in Draco's
+ears had soared to a pitch like crickets, the last night before summer
+ended.
+
+Then Harry fell full-length across him, and Draco lost his own breath in
+the resulting press on his lungs.
+
+He didn't mind. He didn't mind at all.
+
+He held still and stroked Harry's spine again and again. Harry was
+breathing softly, not completely asleep, but somewhere near it. Draco
+curled his fingers in his hair---the grip had to be deep, or otherwise
+his hand would have slipped free at once, given all the wetness
+there---and tugged a bit. It was a gesture he'd used before, to convey
+how possessive he felt about Harry, but he'd never used it with the
+viciousness he used now. Harry moaned, but didn't protest beyond that.
+
+\emph{He's mine. No one else ever got to see this side of him, and no
+one else will.}
+
+Harry lifted himself up and looked down at him with unshielded eyes. The
+bond between them had ended, since it seemed Harry's magic didn't like
+to hold that unless he commanded it to do so, but he still didn't have
+any Occlumency there, and Draco could make out languid satisfaction and
+easy contentment.
+
+Harry bent down and kissed him again.
+
+``I don't think I can be ready again so soon,'' Draco whispered, though
+he felt his cock shift a bit in interest.
+
+``Then I'll play with you until you are,'' Harry replied, and blew on
+Draco's ears, watching with almost academic interest as he jumped. ``And
+this time, I want you to fuck me. I'm not missing out on all the fun.''
+
+Draco let out a breath, and, just like that, the fears he had still
+nourished burned. Now they were the emotions that seemed faint and
+fragile, and the hope that which had conquered.
+
+\emph{He's mine.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 83*: Whirling Round and
+Round}\label{chapter-83-whirling-round-and-round}
+
+This is one of those non-linear chapters again, flickering back and
+forth through time. Just so you know.
+
+\textbf{Chapter Sixty-Seven: Whirling Round and Round}
+
+Harry leaned briefly back against Draco, then turned, a fire in his
+eyes. ``You're ready.''
+
+``Yes,'' Draco said. \emph{Never readier,} he thought. Merlin, he wanted
+this so much, at least if it would work the way they thought it would.
+He and Harry had planned this for hours, but, as Harry was fond of
+saying, the battle splintered the plans for the battle. The gathering
+beyond the doors, the official opening ceremony for the new Ministry,
+could interrupt their delicately laid political configurations.
+
+Harry grinned at him. ``Yes, you would be.''
+
+Draco wished Harry wouldn't \emph{look} like that sometimes. It made it
+difficult to refrain from kissing him, and they were supposed to be
+thinking about other things right now. Draco restrained himself to one
+kiss on Harry's nose. No one would see, he told himself. They were
+standing in an anteroom with the doors shut in front of them, only a
+slender line of light leaking out to fall on Harry's face and hair. No
+one could have been in here without Harry's patrolling magic sensing
+them, in any case. So he and Harry were safe to indulge themselves in
+affection that might make some of their opponents think of them as weak.
+
+Besides, making people think of them as weak could be an advantage,
+Draco thought. Curious to see what would happen, he kept his arm in
+place around Harry's waist as the doors swung open, exposing them to an
+assemblage of devouring stares. Harry wrinkled his nose, but stepped
+forward, walking within the circle of Draco's grip.
+
+``You can do this?'' Draco breathed into his ear.
+
+``I'll have to, won't I?'' Harry replied. Since his Occlumency hadn't
+come back, he showed his resentment of the whole procedure, but he
+didn't back down. Draco felt as though his heart had lit on fire with
+pride.
+
+``Of course you will,'' he said. ``Meanwhile, I have to go associate
+with Elizabeth Nonpareil. Pity me.''
+
+Harry laughed at him, and then turned towards the cluster of Ministry
+officials in the middle of the room, including Cupressus Apollonis.
+Draco stayed with him long enough for a few photos to be taken, and for
+anyone who might care to see that he was firmly planted at Harry's side,
+and Harry was most definitely \emph{taken}.
+
+Then he headed for the cluster of Dark families who were being stupid
+about having nonhumans in the Ministry, the plan ticking over and over
+in his mind like clockwork. He and Harry had spent hours on this,
+talking and mingling their thoughts and pooling political knowledge
+gained from Lucius, Snape, Harry's training in the history of Dark
+families, and what Cupressus and Miriam had reported of the Light
+families they were slowly guiding into the Ministry. It should work.
+
+\emph{And if it doesn't, I can ride the chaos.}
+
+Elizabeth Nonpareil approached him in a rustle of black skirts bright
+with artificial stars. Draco reached out and bowed over her hand,
+sliding into the first words of the ritual greeting he needed to impress
+her. ``Dark water singing over its stones is not more welcome than the
+sight of your face, madam.''
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+He could not but pluck and tug and weave now, and spin the fabric of
+dreams, and hope it would be enough.
+
+He was alone. He lay in the dirt under the darkness of where it had all
+begun, and where it would all end, and pulled through dreams. Slowly,
+now, he must travel slowly. He had moved too far, too fast, the first
+time, and that had left visible signs, the dark circles on the skin of
+his victims. Someone would notice if those circles appeared now.
+
+His heir would notice.
+
+He was not dead, was old Lord Voldemort. He was alive, and only shedding
+his skin now, like a great snake lying far underground, like the
+basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets, like the Midgard Serpent curled
+around the oceans and which would rise someday to devour the world---a
+teaching that had heard from an old dying wizard, the last of his breed,
+in Norway, a wrong story both by the teachings of other kinds of magic
+and by the Norse myths themselves, but there nevertheless. And true, he
+thought, did dark Lord Voldemort, in the darkness. Serpents always
+survived everything, always ate everything in the end. If the Midgard
+Serpent did not strangle the necks of everyone who thought of themselves
+as human, dragon fire would burn them to ashes.
+
+He would shed the skin, and he would \emph{rise}. The vernal equinox was
+not far away. The world tilted relentlessly back towards the balance
+between Dark and Light, from the darkest night to the day when the
+darkness and light were of equal lengths. And from there the sun would
+return and swell until Midsummer.
+
+Before Midsummer, his heir would be his.
+
+He had been wrong, had old Lord Voldemort, in what he had sought to do
+with the attacks on the Ministry and Hogwarts---wrong in action, but not
+wrong in intent. He had wanted to make Harry despair, and then kill him.
+The second part was unnecessary; he could see that now. The first part
+still must be.
+
+And there was the third, lying in darkness couched like a serpent
+himself, though none of them had recognized the signs that marked him as
+serpentine. And there was the other, the dreamer, the snake in the
+breast.
+
+Come the first day of spring, and that snake would \emph{bite}. And
+Harry would never survive what was coming.
+
+He missed his Indigena, did old Lord Voldemort, almost like a snake in
+the drape of her vines, but the third was a trap set and baited long
+before. Even Indigena had danced to its movements, her feet echoing the
+coils of the snake that lay far underground.
+
+Snakes made mountains. The hills of the world were the ridges of their
+spines. Their tails curled into peninsulas. Inside their jaws were
+sacred caves where the oldest wizards had held the oldest rites.
+
+He was not afraid. He moved relentlessly out of the darkness, towards
+the day of his light and his biting, like an old serpent, and in the
+meantime he wove and spun the fabric of dreams.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Connor held Parvati's eyes. After a moment, she flushed and looked away,
+shaking her head.
+
+``I don't know,'' she said, as if the words were being hooked out of
+her, dragged out of her.
+
+``That's fine,'' Connor hastened to reassure her. He \emph{had}
+reassured her, several times already, but he would say it as many times
+as he needed to. At least she hadn't given him an outright refusal.
+``Just think about it, all right? I wouldn't want to do it tomorrow
+night, anyway. That's when Harry's big official Ministry gathering is,
+and I have to go and deploy some of those Light rituals I'm studying.''
+
+He said that hoping to get a smile out of her, but what he got was
+Parvati exhaling a frustrated breath. ``I don't understand you
+sometimes, Connor,'' she said.
+
+Connor cocked his head, and waited.
+
+"You---well, you don't have any \emph{reason} to conduct---this---this
+way." Parvati waved a hand vaguely. Connor knew what she meant, the
+question he'd asked her and the context that surrounded it, but he
+wouldn't ask her to say the word if she was that uncomfortable with it.
+``Your heritage doesn't require you to. And you know that my parents
+will be angry if they find out.''
+
+``Do you want to tell them?'' Connor asked. That wasn't something he'd
+thought of before. Parvati had been beyond angry when her parents
+appealed to the Ministry to force her to come home. She still wasn't
+speaking with them, and had had a fight with Padma before she went back,
+too.
+
+``No!'' Parvati said, almost shouted. She clapped a hand over her mouth,
+swallowed, turned red in the face, and then lowered her hand. ``No, not
+yet,'' she said, showing Connor a faint smile. Connor nodded, reassured
+that she wouldn't ask him to keep it secret forever. ``It's more that I
+don't know what to make of you, Connor. Why would you start trying to
+learn Light pureblood rituals now, when you've never been interested in
+them before?'' Her face flushed even more deeply, but she kept going.
+``Why would you want to make adult decisions when you seem to enjoy
+acting like a child so much? Why would you want to have a life like
+this, when the war could surge back up and swallow it at any moment?''
+
+Oh, \emph{that}. She should have asked him before.
+
+Connor reached out and took her hand, running his fingers lightly over
+the knuckles. Parvati looked him in the face and didn't ask him to stop.
+Connor wondered idly if she could feel him reaching after the words. He
+did know the answer, but he wanted to make sure he phrased it as
+perfectly as possible. He had noted with Harry that people often paid as
+much attention to the \emph{how} of his words as the \emph{what}.
+
+``Because I don't think like other people,'' he said at last. "They see
+themselves as living in the future. They want to be adults now. They
+progress along a path. They're children, then teenagers, then adults.
+And they know that happiness waits for them in the future. They might
+not have it right now, but they'll have it some time. They know it.
+
+"I think that's \emph{stupid.}" He chose that word because some of the
+other ones he wanted to say would make Parvati slap him. ``I think you
+should have happiness where you find it, and not ignore it because you
+think you're not ready for it or because some greater happiness is
+somewhere down the path.'' He looked up at Parvati. ``What would have
+happened if Harry and Draco had waited? Nothing good, I don't think. One
+of them might have been killed before now. And what would happen if I
+insisted that I was still just a teenager because I've seventeen? Stupid
+things. I wouldn't have been able to accept Sirius's death, or that I
+wasn't the Boy-Who-Lived, and I wouldn't have been able to tell anyone
+about Harry's true role in the prophecy. I had to be adult to do that.
+And I don't want to be adult all the time now, or teenager all the time
+now. I want to act the way I need to act. So sometimes that's like a
+child, and sometimes that's like a teenager.'' He took a deep breath and
+locked his eyes on her. "And sometimes that's like an adult. I'm not---I
+don't stop being one just because people think I should. I don't
+\emph{do} things just because people think I should, so why should I
+grow like they say I should? I learned that from Harry, you know, or
+maybe we learned it together. We take a long time to make up our minds
+about something, but when we want it, we go after it with our whole
+hearts."
+
+And now he felt shy, which was stupid, but he also hadn't said all that
+with the most eloquent words in the world, so he kissed Parvati on the
+cheek and left her there. At least she looked as if she were thinking
+about what he'd said.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry could feel Draco, he thought, as he spoke with Cupressus
+Apollonis, polite nothings about the way the Ministry had opened and the
+reaction it had received so far. It was nothing so simple as a magical
+bond. Rather, he knew where Draco was in the room, knew exactly how many
+paces he'd have to walk to get to him, and could guess what he was
+talking about right now.
+
+\emph{Well, why not? I wanted this. I want this. And I feel more about
+him than anyone else.}
+
+``And this is Belinda Morningmaid.''
+
+Harry eyed the woman in front of him coolly, making sure to keep his bow
+polite. It would hide the pulse fluttering wildly in his throat, as well
+as answer for manners. This was the first time he was going to have a
+political conversation since he'd fallen off the mountain.
+
+He'd heard of the Morningmaid family before this, nothing
+objectionable---but then Cupressus had owled him with a long list of
+demands that Belinda had made of the Ministry. She wanted laws to
+prevent \emph{any} nonhumans from working there, even the close
+association that the old Ministry had had with Gringotts. She called
+them halfbreeds, and said that too many of them were Dark creatures. It
+was Cupressus's opinion that many of the people backing her didn't
+believe the same things. They were using her as a test case, a fall
+witch. If she crumpled, it would not hurt them, but if she got away with
+it, they could successfully assert themselves against nonhumans.
+
+Harry was resigned to such power games always existing. And in the old
+days, he would have talked to Belinda with patience and calmness and
+gentleness, trying to make sure he never crushed her will, and she
+probably would have taken that as permission to keep pressing forward,
+just the way Aurora Whitestag had.
+
+But now his mind had changed. He was certain that her mind could be
+changed, as well.
+
+He shifted to the left, and knew that Draco was to his right. ``If you
+wish, Mrs. Morningmaid, we can talk over here without fear of
+interruption,'' he murmured. It was one of the many alcoves in the
+Ministry's Grand Hall that the architects had designed, and Harry
+sculpted, for private conversation.
+
+``Call me Belinda, please.'' She arranged herself in front of him, a
+pretty woman with the usual yellow eyes of the Light purebloods and
+bright golden curls, touched with red, that made her resemble one of the
+Gloryflower family. ``I'm glad that you decided to talk with me, Mr.
+Black. I know the Ministry is just finding its feet, but I think this is
+the time to make it for humans only.''
+
+``That's impossible,'' Harry said.
+
+Belinda froze, and stared at him carefully. Harry wondered if she was
+more startled by his cold tone or his bluntness. She recovered quickly,
+of course, and said, "It's not, Mr. Black. It's truly not. I understand
+that, as \emph{vates}, you're committed to the causes of magical
+creatures, but they don't need to participate in human law. We need an
+area of life where we're separated from them, don't you agree?"
+
+``No,'' Harry pointed out, and watched her face flush red.
+
+"Mr. Black, if they \emph{won't} obey our laws, then they can't have a
+part in the Ministry," she said, and then seemed to calm and retreat a
+little behind the political mask. ``Besides, they wouldn't want us
+claiming jurisdiction over them.''
+
+``We always have,'' said Harry. ``We act as though we had the right to
+tell them where to live, how to live. How, then, can we leave them out
+of the Ministry? There's so much that we don't know, Belinda. We have to
+have advice on what customs of theirs might require compromise, and when
+we're doing something right.''
+
+"We \emph{can't} have different magical rules for everyone," Belinda
+snapped, flexing her fingers as if they stung.
+
+``We can have an adaptive set of rules.'' Harry was trying to be polite,
+he really was, but his temper was boiling behind his eyes. He was
+beginning to think that Belinda didn't really believe she would get what
+she wanted, either. She was just testing him to see what would happen.
+It was the way that pureblood wizards had reacted to Muggleborn wizards
+in the old Ministry, after all; they said all the right things in
+public, but in private they pushed for concessions, for different laws
+that restricted Muggleborn children while not restricting pureblood, and
+got them. It might have been different if there had been special laws
+restricting pureblood magic, too, but that wasn't the way it worked.
+"And that's what we'll have. As situations arise, we'll handle them.
+There might be some centaur behavior we can't tolerate, for example. The
+Grand Unified Theory might find out that goblin magic functions in a
+certain way that means it needs to be kept apart from delicate magical
+instruments. But we don't \emph{know} that yet. I refuse to create rules
+about an unknown situation." He held Belinda's eye and dared her to get
+angry.
+
+She did, but he knew it only from the tightening of her lips. She was a
+little late in controlling her face, he thought, but better than he
+would have expected from her initial approach. "We need rules
+\emph{now}, Mr. Black, not at some undefined point in the future."
+
+``We'll have them,'' said Harry, with a sweep of one hand. ``A base to
+start from. We'll adjust them as necessary. I simply refuse to say that,
+right now, we know everything we must about goblins and centaurs
+sufficient to create rules for them. We'll need their input for that.''
+He turned around as the doors of the hall opened. ``And I believe we're
+about to get some,'' he added.
+
+The \emph{hanarz} came in first, wrapped in chains, surrounded by
+goblins wearing pendants of silver and bronze and carrying spears.
+Beside her was Griselda Marchbanks, scowling triumphantly at the shocked
+witches and wizards. Harry wondered, amused, if she was happier to be
+seen in the company of goblins or happy that so many people were
+horrified to see her there.
+
+Following them came three centaurs, one black, one chestnut, one bay.
+They walked in perfect time, and stood with folded arms in the center of
+the floor, daring the wizards to come up and speak to them. Harry
+cleared his throat and stepped forward.
+
+"Please welcome the \emph{hanarz} of the southern goblins," he said,
+using \emph{Sonorus} to make his voice boom from the walls, ``and her
+human friend Griselda Marchbanks. The centaur emissaries are Lycaon,
+Wolf, and Hemlock.'' The centaurs bowed in turn as he spoke their names.
+``And we have more guests,'' Harry went on serenely, turning towards the
+doors. He could feel the crowd's apprehensive gazes following his, and
+Belinda's burning eyes on the back of his neck. He didn't bother hiding
+his smile.
+
+Draco was on the other side of the doors, just where they'd arranged for
+him to be. Harry met his gaze and felt a tunnel traveling between them,
+pulsing with breath and life. His mouth widened into a grin this time,
+and he barely looked away in time to watch Remus arrive.
+
+He wasn't alone, of course, being flanked by Peregrine and a few of the
+other alphas from London, but he was the tallest, and the one that other
+people here were most likely to know. Harry met his eyes and held them.
+Into that gaze, he tried to put everything he felt for Remus, the old
+love and the new confusion, and the near inability to ever trust him
+again. Remus nodded slightly, saying that he understood.
+
+And Draco moved out to greet and present the werewolves. Harry smiled
+again. This time, he was sure it looked victorious. There were no words
+to express how little he cared about that. The interest of the
+\emph{vates} in some nonhumans was to be expected. The intercession of
+the Malfoy heir was not.
+
+``Remus Lupin,'' Draco announced, to a tide of whispers and a sun-round
+of more intense stares, ``Peregrine, Willow, and Daranda, four alphas of
+the London werewolf packs.'' He bowed, one time for each of them. ``Be
+welcome.''
+
+The whispering grew louder. The other alphas, all women, seemed amused.
+Remus was still looking at Harry, though, and Harry didn't understand
+everything that he was trying to say. He was still new to this business
+of reading people's faces with his own emotions in the way.
+
+``Yes, be welcome here,'' Harry said, making sure that his gaze took in
+goblins, centaurs, and werewolves, ``as part and parcel of the new
+Ministry, as subject to its laws, and welcome to its help.'' He gave a
+little bow, and then moved forward and took Draco's hand. The bond
+between them stretched tight, then fell slack as they neared, and Draco
+nodded to him imperceptibly. Harry relaxed. He had hoped that Draco
+wouldn't have an objection to dancing with him in public, but he could
+have changed his mind. He had been hesitant about this part of the plan
+when Harry suggested it. When Harry asked why, he'd snapped at him not
+to push.
+
+It had taken a while for the sting of \emph{that} to fade, but, well.
+Harry had to accept that they lived in a world where they snapped at
+each other now, and not every mistake was for life. And it was going to
+be nothing compared to the sting of the Imbolc ritual coming up in a few
+days.
+
+He held up his hand, and the walls began to sing. More people than just
+the ones who had come here hoping to wring concessions out of them
+looked startled at that. Harry caught Cupressus's eyes, and knew the man
+was wondering if he had built music into the stones. Harry shrugged. He
+hadn't. He had just wanted the stones to sing, and so they had: the same
+kind of frenzied music that played on Walpurgis Night, though slow
+enough that mortal feet could keep up with it.
+
+He and Draco began to dance, a simple whirling pattern that people
+hastily cleared the floor for. Harry was delighted to see that the first
+couple to follow them out was Remus and Peregrine, Remus bowing to the
+other alpha before he extended his hand to her, and the second was
+Zacharias and Hermione. Hermione's chin was so high that Harry guessed
+she'd just been talking to some snotty purebloods who still disputed the
+claims of Muggleborns to any kind of recognition.
+
+``How did it go?'' Harry asked, as he and Draco unclasped hands, briefly
+turned their backs to each other, and then came together again. No one
+was going to hear them under the music.
+
+``Mrs. Nonpareil is going to be a problem,'' Draco murmured. ``Spoke too
+well about her connections in France for my liking. I think she still
+values the International Confederation's ruling too much. She doesn't
+think of you as a child so much as someone who---well. Who shouldn't be
+doing what you're doing to expose the magical world to the Muggles.''
+
+``How influential is she?'' Harry turned around, clapped his hands as
+the music soared to an intense pitch, turned back.
+
+Draco snorted. "Most of the people around her know she's an idiot.
+Problem is that she's got money. \emph{Vaults} of it. And she just
+removed it from Gringotts, so we can't depend on the \emph{hanarz}
+controlling her."
+
+``Not susceptible to bribery, then,'' Harry muttered.
+
+``Harry,'' Draco chided, a purr in his voice. "I didn't say \emph{that}.
+Everyone is susceptible to bribery. Money just won't work with Elizabeth
+Nonpareil, after all. But there are other things she wants."
+
+Harry turned his head curiously to him. ``You found a solution, didn't
+you?''
+
+Draco looked smug.
+
+``Are you going to tell me?''
+
+``Perhaps I should let you linger in suspense a bit longer,'' Draco
+murmured, but his own eagerness to show off his cleverness overcame his
+desire for mystery, as Harry had known it would. ``She admires beauty,
+Harry. Caged birds that sing sweetly. Old tapestries. Portraits of young
+wizards and witches.''
+
+``And?'' Harry prompted.
+
+``I told her you could get her a bird such as she's never seen before,''
+Draco murmured, "silver and white, with a peacock's tail and a
+cockatoo's crest, which weeps crystal tears when it sings. She believed
+me. You're the \emph{vates}, and she thinks I'm too young to lie
+effectively."
+
+Harry frowned. ``I don't know any bird---''
+
+``That's why your magic will make it, idiot,'' Draco interrupted.
+
+Harry spent a moment looking at him. Draco looked back, head up as if he
+were a deer offering his throat to the hunters, his eyes rich.
+
+And it would have been so easy to just laugh and agree, or argue with
+Draco that a \emph{vates} couldn't create a magical bird and then leave
+it in the care of someone who would mistreat it, but neither was what he
+felt, so Harry used honesty.
+
+``I would have preferred to be asked rather than volunteered into the
+exotic pet trade,'' he said dryly.
+
+``So sorry,'' Draco murmured, dropping his head to lip along Harry's
+neck. ``I could hardly come over and ask you.''
+
+``I know.'' Harry sighed and moved Draco's head away from his neck. He
+was too distracting. ``I'll make the damn bird for her, because you
+promised. But it's going to be able to open its cage and escape if she
+becomes too much for it, and it will sing and cry most of the time. Such
+as when she's trying to sleep, in fact.''
+
+Draco lowered his eyes. ``I only told her that I'd heard of the bird,''
+he said. "I didn't say I knew \emph{every} detail of its behavior."
+
+And this, Harry could believe, and did not mind, and knew, and loved.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Connor frowned. ``Well, no.''
+
+"Why \emph{not}?" Michael had his arms crossed in front of him again,
+which was always a bad sign.
+
+Connor rolled his eyes. He didn't think he needed to be \emph{tender}
+with the other boy. Michael would never learn if he didn't receive clear
+signals. ``You can't demand that other people give you respect.''
+
+``You did.''
+
+Connor shook his head. ``No, I just waited in the background until I got
+pushed into the foreground again.'' He grimaced. The memory of his name
+being pulled out of the Goblet of Fire really wasn't his fondest one.
+"And then, when situations came up where respect between me and Harry
+mattered, I \emph{gave} it. You have to do that, or you can't expect
+others to respect and admire you." He left unsaid that he thought
+Michael wanted Draco's admiration, and that was a doomed cause. Draco
+\emph{loved} a few people, but admired himself, and maybe his own
+reflection in a mirror, and no one else.
+
+``You still don't often show decorum around other people,'' Michael
+said, but at least he uncrossed his arms. ``I've seen the way you act
+around Professor Snape and Draco and Harry.'' He kept his head down and
+massaged the burn on his face from Voldemort's magic during the last
+words, but Connor could hear just fine. Yes, there was still a curl of
+longing in his voice when he mentioned Draco. Connor wondered why the
+others couldn't notice it.
+
+``Harry understands me,'' said Connor mildly. "I can act \emph{almost}
+however I want around him, and get away with it. So I do. And I don't
+respect Professor Snape all that much. No matter how many bad things
+happen to you in your life, you can't use that as an excuse forever. I'm
+trying to stay away from him now that Regulus Black's death just
+happened, but during our school years? He yelled at people like Neville
+for \emph{no reason}. He never even hated Neville's parents. He just
+decided that the whole world hated him, and so that was another reason
+to be a sadistic wanker right back. He never asked the world for its
+opinion." That was one thing Connor did wonder about. The way Snape
+acted towards Connor was stupid, but understandable, given James and
+Sirius. But---Neville? Had Harry never noticed, or did he not care, or
+had he forgiven Snape for it so long ago that it didn't matter to him
+any more? It still mattered to Neville, Connor knew. He still shook a
+bit when in the same room with Snape, and Snape would snap at him like a
+rabid dog. He'd done that when they made preparations to go after the
+Ravenclaw Horcrux and Neville was helping them identify the plants he
+thought might be in the garden.
+
+``And Draco?''
+
+\emph{Not just longing,} Connor thought, staring hard into Michael's
+eyes. \emph{Admiration, and desire, and resentment of Harry.}
+
+But he didn't want to get into the argument that would result from that,
+so he shrugged and said, ``Sometimes I respect him. Sometimes I don't.''
+He grinned. ``He hates that.''
+
+Michael drummed his fingers on the kitchen table. ``Why not be
+consistent?''
+
+``This way is more fun,'' said Connor, but relented when Michael glared
+at him. "All right. The real reason is that \emph{he} varies, too. So
+when he's helping Harry, or when he's acting as if he actually sees the
+world beyond the end of his nose, or when he does something and
+it's---good, like the way he transformed into his Animagus form before I
+did, I have to respect that. But then he'll act like a child again, and
+snap at me when I'm not doing anything, and act as if the whole world
+should kiss his feet because he was born a Malfoy. So I treat him as if
+he were a child."
+
+``He's not,'' Michael whispered.
+
+``We weren't talking about him,'' said Connor. ``We were talking about
+you.''
+
+``I want Dr---people to respect me.''
+
+``So respect them,'' Connor repeated.
+
+``It's hard,'' Michael whinged.
+
+Connor patted his hand. ``I know.''
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+So slow, in the darkness. That was the main danger of the weaving, that
+he would grow impatient and jerk the fabric too quickly, pull against
+the dreams of yearning and hatred and ambition that were his one chance.
+
+But serpents were patient. And he needed to be patient, this old Lord
+Voldemort. He needed to lie in the darkness and smell the dirt and
+contemplate. Then he would rise, when the skin was shed, rubbed off on
+the rough rocks.
+
+There would be despair.
+
+Harry had found answers. He was good at them. A snake for the diary, a
+Black for the locket, a Malfoy for the ring, a McGonagall for the Sword,
+a second Black for the wand. He would, perhaps, find a Rosier for the
+cup.
+
+But not all questions had answers.
+
+The third waited.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco lay in silence on their bed, stroking Harry's hair. Harry had
+fallen asleep immediately after they returned, muttering something about
+living in the midst of his emotions being an exercise in exhaustion.
+
+Draco considered the evening, and whether it had gone well, whether it
+had been the real Harry in the room with him, and Harry looking at him,
+and Harry responding to him, or the calm automaton he had seen so often.
+
+He had to smile at his last thought. \emph{Not so calm anymore, not when
+he shows his irritation in every move.}
+
+But there had been moments when he wanted more attention, when he would
+have liked some response instead of Harry to simply think about it and
+then ask questions. On the other hand, Harry had looked at him before
+they danced, before they entered the room, and many times, expressively,
+when he went up to Mrs. Nonpareil and promised her the bird she wanted.
+So he was trying. It wasn't perfect yet, but there was time to gain more
+from him, to pull out more of the things he didn't even \emph{realize}
+yet that Draco wanted.
+
+\emph{And you could try talking to him, too.}
+
+Draco paused. Then his hand resumed stroking Harry's hair, more slowly.
+
+It was a revelation. He thought Harry should know what he wanted,
+because he'd told him in the past often enough, and one of those things
+was for Harry to know his moods, instantly, and his needs. But did that
+\emph{have} to happen all the time? Why couldn't he offer help, and
+demand attention when Harry faltered or looked away? Harry was used to
+his demanding things.
+
+And\ldots{}well. Draco would not admit this aloud where anyone could
+hear, because it sounded so Gryffindor, but he did not entirely
+understand Harry, either, and could not predict his every mood and
+desire. He supposed it might not be entirely \emph{fair} to require
+absolute understanding from Harry when he couldn't offer it back.
+
+He gave a shiver, to get the Gryffindor squeamishness off him.
+
+He'd ask for more. But first had to come the Imbolc ritual, and that,
+Draco was \emph{not} looking forward to. It was not the deepest ritual
+of the three-year dance, not the most intense, but it was going to be
+the ugliest.
+
+It would show him what his life would have been like if Harry had never
+existed, and Harry the reverse.
+
+Draco sighed and closed his eyes. It was the end of January. A few days
+remained until the second of February.
+
+Harry was warm in his arms, snoring softly, muscles more relaxed than
+Draco could ever remember feeling them before. Darkness, ugliness, and
+pain could wait.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 84*: Slimy Mud and Rotten
+Wood}\label{chapter-84-slimy-mud-and-rotten-wood}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Sixty-Eight: Slimy Mud and Rotten Wood}
+
+``Why does this one start at dawn?'' Harry asked.
+
+``You read the ritual justification,'' Draco said, and his voice had
+turned snappish. Harry could hear him fidgeting, though not see him.
+They had to sit in darkness until the sun rose, when the ritual actually
+took effect. A day had to pass without their seeing each other. Harry
+wondered if it counted that he sometimes saw the dim outline of Draco's
+head when glancing towards the window, or caught a sight of his hair
+from a stray beam of starlight.
+
+``I did,'' Harry said, letting his irritation leak out around his teeth.
+``And I don't understand it. We had to stop seeing each other at
+midnight, and not see each other until the next midnight. So why doesn't
+the ritual start at midnight, instead of starting at dawn and ending at
+sunset the way it does? We spend hours in darkness without being allowed
+to see each other, but the ritual isn't actually in effect then.''
+
+``That's it,'' said Draco. "That's the point. To see if we can refrain
+from the sight of each other even when we could have it just by casting
+a \emph{Lumos}. And then we'll be taken away from each other, and
+reunited in darkness, and \emph{then} allowed to see each other. It's a
+ritual to cure the partners of taking each other for granted." His voice
+dripped with irony that Harry hated.
+
+``I still don't think it makes sense,'' Harry whinged. He winced a
+moment later. Sometimes he felt as if he'd taken a Babbling Potion. He
+was still learning when it was better to keep things to himself. Not
+even people who had lived while falling from the mountain all their
+lives, like Draco, said everything that crossed their minds. For the
+moment, though, Harry was more worried about being accused of
+dishonesty, so he let everything out.
+
+"It doesn't \emph{have} to make sense," Draco said. ``It's a ritual.
+Now. Did you make all the preparations that we'll need for a day of
+being out of contact?''
+
+Harry gave a sharp nod, feeling safe to do that, because Draco couldn't
+see him anyway. ``Yes,'' he said, modulating his own voice to be a
+little calmer. ``I've told the Ministry officials that any questions
+will have to wait. I've argued most of those who opposed letting
+nonhumans into the Ministry to a standstill, anyway. There's been no
+movement on the international front since that letter from Alexandre
+days ago.'' It had startled Harry more than a little when he received an
+owl from the Dark Lord, but apparently Alexandre had sent it to step
+around the Pact's injunction that Harry and Jing-Xi could not speak to
+each other. ``I think we're as safe as we'll ever be to leave the world
+behind for a little while.''
+
+Draco fumbled and shuffled next to him. Harry didn't know what he was
+doing until hands caught his chin and tilted it up. He went without
+protest, and blinked when the kiss landed just a little to the right of
+his lips.
+
+``I'm going to miss you,'' Draco whispered.
+
+And \emph{there} it was, another of those jewel-like moments that people
+like Connor, who normally got to see only Draco's selfish exterior,
+would never understand, Harry thought, as he looped his arms around
+Draco's waist in return. Draco hated moments of emotional weakness, had
+been trained to hate them. And most of the time, he seemed to agree with
+and accept that training. That he could lay down those defenses with
+Harry in private and come out of his shell bespoke a trust that Harry
+couldn't blame him for not extending to other people, and felt honored
+to have himself.
+
+``I'm glad it's just for one day,'' he said back, and hoped that his
+voice would carry all the quiet emotion he wanted it to, since Draco
+couldn't see his expression.
+
+Harry felt it then, the shifting of waves of light and power under the
+earth. The window of their room seemed to shimmer with gold, though
+Harry knew the sun couldn't have risen enough to fill it yet. He lifted
+a hand to shield his eyes as sudden, searing white light flooded the
+room a moment later.
+
+A calm voice spoke into his ear, a voice without gender or age or
+inflection.
+
+"\emph{It is dawn.}"
+
+And then the white swept him, shining, away from Draco, and into a
+vision of what his life would have been like without him. Harry thought
+he felt a touch of fingers across his, a near-clasp of his wrist, and
+then he was gone.
+
+In fact, the whole of \emph{him} was gone. What awaited him was another
+world, another life, within the mind of a Harry Potter who had always
+been the way he was.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco leaned back and folded his hands behind his head, staring at the
+ceiling of the four-poster bed. Greg and Vince sat by the door, keeping
+other people barricaded out. In fact, those ``other people'' were only
+Blaise, but Draco had wanted some time to himself in the first-year
+boys' bedroom, and they insured he got it.
+
+Draco had been feeling more and more sullen in school lately. Oh, he put
+effort forth in public, of course; he did well in his studies, which was
+expected, and he sneered at people of opposing Houses, and he made
+himself felt as a force in Slytherin, and he either avoided trouble
+altogether or made sure he didn't get caught at it. His discontent was
+so private that someone could only have known about it by both knowing
+him inside and out \emph{and} spying on any moment he was alone. Draco
+was irrationally sure that both his father and Professor Snape knew
+about it, but neither had approached him.
+
+He had not expected to be so \emph{bored} at Hogwarts.
+
+Oh, he had thought of it, once or twice, at the beginning of the year,
+when he walked in through the doors of the Great Hall, and saw the
+Sorting Hat sitting on its stool, just the way he had expected, and
+everything else had happened as he expected, too---his own Sorting into
+Slytherin, his friends' Sorting with him, and the sending of that damn
+Connor Potter, who had been so rude to Draco on the train, into
+Gryffindor. And since then, everything had happened as he expected.
+
+There were \emph{no} surprises. There were no shocks of joy or new
+experience, the way Draco had hoped there would be when he first left
+Malfoy Manor for Hogwarts. The only time he really wasn't in control was
+during his encounters with Potter, and that only happened because Potter
+was a \emph{brat} coddled by the whole of the school other than
+Professor Snape and Slytherin House.
+
+His father would say that was good. Lucius Malfoy had spent a long time
+telling Draco the value of carefully-researched plans, and situations
+that went exactly the way you wanted them to. Surprise and interest
+wasn't the point. The interest lay in watching other people do exactly
+as you thought they would. And later, when one had learned their
+patterns of behavior well enough, they would dance to cues that you gave
+them, to imperatives that you planted and convinced them were their own.
+That conception of life had helped Lucius Malfoy be a successful
+politician for years. Draco knew it, and he knew he was destined to
+follow in his father's footsteps, too. He should have been happy that
+his life was the way he'd been told it would be. After all, a lack of
+joyful surprises meant a lack of painful and debilitating surprises,
+too. Slytherins took risks when necessary, but it was always good
+\emph{not} to have to take risks, because they could always fail.
+
+But---
+
+Draco was bored.
+
+He took a deep breath and sat up. He had to do something before his
+temper got the better of him and he started ``acting up,'' the way his
+father called it, just to get attention and \emph{change} things. He'd
+done it sometimes while he was still a child, and it had driven his
+parents both mad. He couldn't do it now that he was supposed to be in
+school and an adult. Besides, the problem was with him, not Hogwarts,
+which was exactly what he had expected.
+
+So he would change himself.
+
+He would ask his father to teach him more about the Dark Arts over
+Christmas holidays.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry spat blood and didn't look up. What had happened to him wasn't
+important. He didn't even really know why he'd been called to the
+Headmaster's office. This sort of thing happened every day. It was only
+recently that it had escalated into bloody violence, and only the worst
+of poor luck that Professor McGonagall had come around the corner in
+time to see it. Harry wouldn't fight back, though he could have blasted
+his assailants away from him with a spell. His mother had told him
+\emph{not} to attract any attention, and Harry had done very well at
+that so far. For a while, Professor Snape had seemed to suspect him of
+hiding trained magic, but Harry had convinced him that he was innately
+worthless, James Potter's son and no more.
+
+The rest of the Slytherins were convinced of that, too, which led
+to---this. Harry touched his jaw, and decided that it was well on the
+way back to normal, even without a healing potion from Madam Pomfrey.
+Professor McGonagall had actually dragged him to Dumbledore instead of
+the hospital wing after she found the fifth-year Slytherins attacking
+him. Harry couldn't see why. A few healing potions, a few glamours, and
+life would go on as normal. Everyone around him hated him, thought he
+didn't fit in to his House, and were more infuriated by his refusal to
+fight back and his silent resilience than anything else. Harry didn't
+care. He would get through this, because it was just another burden on
+the path to be got through. His goal was to serve Connor, not to make
+friends in a place he didn't belong.
+
+``Harry.''
+
+Harry looked up calmly at the Headmaster. Dumbledore was leaning
+forward, and his face was grave. Harry's eyebrows rose. \emph{What's the
+matter with him? He knows the nature of sacrifice. He knows the
+importance of my mission. Nothing can be changed. But he looks as though
+something can.}
+
+``I have never wanted to contest the Sorting Hat's judgment,''
+Dumbledore said, slowly, as if he were feeling out the confines of
+unfamiliar territory. ``But now---I feel I must. I have never seen a
+student less suited to his House.'' He paused, but Harry didn't
+volunteer anything. He wasn't supposed to complain. It would draw
+attention. ``Harry, do you feel you belong in Slytherin?''
+
+Someone had asked him outright, and that person was a Light wizard. That
+meant he could respond.
+
+``No, sir,'' Harry said quietly. He heard Professor McGonagall, standing
+off to the side, let loose a victorious sniff. Harry gave her a sidelong
+glance. She'd given his attackers detention in such a cold tone that he
+had been surprised to look at the walls and find them still stone
+instead of ice. He had been more surprised that she bothered, though.
+Why should she care if the older Slytherins wanted to discipline him?
+
+``And why not, Harry?'' Dumbledore prompted gently, stealing Harry's
+attention back.
+
+Harry turned around. ``I have no friends,'' he said simply. ``No one
+trusts me because I'm the brother of the Boy-Who-Lived, and they think
+I'm there to spy on them. Professor Snape hates me because of who our
+father is, and our godfather. I don't wish to practice Dark Arts. I
+don't like or trust anyone there.''
+
+Dumbledore's mouth had tightened further and further as Harry recited
+the list. Then he said, ``Professor Snape has not come to me with
+any---comments on your treatment there.''
+
+``Oh, he knows about it,'' Harry reassured him, worried that the
+Headmaster would think his professor's perceptiveness was slipping.
+
+"He \emph{what}?" McGonagall sounded like a true lioness when she
+growled.
+
+``Why hasn't he stopped it, Harry?'' Dumbledore asked quietly.
+
+Harry shrugged. ``He hates me because of who our father is, sir. I did
+say that,'' he added, wondering if they thought he'd lied. He didn't
+want to become suspected of practicing deception, because that would
+make people think of him as Dark, and because it might lead them to ask
+what else he was hiding.
+
+``This goes too far, Albus,'' McGonagall hissed, like a teakettle.
+
+``It does.'' Dumbledore sighed. ``In this case, I am making a transfer
+for the student's health. School records will show that Harry Potter was
+Sorted first into Slytherin. Due to irreconcilable differences with the
+students and the Head of House involved, however, he was moved to
+Gryffindor for his own safety.'' He looked at Harry with kind eyes. ``I
+trust that will not be a problem for you, Harry?''
+
+A tiny flame sprang to life inside him. Harry could not remember such
+pure joy anywhere in his life. Most of what he had was the quiet
+contentment that came from a job well done, a duty fulfilled.
+
+He nodded. ``That will be more than enough for me, sir,'' he said
+softly.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco hesitated for a long moment, heart beating so hard that he was
+convinced someone would come down the hall at any moment and hear it.
+Then he shook his head, reminded himself that people who cast those
+sorts of spells in Hogwarts were \emph{rare}, not common, and moved
+forward.
+
+His father had given him a simple task. He had \emph{trusted} Draco.
+He'd done so since Draco went to him during Christmas holidays last year
+and confessed his boredom and his desire to be trusted with something
+life-changing, something important. And Draco wasn't going to betray his
+father's trust.
+
+He arrived at the portrait that guarded Gryffindor Tower, and smirked.
+It \emph{had} been a good idea to come this late at night, despite the
+risk of being caught by patrolling Prefects and professors. The fat
+woman in the picture sat asleep, chin dangling on her chest. She didn't
+wake as Draco whispered the password he'd heard Neville Longbottom
+whimper the other night when he stumbled back to the Tower after falling
+asleep in the library, and thus she didn't see that the one requesting
+entrance wasn't one of her precious Gryffindors. She just swung outward,
+and Draco climbed in and looked around carefully. No. No one in
+the---very garish---common room.
+
+He reached down, eyes on the set of stairs he needed to climb, and
+carefully cast the Hermes Charm on his trainers. He'd practiced and
+practiced this. Lucius had assigned Draco his task, but left the
+mechanics of accomplishing it up to him. That meant that he had to be
+the one responsible for finding the right spells, and thinking up
+\emph{every} problem that could deter him and a way around it. Draco was
+not sure that he always liked the sheer effort involved, but he had to
+admit it was much more exciting than the boredom that had plagued him
+last year.
+
+He rose gently from the ground, the wings on either side of his trainers
+straining and flapping. This charm wasn't often used because it didn't
+last long, so Draco shot quickly over the staircase to the first-year
+girls' room, which would have turned to a ramp and dumped him down it,
+not to mention blaring with alarm wards, if he'd tried to just walk up
+it. He landed safely on the top step just as the wings disappeared.
+Draco sighed, shook his head, and made his way to the door of the room.
+He was prepared to cast spells to dissipate the wards, but there
+\emph{were} no wards here other than the general school ones. Draco
+snorted in disdain.
+
+He did have to wait a moment for his hand to stop shaking before he
+could ease the door open.
+
+He easily saw the Weasley girl, of course. The long red hair revealed
+her through her partially-closed curtains. Draco rolled his eyes and
+crept to her side.
+
+Yes. There on the table next to her bed was the small black tome his
+father had described to him. Draco relaxed. The first part of the task
+his father had asked of him was complete---just to make sure that the
+girl Weasel still had the book. Lucius hadn't explained the book's
+importance, and Draco hadn't dared ask.
+
+The second part was more complicated. Draco stood still, eyes
+half-closed, and recalled all the bad things he'd heard about Weasleys
+growing up: how poor they were, how they refused to stop having
+children, how they disgraced their pure blood by associating with
+Muggles and Muggle-lovers. Draco hissed under his breath, and then
+carefully cast the compulsion charm on Weasley.
+
+She stirred, and Draco flinched, drawing into himself. But she only
+rolled over, sighed, and went more firmly back to sleep.
+
+Draco nodded. The compulsion made it impossible for her to part with the
+book now, even if she felt the inclination to do so. That was all his
+father had asked of him, and Draco had accomplished it swiftly and
+silently. Lucius was going to be so proud of him.
+
+And so would the Dark Lord. Though Draco hadn't asked questions, he had
+eyes and ears that worked. He knew this had something to do with the
+Heir of Slytherin and the Chamber of Secrets.
+
+He slipped carefully out of the room, made sure to cast a spell that
+would remove any trace of his magic from the hallway, and then used the
+Hermes Charm again to reach the bottom of the stairs. From there, it was
+easy enough to get out of the Gryffindor common room, and he made it
+back to the dungeons intact.
+
+He went to sleep with a small smile on his lips, imagining all the while
+the look that would be in Lucius's eyes when Draco's letter reporting
+success reached him.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Harry had a word, and he put it in the forefront of his thoughts, and
+the word \emph{stayed} there.
+
+\textbf{\emph{No.}}
+
+He lay in his bed in the hospital wing furiously fighting the storm that
+wanted to descend on him. The storm had probably really started brewing
+after he and Sylarana had managed to lock Tom Riddle in the box. They'd
+kept him there for almost six months, but then he had started breaking
+free, possessing Harry, and using him to let the basilisk free from the
+Chamber and Petrify people. Neither Harry nor Sylarana had known. Then,
+finally, when he'd acted against Connor, they'd become aware of him, and
+fought him. He'd died, and so had the basilisk, with help from Connor
+and Fawkes, but before he did, he opened and emptied the box. The mental
+strain of trying to hold the box shut against Tom's power had killed
+Sylarana.
+
+And now Harry's mind was full of images and pictures that he didn't want
+to see, and thoughts he didn't want to think. They had words mingled in
+them like ``abuse.'' A rage so cold that Harry hadn't stopped shivering
+since the Chamber wanted him to rise up and use his magic like a Dark
+Lord.
+
+\textbf{\emph{No}.}
+
+Harry would not. Never. No. He would not.
+
+He swam among the shards of his splintered mind, and, carefully, he
+picked them up and put them back together. A golden light and a singing
+voice sometimes appeared to help him, to show him where the pieces fit
+best. Across hours, across days, while he lay in the hospital wing and
+Madam Pomfrey and everyone else assumed he suffered from some sort of
+persistent magical fever, Harry carefully rebuilt his mind, centering it
+around his loyalty to his brother.
+
+He did not want anyone to see into his head; he avoided eye contact with
+both Snape and Dumbledore when they came into the hospital wing.
+\emph{No}. They couldn't see. They would say that he was evil for ever
+thinking such thoughts about his parents, who had only tried their best
+for Connor and for the world. And Harry knew he was Dark, but he did not
+think he could stand condemnation for it right now. The best possible
+apology would be to heal himself in silence, and so thoroughly that they
+never knew he had been wounded.
+
+He healed, and healed, and worked, and worked, and finally it happened.
+He was whole again. He still loved his parents and Connor as much as he
+ever had, so Riddle hadn't succeeded in turning him against them. And
+his shivering subsided, and he sat on the rage.
+
+He built a new box, a sturdier box, and when the end of the term came,
+he was ready to go home with his parents and his brother. He knew that
+he would never lose control like that again. He was deeply ashamed that
+he'd ever thought those things in the first place. He didn't want power;
+he didn't want the freedom that Tom Riddle's voice had whispered of,
+because that would mean the end of freedom for other people; he didn't
+want the rage. He wanted to serve his brother, and live in peace.
+
+The rage stayed in the box. It always would.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+It didn't take much more than a small twist of his wand to cast the
+spell. And, once it was cast, things took their natural course.
+
+Draco watched with---well, call it indifference---as Connor Potter fell
+from his broom to the ground below. After a moment's stunned silence,
+because no one had \emph{ever} seen the Gryffindor Seeker fall before,
+the crowd began roaring, shouting, and surging to its feet. The
+Gryffindors were shouting the loudest, of course, screaming about
+Slytherin sabotage, even though their team had been playing Hufflepuff.
+
+Draco sat back, twirling his wand between his fingers, and arched a
+brow. He'd done no more than Confound Potter for a moment, and from that
+height, no one would be able to tell that was what had happened. And, of
+course, Potter had hit the ground hard enough to scramble his brains,
+which was what Lucius had hoped for. The savior would probably not lie
+in a coma forever---they would manage to pull him out of it---but he
+could easily have permanent brain damage.
+
+And if he didn't\ldots{}
+
+Well. Lucius had some plans for that eventuality, too. And he would send
+his son to fulfill them if necessary. Either way, their precious Potter
+would emerge from his third year with less than the mental capacity his
+designated role needed.
+
+Draco rose to his feet. He was thirteen, an accomplished master of Dark
+Arts already, and promised to the Dark Lord's service when he returned.
+He could cast a spell that would cause the injury of a classmate and not
+care that much.
+
+He loved his father with all his heart.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Horror, screaming horror all around Harry, and he knew what would work,
+he knew what he \emph{must} do, but love stayed his hand and forced the
+words out of his mouth.
+
+"Sirius, please, fight him, I know you can do it, I \emph{know}---"
+
+``He cannot hear you,'' Voldemort's voice said from Sirius's mouth,
+laughing, cold. ``He is buried too deep. He did try to take control of
+this body, but he moved too quickly, Potter.'' He turned an almost
+tender gaze on Connor, curled in the corner. ``Grief unmanned him.''
+
+Harry didn't listen, wouldn't listen. Voldemort's corrupt justice ritual
+held him motionless in the center of the Shrieking Shack, but he'd left
+Harry the ability to speak. He found it amusing. Harry went on pleading
+with Sirius, asking him to fight, whispering for it, giving him
+Gryffindor memories, letting him know how much he was loved.
+
+And then the moment came when Sirius's soul shone in Voldemort's eyes,
+and Harry knew it was the last time.
+
+He exerted all his power, all the magic he'd never used, but chained up
+and ignored, because to use it was to call himself Dark. It flowed
+through him like a black tsunami, anxious to be free. He snapped out of
+the corrupt justice ritual, though he heard Connor scream as he did it,
+and knew that he'd probably fractured a bond between them. But better
+the broken bond than a dead brother or a doomed world.
+
+He had his wand in his hand, and Voldemort gaped, and, through his eyes,
+Sirius nodded his willing permission to die.
+
+"\emph{Avada Kedavra!}" Harry cried.
+
+Riding all his hatred, all his love, the Killing Curse blasted out of
+his cypress wand and hit Sirius in the chest. He fell dead in an
+instant, the light in his eyes snuffed out. Harry wasted no time, but
+turned his wand on the locket that lay against Sirius's chest, bubbling
+with enough darkness that Harry didn't think it was ``dead'' yet.
+
+He ended up not using a spell after all. He couldn't think of one potent
+enough. Instead, he used his magic, a sheer wandless \emph{snap}, and
+both the locket and the darkness bubbling around it ceased to exist.
+
+And then there was silence.
+
+Harry, panting, fell to his knees for a moment, then crawled towards
+Connor and undid the bonds that tied him. His brother refused to look at
+him. Then Harry turned to the Pensieve that sat next to Voldemort's
+heels, because he \emph{had} to see.
+
+In silence, he watched Voldemort go into the house at Godric's Hollow
+with Peter Pettigrew. The Killing Curse touched his forehead, and the
+second one touched Connor's, and then, at the exact moment when it did,
+green light rebounded from the infant Harry and flew back to strike
+Voldemort, locking all three of them into a bent triangle.
+
+And Harry \emph{knew}. His mind, too skilled in book learning, in
+untangling riddles, darted off, grabbed the necessary strands, and
+pulled them together to present him with an alternate version of the
+prophecy in which he was not Connor's guardian, but the one meant to
+defeat Voldemort.
+
+He waited a long moment, his head bowed, listening to his brother
+panting in the corner.
+
+Then he upended the Pensieve, and watched as the silvery liquid trickled
+away into the corners of the Shack.
+
+\textbf{\emph{No.}}
+
+He set the word of his heart against the vision, and limped over to curl
+an arm around Connor's shoulders, helping him to his feet. Along the
+way, he tamed and soothed his magic, making it lie still again. He would
+not use it, he \emph{would} not, he \emph{would} not.
+
+He was not the Boy-Who-Lived, because he refused to be. Prophecies could
+shift, but Harry intended to see that this one did not. It would stay
+right where it was supposed to be, and not choose him as its younger
+instrument.
+
+Besides, it made more sense that it should stay where it was. Who in the
+world loved Harry for himself, and could have stood at his right
+shoulder?
+
+Connor didn't look at him as Harry helped him out into the sunlight.
+Harry knew why. He had killed Sirius, and that would stand between them
+forever.
+
+Harry did not care. Connor was still alive, and the rage and the magic
+were locked in the box again. Everything was as it should be. He did not
+need his brother's love, only his life.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco frowned and shifted one foot in the mud. It was under the trailing
+hem of his robe, so his father couldn't see it moving. That was a very
+good thing. His father stood masked and cowled not too far from his
+side, and he would notice in a moment if his son did anything that
+suggested he was less than happy with the ceremony.
+
+Of course Draco was happy with the ceremony. In recognition of his
+accomplishments over the years---including making the Boy-Who-Lived an
+idiot due to brain damage in his third year and insuring that he
+couldn't ever foil the Dark Lord again, as Potter had managed with the
+diary---Draco was going to become the youngest Death Eater ever. The
+Dark Lord had developed a spell that would give him a Dark Mark visible
+only to those who loyally served him. Thus he could serve his Lord
+without giving too much away, including revealing a snake and skull in a
+school full of curious people who would pry where they were not welcome.
+
+He simply hadn't expected to be so bothered by the details of the
+ceremony.
+
+The Dark Lord had needed the blood of an enemy to complete his
+resurrection ceremony, but though he would have liked to use the
+Boy-Who-Lived, Connor Potter was now too tightly guarded to make it
+practical. In the end, Mulciber, disguised as Moody, had managed to
+capture McGonagall and bring her to the graveyard where the Dark Lord's
+father was buried. Now, she writhed and screamed on the altar next to
+the grave, though a \emph{Silencio} had muffled her cries so that she
+would not interrupt the Dark Lord's punishment of his disloyal
+underlings.
+
+Draco had no mask yet. He could look at her, and she had seen him. Her
+eyes had narrowed, and then she had spat several insulting things about
+the Malfoy line, before the Dark Lord put her under the Cruciatus and
+left her like that.
+
+``Draco.''
+
+He dropped instinctively to one knee. His father had trained him well.
+When someone spoke his name in that tone, the time to ask questions had
+passed. ``My Lord,'' he said, and knew his voice was the right
+combination of submission and confidence. For a moment, he felt his
+father shift, his robe brushing Draco's, and that sent a warm bolt
+through him.
+
+For his father's approval, he could face anything, including what he
+thought he would be asked to do in a moment.
+
+``Come here to me.''
+
+Draco rose and walked towards his Lord, holding his eyes because the
+Dark Lord hadn't said not to. That lipless mouth slid into a smile.
+Draco felt a shudder run up his spine, and told himself sternly that it
+didn't matter what his Lord looked like. The power around him, like the
+waves of a sunless sea, was the important thing, and it was power that
+Draco could shelter beneath for the rest of his life. Already the
+addiction to it crept into his bones and blood.
+
+``All Death Eaters must pass an initiation before they can truly become
+my servants,'' his Lord whispered to him, mockingly, caressingly.
+
+Draco nodded. ``I understand, my Lord.'' He was fourteen, but Lucius had
+explained as many details as he rightfully could to him.
+
+``Take your wand, Draco, and kill the Gryffindor bitch for me,'' said
+the hissing voice, softer than sand.
+
+Draco nodded again, and drew his wand, and faced the altar. The long yew
+wand descended, lifting the Silencing Charm on McGonagall. Now Draco
+could hear her screams, the agonized cries of a maddened animal.
+
+He held her eyes, and forced himself to remember every single time she
+had stood in front of Transfiguration and frowned at him. There was
+every time she had been unfair to Slytherins, too, and the times she
+grudgingly admitted that Slytherin had indeed won the Quidditch matches
+between Gryffindor and Slytherin. If she could not catch them cheating,
+she did not deserve to know.
+
+Draco thought of all that, and made it \emph{not matter.} Why should it
+mean anything, who she had been? She was now the sacrifice for his
+initiation into the Death Eaters, and that was all.
+
+He raised his wand and spoke the Killing Curse without thought, lost in
+a sea of indifference. She slumped and died of a jet of green light, and
+Draco turned and bowed calmly to his Lord.
+
+``I notice that you did not make her suffer more first, Draco,'' his
+Lord whispered.
+
+``She had madness in her eyes, my Lord,'' Draco said, with complete
+honesty. ``She would not have noticed any pain curse I used. And I do
+not think that I can cast Cruciatus as well as you can, nor shall ever
+be able to do so.''
+
+The red eyes gleamed. That answer pleased him very much. Draco felt
+another warm bolt, and knew he'd found another person he
+wanted---needed---to impress.
+
+``Very good, Draco,'' his Lord said. ``Kneel.''
+
+Draco knelt.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``Do you understand, Harry?''
+
+Harry nodded fiercely. ``Of course I do!''
+
+Dumbledore's face softened. ``That makes me gladder than you can know,
+Harry. I know what sacrifices you have made for our cause, and I am
+loathe to demand another of you. But, in truth, the situation is
+intractable, and there is no other way.''
+
+``I understand, sir,'' Harry whispered. And he did. It didn't make him
+\emph{happy}, in the same way that being suspected of being a Dark
+wizard because he spoke Parseltongue didn't make him \emph{happy}. But
+his happiness was not a factor that entered into decisions made by the
+side of the Light, and that was the way it should be. They had so many
+more important people to serve, and his effectiveness as a weapon
+depended on his staying in the shadows.
+
+There were many people in the Order of the Phoenix who had expressed a
+concern that Harry's killing of Sirius at the end of last year showed
+Dark tendencies. So they had argued with Dumbledore about keeping Harry
+free of Azkaban, and in the end, he had proposed a compromise. That
+compromise was to be executed now.
+
+Harry watched in silence as Connor came into the office. His brother
+wouldn't speak to or look at him. Harry's heart ached, but he felt a
+kind of sad pride, too. Connor was true to his ideals and the Light, as
+he'd been raised, and in the world of the Light, there was no place for
+what Harry had done. At least he was still pure and innocent. At least
+Harry had managed to achieve that.
+
+``Connor,'' Dumbledore said. ``We know that you don't think your brother
+can be trusted with his magic any more, thanks to---last year.'' He was
+delicate enough not to mention Sirius's name, at least.
+
+Connor's shoulders hunched---at the mention of his brother, Harry had to
+note, not the end of the sentence---but he nodded.
+
+``Therefore,'' said Dumbledore, in an even gentler tone than he'd used
+with Harry, ``we have decided to put Harry under an Unbreakable Vow. He
+will swear his magic over to you, to be used at your command. He will
+never again be able to use a Dark spell, if that is what you demand of
+him. At the same time, you can draw freely on his power, and use it to
+protect yourself during the Tournament.''
+
+Connor looked up, and then turned his eyes to Harry. Harry basked in his
+brother's gaze, and nodded to show that he'd agreed to this and even
+welcomed it.
+
+``But---'' Connor began, and then fell silent.
+
+``Yes, it does sound barbaric,'' Dumbledore said. ``But it is the only
+compromise the Order of the Phoenix will accept, and, frankly, it will
+make Harry feel better about himself, Connor. And since Harry is
+supposed to be your guardian, according to the prophecy, it makes sense
+for him to assume this position.''
+
+Connor gnawed his lip for a moment, then nodded fiercely. ``I'll do
+it.''
+
+They knelt, and Dumbledore drew his wand to be their Bonder. Harry
+reached out, and held Connor's hand, and met his eyes, and thought, with
+sudden clarity, \emph{This means the magic can never come out of the box
+again. I don't have to fight it anymore. I'll be free in my chains.}
+
+The relief of that was so great he had to shut his eyes, but he opened
+them again as Connor incanted the first two vows, repeating what
+Dumbledore told him: that Harry's magic was Connor's to use as he
+willed, and that Harry could never use a Dark spell again. Connor looked
+up at the end, though.
+
+``What's the third vow?'' he asked.
+
+``Whatever you choose it to be.'' Dumbledore smiled at him. ``I trust
+you, and I know that Harry does, too.'' Harry nodded like a marionette
+when Connor looked at him, just in case his brother was in any doubt.
+
+``All right.'' Connor took a deep breath. ``From this moment forward,
+Harry, I want you to swear that you won't speak Parseltongue to anyone,
+and that if a snake talks to you, you won't answer.''
+
+Gratitude came like a starburst from inside Harry's chest. At a stroke,
+Connor had freed him from his worry about the Darkest gift he carried.
+
+He made the vow, and the fire glowed all around their joined hands.
+Harry watched it, and thought the separate strands were like the shine
+of candles of peace.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``That is not the way, Draco.'' Hawthorn Parkinson never dared sound
+\emph{annoyed} with him, but she could sound weary, and she did so now.
+Draco bit his lip and tried to stand straight, though his anxiety was
+making it hard for him to do so. He wanted to hunch over and try to look
+small the way he had when he attracted his father's disapproval as a
+child.
+
+He reminded himself that he had Lucius's approval, had had it for
+several years now, and gave a little nod to Hawthorn. He was fifteen,
+and the Malfoy heir. Fifteen was the magical age of inheritance among
+some of the pureblood families even now. Practically an adult, he could
+not disappoint his father.
+
+``I am ready,'' he said, as calmly as he could.
+
+``Good.'' Hawthorn stepped out of his way. They stood in one of the
+clean, cool underground rooms of the Dark Lord's new fortress, which had
+apparently once been the site of some Muggle religion. Draco knew little
+and cared to know less about Muggle religions. He only knew the walls
+were comfortingly solid stone, reminding him of Hogwarts, and that in
+front of him, on an altar-like slab resembling the one where he had
+killed McGonagall, lay the woman he was meant to practice the blood
+curses on. ``Now try the Blood-Burning Curse.''
+
+Draco grimaced. That spell was harder than all the others, invented by
+the madman Evan Rosier. Even Hawthorn, Red Death though she was, had
+trouble with it. But he had said that he would master the spell, and so
+he would.
+
+He focused on the woman with long bright hair on the altar---her name
+was Ignifer Apollonis, and though she was sworn to the Dark, she had
+refused to serve his Lord---and whispered the incantation.
+
+Ignifer screamed as her blood began to burn along her veins. By now, she
+had no pride left, and it was easy to make her cry out.
+
+Draco stared. He did not believe at first that he had done it, even when
+Hawthorn touched his shoulder and nodded in approbation. ``Very good,
+Draco,'' she murmured, ending the spell. "Now I want you to try it in
+combination with \emph{Sanguinolente.} I'll heal her before she can die.
+Do you think you can do that?"
+
+Draco nodded absently, still caught in the middle of his shock. He had
+felt nothing but the same indifference with which he had killed
+Professor McGonagall in the graveyard last year. His Lord wanted all his
+Death Eaters to have a love of torture and killing, but so far it evaded
+Draco.
+
+But then he thought of the half-smile that would overcome Lucius's mouth
+when he let himself show pride in his son. He thought of those wintry
+gray eyes softening enough to show him something of the man behind.
+Draco's indifference swelled into determination to do better.
+
+He nodded again to Hawthorn and set his feet. He might not care very
+much about making his enemies suffer, but he cared a great deal about
+his father's regard. He could \emph{do} this. He was the Malfoy heir,
+the sole scion of his father's legacy, and Lucius Malfoy could torture
+like an artist. Draco must learn how to do so.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+"\emph{Now}, Harry!"
+
+Harry sent his magic flowing to Connor, watching tensely as his brother
+dashed away among the shelves of prophecies in the Department of
+Mysteries. Only Connor and Voldemort could touch the prophecy that
+concerned both of them, and his brother had come here because he wanted
+to hear the whole thing. He had started distrusting Dumbledore and even
+Lily in the last year and longed to know whether the words they had
+given him were true or not.
+
+The problem was that there were three Death Eaters behind them,
+including Bellatrix Lestrange, and Harry, with his magic occupied in
+protecting his brother from the ones ahead, couldn't defend himself at
+all.
+
+A bright purple curse struck over his head and hit the floor near him.
+Harry dropped and rolled. He could hear flames creeping nearer the
+prophecies, and abruptly had an idea. No, he couldn't defend himself
+with magic thanks to the Unbearable Vow, but he could at least make sure
+that Hermione and Ron, who had come with them to the Department of
+Mysteries, were safe, and create a distraction.
+
+He reached out and set his shoulder to the shelf next to him. In
+seconds, it wavered---the shelves weren't that heavy, since they simply
+held the fragile globes of prophecies, not tomes as in the Hogwarts
+Library---and then began to fall.
+
+Harry watched, fascinated despite himself, as the prophecies fell with
+it, their clear sides shining like tears. They smashed on the floor, and
+the ghosts of the visions inherent in them began to rise from the
+remains, their lips moving and the voices of the Seers, some shrieking,
+some mumbling, some clear as trumpets, mingling. Two voices cursed, and
+Harry knew he'd successfully slowed at least a few of the Death Eaters
+down.
+
+Then he heard a pained scream.
+
+He whipped around, and saw Bellatrix Lestrange holding Hermione under
+the Cruciatus, laughing cruelly. Harry knew what the Cruciatus felt
+like. He'd felt it himself last year in the graveyard, and he'd been
+lucky that Voldemort succeeded in doing no worse to him before Connor
+came charging in to rescue him.
+
+He flung out a hand, instinctively trying to stop Hermione's pain.
+
+And he could do nothing, because his magic was with Connor.
+
+Harry couldn't just approach Bellatrix, either, because he couldn't hurt
+her without the ability to curse, and there was a high chance he would
+die. He was supposed to sacrifice his life to save Connor, not Hermione.
+
+He hesitated, his training struggling with the instinct to intervene and
+save a fellow Gryffindor in trouble.
+
+And then Bellatrix spoke the Killing Curse, and Hermione lay as lifeless
+as Sirius had two years earlier.
+
+Harry closed his eyes.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco cursed in shock and barely ducked around the corner in time. The
+green light of the Killing Curse cut the darkness around him, a silent
+flash; no words other than the incantation accompanied it. When it
+faded, Draco stood shaking in the darkness, and realized exactly how
+close he had come to losing his life.
+
+He'd been assigned, during his sixth year, to run a subtle test of
+Snape's loyalty, and see how well he truly adhered to the Dark Lord's
+call. What Draco had found was inconclusive. In the end, he'd decided
+that he could only be sure by gaining access to Snape's private rooms,
+and he'd tried to Stun his teacher and look over the evidence at his
+leisure. If he found something incriminating, he could inform his Lord.
+If he found nothing, a quick \emph{Obliviate} would take care of things,
+or perhaps even an explanation. Draco knew Snape was cautiously fond of
+him, and he had run similar risks while a young initiate in the Dark
+Lord's service. He might understand why Draco had done this.
+
+But the Stunning spell had failed, and Snape had given Draco no chance
+to explain before he began to fight.
+
+Snape was a brilliant duelist. Draco had heard that all his life, but
+never thought about what it meant. Now he did: his own curses turned
+with hardly a blink, his wand nearly slapped out of his hand before he
+could complete the \emph{Avada Kedavra} incantation, Snape's composure
+eerily refusing to falter even when Draco wounded him. And he bore a
+bloody gash on his chest thanks to a near-collision with
+\emph{Sectumsempra}, one of Snape's own personal invented spells.
+
+He could feel Snape's magic from around the corner, silent and deadly as
+a hunting beast. Draco shuddered. It was the first time he'd fought a
+wizard so much stronger than himself, and he wasn't enjoying it.
+
+Then Snape hissed, ``Draco.''
+
+Frustratingly, his voice came from every direction. Draco shivered. He
+was not fool enough to answer.
+
+``I know what you were doing, little snakeling,'' Snape whispered. ``Do
+you not suppose I know that the Dark Lord has doubted my loyalty? Shall
+I tell you the same story I told him, little snakeling?''
+
+Draco shuffled a bit closer to the corner, wondering if he could fire a
+spell around it and hit Snape before the man knew he was there.
+
+A loop of rope shot around the corner from the opposite direction and
+curled about his neck, choking off his breath. Then he flipped around as
+neatly as if his personal gravity had been reversed, and Draco found
+himself hanging from the ceiling, trussed hand and foot. His wand
+clattered away from his grasp and rolled into the darkness.
+
+Snape stepped towards Draco, shaking his head. He didn't look angry,
+merely disgusted.
+
+``Your task was to spy on me and make sure of my loyalty,'' he told
+Draco. "And \emph{my} task was to answer you back and curb your
+confidence. You have been growing too reckless, little snakeling, taking
+risks that will not answer." He paused meaningfully. ``Your father as
+well as the Dark Lord asked me to keep an eye on you. I can only assume
+that their motivations do not differ.''
+
+Draco swallowed and nodded as best he could around the rope. Lucius had
+told him more than once that if Draco failed to live up to the high
+standards of the Malfoy family, he deserved no better than death.
+Draco's mother had sometimes turned away when her husband said things
+like that, but she had never disagreed.
+
+Snape raised an eyebrow, and the ropes uncoiled and dropped Draco to the
+ground. Draco didn't cry out as he landed, though the fall bruised him.
+He sat up and waited, head bowed. He knew what was coming.
+
+``You have learned to make others suffer,'' Snape said, in a voice
+barely distinguishable from the hush of blood along Draco's veins.
+``However, you have learned very little suffering of your own.'' He
+raised his wand.
+
+Draco set himself to endure.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+In the silence, during the long hours, Harry fought and fought with
+himself.
+
+He had thought that, after he gave up control of his magic to Connor
+with the Unbreakable Vow, he would never be troubled by his Dark rage
+and Dark thoughts again. But the death of Hermione last year had
+unleashed something in him. He had gone, screaming, after Bellatrix, and
+he would have been killed if Connor hadn't come back just then with the
+prophecy and held her off.
+
+And since then, Harry was conscious of the box in his head for the first
+time in years.
+
+Something inside the box kept knocking. It wanted out.
+
+Every night, he fought in silence with himself, sitting up on his bed in
+the Gryffindor sixth-year boys' room, staring out the windows of the
+Tower. The stars were serene and distant. They did not help him. Harry
+had asked his parents for help, but James pretended not to know what he
+was talking about---he had his own ghosts to contend with, Harry knew,
+his own darkness---and Lily simply patted his shoulder and smiled at him
+with soft eyes and reminded him that it couldn't be any other way, that
+they \emph{had} to be sure he wasn't Dark after he murdered Sirius, or
+he would have been sent to Azkaban.
+
+Sometimes Harry wanted to shout at them that it had been Voldemort in
+Sirius's body, and didn't they understand that?
+
+But he knew that was a sign of his sickness. He was hopelessly sick,
+corrupt down to the bone. It could be the only reason he was thinking
+thoughts like this now, missing his magic with a longing that left him
+unable to do anything but shake in bed for days, and actually paying
+attention to Ginny Weasley in such a way that sometimes it distracted
+him from Connor.
+
+He had found a solution, though, a mental technique described in a book
+on Light magic. It would work, he was certain. Connor let him have his
+magic during the nights, and this was nothing to do with Dark spells or
+with Parseltongue.
+
+Harry closed his eyes and collected the deviant thoughts and Dark
+leanings into a small pile. Then he imagined his devotion to Connor and
+all that was good and right as a brilliant fire, a beam of the sun
+magnified through glass.
+
+He burned the bad parts of himself. He pared himself down until he was
+the shining weapon of the Light, the part of himself under Unbreakable
+Vows to Connor, and nothing else.
+
+He sat there, and did it. He knew he would have to do it night after
+night, until he could no longer hear the knocking from inside the box,
+or the frenzied music he sometimes thought he heard blowing among the
+stars at the end of April and on Midwinter Night.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+``---by the order of the Dark Lord of Britain and Ireland, soon to be
+Dark Lord of Europe---''
+
+Draco stood stiffly proud at his Lord's side. Only a small honor guard
+got to be this close to their Lord and the prisoner he was going to
+torment this morning: the idiot Potter boy, his head hanging off to the
+side and a slow line of drool sliding down his chin. Everyone else could
+watch, of course, gathered in the slimy mud that was the churned
+battlefield around the conquered Hogwarts, but few were this close.
+Draco's father, his aunt Bellatrix, and Snape made up the rest of the
+inner circle.
+
+``---for crimes against His exalted person and for interfering with the
+continuance of His rightful reign---''
+
+Draco stared at Potter. He tried to see some spark of the boy he had
+once hated in those glazed hazel eyes, and could not. He didn't even
+feel pity. Dull, crawling indifference consumed him.
+
+``---sentenced, to die.''
+
+Bellatrix stepped forward. She would torture Potter, and it would take
+him hours to stop screaming. It would take him days to actually
+\emph{die,} of course. The Dark Lord knew how to make his examples.
+Draco still thought his ears were ringing from Dumbledore's screams, and
+from Lily Potter's, though technically Lily wasn't dead yet. There was
+still enough of her left for people like Crabbe and Goyle to enjoy.
+
+Draco cared little for that. He had learned to inflict suffering and
+death, to come to the edge of them himself and not to betray his Lord,
+but he valued them as skills, not as part of life, like Bellatrix did.
+And he was proud to serve his Lord, but he didn't love his power the way
+some Death Eaters did; he was content to be near the shadow of those
+gigantic wings.
+
+His reward was in the glance that Lucius gave him every now and then,
+the way he acknowledged that Draco was there and a worthy son.
+
+Voldemort was his Lord, Draco thought. But Lucius was his \emph{father},
+and he had done all this for him.
+
+For his approval, to have a place in his heart. Lucius knew best.
+
+The first scream rang out. Draco looked boredly back at Potter as a
+light rain began to fall. He supposed his robes would be coated with mud
+before the day was out, but, well. The house elves of Hogwarts could
+make themselves useful to their new masters by cleaning them.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+On Midwinter Night in the same year as Voldemort's defeat, which was his
+and Connor's last year at Hogwarts, Harry climbed the Astronomy Tower.
+
+He could not keep indoors. He had tried. The school was holding a Yule
+Ball like the one during fourth year, and Harry wanted to be there,
+among lights and companionship, watching as his brother whirled across
+the floor with Parvati Patil, to whom he was engaged to be married this
+time next year.
+
+But he couldn't, even with his magic safely bound, and so he had slipped
+away at last and climbed to the place he could be closest to the stars.
+And to the darkness between the stars, though he tried not to think
+about that.
+
+He was shivering convulsively, even though the wind that blew didn't
+feel cold. It felt hot, like the breath of a mighty beast down the back
+of his neck. No one had seen him go, he knew. No one cared that much.
+Harry was his brother's shadow, his weapon, of account and notice in the
+same way that a shining sword at his side was. Everyone admired it, but
+no one thought it had a brain of its own. Even Ginny had given up when
+Harry began to ignore her last year.
+
+He could feel the wood of his box rotting.
+
+Harry closed his eyes. But he couldn't cry. He had forsaken tears. There
+was the wind above him, and the courtyard far below, and the rotting
+wood inside. He heard the muffled rhythm of his Dark magic's knocking
+night and day. He might die, if it burst free from his control, given
+the Unbreakable Vow. But the Vow was a fragile barrier to trust the
+safety of Hogwarts to. Dark magic could do unpredictable things against
+Light spells.
+
+And there was the surge of strength Harry had felt when Voldemort died,
+and the voice in his ear that had whispered, \emph{You are my heir},
+even as the prophecy came true. He hadn't told anyone about that, of
+course. They would think it was Dark, and Harry wanted to prove he was a
+weapon. That was what he was.
+
+The wild Dark---he could name it in his thoughts, if not aloud---sang
+above him, and now and then he glanced up and saw a wolf with green eyes
+and a silver lightning bolt scar watching him. The last time he saw it,
+it had winked at him.
+
+He wondered, if he leaped from the Tower, would he fall or fly?
+
+Slowly, he climbed up on the battlements. The stone was cold under his
+feet. The wind lipped at his ears. The stars shook overhead like
+cymbals.
+
+Inside him, a fist punched through the rotten wood of the box.
+
+SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
+
+Draco opened his eyes, his heart shuddering. He knew it must be sunset,
+or the visions wouldn't have let him go. He lay on his back on a bed, he
+knew that much, and the motionless weight beside him was Harry. Given
+how dark the room was, Draco doubted that he could see him even if he
+looked.
+
+And then the weight came alive with a strangled cry, and Draco found
+himself wrapped in a pair of arms so tight he could barely breathe. He
+slowly gathered Harry to himself, his own heart going fast enough to
+make his skin shudder over it.
+
+``Oh, Merlin, my life was worthless without you there,'' Harry babbled
+to him, voice full of terror and tears. "I can't believe---it
+wasn't---Draco, Draco, I \emph{need} you so much."
+
+Draco whispered, ``I know. I know. Shhh. I've got you, Harry. I felt the
+same thing.'' He held on as tight as he could, and reminded himself over
+and over that he wasn't the boy who had existed as a pawn under the
+domination of his father and been utterly indifferent to torture and
+death. That had been the ritual's version. He was himself, and he was
+real, and he held Harry in his arms. Harry had helped him defy his
+father and become his own person, but that was in the past. They were
+\emph{living} now, as well as struggling.
+
+``I was dying,'' Harry breathed. "I was a weapon, and the wild Dark was
+calling me, and I either committed suicide or went mad and destroyed
+them all in the middle of my seventh year, I'm not sure which. I didn't
+have you to help me make friends in Slytherin, or to shelter me at the
+end of second year, or to teach me what it meant to be human. I just---I
+had---\emph{fuck}," he ended, on a broken note, and burrowed his head
+into Draco's chest.
+
+``And I wasn't my own person without you, either,'' Draco whispered. ``I
+may still not be, but at least I'm more than the Malfoy heir my father
+would have trained me into.'' He remembered, then, how glad he had been
+to be tossed a scrap of approval from his father, and his skin crawled
+as if it would hump up over his shoulders. He held it down. He felt the
+temptation to toss Harry aside and retch up the contents of his stomach,
+but that could wait, too.
+
+``Can't we turn on a light?'' Harry whispered back.
+
+``No,'' Draco said, though he felt the same yearning himself. ``Not
+until midnight.''
+
+``Then I'll use my hands to feel you as much as I can,'' said Harry, and
+he locked his arms around Draco more tightly than ever. There was a
+pause, and when he spoke again, he sounded a bit stronger, but Draco
+knew he was very far from repairing his barriers. "Draco---talk to me.
+Tell me what your vision was like. \emph{Tell} me."
+
+Draco wondered if Harry wanted to hear about his vision for its own sake
+or to hear his voice, and then decided it might be something even
+simpler than that: the human motive to comfort and be comforted.
+
+``All right,'' he said. ``I was bored during my first year, just like I
+thought I would be without you there to help make it more fun\ldots{}''
+
+So he went on, telling his story, interspersed with Harry's indignant or
+reassuring little comments, waiting for the end of visions, waiting for
+midnight and the light.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 85*: Interlude: Bulstrode to
+Yaxley}\label{chapter-85-interlude-bulstrode-to-yaxley}
+
+\textbf{Interlude: Bulstrode to Yaxley}
+
+\emph{February 7th, 1997}
+
+\emph{Dear Lazuli Yaxley:}
+
+You have no particular reason to look upon my request favorably, I
+suppose, but it {is} a fact that we are both allies of Harry {vates},
+and I am confident that no one else will make this request of you.
+
+You have had time, by now, to examine your sister Indigena's house and
+garden, to learn what treasures she left, and what heirlooms for your
+family. What I am interested in is not a jewel, or a statue, or a
+portrait, but a plant. It would be a vine, dark green, with a thin
+stripe of silver running down the middle of each tendril. It may be
+growing potted or as a wild plant in the gardens or greenhouses. It
+trails low along the ground, but may rear up when magically commanded. I
+suspect, however, that the silver stripe is your best means of
+identifying it.
+
+I am afraid that I cannot tell you why I need cuttings of this
+particular vine. Be assured that I will not use them alone; young
+Neville Longbottom is an expert in Herbology and will help me care for
+the plants as they should be cared for. And be assured I intend to use
+them for no malicious purpose.
+
+Sometimes, there are things our {vates} needs that he does not know he
+needs, and which he would never ask for. I intend to use the vines to
+secure him one of those things. I cannot tell him the plan; he would
+oppose it, out of his own unselfishness. He has changed much of late,
+but I have reason to believe he would never let me do this.
+
+Please let me know very soon whether you will send clippings of the vine
+to me or not. Time is of the essence.
+
+I hope your daughter is well.
+
+In the name of the Dark,
+
+\emph{Henrietta Bulstrode.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 86*: Caught on the
+Hop}\label{chapter-86-caught-on-the-hop}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Sixty-Nine: Caught on the Hop}
+
+Connor sighed loudly and put the book aside. He'd been researching the
+Switching Potion, hoping to find some wrinkle in it that Harry didn't
+know about and which would convince him to use it again to give Connor
+the knowledge of the pureblood rituals. Just for a little while. Just
+for a few hours. There was a gathering tonight---apparently, Harry's
+enemies and friends alike were interested in setting up an election for
+Minister as soon as possible, taking away unofficial duties from people
+who shouldn't be performing them, and making competent people
+official---and Connor was confident that Harry could survive without the
+rituals. He didn't think \emph{he} could.
+
+What he read, however, was the information that Harry had already told
+him about the Switching Potion. The two people who would consume it had
+to be linked in two ways, one of which must be a blood bond. It was
+fatal to take another potion within five minutes of the Switching
+Potion, to consume more than exactly half the draft, or to take it when
+the bonds between the two people weren't strong enough. A way to die a
+horrible screaming death, Connor had managed to surmise, though the
+books he had looked at were coy about that.
+
+Everything else concerned the brewing process and the way that the two
+people involved had to concentrate so that the stones filled with their
+magical essences dropped into the potion. On the bright side, Connor had
+found nothing that said it was fatal to take the Switching Potion more
+than once or twice.
+
+On the dark side, that would not convince Harry to switch knowledge with
+him.
+
+As if he were lurking about in the corridor outside the library waiting
+for the perfect moment to intrude and make a nuisance of himself, Harry
+opened the door and leaned in. ``Connor, Parvati says that she isn't
+going to appear with you looking like a ragamuffin,'' he said. ``You
+need to get bathed and dress. The gathering is only in a few hours.'' He
+spoke as if bored, only passing along a message, but his eyes sparked,
+and Connor knew that he was enjoying this.
+
+``Harry,'' Connor whinged. He knew he was whinging. He didn't care. This
+was important. "Lend me your knowledge. It's just for a \emph{little}
+while."
+
+Harry folded his arms and raised his eyebrows. Connor couldn't remember
+his brother being so expressive with his body language before. Of
+course, a large part of that came from the fact that, before, he'd
+always tucked his emotions away as soon as he felt them, not letting
+them influence his body language at all. Connor was grateful for the
+change, most of the time, but it \emph{did} mean Harry was much more
+often pissed off with him.
+
+``What happened to your resolve to study the Light pureblood rituals
+that you need to know?'' Harry asked.
+
+``Harry---''
+
+``What happened to Draco and me being idiots, while you were an
+intelligent adult who knew how to hold his own?''
+
+``Harry---''
+
+``You have to learn not to depend on potions, Connor,'' Harry said,
+chidingly. ``Any wizardry worth doing doesn't lean on them exclusively.
+It takes brains and cleverness, not merely mindless brewing.''
+
+``Does Snape know you think that?'' Connor said, and then wrapped his
+arms over his head and moaned. "I'm going to \emph{fall flat on my
+face.} Apollonis and Smith will both be there, and they'll expect me to
+know as much as I did the day I visited them. Take pity. Your power and
+your memory of the rituals I don't take can get you through, but not
+me."
+
+``No Switching Potion,'' said Harry, with a sadistic enjoyment that
+Connor didn't think was very fair, and shut the door behind him.
+
+Connor spent a few moments moaning, then stood up and went reluctantly
+to bathe and dress. Yes, Smith and Apollonis would probably make him
+suffer for his lack of studying, but it was nothing compared to what one
+stare from Parvati would do if he showed up for this gathering with his
+hair mussed and his fingers stained with ink.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+``Who do you think they'll choose for Minister?'' Zacharias asked, as he
+helped Hermione arrange the necklace around her throat. It was a heavy
+piece, silver, with a clasp in the middle that Hermione thought ugly; it
+resembled a knot too much for her taste. It had once borne the Black
+family crest, but that had worn away through long centuries of polishing
+and touching. It sufficed for the jewelry that Hermione needed to wear
+in a time and place like tonight, and Harry had been happy to lend it to
+her.
+
+"Who do \emph{you} think they'll choose?" Hermione countered, spelling
+her hair so that it would lift up and let the pearl-covered white
+tendrils snake through it. Zacharias looked disgruntled---according to
+tradition, Hermione should have braided the ribbons in by hand---but
+Hermione ignored him. It wasn't as though anyone could tell, and this
+was the much more practical and time-saving way.
+
+``I want to know what you think,'' Zacharias insisted, folding his arms.
+The mirror muttered about his reflection, and Hermione silently agreed:
+he didn't look nearly so handsome when he was pouting.
+
+``You're trying to ride on my knowledge, Zach,'' Hermione murmured,
+knowing how much he hated the nickname. ``That will never do.''
+
+His eyes sparked at her, as angry as Harry's had become in the last
+little while. ``Fine,'' he said. "It'll be Cupressus Apollonis, of
+course. He's a Light wizard who reaches out to Dark ones, and he's been
+the one most involved in the infrastructure of the new Ministry, and he
+even took care of the traitor Juniper and insured that Harry could catch
+him in the act of treachery. He's been running the Ministry almost
+single-handedly from the very day it started. Who \emph{else} would they
+choose?"
+
+``Hm,'' Hermione said.
+
+``Well?'' Zacharias came around in front to stare at her. His face
+softened as he did, and Hermione wondered, the way she had to, whether
+it was for her or for the vision she presented, part Muggleborn and part
+pureblood lady. He reached out and let a hand linger on the ribbons in
+her hair in a way that could have meant either. Hermione suppressed the
+urge to roll her eyes. The ribbons and the gown and the silver ornaments
+and the rest of it were trappings to her, encumbrances she donned
+because they were historical and pleasing to the eyes of the purebloods
+and let her achieve things she couldn't have otherwise. She refused to
+admire them for their own sake, when their whole purpose was to make her
+look like something she wasn't. ``What do you think, then?'' Zacharias
+whispered, and his voice had grown softer. ``Who will be Minister, in
+your opinion, my fine, fine lady?''
+
+\emph{Well, they're good for one more thing,} Hermione thought, as she
+met Zacharias's gaze. \emph{They're good for reducing my boyfriend to a
+babbling fool.}
+
+``I think Griselda Marchbanks could have it if she wanted it,'' she said
+calmly, and put out her arm to thread through Zacharias's. ``Half of
+them will try to offer it to Harry, of course. Millicent Bulstrode has
+the drive and determination to do it, though she won't try now that
+she's pregnant. And Laura Gloryflower---well, her name is almost
+constantly mentioned.'' She paused, wondering if Zacharias would mention
+the one candidate Hermione considered likeliest, the one person among
+Harry's allies who'd been getting the most notice in the \emph{Daily
+Prophet} lately and seemed well on the way to overcoming any trace of an
+evil reputation with sheer hard work.
+
+Zacharias was still stuck on her choices, it appeared. ``Marchbanks is
+too old,'' he said, as if Hermione should have known that. ``Harry will
+refuse. Gloryflower's reasonable. But Bulstrode---'' He made a noise
+like a cat being stepped on. "Hermione, Bulstrode's a \emph{Dark
+witch.}"
+
+``And Harry's undeclared,'' Hermione shot back, as she guided Zacharias
+down the steps. The older partner was supposed to lead when they entered
+the gathering, and since the gathering was in the vast central hall of
+Silver-Mirror, they didn't have far to walk. ``Why should the Dark
+wizards have to accept a Light candidate, but the Light wizards not
+accept a Dark one?''
+
+``Because they should know that a Light witch or wizard won't try to
+hurt them!'' Zacharias exclaimed. "We don't know anything like that
+about someone like---like \emph{Bulstrode.} Besides, Hermione, her
+father served Voldemort."
+
+``I don't think Dark witches and wizards have any reason to trust the
+Light more than we trust them, given what people like Dumbledore did
+with the best of intentions,'' Hermione pointed out. ``So that
+argument's out. And yes, Millicent's father served Voldemort, and the
+name will work against her. But she's her own person, and this is a time
+for heroes, Zacharias. Do something in this period of change, and
+everyone will remember your name much better than they would in a time
+of peace, when the British wizarding world pays more attention to
+private than public affairs.''
+
+Zacharias opened his mouth to retort, and then shut it again. Hermione
+paused when they came to the doors that would open into the hall.
+``Thinking strained your brain?'' she asked. ``I suppose I'll have to
+find a new boyfriend, then.''
+
+``Shut up,'' Zacharias murmured, in that absent way he had when he was
+thinking. "I could make my name, too, couldn't I, if someone like
+Millicent \emph{Bulstrode} could?"
+
+``You mean that you don't already have plans in that direction?''
+Hermione nudged the door open with her free hand. ``Slow, Zacharias,
+very slow.''
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Harry was aware of the drop in volume as he and Draco came through the
+doors, with Draco leading. Everyone turned to stare at them. Harry
+flushed---he had even less control over that now that all his emotions
+were out and playing in the open---but he put his chin up and walked
+towards the periphery of the room. He and Draco would circulate from
+there, greeting everyone who needed greeting, and some people who didn't
+but wanted to talk to them. He and Draco had had quite the argument
+about that, escalating to book-throwing. Draco didn't want to talk to
+``plebeians'' and ``commoners.'' Harry had reminded him that, thanks to
+the Grand Unified Theory, the Malfoys were not so separate from those
+commoners as they had once liked to believe. Draco had then said
+``Mudblood'' and everything was downhill from there.
+
+But he had not let that interfere with making sure that he and Harry
+were both properly garbed for the ceremony, with robes that announced
+them the representatives of their respective families, or that they were
+on time. If Draco was taking a little vicious pleasure in towing him
+along because he had to enter first, Harry thought, at least it wasn't
+visible from a distance.
+
+Besides, they had already agreed to put minor fights aside when they
+were on a political stage, for the sake of a united front.
+
+Laura Gloryflower was the first to come to meet them. Harry eyed her
+approvingly. She had cut her hair short so that it resembled a
+soldier's, and her gown was of the style that would let her reach both a
+knife and her wand in short order. She wanted to remind people that a
+war was going on outside these walls, still, and if not currently in
+progress, would certainly explode again on the first day of spring. Even
+better, a silver winged horse pranced along on the bright cloth above
+her heart. Sometimes people looking at them looked away from her, which
+Harry thought meant it was working.
+
+``Harry,'' she said. ``I wanted to let you know that I intend to make a
+run for Minister.''
+
+Harry nodded. He had no idea if she would win, in part because he had no
+idea who would stand against her.
+
+\emph{None of them can replace Scrimgeour.}
+
+He caught his breath around the pang of loss, and realized something
+abruptly, about what Laura had said and the way she was standing. He
+tilted his head towards Draco as he responded and added a slight
+emphasis to his voice. "\emph{We} will be most interested in seeing how
+you do, Madam Gloryflower."
+
+Laura twitched. Then she turned to face Draco, whom she had been looking
+subtly past. ``Of course,'' she said. ``I understand that you have
+passed through an important phase in your joining ritual, Mr. Malfoy,
+and therefore are much closer to being Harry's true partner.
+Congratulations.''
+
+Nothing about her words was openly insulting, Harry thought, watching
+her carefully, other than, perhaps, ``true partner.'' And she certainly
+couldn't have known about the Imbolc ritual just past and how hard it
+had been on them---perhaps. Draco had told him that this three-year
+ritual was not popular. But nevertheless, there was concealed anger
+there, in the way that Laura held her head and aimed her voice. She
+didn't like being so close to a Dark wizard.
+
+Draco, at least to Harry's eyes, hid any concealed disgust at being near
+a Light witch much better. He actually reached out and clasped Laura's
+hand, bringing it to his lips, while never removing his eyes from hers.
+Laura flinched and seemed to fight against drawing her hand back. Draco
+kissed it, and then said, ``The joining ritual is a convenient marking
+point, but I have found myself remarkably close to Harry from the day we
+first met.''
+
+That wasn't very subtle, Harry thought, coughing to conceal his
+amusement. But perhaps it didn't need to be, if Draco had thought that
+Laura was denying his importance in Harry's life.
+
+Laura slowly drew her hand back to her side; Harry saw her fingers
+twitching as if she wanted to wipe it off. ``Yes,'' she said. "See that
+you continue to take care of our \emph{vates} at least as well as you
+have done in the past, Mr. Malfoy." A stiff inclination of her head, and
+she moved away, her robes rustling.
+
+``Are you all right?'' Harry murmured to Draco.
+
+``It was an insult, not a stab wound,'' Draco replied, never taking his
+eyes from Laura's back.
+
+``Still. She had no right to do that.''
+
+Draco glanced at him, and smiled, sudden and unexpected as a beam of
+winter sunlight striking through the clouds. ``She didn't,'' he said,
+and this time Harry's hand was the one caught and kissed. ``But you had
+the right to notice, and I would have been hurt if you hadn't. Thank
+you.''
+
+It didn't completely smooth over their argument from before, but it was
+a gesture in that direction, Harry knew. He nodded to Draco, and felt
+his spine, which had been half-hunched like a cat's, relax. ``Come on,''
+he said, and they moved towards the next cluster of notables, who had
+Cupressus Apollonis in the middle of them. ``Do you think she'll succeed
+in the run for Minister?''
+
+Draco shook his head with some confidence. ``It'll be Apollonis,'' he
+said. He paused, then added, ``Although.''
+
+``Although?'' Harry prompted.
+
+"Have you noticed whom the \emph{Prophet} is paying the most attention
+to, in the last few weeks?" Draco asked, lowering his voice as they
+passed a pair of loudly arguing Light witches. ``I think it's because
+Skeeter enjoys debating her, more than anything, but they've also been
+printing more articles about the price of Wolfsbane, and that editorial
+sympathetic to werewolves.''
+
+Harry blinked once, then said, ``Hawthorn's done something wonderful
+with that werewolf cure, Draco, and she thinks she's almost ready to
+start trying it on volunteer werewolves who want to be rid of the curse.
+But she served Voldemort for too long to truly make her reputation
+back.''
+
+"\emph{You} would think that," said Draco tolerantly. ``There speaks the
+wizard raised by Light parents with the notion that honor is important,
+Harry. But it need not be true. This is the game. Reputation isn't
+everything, and family names rise and gain prestige and lose it; that's
+always been true. Hawthorn's playing. Whether she'll win? I don't know.
+It will depend on how soon the election is held, and how much momentum
+she can build up before then. But if she can't convince people to make
+her Minister this time, I think there's a good chance she can take the
+next election.''
+
+Harry blinked at nothing. He had paid so little attention to something
+so important happening right under his nose. Of course, one could argue
+that he'd had enough to do, learning to live with his emotions and
+adjusting his behavior around Draco, and Hawthorn hadn't tried to talk
+to him about it, but still---
+
+``I'm glad that you notice,'' he muttered.
+
+``One of us has to be the smart one.'' Draco breathed the words now,
+since they were a few inches from Cupressus. "And the politically aware
+one, since you still insist on \emph{trusting} people."
+
+Harry flicked him a glare. ``And how are your negotiations with the
+Americans going?'' he asked.
+
+Draco gave him a frustrated glance. Lucius had got into the negotiations
+somehow, and apparently there was a faction in the American Ministry who
+thought it a better idea to listen to the father-in-law of the
+Boy-Who-Lived than his partner, due at least in part to age factors.
+
+Harry raised an eyebrow, then turned to meet Cupressus. He expected
+another announcement about running for Minister, but instead, Cupressus
+was looking past him, towards the doors of Silver-Mirror's hall. Harry
+turned, wondering if the decorations were out of place. He had tried to
+decorate two walls of the vast and bare stone room with symbols
+appropriate to a Dark gathering in the middle of winter and two with
+symbols for a Light one, and the double doors had likewise been split
+between the two allegiances. If someone had noticed a mistake, though,
+it would be Cupressus.
+
+``We have trouble,'' Cupressus said, and Harry realized then that
+Cupressus was looking at the people coming through the doors, and not
+bothering to differentiate between magically-created snowflakes and
+magically-created shooting stars.
+
+Lazuli Yaxley had just arrived. That in itself was not surprising; Harry
+had expected her at this gathering, now that the Yaxleys were moving to
+enter politics again. But beside her walked Jacinth, eyes wide and
+shivers arching through her body---Jacinth without a glamour, so that
+everyone could clearly see her violently nonhuman features.
+
+And, by the way that the shadows boiled at the pair's feet, Jacinth's
+father had come along.
+
+"Oh, \emph{shit}," Harry murmured, and began to move discreetly but
+quickly in their direction. Draco went with him, and made sure the pace
+was slower than Harry would have liked. Harry restrained his irritation
+with the reminder that Draco was watching the larger picture, while he
+had a tendency to get caught up in the details. \emph{All a part of the
+change}.
+
+Sometimes, of course, he wished his life were not \emph{quite} so filled
+with excitement.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Hawthorn lifted his head, then reminded herself sharply that she wasn't
+a werewolf any more and so couldn't actually \emph{smell} danger. She
+could sense it, though, the tint to the air like winter. She shook her
+wand into her hand and murmured to the people who had clustered around
+her, including several part-owners of the \emph{Daily Prophet}, ``If
+you'll excuse me? It seems that Mr. Black has acquired a problem.''
+
+Reynard Rumpleworth, the one she'd been speaking with just then, nodded.
+``Of course, Mrs. Parkinson,'' he said, and let her pass. Hawthorn could
+feel his admiring eyes on her as she glided away, and frowned. She
+\emph{hated} walking away from politics. The conversations that might go
+on in her absence, the dances and the threats and the glimpses of
+emotions in eyes and lips, pulled at her like treacle, and she usually
+rejoined the game as soon as she could.
+
+When she came into the center of the room and saw the shadows boiling
+around Lazuli Yaxley's feet, she changed her mind about returning to the
+conversation any time soon.
+
+She was in the best position to help Harry with this, she reasoned,
+thoughts flying as swiftly as her feet. She had until recently
+\emph{been} a creature feared and hated by other wizards, though not
+nearly as feared and hated as Jacinth's father. And she had gained
+enough reputation to help smooth over the ripples from the stone that
+had just fallen into their calm little pond.
+
+There was the question, of course, if she wanted to sacrifice that
+reputation because Yaxley was impatient, and she had to admit she
+didn't. But there was the fact that taking a risk like this might win
+her much.
+
+Dragonsbane's voice echoed in her head, teasing her one Halloween when
+Hawthorn had described the hundreds of different ambitions she had, and
+how she would never live long enough to achieve them all. \emph{Once a
+Slytherin, always a conniver.}
+
+Hawthorn could not help that, though---either the ambition or the soft
+jolt that traveled through her when she thought of her husband. She was
+alive, and free of service to a madman, and as long as those two things
+were true, she would think and plan and dream.
+
+She halted in front of the Yaxley woman and bowed her head. The child
+gave her one wide, golden-eyed glance, and flicked out a forked tongue
+to taste the air. Hawthorn nodded to her. Of course, her scent had
+changed since the last time she had seen Jacinth, and the girl would
+notice.
+
+Then she faced Lazuli. Harry was already there, in front of her, but the
+darkness on his face said that whatever question he'd just asked and
+heard answered had not been \emph{well} answered. His magic sparked
+around his shoulders; Hawthorn could see wings if she squinted. Those
+were usually a sign of dangerous anger in the days since Harry had done
+what he called falling down the mountain.
+
+\emph{Yes, I am the best one to smooth this over.}
+
+``Greetings, Madam Yaxley,'' she said, and drew those unnerving blue
+eyes to her own. ``I presume that you are here to test the politeness
+that your daughter and mate receive in a public gathering?''
+
+"The \emph{vates} has said, and I believe him, that he intends to make a
+world where half-human wizards and witches are welcome," said Lazuli,
+folding her arms so that Hawthorn could see the chewed-off chunks of
+flesh along them. ``And so, too, are those magical creatures who choose
+to grace us with their presence.'' Her gaze was heavy, as if inviting
+Hawthorn to compare the cold stares and nervous sidling that went on
+around them now to the way people had looked at her when they'd known
+her for a werewolf.
+
+That was the problem, of course, Hawthorn thought clinically. She
+\emph{did} remember the reaction she'd received, and how much it
+bothered her. She still felt thankful each time a full moon rode the sky
+and she didn't transform. But she'd never had a true pack, only the torn
+remnants of the one that Fenrir Greyback's victims had formed, and so
+she'd never felt the impatient daring to walk into public, the way Loki
+had, and force Harry's hand. Lazuli had followed her impulses, and not
+thought about the way it might rebound on her---or Harry, to be more
+precise, since Harry would, of course, be bound to protect her and her
+daughter.
+
+The little girl, Jacinth, hissed something in Parseltongue to Harry.
+Harry responded instantly, his eyes becoming soft. Jacinth nodded, then
+reached up and tugged on her mother's sleeve. Lazuli bent at once,
+though she never took her eyes from Hawthorn's as she listened to the
+difficult English words forced around Jacinth's tongue and teeth.
+Hawthorn listened, but her preternatural hearing had gone, and she
+couldn't catch more than one word in three. It sounded as though Jacinth
+were urging her mother to leave, however.
+
+Lazuli straightened with a slight shake of her head. ``It seems that the
+rumors of welcome were greatly exaggerated,'' she said. "Would you care
+to make a comment on that, \emph{vates}?" She was looking straight at
+Harry.
+
+Hawthorn got there before Harry could. Whatever he said now would be
+used against him, misinterpreted. Yes, she might sacrifice the
+reputation she'd built up, but it would \emph{still} be better than
+Harry doing something to stain his own.
+
+``Harry has always insured that those magical creatures who promised not
+to hurt others in the exercise of their own free will were welcome,''
+she said. ``And he needed warning of their coming. Am I wrong, Madam
+Yaxley, in thinking that neither a peace agreement nor warning were
+given beforehand?''
+
+Lazuli's eyes clouded slightly. She would probably take this as an
+insult to her honor, Hawthorn knew, and that inference would strike her
+deep. ``I did not think them needed,'' Lazuli responded, ``if the world
+were truly as safe for my child and mate as it should be.''
+
+The shadows at her feet churned, and Hawthorn caught a glimpse of a
+rising chest and a pair of forelegs that ended in claws sharp enough to
+scoop out a person's insides. For a moment, just a moment, she was a
+child again, huddling beneath the blankets while her house elf nanny
+whispered horrid tales of the Viper Wars.
+
+The house elf was long freed, Hawthorn reminded herself, and she was
+long since an adult. She locked her eyes on Lazuli's face. ``Without
+them, we do not know that you came here in good faith,'' she said. ``You
+could, perhaps, set your mate on us, and have him feed.''
+
+And she \emph{had} to take the risk, because, if she did not die, this
+would make her name for numerous traits the Light wizards admired, such
+as courage and a sense of duty. She locked her eyes on the swirling
+shadows and took a step forward. ``How do I know,'' she asked, ``that
+those teeth will not tear my flesh?''
+
+She could feel Harry's tension from here. That didn't matter. He was
+keeping back, letting her handle this. She looked at Lazuli, not the
+shadows, and ignored even the sensation of them stretching towards her.
+She tested, instead, the Yaxley woman's nerve. The creatures that had
+once hunted wizards were beyond Hawthorn's comprehension. A Dark witch
+who had decided to take a risk was not.
+
+The moment pulled again like treacle, except that the drops that fell
+from this were made of anticipation. Hawthorn breathed in and out, eyes
+never leaving Lazuli's wide ones.
+
+And then Lazuli glanced aside, and the moment broke, and the game was
+over.
+
+Hawthorn had won.
+
+It was time to reconcile, of course, because humiliating the woman
+wasn't going to do any good. ``In one way, I am glad that you did seek
+to test our boundaries of acceptance,'' she said, making her voice warm
+and calm and friendly. ``After all, if you had not, we would not have
+known that this particular species of magical creature could stand in
+the same room as mortal wizards and witches and not try to destroy
+them.''
+
+The shadows stirred again, but Hawthorn was reasonably confident they
+would not strike. No one had ever accused the creatures behind the Viper
+Wars of being mindless. The creature had to realize that, even if it
+managed to kill Hawthorn and several others, there would be people
+trying to strike at its---his---mate and daughter. It might be good at
+killing others, but Hawthorn didn't know how good it would be at
+protecting Lazuli and Jacinth.
+
+``This is an excellent sign for the future,'' Hawthorn prattled on,
+saying what needed to be said, and building up her own reputation in the
+meantime. ``We know that we can share common space with your mate now,
+Madam Yaxley, as we have learned we can share it with centaurs and
+werewolves.'' She gave Lazuli a piercing smile, then turned to the
+people watching them breathlessly. ``I assume that we have gathered here
+to discuss the Ministry and the candidates for Minister?'' she asked,
+and received several hesitant nods. ``Then why aren't we doing it?''
+
+That won her laughter, and the crowd began to break up and move towards
+the table in the center of the room, where the truly official part of
+the gathering would be held.
+
+Glancing over her shoulder, Hawthorn saw Harry stepping in to talk to
+Lazuli and Jacinth, both. He gave the shadows on the floor a respectful
+glance, but did not seem afraid of them. Hawthorn relaxed, glad that the
+negotiations over the viper's continued presence in the room would fall
+to Harry and not her.
+
+A hand caught her arm, and Hawthorn barely stifled the instincts that
+told her to swing around and use her wand---or her teeth---to take it
+off at the wrist. Instead, she turned with a patient smile, and Reynard
+Rumpleworth beamed at her. ``That was more than amazing, Madam
+Parkinson,'' he said. Hawthorn silently noted the change in title; she
+had been simply ``Mrs. Parkinson'' before. ``I hope that you will accept
+my escort to the table?'' He offered her his arm.
+
+Hawthorn placed her hand on his arm in the proper position, and let
+herself be guided. The admiration from dozens of pairs of eyes washed
+over her like sunlight.
+
+She was not sure whether or not she would announce her candidacy for
+Minister yet. For one thing, she was not sure that she wanted to run the
+new Ministry. It would depend on what other decisions they made today.
+
+But the admiration was its own reward, a stepping stone towards many
+other high positions even if she did not choose the highest. It soothed
+an itch inside her that, for an ambitious Slytherin, could be scratched
+no other way.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Draco was not sure that Harry would be forceful enough. If he wasn't,
+Draco was prepared to offer the needed threats. Lazuli Yaxley had
+endangered their political reputations along with lives. She did not
+deserve anything but a thorough scolding.
+
+Luckily, that was what Harry gave her, and Draco had to admire the way
+he did it.
+
+``You made me no promises of good faith,'' Harry told her, utterly
+ignoring the shadows that danced at his feet. "You did not tell me that
+you planned to bring Jacinth unglamoured, and that put \emph{her} in
+danger, as well as the people around you. What would have happened if
+someone had cast a spell in his panic before I could intervene? She
+might well have \emph{died}."
+
+``I knew you would protect us,'' Lazuli murmured, but her voice was
+shaken. Draco knew why. The only thing that could truly crack that
+flawless façade, it seemed, was danger to her daughter.
+
+``You cannot play me against other people who depend on me.'' Harry
+folded his arms, and his voice had turned into stone. ``You cannot force
+me to choose between one faction and another, your safety over theirs,
+when you were the one who would have begun the war and given the
+provocation. I am disappointed in you, Lazuli.'' His voice shifted a
+bit. ``Now. Did you come to make a contribution to this discussion about
+the best way the Ministry should be run, or did you come solely to put
+me and Jacinth in untenable positions?''
+
+``I did not think of it that way,'' Lazuli said.
+
+``I know you did not.'' Draco \emph{did} approve of that; now that Harry
+was sure his authority was understood, he could soften his voice and
+talk to Lazuli as he would to a friend he'd forgiven. His mother had
+more than once done that with Lucius. Draco took a deep breath, trying
+to absorb the pride of that memory and forget the sadness, and listened
+to Harry, because what he said next would be important. ``But did you
+come here for more than that purpose?''
+
+``No, in truth,'' said Lazuli, and then seemed to recover. ``But I would
+like to know where the Ministry stands on the treatment of half-human
+wizards and witches as soon as possible.'' Her hand fell on Jacinth's
+shoulder. The little girl was rigid with tension, Draco saw, thought she
+relaxed a bit when her mother stroked her hair.
+
+``Hear it from my mouth,'' said Harry. ``They shall have the same rights
+as any other wizards and witches. If their changes are such as may cause
+harm to others, in the way that the werewolf transformation is, they
+will be required to make modifications to their behavior to protect
+others. The Ministry will help with those modifications if necessary, as
+we help with the Wolfsbane Potion.''
+
+``You do not know if the others will decide that way,'' Lazuli said,
+hooking her chin towards the gathering of politicians.
+
+"I will \emph{make} them do that."
+
+Draco bit his lip to smother a victorious grin. Yes, \emph{finally}.
+There was power in the way Harry stood, and in the way he lifted his
+head so that he was glaring straight back at Lazuli, daring her to
+challenge or doubt his word. Harry could ask for what he wanted, and he
+was going to enforce his will. He was doing it in the name of others
+rather than for himself, but still. Draco considered this a good start
+for the showing of a more Slytherin side of Harry's politics.
+
+Lazuli studied him in silence, then abruptly nodded and turned for the
+doors. The shadows accompanied her, though Jacinth lingered long enough
+to hiss something at Harry. Harry hissed back, a lengthy, gentle
+exhalation, and followed Draco towards the table when Jacinth nodded and
+turned away.
+
+``What did you say to her?'' Draco asked.
+
+``She asked if I was angry at her for what her mother had done,'' Harry
+said. ``I said I wasn't, but I did warn her that, though things are
+changing, she should learn how to do the glamour on her own if something
+like this happens again.''
+
+Draco nodded. ``I didn't think that Lazuli Yaxley would take such a
+foolish risk with her daughter,'' he murmured.
+
+``She thought there was little to no risk, with her---mate---'' Draco
+could tell Harry didn't like the word, but, just as with everyone else,
+he didn't seem to think there was a better way to refer to the
+shadow-creature "---here, and with me. And she's right that I wouldn't
+have let anyone \emph{hurt} Jacinth deliberately, or get away with
+hurting her. But there was a chance, however small." Harry smiled
+slightly. ``She was more in the mood to listen to someone else after
+Hawthorn talked sense into her, of course. Hawthorn did wonderfully
+well. Remind me to thank her later.''
+
+``Is Hawthorn someone you want as Minister?'' Draco murmured, his mind
+already working rapidly.
+
+``Does she plan to run?'' Harry countered.
+
+``Support her, and she could,'' Draco pointed out. He was growing more
+and more pleased with the idea the more he examined it. Yes, Hawthorn
+had begun to build herself a reputation, and the fascination with the
+first woman to cure herself of lycanthropy would win her more of one.
+But there was the name and the record of service to Voldemort, however
+unwilling. Harry's support would negate that, and Draco was confident
+Hawthorn was loyal to Harry. Having someone like that in the position of
+Minister of Magic was the next best thing to Harry being Minister
+himself, which Draco knew he wouldn't consider.
+
+For a moment, he saw the weary woman with the tight mouth and the drawn
+wand teaching him about blood curses. Then he shook his head, and
+reminded himself what reality they stood in. The Imbolc ritual was past,
+and none of the five that remained---Walpurgis, Lammas, Halloween,
+Imbolc, and the last Walpurgis---were nearly as unpleasant.
+
+``I'll ask her what she wants, first.''
+
+Draco suppressed the urge to shake Harry. Him and his support of free
+will! Hawthorn would make the best choice for Harry's own political
+ends, and that was what he should be thinking of, instead of all this
+endless free will for wizarding Britain. Wizarding Britain was made up
+of stupid people who didn't know what they wanted, or at least didn't
+know until someone told them. Draco would rather that Harry lead from
+the front than hang back.
+
+But he reminded himself that Harry wasn't perfect and never would be,
+and just sighed. ``If she says yes?''
+
+``I'll consider it.'' Harry's voice was troubled. He had meant to keep
+his voice out of the contest at all costs, Draco knew, and not even say
+whom he supported or was going to vote for---assuming they emerged from
+this night with a workable compromise at all.
+
+But at least he was considering it. Draco snorted. \emph{I have that
+much influence with him. I'll just have to work to show him that I'm
+right, and that it really is the best solution.}
+
+They reached the table, and took the empty seats between Cupressus
+Apollonis and Miriam Smith. Draco nodded to Hawthorn, who sat a few
+chairs down, and she nodded back. Murmurs rang back and forth at once,
+of course. People would see the nods, Draco knew, and draw all the right
+conclusions---and some wrong ones. They might begin to think the stunt
+with Lazuli was planned, but even if they did, there was no denying
+Hawthorn's courage in facing the shadow-beast. Legend said those
+creatures couldn't be reasoned with, and any plan involving one of them
+would still have carried an element of risk.
+
+Draco faced Apollonis as he began to speak. He had to admit he didn't
+like the old Light wizard much. Draco always began his political
+maneuverings with observation; that was part of what both Lucius and
+Narcissa had taught him, and it usually afforded him valuable insights.
+His own adaptation of the process was to look for weaknesses. And
+Apollonis had far too few. He didn't seem to have dirty secrets, because
+he was as brutally honest as possible; even his feud with his daughter
+was public knowledge. He was too upright and too inflexible to be
+bribed. He didn't allow people close to him who could be turned. In
+fact, Draco thought that he had only house elves working in his
+household, not human servants.
+
+\emph{House elves. Could that be a sticking point? If he won't give them
+up, then he and Harry will have words to exchange with each other sooner
+rather than later.}
+
+For now, Draco hushed his own speculations to pay attention to
+Apollonis's words.
+
+``We must, of course,'' the pompous bastard was saying, ``decide whether
+we shall model the new Ministry on the old, or design a new system from
+the ground up. The latter is the harder choice, but it would prevent
+corruption from blossoming as it did under the old regime.''
+
+\emph{No, it won't, you windbag,} Draco thought. \emph{I'm sure the
+wizards who founded the Ministry thought the same, but it crept in
+anyway, and once people got used to the new requirements, it would
+happen here.}
+
+``We need some general decisions made now, though we can save finer
+details for later,'' said Harry firmly, and all eyes went at once to
+him. ``First is to determine the candidates for Minister of Magic.
+Second is to pledge the Ministry's support for magical creatures,
+half-human wizards, Muggleborns, and others who historically had a hard
+time with the old Ministry. Third is to make sure that a certain number
+of jobs for members of that group are secured at the new Ministry.''
+
+"Such decisions require some assumptions on the finer details,
+\emph{vates}," Laura Gloryflower pointed out from the other end of the
+table. Draco regarded her with disdain. She had shown such subtle
+condescension towards him that he would have had a hard time pointing it
+out as prejudice, but it was there nonetheless. Every movement and
+avoidance of eye contact screamed that she didn't think a Malfoy had a
+right to sit in their high councils, or that Draco himself didn't have a
+right to his place at Harry's side.
+
+Of course, one thing was different about this from all the prejudiced
+Light wizards and witches Draco had dealt with before: this time, Harry
+had noticed. He fought to keep himself from grinning just then. No one
+would understand.
+
+``Not all of them,'' Harry said calmly. ``I assume you are referring to
+such details as the process of choice for Minister, Madam Gloryflower?''
+He waited until she nodded, then said, ``But we have already named the
+building the Ministry and spoken of the future Minister of Magic.
+Announcing the candidacy is not the same thing as deciding that we will
+or will not use the voting owls your family designed centuries ago. Some
+decisions are made for us. Others we can wait on.''
+
+Draco was smug to see that most of the Light wizards---except Cupressus
+Apollonis---had to pause to consider what he meant by that---while the
+Dark wizards and witches gathered around the table understood at once.
+
+``You're envisioning a Ministry consistent in the details with the old
+one, then, Mr. Black?'' Elizabeth Nonpareil asked, leaning forward.
+
+Draco hid the roll of his eyes, because he knew some people were
+watching him. \emph{Well, most of them understood at once.}
+
+``Of course not, Mrs. Nonpareil,'' said Harry, and his voice had gone
+dry. ``Their treatment of magical creatures and Muggleborns was far more
+than a detail.''
+
+``But you said---''
+
+``I think we can use the old names and not imply the old things,'' said
+Harry, giving her the kind of personal, flattering smile that Draco knew
+was best to deal with attention-hounds like her, but which made him feel
+a bit jealous nonetheless. ``That was all I was suggesting, Mrs.
+Nonpareil.''
+
+Harry smelled of roses, Draco noted. The magic around him made the Dark
+witch a bit giddy, and she leaned back in her chair with a nod and a
+smile, letting the larger sense of Harry's words fly completely over her
+head.
+
+Belinda Morningmaid had a snotty voice, and a drawl that sounded to
+Draco like a poor imitation of his father's. ``And the inclusion of
+magical creatures in the Ministry is non-negotiable, Mr. Black?''
+
+``Non-negotiable,'' said Harry, and for a moment, his shoulders sparked.
+
+``They may plan sabotage,'' Morningmaid pressed. ``We know that
+Veritaserum doesn't work on most of them. What if they enter the
+Ministry and suborn its people and principles to their own ends, instead
+of working for the good of humans and magical creatures alike?''
+
+Harry turned, quite unexpectedly, to Draco. ``Draco,'' he said.
+
+Draco sat up and nodded to show he was listening, while his heart sped.
+He thought it was a combination of the surprise and the thrill that
+Harry was actually talking to him, asking his opinion, in a political
+discussion with other people, and told himself to calm down if so. Of
+\emph{course} Harry would ask his opinion. They were partners, and Draco
+was often better-informed than Harry himself.
+
+``That spell you invented that lets others enter into Pensieves and
+experience the mindset of the memories, as well as the memories
+themselves,'' Harry said casually. ``Would it work on a magical
+creature?''
+
+Draco allowed himself one blink, and then no more. The answer flowed out
+of him as naturally as breathing, because it had to. ``No reason it
+should not.''
+
+Harry smiled, and faced Morningmaid again, while his hand crept under
+the table to press Draco's. ``There you have the answer, Mrs.
+Morningmaid. If Veritaserum will not work, we can use the spell Draco
+invented. It would let anyone who had questions see the purity---or
+not---of the magical creature's intentions for himself.'' He paused
+thoughtfully. "Actually, I rather like the implications of your
+suggestion. Yes, indeed, we should not let corruption enter the
+Ministry. I think we'll require a test of \emph{everyone} who applies
+for a job here, including both Pensieve memories and Veritaserum where
+applicable."
+
+Morningmaid made a choking sound. Draco ignored her. He could feel other
+people giving him admiring sidelong glances. Inventing a spell was no
+easy affair. Draco decided he would arrange to leak the information that
+he'd actually developed that spell when he was fifteen. That ought to
+gain him even more respect.
+
+``The Ministry has a procedure in place for hiring both magical
+creatures and humans, then,'' Harry went on, sounding inordinately
+pleased with himself. ``So, now. The candidates for the office of
+Minister. Who will they be?''
+
+Apollonis, of course, rose to his feet. Draco sat back and looked around
+the table, barely containing a snort when Gloryflower stood. There had
+to be Dark candidates---and ones \emph{other} than Elizabeth Nonpareil,
+he thought, who'd stood up just then. She could cause a problem with her
+Galleons, but there was no way she would win a contest like this. Nor
+did she deserve to.
+
+Then Hawthorn stood.
+
+Draco smiled. He didn't care who saw. Perhaps Harry would have to be
+seen as remaining neutral in this election, but there was no rule that
+said his partner had to be.
+
+And then a movement further down the table caught his eye, and he leaned
+that way just as Lucius flicked a piece of nonexistent dust off his
+robes and nodded to the incredulous stares.
+
+``I find myself qualified,'' he said, answering the silent questions,
+``and surely, if one candidate feels herself equal to the pressure of a
+tainted name, a Malfoy may feel the same.''
+
+Draco restrained a glare. But he did present a smooth, neutral mask to
+the people who looked to him for his reaction. Let no one think the son
+supported the father just because they had the same name.
+
+\emph{In fact,} he thought, locking his gaze on his father, \emph{quite
+the opposite. Let the games begin, then, Lucius, since you don't have
+the sense to stay out of them.}
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Harry opened the door of the Black library, and paused with a lift of
+his eyebrow. He'd expected to be alone when he came here to do his
+research on summoning spells, save perhaps for Thomas, but Connor was
+there, half-asleep over a large book.
+
+``Connor?'' he asked.
+
+His brother jumped and turned to face him. His face fell when he saw who
+it was. ``Harry,'' he moaned. "The gathering was a \emph{disaster.}"
+
+Harry felt a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. He tried not to
+let it out. ``Really?''
+
+"Both Apollonis and Smith asked me all these \emph{questions} I couldn't
+answer, and talked about what I had to know to be a proper Light heir
+until my ear wanted to fall off, and Smith talked about her cousin's
+daughter and how advantageous a joining of the Potter and Smith lines
+could be." Connor made a disgusted sound. ``I couldn't even tell her
+that Parvati and I are dating. I tried, but she just went on talking as
+if I made no sense. I think she thought I forfeited her respect because
+I didn't know the rituals she thought I did.'' He sat up straighter and
+pouted at Harry. ``All of which could have been avoided if you let me
+have the Switching Potion.''
+
+Harry's amusement vanished so fast that it surprised even him, and he
+let wings snap into being above his shoulders. They weren't quite the
+spiked monstrosities they'd been the night he flew off the Astronomy
+Tower, but Connor blinked and fell silent anyway.
+
+``I'm not going to be your scapegoat or your source,'' Harry growled at
+him. The lingering memories of the Imbolc ritual made this a
+particularly sore point with him. He \emph{was} worth more than what he
+could be to his brother. He had to be. Most of the time, Connor
+remembered that, but not always. ``You should have bloody learned the
+rituals on your own, Connor. You've had years, and I know you aren't
+stupid. And you've even had some weeks in between the last time you met
+Cupressus and Miriam.''
+
+Connor flushed. ``Not all of us are as smart as you are, Harry.''
+
+``But you could have tried, and you didn't want to.'' Harry shook his
+head at him. He knew Connor was probably half-asleep, and that accounted
+for his unusual childishness, but, just once, the reason wasn't enough
+to become an excuse. "You \emph{should} try, Connor. Maybe Apollonis and
+Smith aren't right about everything you need to know---you might not
+move in their circles, after all---but you'll need to know more than you
+do now, and the war won't last forever. What will you do after it?"
+
+Connor glared at him. ``I don't know yet. Maybe play Quidditch. I don't
+have to decide everything just yet. Not everyone jumps onto the path of
+their life at thirteen, Harry.''
+
+``No, but you need to think about it,'' Harry replied insistently.
+
+Connor stuck out his tongue. Knowing the conversation would go nowhere
+up from there, Harry rolled his eyes and turned to depart.
+
+``It's not always an unmixed blessing, this change of yours to let the
+emotions out,'' Connor muttered at his back.
+
+Harry bared his teeth, but managed to restrain himself to a clipped,
+``Nothing is,'' and a slam of the library door hard enough to hurt his
+wrist.
+
+He stood where he was for a moment, trembling, then started up the
+stairs to Draco. So he and his brother were going to have arguments like
+this. It was normal, natural, inevitable. If they'd been normal
+siblings, they would probably have had far more epic battles by this
+point in their lives.
+
+But it sent a worm of hurt into Harry's gut anyway.
+
+\emph{Not enough to make go back and apologize, though, because I did
+nothing wrong. I} didn't.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 87*: Hogwarts}\label{chapter-87-hogwarts}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Seventy: Hogwarts}
+
+Harry had dreamed of the sea.
+
+He was certain it was the North Sea off the beach in Northumberland,
+though he did not know why he thought that when he woke up. After all,
+he had seen the ocean in darkness, gray waves heaving under rain. He had
+held up a hand, and the waves rose and danced. He lowered it, and they
+retreated as if it were ebb tide, hissing and shushing so gently across
+the sand that Harry had to concentrate to make the sounds out.
+
+When he looked up, glassy black walls surrounded him and the expanse of
+water. He knew that just beyond the glass, grief waited for him. Patient
+as a revenant tracking its prey, it hummed to itself. It would not break
+the walls to get at him, Harry knew. Sooner or later, his resolve to
+live in the world would drive him forth from this place, and then it
+could pounce and rend.
+
+He wrapped his arms around himself and shivered, and then \emph{woke},
+shivering. He reached up to touch his face, and paused. Wetness lay all
+around his mouth, as though he had stood in front of the sea and come
+away stained with the foam. He licked his lips and tasted salt.
+
+``Harry?''
+
+His movement, light as it had been, had awakened Draco. Harry reached up
+and gently stroked Draco's hair with one hand, while he used the other
+to feel at his eyes. The wetness could have come from tears, after all,
+making their way down and clustering around his lips.
+
+Nothing there, though. Harry shivered again.
+
+``I'm sorry,'' he murmured, when Draco spoke his name a second time. "I
+had a bad dream, and now that I'm awake, it feels as though the dream
+was actually \emph{real.}" He uttered a laugh that went too high, so he
+cut it off, and touched his lips again. ``Perhaps it was simply my magic
+imitating what it thought should be there.''
+
+``What was the dream about?'' Draco pushed himself up on one elbow in
+their blanket-nest and yawned. His hair hung so wildly over his face
+that Harry found it hard to make out his eyes.
+
+Harry hesitated, then shook his head. He \emph{wanted} to share it, and
+besides, the idea that Draco would make fun of him was silly.
+
+``Not a Voldemort dream,'' he said. ``I was standing by the sea, and I
+seemed to control it. There was a storm, which made it impossible for me
+to see where I was, but I think---the beach in the north, the one where
+Voldemort tried to command the sirens to attack that autumn. The one
+where the unicorns swam with me?'' he clarified, when he saw Draco's
+brow wrinkle as he struggled to recall that memory.
+
+Draco nodded at once, but his eyes were concerned. ``And then what
+happened?''
+
+``I had the feeling that something immense and sorrowful had happened,
+but I wouldn't know about it until I chose to turn away from the
+ocean,'' Harry breathed. He brushed a hand across his face again and
+winced. No, the salt was still there, and what felt like an actual flake
+of brine clung to his cheek. ``And then I woke up with foam on my lips,
+as though the sea were real.''
+
+``Well, I'm no expert at dreams,'' Draco said, and then crowded close,
+urging Harry onto his back. "It doesn't \emph{sound} like something
+Voldemort would send to you, but you can't be sure. Talk to Snape in the
+morning, and see what he says about it. He's spent enough time over the
+past few days brooding. I'm sure he needs a challenge." He ducked his
+head and rubbed his cheek against Harry's. "There \emph{is} something
+I'm an expert in, though, and I want to do it now." His hand slid
+between Harry's legs.
+
+Harry didn't bother asking if he were sure. He needed this too much. He
+closed his eyes, and let Draco kiss him, and let the taste of that
+replace the salt, just as Draco's husky murmurs in his ears replaced the
+sound of the waves rising and falling.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+``There is a purpose to choosing this meeting site, I assume?'' Jing-Xi
+let none of her own surprise show. It would not be productive. She stood
+calmly in front of the window that conducted the vision of her to the
+other Lord and Ladies, and let her memories of the British wizarding
+school happen in a part of her mind that would not require undue
+reflection on her face.
+
+``Of course there is,'' said Coatlicue, the serpents of her skirt
+climbing around her, draping their necks about hers and swaying back and
+forth with a rapidity that reminded Jing-Xi of plains grass swaying in
+the wind. The snake reflected her friend's moods, Jing-Xi knew, and the
+Light Lady of Mexico was nervous. ``It will remind us all of the power
+of Lord Riddle's evil, as well as the lengths he is willing to go to to
+kill Lord Black. And it will remind us of Kanerva's death, and that more
+than one Lord-slayer is currently walking the world.''
+
+Jing-Xi simply raised an eyebrow, and turned to look at the others the
+windows gave her access to. Pamela Seaborn gave her a look that said she
+didn't approve of choosing Hogwarts as the site of their meeting with
+Harry, either. Alexandre's expression was distant, as always, listening
+to music that Jing-Xi couldn't hear. She refused to meet Elena's eyes,
+looking at the shape of her nose instead. The Dark Lady of Peru was
+missing something essential to make her human, and always had been.
+
+``The meeting site is chosen,'' Elena said, voice falling oddly silent,
+as though it should echo and would not. ``And the representatives are
+chosen. These two Light Ladies, as representatives of one side of the
+allegiance. Alexandre and I, as representatives of the Dark. And
+yourself, Jing-Xi. You will see your protégé again. You will simply not
+be allowed to do it alone.''
+
+Jing-Xi sighed. She should at least warn them of what Harry's reaction
+might be when he heard they wanted to meet at a place of Voldemort's
+victory, and the place where so many innocents had died. ``He will not
+like this. He might feel that we have come there not to make peace or
+offer acceptable terms, but simply to spite him.''
+
+``He would be wrong.'' Elena folded her arms. Jing-Xi knew those dark
+eyes had never blinked, though she did not look up to confront them.
+``Unless you are saying that you agree with him, Jing-Xi?''
+
+It was a difficult dance, this one between the Pact and an emergent
+power they did not want to accept as one of their own. But Jing-Xi had
+done it before, when she urged the others to accept Kanerva on her terms
+rather than trying to restrict her with too many laws she would simply
+be unable to understand. She had thought the young Dark Lady well worth
+it, and she thought the same thing about Harry. She was one of the most
+powerful witches in the world, too, she reminded herself. Just because
+she usually preferred diplomacy and gentleness, as many Light-sworn did,
+did not mean she was lesser than they were.
+
+In particular, she was stronger than Elena, and that could matter much,
+in a private disagreement.
+
+``I am saying this as someone who helped to rescue the children of
+Hogwarts,'' said Jing-Xi softly, ``who felt a friend die there, who
+spent much time there at the Pact's behest while I tried to help Harry,
+and as someone who was summoned away before I could find out if they
+needed me in the wake of the school's fall. I think this move
+undiplomatic, Elena, and designed more to put Harry in a place that he
+does not seem to need than to make the Pact any more secure. Harry has
+faced enemies all his life who thought he should take a place of respect
+far below what his power and accomplishments demand. Do you think he
+will take this well? Tell me.''
+
+``Ah, the honesty of the Light.''
+
+What would have been sarcasm from Alexandre simply fell flat from Elena.
+Jing-Xi glanced aside. She knew the meeting would happen anyway---the
+Pact had already agreed on it, and already agreed on what they would
+have to tell Harry---but she couldn't help hoping that the rumors
+filtering out of Britain with the refugees were true, that Harry had
+changed enough to confound the most powerful wizards and witches in the
+world.
+
+\emph{He could not battle them, certainly. But they will arrive thinking
+he will submit, and I hope he will not.}
+
+Should she voice such thoughts aloud, of course, someone would accuse
+her of desiring war. But there was a thick line between war and hoping
+to see her colleagues learn respect of a boy they disliked mostly
+because of things he had done to other people, and never directly to
+them.
+
+\emph{He is in the world. They must live with it, as they lived with
+Kanerva's emergence and Monika's. Fussing about it is worrying about the
+grass crushed by the ki-lin's hooves.}
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Snape slowly turned Harry's head from side to side, examining his
+temples and massaging them gently. He had looked into his son's mind
+with Legilimency, and seen the pools all clustered faithfully around the
+scar, so that Voldemort could not possibly influence his mind. Now he
+looked for some sign that Harry had taken a curse which induced
+grief-dreams. Snape would not put it past the Potter brat to use a spell
+like that, since he was sulking about being ignored by Harry. And he
+studied so little that he might think a spell like that a harmless bit
+of fun.
+
+There was no telltale blue circle, though, no matter how Snape probed,
+and Harry at last began to wriggle beneath his hands. Snape sat back and
+looked directly into Harry's eyes. ``I fear this may be a dream of the
+future, Harry,'' he said calmly, ``and nothing more or less important.''
+
+Harry frowned. ``I thought I didn't have prophetic dreams,'' he said,
+``only dreams that leaked through my scar connection with Voldemort.''
+
+Snape shrugged. ``I do not know that we ever had the opportunity to
+measure such a thing,'' he said. ``Perhaps you have a gift for prophetic
+dreaming that the scar connection inspired, or covered before now. Or
+perhaps some of the dreams you saw as originating with Voldemort came
+from yourself.'' That made sense, the more he thought about it. While
+Voldemort would have wanted to send visions to torment Harry, some of
+the information Harry had picked up from his dreams---such as the mere
+fact of Voldemort's existence in the back of Quirrell's head---was not a
+forewarning Voldemort would have wanted his enemies to get his hands on.
+Snape usually sneered at Divination, but there were real Seers in the
+world. There might be dreamers. He suspected years of experimentation
+would be necessary before they could tell for sure.
+
+``And I dream about Voldemort because he's the most important obstacle
+in my life,'' Harry said slowly.
+
+Snape nodded. ``Visions are usually less reliable than spoken
+prophecy,'' he cautioned, just so Harry wouldn't think he had the gift
+to predict his enemy's movements now. Yes, it was unlikely, but Harry
+had taken similarly unlikely risks in the name of the war. ``This vision
+may not mean the sea, but something like it, or an important place in
+your life, or a foretaste of grief. Water is sometimes associated with
+such.''
+
+``Who took Divination here?'' Harry smiled. "Thank you, Father. At least
+I know it's not from \emph{him}." He paused a moment, then added, ``And
+what about you?''
+
+Snape frowned and lightly touched the Dark Mark on his arm. ``It has not
+hurt since the school came down.''
+
+``I meant,'' said Harry, leaning forward slightly from the chair he sat
+in, ``what are you dreaming?''
+
+Snape leaned back in his own chair, and debated whether he should
+answer. It was very \emph{easy} to make vows to change one's life; he
+had done it many, many times. And then the vows fell to the ground and
+shattered, or otherwise went unanswered. Only the vows of his Death
+Eater initiation, the turning to Dumbledore, and the decision to help
+Harry had become cornerstones of his life. It was easy, therefore, to
+say or to think that he would try to live after Regulus's death and stop
+blaming himself, but far from easy to do. Why not let it sink into
+darkness? It was not as though anyone would ever know it but himself. He
+could bear it. The other important person involved in it was dead.
+
+``I want to know,'' Harry insisted.
+
+Snape's eyes narrowed. There was that unusual tone in his son's voice
+again which came from letting the Occlumency pools go. Harry not only
+wanted to know because he was genuinely interested, but because he
+thought he had some right to intrude on Snape's private emotions.
+
+Snape could envision a life where Harry would bully and push and shove
+him into keeping his vow to live better after Regulus's death and not
+take so much for granted. The vision was not an attractive one. Snape
+did not need a minder. He was the father, not the son. He therefore
+narrowed his eyes, and waited for Harry to recognize that this was an
+exercise of his free will and he should back off.
+
+Harry folded his arms. ``You can't pretend that this doesn't matter to
+you,'' he said flatly. ``They're bad dreams, aren't they.''
+
+"They are \emph{stupid} dreams," Snape corrected, stung. \emph{As if I
+were a child, to be undone by a nightmare.} ``Dreams of---of what would
+have happened if Regulus had not died in the garden.'' There. That much,
+he could admit to his son. He would not admit the dreams that had smiles
+in them. Harry could interfere all he liked. Such details would remain
+behind Snape's teeth.
+
+Harry's posture altered, and now he looked like the \emph{vates} he had
+been for so long. ``Is there anything I can do to help?''
+
+\emph{Yes. Do not ask me about my dreams again.}
+
+But that was an outright violation of his vow, not just an omission in
+keeping it. Snape clenched his teeth. He hated being trapped in corners
+like this, and that he knew Harry wanted to help him, rather than help
+to use him, like Dumbledore, or keep him for a tool, like Voldemort,
+just made this worse.
+
+``Do not often ask me about them,'' Snape said at last, and felt his
+cheeks flush again at Harry's look of understanding. \emph{I am not
+undone by them. What I say in my sleep does not count.} ``When I---wish
+to discuss them, or when I have great difficulty, I will speak with you.
+Otherwise, do me the courtesy of not probing.''
+
+Harry grinned, and leaned forward to hug him. ``That was all I wanted,
+really,'' he muttered into Snape's shoulder, while Snape just sat there
+stiffly, shocked beyond measure. ``A promise that you'd speak if you
+needed to. You tend to keep your problems to yourself far too often, you
+know.''
+
+``So speaks an expert.''
+
+Harry winced a bit, but managed to chuckle as he pulled away. ``Like
+father, like son?'' he suggested lightly.
+
+Snape restrained himself from shaking his head, because he knew Harry
+would misinterpret the gesture. It was not that he minded Harry likening
+Snape and himself; far better that than Harry suddenly seeing an
+unexpected likeness to James in himself. But he had suddenly tumbled
+into a world where Harry wasn't fighting this aspect of family between
+himself and Snape, and it was disconcerting.
+
+``Yes, indeed,'' Snape said coolly, and then looked hard at Harry.
+"Though \emph{my} son would also, ideally, spend a bit more time in
+brewing potions that did not work solely to benefit his brother."
+
+Harry flushed. ``It was just the once,'' he said, looking at the wall.
+``I did it to help Connor, but he's proven that he doesn't deserve a
+second dose, when he just assumed that I would do it for him for the
+gathering yesterday, and didn't try to learn the Light pureblood rituals
+on his own.''
+
+Snape snorted, glad to be back in the role he understood, as the one who
+could chastise and guide Harry when he wouldn't accept the same from
+anyone else. ``See that you do not forget your hand,'' he said.
+``Brewing skill will serve you every bit as well as politics when the
+world comes back together.''
+
+``Yes, Father,'' said Harry, with a roll of his eyes that made Snape
+happy for some inexplicable reason. ``In the meantime, I'm going to
+study summoning spells. If I'm ever to have any hope of bringing Evan
+Rosier to me, that is the way, since I wouldn't write to him.'' Harry
+snorted. ``As if his letters are any guarantee of good will in any
+case.''
+
+Snape narrowed his eyes. ``If I find that you have gone to meet him on
+your own, I will---''
+
+Harry held up a hand. ``You won't have to do anything. I don't plan on
+ever facing an enemy alone again. At least Draco will be with me, and
+you, too, if I can manage it.''
+
+``You know that someone else will have to die to destroy the Hufflepuff
+cup,'' Snape reminded him, since it seemed Harry had forgotten that.
+``Have you considered who will do it?''
+
+Harry's eyes were clear and bleak as a stretch of tundra. ``Whoever is
+willing to die when we have the cup,'' he said quietly. ``At this point,
+I can't predict who that will be. And I know better than to think I can
+do it,'' he added, then slipped out of the room before Snape could
+question him further.
+
+Snape leaned back against the wall and scowled. He did not like to think
+of his son summoning Evan Rosier in any way, but it was as inevitable as
+someone needing to die to destroy the Cup. They could not break the
+Unassailable Curse if they did not have the Horcrux.
+
+At least he had Harry's reassurance that he would not go hunting Rosier
+alone.
+
+Snape wondered what was more surprising: the fact that Harry had given
+him that reassurance unprompted, or the fact that he trusted Harry to
+keep \emph{this} promise, when he would have been planning to keep a
+silent watch on him before.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Harry paused when an owl fluttered through the windows. He'd been on his
+way to the library to study summoning spells, but the universe seemed in
+a conspiracy to ever keep him from finding books, he thought. There was
+Connor last night, and now this envelope, with a heavy official seal
+that Harry didn't recognize: the sun within the arms of the crescent
+moon, with the world beneath it.
+
+Of course, he could guess, and when he tore open the envelope and read
+the bland words inside, his guess had been correct.
+
+\emph{February 19th, 1998}
+
+\emph{Dear Mr. Black:}
+
+\emph{Though you may not realize it, there are still concerns among us
+about what you intend to do after the war with Lord Riddle and how much
+you will expose the magical world of Britain to Muggles. Because these
+are matters that properly affect the international community and not the
+British Isles alone, we wish to meet with you and discuss this. The
+meeting will happen on the twenty-first of February, at noon, near the
+ruins of Hogwarts school. The Pact will send your friend Jing-Xi, the
+Light Lady of China, as well as two more representatives of each
+allegiance, to insure that every side of the matter has a voice. They
+are:}
+
+\emph{Dark Lord Alexandre}
+
+\emph{Dark Lady Elena}
+
+\emph{Light Lady Pamela Seaborn}
+
+\emph{Light Lady Coatlicue}
+
+\emph{If you have objections to this, please let us know at once. The
+meeting date is, after all, very close and cannot be changed, but we may
+be able to change the composition of those meeting you, as long as there
+are two representatives from Light and two representatives from Dark
+left.}
+
+\emph{Yours,}
+
+\emph{The wizards and witches of the Pact.}
+
+Harry hissed. He was sure the choice of meeting site had been
+deliberate, and probably made by someone who didn't like him. His hand
+clenched on the letter, and he thought about tearing it. But Draco and
+Snape would want to know what had set him off, and Harry preferred to
+show them the exact words than a memory.
+
+Besides, he thought, as his mind turned and raced across the letter
+again, he had better uses for his anger. He would go to the meeting, he
+decided. It was better than starting a conflict with the Pact. He had
+enough enemies, and between rebuilding the Ministry and fighting
+Voldemort and making arrangements for defending every important place he
+could think of before the vernal equinox, he did not need war on another
+front.
+
+But their choosing Hogwarts, as well as what Jing-Xi had taught him of
+etiquette between Lords and Ladies, gave him the opportunity to change
+things, to control the meeting in ways that they certainly could not
+have anticipated.
+
+Harry suspected he was giving an evil grin. He didn't care. He would
+discuss his plans with Draco, Snape, Hawthorn, and others who might like
+to come with him and witness such a historic moment. Harry didn't
+\emph{have} to let the Pact make this into a scolding for him if he
+didn't want to. He would make it his, instead, and the determination to
+do just that was scraping through him like an adamantine claw.
+
+He turned away from the library, and made his way towards their bedroom.
+Summoning spells would and could wait. But the meeting was only two days
+away now, and he wanted his plans to be \emph{perfect.}
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+``Are you all right, Connor?'' Connor could hear Michael's stuttering
+steps behind him, as if he were shifting back and forth in the doorway
+of the library, but didn't know if he should come any closer. ``Do you
+remember that you were supposed to meet me in the kitchen at ten-o'clock
+for another lesson in respect?''
+
+``Go away, Michael,'' said Connor flatly, refusing to glance up from the
+printed page in front of him. \emph{The proper ritual of greeting
+between Light wizards and witches takes into account age, place of
+meeting, gender, the dominance of the families involved, magical power,
+and several other factors that must be studied in detail before one will
+know the words to use. Each situation is, in point of fact, unique, and
+this book is intended only to give one an insight into shifting
+paradigms, not to serve as a guide.} Connor stifled a groan. Was it too
+much to hope for a book that just \emph{told} one what to do? Many of
+the books at Hogwarts certainly seemed to. ``I'm not in the mood to talk
+to you right now.''
+
+"Why \emph{not}?" That sounded less like a pout and more like a request
+for clarity, Connor thought, which was hard to believe. He did lift his
+head from the book to stare at Michael as the other boy circled around
+the table.
+
+``Because I have to learn these bloody dances,'' Connor sniped.
+
+Michael's eyebrows went up, and stayed there. ``I could teach you
+those,'' he offered. ``In return, you could teach me more about respect
+and admiration, and living in the shadow of someone like Harry.'' A
+sneer on the name, but it didn't bother Connor so much this morning. He
+almost agreed with Michael, in fact. Yes, he knew he should have studied
+earlier, but that didn't mean he wanted Harry to humiliate him and rub
+his face in the fact. And Harry was \emph{right}, too, which was the
+sting of it, and which writhed in Connor's belly long after he'd managed
+to ignore Harry's words themselves.
+
+``You don't know the dances I have to learn,'' Connor told him.
+``They're Light ones, not Dark ones.''
+
+Michael blinked, as though he honestly hadn't thought of that. ``Oh,''
+he murmured. He sat down on the other side of the table, and looked
+wistfully at Connor across the book. Connor marveled at how easy it was
+to ignore the ugly, nearly-hand-shaped burn on his cheek. Once you got
+used to accepting it as part of his face, it was really no different
+than Harry's scar was, or Connor's own. ``But does that mean you won't
+teach me?''
+
+Connor studied him for a moment. Here was someone who needed his help,
+far more than Apollonis and Smith needed him to be a proper Light heir.
+And he was in the state of mind where he didn't absorb anything the book
+said anyway, because it kept filtering into his brain and encountering
+resistance.
+
+He shoved the book aside, ignoring the little squirm of guilt, and said,
+``I can teach you right now.''
+
+Watching Michael's eyes light up with gratitude was \emph{much} more fun
+than reading a dusty old book.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Jing-Xi studied the ruined stones of Hogwarts, currently covered with a
+light drifting of snow. She would not have imagined the place could
+still be so sad two months after its fall, but it was. The sensation of
+lost life lingered around it, and lost magic. It had been one of the
+oldest buildings she had ever been in. For that alone, wizards around
+the world should mourn it.
+
+Elena and Alexandre stood on her left, Pamela and Coatlicue on her
+right. Jing-Xi stifled a sigh. Other than Pamela, who liked Harry, the
+rest were there to challenge him and put him in his place, make him
+understand his smallness before the might of the Pact. Coatlicue might
+be of the Light, but she had a nearly neutral position where Harry was
+concerned, watching the ripples his actions had on the world and not
+liking them. She was watching the larger tapestry, not the fine threads.
+
+Jing-Xi could not even blame her. If she had not known Harry personally,
+it was probably the position she should have taken, the right one. They
+should never forget that Harry was undeclared. It made him no closer to
+Light than Dark, when one looked at matters objectively. He might have
+morals that \emph{seemed} Light, but that did not mean he would always
+achieve them through Light methods.
+
+Jing-Xi was personally involved, though. Her heart had always led her
+astray. She had gone to Britain the moment she heard, through Thomas,
+that Harry was both willing to meet her and without any other guidance
+in the ways of Lord-level wizards. It was amazing that he had come as
+far as he had, since she'd had so little time to instruct him, and since
+the other Lords he had known were Dark and monsters, every one. Not to
+mention the abuse, the war itself, the fact that a Dark Lady had
+attacked him in search of his power\ldots{}
+
+She sighed aloud this time, and avoided Elena's dead-eyed glance. Her
+view on Harry was shared by no one else. She must remember that.
+
+Cracks struck the air in front of them like whips, and Jing-Xi looked up
+in surprise. They were waiting on the right side of the school. Perhaps
+unreasonably, she had expected Harry to sense their magic and Apparate
+right in front of them.
+
+Instead, by the sound of it, he had Apparated to the end of the road
+that led to Hogsmeade.
+
+Beyond the limit of the old wards that restricted Apparition, Jing-Xi
+realized suddenly. Harry still remembered what Hogwarts had been, and it
+seemed he would allow that intuition to rule the meeting.
+
+She bowed her head. In one way, it was all she could have hoped for,
+that sheer political necessity was not ruling Harry at the moment. On
+the other hand, if he came to the meeting too emotional, he would give
+the others a hold over him.
+
+Elena and Coatlicue shifted. Jing-Xi had expected that. They were
+meeting Harry for the first time, assessing his strength and the ripples
+his power made in the air around them, or in their bones, or in the
+other ways they might sense it. Pamela and Alexandre didn't move.
+Jing-Xi shot them a curious glance, and Pamela flushed and avoided her
+gaze. \emph{So. Perhaps what she constantly hinted at but couldn't tell
+me about involved visits to Britain in Alexandre's company.}
+
+Harry took his time coming up the road, as if he knew that it would be
+wrong to come too suddenly and seem frightened, or to panic the
+representatives of the Pact. When he appeared, he moved at a sedate,
+comfortable pace, letting those who had accompanied him trail around
+him.
+
+And many more people had come than Jing-Xi expected. She narrowed her
+eyes. There was Harry's Malfoy, and Severus Snape, and his brother, and
+perhaps he had wanted to have his own representatives of Light and Dark;
+that would explain the old golden-haired wizard, for example, and a
+witch whom Jing-Xi remembered as Hawthorn Parkinson. But the others,
+marching beneath banners of family symbols, or walking with quills in
+their hands to indicate their profession as newspaper reporters, or
+carrying cameras? Harry was shy of attention. Why would he want them
+here?
+
+To confuse matters even further, Harry was carrying a stone in his
+hands.
+
+He halted not far from Jing-Xi, and bowed to her first. Jing-Xi thought
+that could have been coincidence, since she stood in the middle, but she
+would have wagered Kanerva's gift of wind that it was not. Had she had
+pointed ears, they would have stood away from her head in curiosity.
+
+Harry straightened and glanced at the other representatives, gaze cold.
+He didn't even flinch when Elena looked at him, though Jing-Xi saw his
+expression darken. ``Jing-Xi has my permission to be here, having been
+invited long since,'' he said, his voice like the snow-dusted bulk of
+Hogwarts at their side in more ways than one. ``What of you others? Why
+did you not ask permission from the Lord of the British Isles, as you
+call me, before arriving? I was under the impression that the etiquette
+of the Pact forbade inviting oneself in, but perhaps a great madness
+struck all of you at once.''
+
+Jing-Xi bit her tongue. She had not counted on this. True, that was a
+bit of etiquette that she herself had taught to Harry, but most of the
+time, it wasn't used in situations like this. Confronted with the massed
+power of four or five Lords and Ladies, even Monika would lower her eyes
+to the ground and play along for the time being.
+
+Someone had forgotten to tell Harry about other situations like this,
+though. Jing-Xi clasped her hands in front of her, and settled back to
+enjoy this.
+
+``Traditionally, one need not request permission,'' said Coatlicue, ``if
+the Lord in question presents a great enough threat to the world.''
+
+Harry gave a little nod. ``Then tell me which specific actions of mine
+have presented such a threat,'' he said, ``so that I might correct them
+in the future. And if you give me the message, then I will carry it to
+Lord Riddle the next time I see him, though I cannot pretend he will
+agree.''
+
+A muted chuckle moved through the ranks of those watching. Jing-Xi saw
+Pamela's mouth tightening. She hated to be made a fool of. Coatlicue
+simply watched, Alexandre showed no change of expression, and Elena
+watched the way she always did, looking for prey.
+
+``You must understand,'' said Coatlicue, "that it is the fear of what
+you \emph{might} do, and not what you have done, that has prompted this
+visit."
+
+``And what do you fear I might do?'' Harry spoke calmly enough, but
+Jing-Xi could see the ire sparking in his green eyes. She doubted he
+really felt it---or, at least, that it was the only emotion he was
+capable of letting through. He was far more controlled than she had ever
+seen him, better at using his feelings instead of letting them use him,
+or simply experiencing them. ``Is it similar to what Lord Riddle will do
+if he wins, extending his reign beyond the British Isles and into other
+countries without mercy, slaughtering anyone who does not agree with
+him?''
+
+Elena moved a step forward. Jing-Xi doubted she truly wanted to answer,
+but it was a convenient cover for the way she was looking at Draco.
+
+``The Lord Riddle is Dark,'' Elena whispered, ``Declared, a known
+quantity. You are not.''
+
+``That does not change,'' said Harry, his voice beginning far away and
+then gathering power like a tsunami, "the fact that I am the only
+Lord-level wizard currently fighting him, that the Pact sharply
+restricted the aid of those others who wanted to help, and that you have
+interfered, not once but multiple times, with my attempts to make sure
+his reign does \emph{not} extend. This is only another example of such
+interference. You come without permission, violating your own rules,
+because I refuse to Declare. That is the motive behind your actions, all
+of them. Voldemort panics you, but you keep meddling with me, because
+you would rather dictate what I do than face the threat he poses." Harry
+snorted. ``And I have this to say to the Lords and Ladies of the Pact:
+if you refuse to obey your rules, why should I?''
+
+Jing-Xi caught her breath. Harry had just taken the song to a new and
+dangerous level. She felt the wind whipping her hair move faster, and
+could hear a new tone in the hisses of the snakes climbing on Coatlicue.
+Pamela went curiously still. Jing-Xi didn't know the two children of the
+Dark well enough to read what preparations they might have made for an
+attack.
+
+"You are speaking of war, \emph{vates}," Coatlicue said, and Jing-Xi
+knew the title as much as the soft tone was an attempt to soothe Harry.
+``You do not want to start one over a mere matter of courtesy, do you?''
+
+``If it began, it would be your fault, and for a reason even pettier
+than courtesy.'' Harry set down the stone he was carrying at his feet.
+Jing-Xi could sense his power growing around him, in careful, controlled
+eddies that made her wince. Not only had Harry grown better since she
+began instructing him, he was drawing on the support and loyalty of most
+of the people behind him, the memories inherent in Hogwarts, and the
+fact that he stood on his native ground. All those factors could
+influence magic in ways that the Grand Unified Theory was only beginning
+to understand. They would still win if they had to fight him, of course,
+because their sheer strength was too much for him, but Jing-Xi was
+certain that Harry would manage to kill Pamela and Alexandre, the two
+weakest ones there, if it happened. Harry straightened and regarded them
+without a trace of the emotion he named next. ``Fear.''
+
+Elena hissed between her teeth, and edged closer to Draco. Harry turned
+to face her, and abruptly the air between them turned black with
+writhing snakes, floating on top of each other in a solid wall, their
+tails looped around each other, but their necks and fangs free to
+strike.
+
+"Stay \emph{back}," Harry hissed at her, voice on the edge of
+Parseltongue. ``And leave my partner alone. He is not for the likes of
+you.''
+
+\emph{He has changed more than I imagined he could.} Jing-Xi shivered at
+the sheer tone of possessiveness in Harry's voice. Then she sighed as
+she saw the expression on Elena's face. \emph{And he has made another
+enemy.}
+
+``I have nothing to say to you,'' said Harry. ``I have already struck a
+bargain with the International Confederation of Warlocks to reveal no
+more of the British magical world to the Muggle one until after
+Voldemort is defeated, and my allies who disagreed with me have parted
+ways with me. When the war ends, then I will renegotiate at need. What
+you came to say to me about international courtesy has been invalidated
+by your own actions. I will not speak with hypocrites.'' He twitched his
+wrist, and the snakes vanished as if they had never been. ``Now, if you
+will excuse me, I will get on with my true reason for coming here.''
+
+``What is that?'' Jing-Xi asked, because she had to know.
+
+Harry tossed her a glance slightly softer than he'd given the others.
+``Raising Hogwarts,'' he said, and touched the stone he'd placed on the
+ground. ``This is the cornerstone.''
+
+And then the giant bulk of Hogwarts rose slowly into the air, rotating
+like a galaxy around a central hub. Jing-Xi could sense the restlessness
+circling in the magic itself, but Harry never let it get too far away
+from him. He turned and began speaking to the crowd, voice steady and
+clear, while what was left of the old school drifted overhead.
+
+``One school has fallen. Another may rise in its place. No, I am neither
+Godric Gryffindor nor Salazar Slytherin, and may not claim for myself
+the serenity of Helga Hufflepuff nor the wisdom of Rowena Ravenclaw. But
+I may cleave to their traditions, and try to honor those fallen
+innocents who should never have had to perish in a war like this. For a
+thousand years, Hogwarts offered sanctuary to those in need. May it
+continue to do so.''
+
+And the stones began to dance, arranging themselves around the new
+cornerstone in what looked like walls much the same, yet subtly
+different, from the walls of Hogwarts that Jing-Xi remembered.
+
+In one stroke, Harry had changed the purpose of this meeting from a
+scolding to something that mattered to his land and people.
+
+Jing-Xi had never felt so thorough a dismissal. She reached out and
+lightly grasped Coatlicue's arm as her friend opened her mouth to
+comment.
+
+``Look at it like this,'' she breathed. ``He's made fools of us, and
+Elena threatened his partner, and we forgot the most basic of courtesy,
+and the Pact is even more unwilling to contribute forces to the fight
+against Lord Riddle than it is to stop interfering with Harry. He's
+right. We made a bad decision. We should go now. These people aren't
+ours. They won't profit from our humiliation.''
+
+Coatlicue would have argued, but that near-objectivity Jing-Xi had
+always envied her for was working now. She uttered one sigh, then made a
+curt gesture with one hand, beginning the group Apparition that would
+insure no one could linger behind.
+
+Jing-Xi did hear Alexandre murmur, ``Ridiculous, to interfere in the
+life of one so guarded by prophecy.''
+
+She turned to look at him just before they vanished. He met her gaze,
+serene and insufferable as always, and for a moment Jing-Xi thought she
+heard the sweet singing of multiple active prophecies.
+
+She caught one more glimpse of Harry just before they went, and that
+hardened her resolve to fight for him. He faced his people, and spoke
+what they needed to hear, and used his enormous magic to benefit and
+guard them.
+
+\emph{He's doing just what he should be. The Pact is going to have to
+wake up from its stubborn fear of him and see that. I'll spend the rest
+of my days arguing if I must. Stubborn set of old men and women.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 88*: On Unneutral
+Ground}\label{chapter-88-on-unneutral-ground}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Seventy-One: On Unneutral Ground}
+
+Owen laid down the parchment in front of Apollonis with an air of
+finality that he didn't feel. But showing such nervousness to the old
+Light wizard was grounds for his proposal to be rejected yet again. He
+stood with his hands folded firmly in front of him and met Cupressus
+gaze for gaze.
+
+``Ah.'' Apollonis picked up the parchment and turned it over, as if he
+were reading every word on the underside. He probably was, Owen thought.
+No single concession that he'd tried to sneak past the acting Minister
+had worked, so in the end he'd listed everything clearly and
+straightforwardly. Apollonis leaned back and looked up at Owen now.
+``And you think that we will let Dark families have equal power in the
+Ministry with the Light families who have always served others?''
+
+Owen drew an angry breath to respond that, if they didn't, Harry would
+know why, and then shut his mouth with a shake of his head. Burst out
+with something like \emph{that}, and Apollonis would have an excuse to
+dismiss him and request some other representative for the Dark families
+from Harry. It wasn't so much that Owen would regret being back at his
+Lord's side, but Harry had asked him to do this. He wanted to succeed.
+
+Besides, the work was interesting in and of itself, and at least Owen
+felt he was making some difference here, instead of sitting about in
+Silver-Mirror and watching as everyone else did more useful work.
+
+``I would hope that you would, sir, yes,'' he said, evenly, his eyes
+never wavering from Apollonis's. "Since the new Ministry is committed to
+including those who did not have equal power in the old one, I would
+\emph{hope} that a committed offer to the principles of that equality
+would serve." He made a little gesture at the parchment, and then sat
+down in the chair across from Apollonis, though he hadn't been invited
+to sit since the moment he entered the room.
+
+Apollonis's eyes flashed. Owen wasn't sure what it meant, but he didn't
+intend to rise until he was \emph{chased} out. His hands tightened on
+the arms of the chair, and he waited.
+
+And, a moment later, Apollonis relaxed, even looked half-amused, as if
+he thought Owen's ready-to-attack posture a bluff or a feint, and turned
+back to the parchment. Owen kept a scowl from his face with effort.
+\emph{He was testing me. Bloody bastard. Probably wanted to see if I
+could stand up to him. Well, Ignifer did say that he used to do that to
+her.}
+
+Ignifer had said a great many other things about her father, none of
+them complimentary, so Owen expected the objection when Apollonis leaned
+across the desk and tapped one item on the parchment with his
+forefinger.
+
+``This mandates that Dark families may enchant some offices so that the
+people working there will have an obligation to be loyal to them,''
+Apollonis murmured. ``It would rely on the office, and not the person.''
+
+Many such offices had existed in the old Ministry; Owen knew that Harry
+had even used one to his advantage once, when he called on Aurelius
+Flint and asked him to fulfill his office's debt to the Black line. He
+didn't have any proof that they existed yet in the Ministry, for either
+Light or Dark, but he had passed some rooms with spells and wards on
+them that he didn't recognize. So he held Apollonis's gaze and bluffed.
+
+``If that is a power that you do not intend to allow us, I withdraw the
+point at once.'' He paused until that yellow gaze grew suspicious. ``So
+long as the Light families who have already claimed superior advantages
+in our Ministry withdraw their own spells, of course, and swear to stick
+more closely to the rules. This is, in any case, a weaker group
+approaching a well-established group, not a group of upstarts requesting
+a privilege that the other doesn't have.''
+
+Those eyes narrowed. Owen waited, never blinking. If the offices he had
+intuited didn't exist, or the spells on them were meant to serve a
+different purpose---well, then he had just made a blunder, and he would
+wish he had apologized before all was through. But sometimes, one had to
+take a risk.
+
+Apollonis sat back with a loud curse. "We \emph{did} hope that no one
+had noticed," he said, with remarkable candor. But then, he was a Light
+wizard.
+
+Owen made sure to pace his breath as it traveled out of his lungs, so
+that Apollonis wouldn't hear it as a nervous gasp, and nodded. ``We have
+no objections to benefits,'' he said, and then paused to smile like a
+shark. ``So long as they are shared with us, of course.''
+
+This time, the old wizard laughed openly, and then sat back to discuss
+the rest of the list with him. That did not mean the end of tricks, of
+course. Owen would have been slightly worried if it had.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Draco was the center of all eyes as he set the Pensieve on the table in
+front of him. He didn't mind that. In fact, he had to work hard to keep
+from visibly preening. That would say he relished all the attention
+being paid to him. Instead, he had to act as if this were normal and
+everyday.
+
+``Now,'' he said, indicating the Pensieve. "This holds memories of mine
+where the mindset is perfectly clear. I brought it here to show you that
+the spell \emph{does} work."
+
+``But couldn't you just teach us the spell?'' demanded a mousy little
+man whom Draco thought was probably a Nonpareil agent.
+
+Draco gave him a sweet smile. "And not have demonstrated to you that it
+works, good sir? Then \emph{I} would be at fault, for practically
+handing over a dangerous incantation that could have unpredictable
+results."
+
+The man scowled and folded his arms over his chest. Draco wondered what
+position in the new Ministry he was hoping for.
+
+They were gathered in one of the ``Light'' rooms on the fourth floor. At
+least, Draco thought of it that way, since the window giving onto the
+sun was especially large, and someone had already cast the Sourceless
+Torch spell that was going to light the new Ministry, filling the
+corners with soft white radiance instead of soft shadows. The only
+furniture was the pale wood desk on which Draco had placed the Pensieve,
+and clustered in front of him was everyone from Ministry officials to
+those hoping for jobs there to the merely curious. Luckily, given
+Harry's announcement of Draco's prowess in Silver-Mirror the other
+night, the ``merely curious'' crowd was large, and Draco could feel eyes
+in there focused on him.
+
+He didn't know the tenor of all the gazes. Some of them would be
+envious, he knew, and some admiring. He didn't much care which was
+which, right now. He was in a large enough crowd that they couldn't
+threaten him, and so he had nothing to do but bask in the attention he
+rightfully deserved.
+
+He drew his wand now, and a few people stepped back. Draco only tapped
+the side of the Pensieve, however, and made the metal softly ring, in
+order to quell the faint conversations in the back of the room. ``The
+spell is already cast,'' he reassured them again. ``Come.''
+
+Those nearest edged forward and pushed their heads in beside his. Draco
+knew the others would be waiting impatiently for a report and the chance
+to try on their own, but he didn't care. Rather than bring one large
+Pensieve to absorb them all, he preferred the smaller one that would
+imply multiple turns. That would cause the admiration and awe from the
+first set of gazers to ripple back into the rest of them, as those
+aroused from their trance gave extravagant descriptions, and made the
+rest all the more eager to see the truth for themselves.
+
+Draco had chosen the memory carefully. Why wouldn't he? This was a
+political tool, and, as such, it should have multiple valences. Others
+might think of it merely as a chance for Draco to prove that he could do
+what Harry said he could. But he was going to take the opportunity to
+make himself look good, of course.
+
+The memory was of the battle in Woodhouse, and Draco winced a bit as he
+watched Fenrir Greyback spring out of the tall grass beside Woodhouse
+itself, snatch his broom in his teeth, and send Draco spinning to the
+ground. Not his finest moment, of course, and the audience could feel
+his panic and his fear. But, in another moment, they would also be able
+to admire his swift reflexes and his protective instincts.
+
+And then there was the third purpose to this memory, of course.
+
+That purpose came when Harry descended like fire and thunder and willed
+Fenrir Greyback out of existence. Draco could feel the fear and shock of
+the others with him billowing around him like a cold wind. His own
+superiority, meanwhile, grew across his mind like a cloud of smoke. They
+knew about Harry's power already; it would be impossible to surprise
+them with that. What they \emph{didn't} know, or might not have known
+before now, was the extent to which Harry would go to protect Draco. And
+now they knew, and that might prevent stupid things like attacks on
+Draco that he had no time for.
+
+Harry landed beside Draco on the ground, and then Whitecheek, Greyback's
+mate, came for his back like a flying shadow.
+
+Draco felt his own fear and determination meld into a single surge,
+which served to lift his arm straight out from his body and tear the
+Killing Curse from his wand. And Whitecheek died, a full-grown werewolf
+fallen to a boy just fifteen years old. Once again, awe swept through
+the people around him, and this time, there was fear, centered on him.
+Draco reveled in it.
+
+He would, of course, welcome the impression that he had Harry's power at
+his back, and therefore people should do what he told them to do,
+whether or not it was true. But he welcomed even more the idea that he
+was formidable in his own right. The stupid, the careless, the lazy, and
+the inappropriate should stay out of his way, and then he wouldn't have
+to resort to violence like the Killing Curse.
+
+The memory ended there. Draco shook his head and rose out of the silver
+liquid, to find himself standing beside the Pensieve with fascinated
+eyes riveted to him. \emph{Merlin}, that was a good feeling, as if he
+stood in the middle of a sliding mass of honey. If he hadn't known the
+explanation that came from Harry's training, Draco would have wondered
+how in the \emph{world} Harry could dislike the sensation.
+
+``You used an Unforgivable,'' one of his watchers whispered, a woman
+with straggly white hair and, currently, a death grip on the edge of the
+table, as if the very sight of the Killing Curse were enough to make her
+fall over.
+
+``Tell me,'' Draco said calmly, examining his nails, ``what better use
+do you think it could have, then to kill a werewolf and one of
+Voldemort's minions who was pursuing the death of our only hope against
+Voldemort?'' All of them flinched when he said the Dark Lord's name.
+This was \emph{hilarious}. Draco was grateful for the iron control of
+his face that kept him from laughing. ``And who will punish me? The old
+Ministry, by whose laws this was a crime? Or the new Ministry, which
+hasn't gathered itself enough yet to declare the Unforgivables a
+crime?''
+
+``You should be in Tullianum,'' the old woman persisted.
+
+Draco met her gaze and shrugged his shoulders. ``A little difficult,
+seeing that Tullianum lies in ruins, and has for months,'' he said. ``If
+Harry had wanted to arrest me or give me to the Ministry at the time it
+happened, he could have. That he chose not to\ldots{}'' He let the words
+dangle, and then waved the people still crowded in front of the table to
+move back, because the ones behind them were shoving at them, desperate
+to get near the Pensieve and see the memory for themselves.
+
+It had been a risk, of course. There were people revolted at the very
+mention of the Killing Curse, people who forgot that the Aurors had been
+granted permission in the First War to use it for a time, people who
+forgot that they would probably use it themselves against enemies too
+powerful to defeat---people who forgot that, in their fifth year, Harry
+had fought with a ragtag band of allies, not the powerful political
+force it had become since.
+
+Draco might inspire some disgust.
+
+But, from the looks in some eyes, he'd inspired more fear, and that he
+could more than live with. Fear was the beginning of respect in many
+people. Draco wasn't blind to the way that people flinched when Harry
+walked into a room, even though Harry was. They respected power, yes,
+and by this time, they also respected that Harry would live up to his
+principles, but they also cowered from what that magic could do.
+
+Draco wanted to make his own reputation. Fear would be one of the
+necessary components.
+
+Looking around the room, he caught his father's gaze. Draco inclined his
+head, and let his eyes ask, as clearly as he could without actually
+speaking the words, whether Lucius was here to gather support for his
+run for the Minister's office. Lucius turned and stalked away.
+
+When his cloak passed, Michael Rosier-Henlin stood where he had been,
+staring at Draco with obvious longing.
+
+Out of pity for an old partisan, Draco turned in profile, where he knew
+he looked best, and then plunged his head into the Pensieve. Michael's
+gaze went with him like treacle, clinging where it wasn't welcome.
+
+His admiration \emph{was}, of course. Just not the manner in which he
+had chosen to express it, and that unforgivable presumption that Draco
+would ever leave Harry for him, a nearly talentless, far too impetuous
+wizard who wouldn't even be alive now if it weren't for Harry's freeing
+Durmstrang, and who had first borne the lightning bolt scar on his arm
+and then lost the right to do so.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+``Harry!''
+
+Harry jolted out of a sound sleep over the book of summoning spells, and
+then relaxed a bit. It was Thomas, clutching a book, and sometimes he
+had a habit of waking people like that for nothing more urgent than to
+share the latest bit of new information he'd found. Thomas's children
+were visiting Silver-Mirror, and since he now had his daughter Rose to
+share his fascinations with, his waking Harry up had grown a bit less
+frequent of late.
+
+But the expression on his face was indignant, and Harry found himself
+standing. ``What is it, Thomas?''
+
+``The centaurs,'' said Thomas, folding his arms. ``They went to the
+Ministry, and now there are some people forbidding them entrance,
+claiming they're animals and halfbreeds and they can't come in.''
+
+Harry hissed between his teeth. He could imagine that all too clearly,
+even given that Apollonis and most of those who had attained
+``unofficial'' power in the new Ministry would invite the centaurs in.
+``How many of them?'' he asked, as he unwound his arms from the chair's
+and stood up. ``And how did you learn of this?''
+
+``I was in the Ministry, trying to catalogue their library.'' Thomas
+tightened his arms defensively around the book he carried. "I left as
+the centaurs arrived. \emph{Hemlock} was leading them, and they couldn't
+get in!"
+
+Harry nodded. Hemlock was one of Thomas's contacts on centaur magic and
+the way it related to the Grand Unified Theory, which promptly meant, of
+course, one of Thomas's best friends in the whole world. ``I'll come,
+Thomas.''
+
+Thomas beamed, caught his arm, and hustled him towards the entrance to
+the library, where he could come outside the wards and Apparate to the
+Ministry more easily.
+
+Harry did lift a hand and conjure a sending of himself for Snape, with
+his mouth full of the message that he was going to the Ministry in
+Thomas Rhangnara's company, to solve a diplomatic incident. He wondered,
+though, as Thomas dragged him down the stairs and outside by main force
+of strength, whether he should really solve this one the way he had all
+the others.
+
+His magic couldn't be the sole governing force in the new Ministry,
+especially since he didn't intend to take on the post of Minister, and
+still considered his \emph{vates} path and the defeat of Voldemort his
+primary responsibilities. And people couldn't cooperate forever,
+sullenly, in the shadow of his power. They had to learn to do this on
+their own, live with people of other species, or what good was anything
+they'd done? It wouldn't make new ideas blossom and grow among those
+wizards and witches whom Harry wanted to see change. It would follow the
+same pattern it always had: the powerful, dominating wizard, who got his
+way because other people were afraid of his magic.
+
+So Harry decided that he could try something---especially now, since
+when they arrived at the Ministry, he could see that both the group of
+centaurs at the doors and the group of humans staring at them were
+small. And Thomas had arranged it so that he would be nearby if anything
+happened. He reached up and touched Thomas's sleeve before the man could
+drag him near enough to be seen.
+
+``I want you to help them,'' he whispered.
+
+Thomas turned and stared at them, then shook his head. "But, Harry, they
+won't \emph{listen} to me," he said, indicating the group of wizards and
+witches who blocked the centaurs' entrance into the Ministry. "They're
+\emph{stupid.}"
+
+Harry smiled. It was often hard to stop doing that around Thomas.
+Currently, he wondered how hard it was for Thomas to live in a world
+where most people seemed to ignore his brilliance and the very simple
+things that he believed in and which anyone, he thought, could see if
+they just studied enough.
+
+``I'll be right here, ready to help if you need me,'' he said. ``But
+hiding. I don't think it's true freedom if people change their minds
+because I ask them to, Thomas. Do you? They should change their minds on
+their own. Or because someone brilliant, but not a Lord-level wizard,
+persuades them to do so.''
+
+Thomas looked as if Harry had just given him a new library. He glanced
+towards the centaurs for a moment, opened his mouth, then shut it and
+gave a firm nod. He strode into the confrontation with a mutter that
+sounded to Harry like, "It's \emph{Hemlock.} He's smart, and they're
+not. I have to help him."
+
+Harry used his magic to wrap the \emph{Extabesco plene} around himself
+and hide him from not just human sight but the keener senses of the
+centaurs. He watched eyes and faces and hands and hooves, looking for
+some sign of growing hostility, but determined not to intervene unless
+he had no other choice to prevent people from being injured.
+
+\emph{They have to learn to live without me. And if there's anyone who
+can scold people into living a better life, it's Thomas.}
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Thomas wished it were a permissible punishment to drub people over the
+head with a book until they paid attention. Or, even better, the book
+could be one of common sense and morality, and each hit could impart the
+knowledge that the book contained.
+
+Thomas was tempted to disappear into daydreams of how he would enchant
+such a book, but the angry faces before him reminded him of his course.
+He walked right in between a shouting witch and Hemlock, and stood
+there, glaring at her. \emph{She is stupid to yell at centaurs. They are
+not impressed by raised voices except to view them as signs of just how
+impatient and unworthy of sharing space with them humans are.}
+
+Of course, no one in front of him knew that, because they were all
+stupid.
+
+``Why are you stupid?'' he asked the witch, who had shut her mouth and
+stared at him as if she didn't know what else to do.
+
+She flushed at once, and lifted her wand as if she would smack him
+across the palm with it. Thomas's mother used to do that, but obviously
+someone hadn't done it enough to this witch with a child, because
+otherwise she wouldn't have been stupid. Thomas slapped the wand away
+with his book, careful of the cover. This was a rare old volume of
+Fishbaggin's goblin histories. He wouldn't want to get sweat stains on
+it, or the drabs of a spell, either.
+
+``You know that centaurs are welcome here,'' he said. "The Ministry said
+so. \emph{Vates} Harry Black said so. And you are standing here, denying
+entrance to fellow citizens, and being stupid. Why are you stupid?"
+
+``They shouldn't be welcome,'' fumed the witch. ``I'll have you know
+that centaurs raped my sister.''
+
+``Where?'' Thomas demanded. He hadn't heard of a centaur rape happening
+on British soil in centuries, since the herd in the Forbidden Forest had
+been so thoroughly bound. Centaurs from other countries, visiting the
+Forest or brought in by foreign wizards, had sometimes raped people, but
+that was rare.
+
+``In Greece!''
+
+Thomas turned around and indicated Hemlock and the others behind him.
+Hemlock had his arms folded and his tail twitching, which was a sure
+sign that he didn't like the behavior of the people facing him. Thomas
+was sorry, but he didn't think that stopping to apologize now would make
+the wizards and witches in front of him realize how stupid they were
+being. ``And do these centaurs look as if they've been in Greece to
+you?'' he asked.
+
+"They \emph{could} have been." The witch folded her arms in turn. "One
+centaur looks like all the others to me. All I know is that I'm not
+having them in the Ministry, \emph{creatures} who could do that."
+
+``Humans rape, too!'' Thomas could not believe the sheer insanity of the
+universe sometimes. People acted as if he and the other research wizards
+had concocted the Grand Unified Theory of Every Kind of Magic as an
+affront to their personal honor, and now this. ``Would you want to shut
+all humans out of the Ministry because some of them rape sometimes? Or
+because Voldemort tortures people, and so that must mean that other
+humans torture people?''
+
+``That's different,'' the witch countered. ``Humans are different from
+each other. Just because one person does that doesn't mean we'll all do
+that.'' Thomas scowled. He hated it when people thought ``human'' and
+``person'' were equivalents to one another. ``But centaurs are all the
+same.''
+
+"How do \emph{you} know?" Thomas asked.
+
+``Excuse me?''
+
+``How do you know that?'' Thomas repeated. "Have you read the histories
+of centaur migration, and the different ways they interpret the stars?
+Have you ever heard of the way that centaurs negotiated with the
+Ministries, and the different ways they resolved their problems with
+wizards in each country? Have you heard of Sagittarius and the legacy he
+left and how difficult that was to resolve? Do you have the least idea
+of what the centaurs struggle with? Have you even \emph{heard} of Orion
+the Black? Of course not," he went on, while the woman simply stared at
+him. "You just think that centaurs are rapists, and that's all you know
+about them. If you'd paid close enough attention to the news to see
+something beyond the end of your nose, you would have realized that this
+centaur herd asked the \emph{vates} for help years ago. He freed them
+from their web, but, at the same time, made them unwilling to rape. One
+of their own \emph{died} for that, made a willing sacrifice so they
+could fit into the world better and have their freedom. Until someone
+human is willing to die like that, and until we've endured slavery to
+compare to theirs, I don't think you have a right to deny them the
+Ministry!"
+
+He was shouting by the end, but he didn't care. Willing ignorance
+\emph{maddened} him. It was one thing when he knew people were
+intelligent and hadn't heard of his theories---then he could just
+explain them---but another altogether when there were things happening
+around them they should have known before they started talking
+ignorantly, and they just went ahead and talked ignorantly anyway.
+
+\emph{They are so stupid,} he thought, as he watched the witch in front
+of him go through several shades of pale. \emph{And they don't have to
+be. Why don't people want to educate themselves? Why? Why don't they
+care more about people around them, and want to know about them, instead
+of only knowing about themselves? Why?}
+
+Hemlock touched his shoulder with one light hand. Thomas turned and
+looked up at him. It could be hard to read centaur faces, at least for a
+wizard who didn't want to learn, but he could make out a spark deep in
+the blue eyes looking back at him.
+
+\emph{I spoke well for them. I didn't disgrace them, or say something
+they wouldn't have endorsed.} Thomas beamed back at them. It was always
+best to let people speak for themselves, of course, but the wizards and
+witches would only have listened to another wizard just then. Now came
+the moment when Thomas had bought them silence, and Hemlock could
+actually talk without shouting. Centaurs hated shouting, and had never
+seen the purpose.
+
+Thomas stepped aside.
+
+Hemlock nodded to the witch who still watched them as though trying to
+respond to that torrent of information. ``It is quite true,'' he said.
+"We cannot rape, thanks to the efforts of the \emph{vates}. It is for
+that effort that we promised him aid in war, and indicated interest in
+joining in human politics." He paused for a moment, while his hoof
+scraped the ground in front of him. ``I am sorry for your sister, but we
+are not the ones who raped her. And we do not let prejudice against
+humans rule us. Will you let prejudice against centaurs rule you?''
+
+Thomas could see the way this worked. The witch in front of Hemlock kept
+sneaking little side-glances at Thomas as she answered. It was really
+still his voice that she was responding to, a human voice instead of the
+centaur one that actually spoke, and that was bad, not ideal. Thomas
+scowled.
+
+Then he brightened. Not everyone would catch that nuance. Some people
+would think she was talking to Hemlock as an equal, and given that
+impression, some people would treat the centaurs more like equals
+because they had seen other people do so. So the truth could spread
+through a deception, or a mistaken impression.
+
+Thomas's favorite tactic was using willing ignorance against itself. If
+the people watching thought that this witch could learn to grant
+intelligence to centaurs, then they could learn. They might even feel
+\emph{shamed} into learning, which was all right with Thomas. They
+should have learned already. Stupid people.
+
+``I---I accept your sympathy,'' she said. ``I don't like and I don't
+trust you, but it may work. For now,'' she added, grudgingly, and
+stepped out of the way. ``I'll accompany you to the Acting Minister's
+office, you know. Just in case.''
+
+Hemlock nodded, and the other three centaurs behind him cantered into
+the Ministry. The wizards and witches closed in around them, and Thomas
+decided that he should go with them, just in case they had any
+unfortunate ideas before they reached Cupressus Apollonis.
+
+Besides, he needed to observe more willing ignorance in its own habitat,
+so that he could come up with plans for that book that would deliver a
+drubbing and knowledge at the same time.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Harry let himself melt back into view. His face hurt from his hard grin.
+
+Merlin, \emph{that} was the way to do it, to give people a chance to
+yell and figure it out \emph{themselves.} This was what he had once
+hoped the monitoring board could do: provide a base of coherent
+opposition to him.
+
+There \emph{had} to be opposition to him, or there was no \emph{vates}
+path. There was only frightened silence, with no one daring to speak up
+because they thought his power would conquer them. Silence didn't mean
+agreement, it just meant stifled disagreement, and Harry had never
+wanted that. People should be free to yell in his face, to say stupid
+things, to make requests of him that he was never going to honor. It
+might infuriate him, and it might sometimes endanger others enough to
+require his intervention, but at least it would mean he was not a Lord
+and the British wizarding world was still free of a single dominating
+presence.
+
+And to see people solving problems \emph{themselves\ldots{}}
+
+It made his face hurt.
+
+He Apparated home, humming under his breath, and arrived at the same
+moment as Draco, who had been showing off the Pensieve with his
+mindset-spell in it to the Ministry. Harry caught him and swung him
+around in Silver-Mirror's entrance hall, enchanting the walls to sing
+the same music they'd played at the Ministry on its official opening
+night. He reenacted the dance they'd done there with a very startled and
+confused Draco, who looked as if he didn't know whether to laugh or slow
+Harry down and demand an explanation.
+
+``What happened?'' he said at last, clamping his hands on Harry's
+shoulders and making him stop the spin.
+
+Harry grinned at him, and Draco put his hand over his eyes and squinted.
+Harry retracted his magic with a murmured apology. It liked to make his
+eyes and teeth shine brightly lately, at least when he was happy. ``I
+just saw people accept centaurs into the Ministry with Thomas's
+intervention,'' he said. "I didn't have to step in and use my magic or
+my tongue to mediate. They managed it \emph{themselves.} I think Thomas
+wanted to hit them with a book, and there were lots of stupid things
+said, but they managed it."
+
+Draco, of course, understood that in his own way. A slow smile widened
+across his face. ``You'll have time for more things than playing
+nursemaid.''
+
+``Yes.'' Harry tugged insistently at his wrist. ``Come with me. I want
+to hear what happened to you at the Ministry, and then I want to invent
+spells. As many of them as we can before dinner.''
+
+Draco's face softened into a look of something like adoration. Harry
+made sure the like emotion was shining in his eyes as he kissed Draco on
+the nose. Then he dragged him up the stairs. Thomas had dragged Harry
+down them. Harry was just making sure there was some symmetry.
+
+\emph{Merlin}, he was happy. Thoughts didn't have to make sense when he
+was this happy.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Connor sighed and flipped through the book again. He knew the Light
+rituals of greeting now, and they weren't really that hard to master.
+But they still made his brain hurt, like the Divination symbols had.
+Yes, he could study them, he could learn them, but he wasn't really sure
+he \emph{wanted} to.
+
+Then the door of the library opened. Connor turned around, hoping it was
+Harry. He'd seen his brother asleep earlier over a book of summoning
+spells, and while he wanted to apologize, he also didn't want to disturb
+him. Harry got little enough unbroken sleep in his life.
+
+Parvati peered through the door at him. Connor shoved his book aside.
+Parvati was biting her lip and looked close to tears, and that usually
+meant another vicious fight with her parents.
+
+``What is it?'' he asked, holding out his hands to her.
+
+Parvati crossed the library to meet him, and took and held his hands.
+Connor pulled her close, stroking her hair. He loved the way it
+smelled---not like anything in particular, but like her.
+
+She whispered a word against his collarbone. Connor sat back. ``What?''
+
+She looked him in the eye, and then spoke words that set fire to his
+heart.
+
+``I said yes. Let's do it.''
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 89*: Nothing Gold Can
+Stay}\label{chapter-89-nothing-gold-can-stay}
+
+The title of the chapter comes from the Robert Frost poem of the same
+name: ``Nature's first green is gold,/ Her hardest hue to
+hold\ldots{}.So dawn goes down to day./ Nothing gold can stay.''
+
+\textbf{Chapter Seventy-Two: Nothing Gold Can Stay}
+
+Connor knelt on the floor in front of Parvati. They'd chosen her bedroom
+for the ceremony, since it was the one room where they were the least
+likely to be disturbed. No one shared it with her, now that Padma had
+gone home to their parents, and Harry probably wouldn't come looking for
+him here. Once they began the ceremony, it couldn't be ended.
+
+Parvati had a mulish look on her face, as if she were about to jump off
+a cliff someone had told her not to jump off. Connor smiled and squeezed
+her hands, which he held clasped in front of him. He couldn't touch her
+cheek, as he wanted, until the ritual was over.
+
+``Not what you expected?'' he whispered.
+
+``Not what my parents wanted for me,'' Parvati clarified, with a little
+toss of her head. "But I \emph{don't} care. I won't care, Connor." She
+took a deep breath, and then the clutch of her hands on his intensified
+almost to the point of pain. ``My parents would want something safer for
+me, a husband and children who wouldn't endanger me. They think
+Voldemort will go away and leave the world unchanged. But I don't think
+he will, and I think that we could be in danger even after the war is
+over, if his enemies want to hurt people important to Harry.'' She
+lifted her head and clenched her jaw. ``I don't care about that.''
+
+Connor paused. He ordinarily wasn't so sensitive to the nuances of
+language, but since he was the one who had suggested this ritual, he
+supposed the magic might already be heightening his awareness. ``You
+don't care what they say, Parvati, but do you really want this?'' he
+whispered, eyes fastened to her face.
+
+At once she melted, and leaned near enough to kiss the top of his
+knuckles. ``Yes, I do, Connor,'' she whispered. ``Even when I'm
+exasperated with you, I love you. This isn't going to go away.''
+
+Connor smiled, and began. Luckily, only the first part of the ritual was
+in Latin, because he wouldn't have wanted to try either his memory or
+his pronunciation skills with dozens of sentences.
+
+"\emph{Animae ambae}," he whispered, and the air around him took on a
+slow, sunlit tinge, as if he and Parvati were the center of their own
+private dawn. Connor took a deep breath. The air had turned sweet, too,
+filled with the perfume of a thousand flowers. Then the excess perfumes
+cleared away, and he could smell only one that he recognized from the
+Hogwarts greenhouses as snapdragons.
+
+\emph{And why not snapdragons? They come in red and gold.}
+
+The scent traveled away from him to embrace Parvati; Connor could see
+the moment at which her nose identified the flowers involved, too. He
+stifled the impulse to lean forward and kiss her, which was not allowed
+right now, and waited for her to begin the second part of the ritual.
+
+"\emph{Animae ambae usquequaque}," she whispered, and Connor thought she
+would stumble on the long last word, but she didn't. She finished in
+what was almost a shout, in fact, and a pendulum of light swung past her
+and impacted with Connor's face, leaving him blinking and dazzled.
+
+But the magic had done what it was supposed to. When he could see again,
+Connor realized he wasn't gazing at Parvati, but at a memory, as sharp
+and clear as if he were experiencing it for the first time.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+``It's a surprise,'' Connor said in a superior tone, tugging on Harry's
+arm. "So I can't tell you what it is yet. And \emph{keep your eyes
+closed!}" he added, as he saw Harry's eyes start to flutter open when
+they stumbled over a small depression in the ground. Since he had
+glasses, Harry was always a little more scared of where they were going.
+
+His brother obediently shut his eyes, but he said, ``This could be
+dangerous, Connor. I wouldn't want to get you into trouble.''
+
+``I'm never in trouble with Mum,'' said Connor airily, because it was
+true. He got into far more trouble with Remus, while Sirius just ruffled
+his hair and called him ``little pup,'' and his father couldn't hide a
+smile---remembering similar things he'd done, Connor knew---while
+scolding him. ``Come on. This is it.'' He tugged Harry to the very edge
+of the pond near their house in Godric's Hollow, then cleared his throat
+impressively. ``Now. Look straight down, and not up or sideways or
+backwards, because that would diminish the impact.'' That was a phrase
+he'd heard their mum use the other day, and he was very proud of himself
+for remembering it.
+
+Harry looked straight down.
+
+And caught his breath. Connor grinned, nudging his twin with an elbow
+almost hard enough to make him fall into the water.
+
+``Aren't they brilliant?'' he said, and proudly surveyed their own
+private clutch of tadpoles again. The tiny frogs trailed their tails
+over each other as they darted back and forth in search of food. This
+close, Connor could see the mad flutter of their gills. He wondered what
+would happen if he were to duck his head under the water. Could they see
+his lungs, and would they think the mad flutter of \emph{those} was
+funny?
+
+``Very brilliant,'' Harry agreed softly, and stooped down, running one
+hand through the water. He captured a tadpole, but didn't try to pull it
+out. Instead, he just knelt there and stared at it swimming against his
+palm.
+
+Connor scooped up a handful of water and frog, and blew gently across
+the surface before it could all drain out of his hands. The tadpole
+turned and turned and turned, but couldn't find a way out. Connor
+snickered and dropped it back into the pond, where it almost collided
+with one of its brothers.
+
+``What do you think we would be like if we were tadpoles?'' he asked his
+brother. "Do you think we'd know we were twins? Or maybe they're
+\emph{all} twins? Would you still help me?"
+
+``Always,'' Harry said solemnly, even as he pulled his hand out of the
+pond. ``I'd show you where all the best food was.''
+
+Connor made a face and laughed, because he didn't want to think about
+what tadpoles liked to eat. In fact, he wanted to go back to the house
+and have lunch right now, because the taste of sandwiches would be
+\emph{much} more appetizing than whatever pond scum the little frogs
+ate.
+
+Harry followed him up the bank, smiling now and then when Connor glanced
+back at him. Harry only smiled like that for him, never at their mother
+or their father or Sirius or Remus. Connor liked it.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Parvati opened her eyes slowly after the vision, shaking her head. She
+hadn't expected to share the memory, though she knew from the ritual
+that the magic would invite in images of those people who also had some
+claim to share a soul with them, to be part of their circle. But she had
+expected that Connor would see his brother, and she would see her
+sister.
+
+That wasn't the case. And Parvati found herself unsure how to react to
+what she saw: with Connor's delight or the pain she knew he would be
+feeling now, as he considered the childhood memory in the light of all
+the changed years that had passed since.
+
+But she didn't have a lot of time to think about it, thankfully, because
+they were passing on to the next part of the ceremony---this one in
+English. Parvati turned their hands so that their joined fingers faced
+the ground. She knew from Connor's face that this was uncomfortable for
+him, and almost smiled. \emph{You don't know what discomfort is until
+you have to spend two hours on your knees because Mother and Father were
+fighting over the New Year's Ritual they wanted to use.}
+
+Right now, the magic rested with her, and so she was the one who needed
+to invoke both the next part of the ritual and the next vision, which
+she knew would involve Padma. Parvati spoke confidently, thinking of her
+dedication to the Light and the fact that her heritage came from a Light
+pureblood family. An unfamiliar ritual couldn't slow her down or
+frighten her, and this ritual had the added benefit of not really being
+\emph{unfamiliar}, just not one she would have ever expected Connor to
+choose. He was so \emph{modern}, really, though with his brother, one
+had to be. And this was a ritual that had been used to bind couples
+centuries ago, and then not much used since.
+
+One of the most potent Light marriage rituals, in fact, commonly
+believed to tie souls to each other so that they would be born near one
+another again and again.
+
+Parvati lifted her eyes to Connor's face, and whispered, ``As my blood
+and my breath and my bone, so be close to me, beloved.''
+
+She gave a little shudder as the first tremors of the magic racked her.
+The breath was easy enough to give, since it was already flowing off her
+lips to join the world, but it was a bit more complicated for the magic
+to take blood and bone from her. She felt the upper bone in her left arm
+grow a bit weaker, and made a note to rest it for the next week or so.
+And then she swayed as the blood seemed to stream away from just under
+her heart, but she didn't fall to the floor and separate their hands,
+which was a good thing. If that had happened, they would have had to
+start the ritual all over again.
+
+Connor opened his mouth, as he needed to, and a stream of mingled red
+and white flowed in at his lips. Connor swallowed, blinking, his eyes
+watering, but he didn't vomit in spite of what he had to eat. Parvati
+smiled at him, proud. Then she turned forward as the light glowed around
+her and flowed into a new image, one of a memory she remembered sharing
+with Padma when they were both eleven, on the night before they started
+off for Hogwarts.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+``What do you think it'll be like?'' Padma was turned on her side in her
+bed, one foot scraping the floor. Parvati smiled. That was a sign that
+she was worried. She could try to hide it, try to make her face all
+smooth and adult, but the foot always gave her away.
+
+``You've heard Mum and Dad's stories.'' Parvati let a yawn interrupt
+her, half-hoping her sister would take the hint and go to sleep, but
+Padma had always been bad at hints, unless they were clues to mysteries
+in a story. ``I think it'll be like that. The Sorting Hat, classes,
+Slytherin House being a bunch of gits---''
+
+"I didn't mean \emph{that}."
+
+``Then tell me what you meant,'' Parvati snapped. ``Because our
+telepathy's deserted me again.''
+
+It was an old joke of theirs, that they really did have the telepathy
+that people always assumed wizard twins did; theirs was just broken. But
+Padma didn't crack a smile this time. ``I meant sleeping in separate
+beds,'' she said, leaning forward to stare at Parvati. ``Separate
+Houses. It could happen, you know. Sometimes twins are put into the same
+House, but not always.''
+
+Parvati blinked. ``Oh,'' she said at last, because she hadn't even
+thought of that. She had simply assumed that she would go to the same
+House her sister did. How could they be separated? Yes, Padma liked to
+read more than she did, and sometimes their mother teased Parvati about
+being a candidate for Hufflepuff, with the stubborn silence she
+maintained on Padma's involvement in her pranks, but they were
+\emph{twins}. That mattered more than little things like books.
+
+\emph{Maybe not so little. The Sorting Hat judges by personality traits,
+you know, and it might put you in different Houses.}
+
+Parvati chewed her hair for a minute, then leaned across the distance
+between their beds and took her twin's hand. Padma sat up. She knew a
+solemn moment when she saw one.
+
+``We'll make a pact,'' said Parvati, lightly, which made Padma pay even
+more attention. She knew Parvati could joke in that tone, or she could
+be deadly serious. "To still talk about the important things. To be
+twins, even if the Hat \emph{does} think that we'll be in separate
+Houses." To her, it seemed ridiculous, but it could happen. And she knew
+having shelters against ridiculous things that could still happen was
+always a comfort to Padma. She was the one who looked up the plants and
+charms that would counter rare magical creatures and put them around the
+doorways and windows of their house ``just in case.''
+
+Padma nodded. ``And what words should we use for the pact?'' she asked.
+``What oath?''
+
+Parvati kept herself from rolling her eyes. It was hard, but this was
+\emph{Padma}, wanting old words instead of their own words. She always
+wanted something old, and Parvati could sometimes understand
+that---sometimes, old things were beautiful---but most of the time she
+thought her sister should be a little more daring.
+
+``There's an oath I read in a book the other day,'' she said, making it
+up completely.
+
+``You read?'' Padma gasped.
+
+Parvati shoved at her shoulder. "Shut \emph{up}. The truth is, there
+\emph{is} an oath that I read in a book, and it goes like this."
+
+She recited a few star names, to make it seem more impressive, and, by
+the end of those, Padma was looking suitably impressed. In truth, their
+mother had just taken Parvati outside last night and showed her the
+stars that had those names, but books had the names \emph{written down},
+which was more powerful than words with breath behind them. Then Parvati
+said, ``And we promise that we'll always be sisters and act like
+sisters, no matter what Houses, or Cassiopeia will come and strike us
+down.''
+
+Padma's eyes were wide. "\emph{Really}?"
+
+Parvati nodded firmly. ``Really.''
+
+Padma recited the star names and the oath in turn, and Parvati didn't
+know about her, but \emph{she} felt a flare of power around their hands,
+and was content that they were joined in the best way she could think
+of. Then Padma finally let go of her hand and went to sleep, and that
+was all Parvati had wanted, really. She turned over in her own bed, and
+shut her eyes.
+
+She didn't know what Padma would do, really, when she sat under the
+Sorting Hat---and it would be her turn first. But Parvati suspected
+\emph{she} would end up in Gryffindor. It was the House where she would
+probably find people willing to agree that a made-up oath was a good
+thing, as long as it shut your sister up and made her go to sleep.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Connor opened his eyes and blinked. For a moment, he couldn't stop
+himself from being envious, though if he thought of it carefully, that
+was as silly as being envious that Parvati and Padma had been born
+identical, while he and Harry had been born fraternal. But they
+\emph{had} had a special relationship, and without a hint of parental
+abuse or secrets lingering in the background.
+
+And then Parvati was watching him impatiently, and Connor realized that
+he had a ritual to conduct. The magic was with him now. He coughed and
+cleared his throat. That was permissible.
+
+Since he'd forgotten the words, he really needed that moment of space
+the coughing and clearing of the throat provided.
+
+Luckily, it worked, and the next words came off his lips as though made
+to be there. ``By air and water and fire, all the powers of motion, be
+close to me, beloved.''
+
+He closed his eyes as a cold sweat popped out all over his body---the
+ritual's magic pulling the water from him. The air seemed to leave his
+lungs in the next moment, and then he shivered; the ``fire'' would come
+from his spirit, which he \emph{knew}, but he had never known that it
+would feel like someone planting a lump of ice directly in the middle of
+his chest.
+
+He opened his eyes in time to see Parvati swallowing what looked like a
+mixture of water and air, the water separated into neat strips of blue
+with equal strips of clear space between them. A moment later, she
+winced, and one hand flexed in his as if she would like to take that
+hand away and touch her chest. So the fire had probably come to her,
+too. Connor didn't relax until he saw the light move away from him and
+back to Parvati, though. It was the only way that he \emph{knew} this
+had worked.
+
+Parvati's voice was clear as she gazed into his eyes. ``Willingly we
+have bound ourselves to each other, by the powers of our bodies, and by
+the powers of our souls. We have shared visions of those who have some
+claim to stand in the circle. But we have not yet intruded on our
+history.'' She stamped with one foot, and Connor saw traceries of green
+and gold rise from the floor where the stamp landed, twining up her leg
+and reaching towards him like vines. \emph{Not Indigena's vines}, he
+reminded himself, even though it did seem uncomfortably like that.
+\emph{Indigena is dead.} ``Will you share your family with me, beloved,
+as I share mine with you?''
+
+``I will,'' Connor said, even though he could feel his face flushing. It
+was one thing for ``everyone'' to know what his family had done to both
+his brother and him, and what that meant. It was another thing
+altogether for Parvati to share his mind and \emph{know} how it felt,
+what he thought and did about it. But he had begun the ritual knowing he
+would have to do this, and it was rather too late to back out now.
+
+Parvati nodded, and stamped down her other foot. This time, a collection
+of greenery and gold began to crawl up Connor's leg. When it reached his
+thigh, it flowed across the space between them and collided,
+intertwining, with the vines of light that had grown up Parvati's.
+
+The world between them vanished. Connor thought, in the moment before
+the light swallowed them, that a second sunrise had taken place around
+them, as if the ceremony were guiding them back to the dawn of time, and
+the beginning of the Potter and Patil lines.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Parvati watched in amazement as a house reared itself before her eyes.
+Then she shook her head. \emph{Of course this doesn't mean that Lux
+Aeterna was built with magic alone. I'm seeing the house as it grew.
+Perhaps one Potter ancestor added one wing, and the second another
+bedroom, and the third a porch.}
+
+She could feel the moment when the balance of power in the house truly
+changed, though, when a Potter ancestor brought home something that
+shone and flashed and heaved like a sea of metal, and had ambitions of
+its own. The Maze, she knew; Connor had told her about it. But it was
+another thing altogether to feel that mind brushing against hers,
+searching, questing, and then turning away in uninterest because she was
+not a Potter. Parvati shivered and wrapped her arms around herself---at
+least, she did if she still had arms. She was not sure if she had a body
+anymore, or if she stood embodied in the vision alone.
+
+\emph{Like being judged by the sun itself.}
+
+She turned, and people were coming and going on either side of her,
+cupping their hands around their mouths to shout, battling with swords,
+dueling with wands. Now and then she saw a death, a man falling with his
+mouth swelling with blood, a woman perishing as she ran from her enemies
+and collapsed into a thicket of brush, but more often she saw the raw
+material of life. The Potter ancestors moved along their tracks and
+refused to pay attention to her. Of course, most of them had never known
+her, so Parvati wouldn't expect much attention from them.
+
+She moved away from the house, walking slowly among them. She saw one
+woman, with a face lovely in its determination alone, running from a
+shape that swooped behind her as gold and red fire, now and then staring
+at a compass in her hand. She saw a woman speaking to a tribe of
+brownies, and nodding when the nearest one said something to her in a
+voice too high-pitched for Parvati to make sense of it. She saw another
+woman holding up a baby boy with a weary, peaceful expression in her
+eyes. Parvati found she would have liked to know the story of that woman
+most of all. There was something about the way she tucked the baby into
+a cot that said she had known much sorrow, and even the baby's birth was
+not without sorrow, but it might be the beginning of an end to grief.
+Since she had always thought that parents had the most to be worried
+about, Parvati wondered how that could be.
+
+She saw a young man with a jawline and nose that looked like Connor's
+dancing with a woman, while his gaze went again and again to another man
+across the room, a man who kept his back pointedly turned. She saw a man
+who could almost have been Harry if not for his grey eyes backing slowly
+away from a portrait from which blackness swirled to engulf him. She saw
+James Potter gently putting a flower on the lid of a shut casket.
+
+There were dazzling images, like thunderbolts, of Courtroom Ten in the
+old Ministry, where Parvati knew the trial had been held. There were
+more flashes, probably camera flashes, and she knew that she was in
+Connor's memories now. She slowed and watched more attentively.
+
+And she knew him better than she ever had before, not from the glimpses
+of his actions, but from the sense of his personality that seethed
+around her like water. She knew that he was stubborn, yes, but she had
+never realized that he was stubborn enough to drive himself into
+exhaustion just to prove a point. And she had never known that his
+daring went deep enough that he could make the greatest of sacrifices
+just because he thought it was right. Fear wasn't quite a stranger to
+him, but it was enough of a stranger to make him the perfect candidate
+for Gryffindor, almost the stereotype of their shared House.
+
+Parvati envied that courage. She had often found she had trouble acting,
+at least until all the other avenues of action were eliminated and there
+was only one way forward.
+
+And then she stepped around a corner and found herself in a boundless
+ocean of impulsiveness. Connor did things because they seemed like good
+ideas at the time, without thinking them through. Those could be taunts
+and insults to people he shouldn't taunt and insult, or they could be
+acts of reckless generosity. The main commonality was the never
+thinking, the leaping and trusting to fate.
+
+Parvati shook her head, a helpless smile curling her lips. She
+understood, now, both where Connor had found the impulse to propose to
+her using an ancient Light ritual, and why he had insisted on sticking
+close to it even after he found out the requirements and how difficult
+the vows could be to keep.
+
+And bursting on her like flicker after flicker of an eternal sunrise was
+that conviction he had already explained to her, that one should take
+happiness where it was found. Seize the sun, don't let it race past.
+
+Parvati held her arms open. She might not always agree with that
+philosophy, but she could certainly embrace it.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Connor drew a breath, and found himself coughing. There were unfamiliar
+flowers all around him, and the shivering, shifting fronds of unfamiliar
+plants. He turned in a circle, and saw only more plants. He knocked them
+aside, and there were trees, the trunks at last, swaying so far above
+him that he couldn't help but feel small.
+
+He stepped forward, and the flowers and trees streamed away on either
+side of him to reveal the river that hid behind. Connor could see people
+moving determinedly along the river, driving reluctant cattle, washing
+clothes, casting garlands of flowers into the water, avoiding the wakes
+of motion that spoke of crocodiles. Most of the women had black hair and
+dark brown skin, like Parvati's, but Connor couldn't tell which ones
+were the more distant ancestors. Now and then they spoke words he
+couldn't understand, in a language that danced with the water and their
+motions, and left Connor feeling like an outsider.
+
+But the ritual had brought him here so that he could understand the
+history of the Patil line, not reject it. It was \emph{his} fault if he
+felt like that. Connor lifted his chin and stepped forward, determined
+to be involved.
+
+The scene shifted away from the water and into large houses built in a
+style Connor had no name for. The houses rose and surged and fell,
+becoming small sometimes, turning into temples sometimes, becoming open
+clearings sometimes before they grew walls again. Connor grasped that
+the fortunes of the Patil line had changed over time. That, he did
+understand.
+
+A woman with black hair that swept the forest floor battled a fire that
+tried to burn down a good portion of the trees she felt responsible for,
+and collapsed in exhaustion only near morning, when her husband came
+with the help he'd run to bring. A woman with a circle instead of a wand
+cast a spell Connor had never heard before, and a hill rumbled and
+faltered and came down. On the surface of water, the same river Connor
+had seen before or another one, walked a woman clad in such power that
+Connor had to control the urge to bow. \emph{So Parvati has at least one
+Lady among her ancestors.}
+
+There were men, too, busily building and directing and commanding and
+taking care of children. Connor watched one of them make an ink from a
+mixture of juices and blood, and set about writing what Connor supposed
+was the last letter to a woman he had once loved. One of them trailed
+blood from a wound high on his shoulder, and died, but he had bought his
+daughter enough time to get away. One stood leaning on the shoulder of a
+grazing cow, his eyes shut, dreaming the day away, and Connor knew his
+life had passed in peace and there had been no need for him to rise to
+heights of courage, though he could have done so if he needed to.
+
+White faces appeared among the dark ones, and Connor watched as the
+world changed, with Indian wizards and witches retreating farther away
+from their Muggles, and magic becoming a rumor and then a distant dream.
+War struck in new ways, new ideas of country arose, trees fell with
+their branches singing songs of desolation, and Connor would have liked
+to stay and watch, but a Patil woman with a young boy in her arms
+stepped onto a ship and sailed away in the direction of Britain, and the
+vision, of course, followed them.
+
+He watched as the Patils slid smoothly into the main wake of British
+wizarding life, accepting the rituals and customs of the country they
+found themselves in, though in private they would still use the ones of
+the land they had come from. They had always been part of the Light, and
+if the Light here was tamer than they had known it, well, that did not
+matter; it was still the Light. Their children grew up speaking two
+languages and living in two worlds, and that had always been a matter of
+pride, a source of strength, rather than something shameful.
+
+Sita Patil rested in a bed with two girls in her arms. Connor focused
+easily on Parvati, not only because she was the younger, but because the
+vision drew him to her and pulled him into the center of her blood and
+bone and breath.
+
+Merlin, she was stubborn. If she needed to do something, she went ahead
+and did it, and damn the consequences. On the other hand, if she didn't
+want to do something, she would avoid it and whinge as long as
+possible---but her conscience could convict her and drag her into doing
+the right thing, the way that it had with the house elves.
+
+She had pride, and she had vanity, and it wasn't always possible to tell
+where one ended and the next began. Nor did Parvati truly see a problem
+with this. So she could not solve the problem with the skills she took
+pride in? Then she would step away and declare the problem unsolvable,
+or at least better not solved. Anyone who could solve it might earn a
+glance of admiration, or a back turned in a huff, depending on how
+Parvati was feeling at the moment.
+
+She envied Padma. She felt herself dumb, sometimes, because the Sorting
+Hat hadn't put her in Ravenclaw, and that was where her father had hoped
+she would end up. On the other hand, she had known she would go into
+Gryffindor, which the rest of her family had only predicted sometimes,
+so she had the satisfaction of knowing herself better than anyone in the
+family did.
+
+She loved like a limpet. Once catching hold, never letting go. Connor
+basked in that, and grinned when he realized that he could feel a
+current of Parvati's thought moving through \emph{his} thoughts. She
+told him to remember that her irritation could be as long-lasting and
+penetrating as her love.
+
+Connor did not care. He folded himself around her, and then the vision
+whirled and bore him back.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Connor opened his eyes. He still knelt on the floor in front of Parvati,
+and when he looked at her, he could see the shadows of her ancestors
+hovering around her shoulders, as she could doubtless see his. With the
+circle so open, anyone with a right to stand in it could enter.
+
+But now was the time to close the circle, and make it still welcoming,
+but primarily for the two of them alone.
+
+``I love you, Parvati,'' he said steadily. He had never been surer of
+something in his life. Harry was sure about \emph{vates} things and
+Draco; well, Connor was sure about this. ``And I promise that I am
+yours, soul and body and mind and heart and magic, never to betray,
+never to turn aside. What comes on the path, Dark or Light or shadowy,
+we share it together.''
+
+``I love you, Connor,'' Parvati said, and Connor thought his heart would
+beat its way out of his chest in his joy and excitement. ``The path can
+turn, but it shall never shake us off. And though we may become angry
+with each other, or despairing, or weary, there is something larger than
+ourselves that we swear fealty to with this oath.'' She leaned forward,
+a breath from his lips, and whispered, ``We share it together.''
+
+And then, finally, the circle closed around them with a hiss and a blast
+of light and a high note of phoenix song, and Connor could
+\emph{finally} kiss her.
+
+The kiss wasn't all that different from others they'd shared, Connor
+thought. Her lips were still soft, and the inside of her mouth still
+tasted nice, and her hair still swept along and tickled his cheeks. But
+he had wanted to do this, and he had wanted to complete the ceremony,
+and he felt happy and smug and ready to bounce off the walls, even if
+the kiss was ordinary.
+
+The ritual blazed around them, and died away at last, but their kiss
+didn't end until both of them, shared breath or not, needed to take in
+air. Connor caressed Parvati's cheek as he pulled away from her, and
+then flexed his hand. It \emph{hurt} from their long joined clasp.
+
+``Who should we tell first?'' Connor asked.
+
+``It's only fair that we tell Harry first,'' Parvati said graciously.
+``We're in the same house as he is, after all.'' Then she grinned. "But
+\emph{then} we're telling my parents and Padma. And they can yell for at
+least ten minutes, all right? And we can both explain to them that
+they're not going to change our minds. In fact, given this ritual, it
+wouldn't do any good for them to try and make us change our minds."
+
+Connor snorted. The glee on Parvati's face was infectious.
+
+He almost hoped that Sita and Rama Patil would suggest that he and
+Parvati were too young to get married. He almost hoped Draco would sneer
+and insist that Connor and Parvati were idiots to have chosen a ritual
+that permanently joined them, not to be parted.
+
+\emph{Let them try. Just let them try.} The certainty shone inside him,
+solid and bright as a golden ring. \emph{I've never been surer of
+anything in my life.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 90*: The World Is Green and
+Gold}\label{chapter-90-the-world-is-green-and-gold}
+
+This is one of those chapters that reaches out to embrace a bunch of
+people. Thus, a lot of viewpoints. It's also the last happy chapter for
+a while.
+
+\textbf{Chapter Seventy-Three: The World Is Green and Gold}
+
+``No.''
+
+``But---''
+
+``No.''
+
+The woman in front of Hawthorn leaned back huffily and crossed her arms
+over her chest.
+
+Hawthorn gave her a patient look to contradict the impatient one.
+``There is very little that I can do for you,'' she said. "I understand
+why you don't like being a werewolf---neither did I---but the potion
+still needs a portion of sacrificed magic to make it work. You were born
+a Muggle, so you don't have the magic to give up. I hope that in a few
+years we'll have a version of the potion that \emph{can} work without
+using magic that way, but for right now, we don't." She nodded,
+politely, at the door behind the woman, and started to turn back to the
+paperwork on her desk. They'd given her an office at the Ministry.
+Hawthorn had no idea whether that had more to do with her work on the
+lycanthropy cure or with the fact that, since she was running for
+Minister, Cupressus seemed to think his organization should welcome her.
+
+``What if I asked someone else to sacrifice his or her magic for me?''
+The Muggle werewolf had leaned across the desk again, honey-colored hair
+falling into wide brown eyes as she stared pleadingly at Hawthorn.
+``Could the potion work if I found someone who would agree?''
+
+``There's a variation that might work in a few months,'' Hawthorn
+murmured, touching a piece of parchment that concerned exactly that.
+``For now, though, the magic has to come from the werewolf healed.''
+
+The woman spun and stalked out of her office without another word.
+
+Hawthorn snorted and made a notation on a piece of parchment. The number
+of Muggle werewolves who had come seeking a cure she couldn't provide
+was now nearly twenty. Hawthorn refused to feel bad about it. She
+empathized with their desperation and their helplessness, none better,
+but she had provided one miracle in her life. She doubted she would
+receive two.
+
+From what Potions experts had told her when they studied the cure,
+Hawthorn had achieved it on the basis of will, inspiration, pure blind
+luck, and her \emph{ignorance} of the way that most Potions ingredients
+interacted. She had essentially thrown things together that no one else
+would have tried, because of the likelihood of their rendering the
+potion too volatile or stagnant. Apparently, the cure \emph{did} become
+stagnant at some points in the brewing process, but Hawthorn had simply
+pressed ahead through that, where other brewers would have stopped and
+tried to estimate how much they could recover from the mess. And the
+pauses she'd taken during the process, while she paced and worried about
+what would happen when she consumed the potion, had turned out to be
+long enough to add some life to the liquid.
+
+No, she could not expect another combination of luck and grace and
+intelligence like that to come again.
+
+But that didn't mean she couldn't work on improving the potion. And it
+didn't mean that she had to spend the rest of her life only doing things
+involved with lycanthropy cures and werewolf rights, either.
+
+Hawthorn stretched her arms above her head with a little smile, and
+nearly yawned with her tongue rolling the length of her mouth, as she
+had when she was in lupine form. She saw no reason her life should have
+a bound or a limit. She had survived what the world could throw at her
+so far. She could survive challenges that she chose to enter of her own
+free will.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Lucius walked calmly down the hall, his robes flaring behind him. If
+anyone did come up behind him and were so crass as to be curious about
+his whereabouts, they would not be able to tell he'd been outside Mrs.
+Parkinson's office.
+
+He knew they still had a score to settle. It was in the way their gazes
+crossed like swords at Ministry meetings. So long as the war with the
+Dark Lord remained the main priority in Britain and Harry needed unity
+among his allies, they could put their hatreds aside. But when that war
+ended---
+
+There would be a duel.
+
+Lucius fully intended to make sure he survived it, and if that survival
+included spying on his opponent to learn her weaknesses, then that was
+what he would do.
+
+He reached the small office Apollonis had set aside for him---smaller
+than Hawthorn's, he couldn't help noticing, almost a closet. He took a
+seat behind the desk and gathered up the paperwork on it. A faint smile
+touched his face when he noticed that the first piece of parchment was a
+letter from the American negotiators he'd been writing to.
+
+The small went rather fainter when he read the letter that informed him
+his share of power in the American Ministry had grown smaller; they'd
+discovered that Draco, as Harry's joined partner, had the more influence
+over him and what magical creatures he might come to the United States
+to free, and they had learned that Draco could invent spells.
+Apparently, though some of the Ministry officials would keep up good
+relations with Lucius, they saw more profit in writing to Draco to get
+what they wanted. The age factor could make his son small in their eyes,
+but not for very long, especially since Draco \emph{was} past the age of
+magical majority.
+
+And something struck Lucius then, something he had not noticed before.
+He put down the letter and stared thoughtfully at the far wall of his
+office, after making sure that anyone peering through the door would not
+be able to tell anything from his face.
+
+He was remembering, now, the way that Narcissa had not interfered when
+he instructed Draco in the suppression of emotion and the Dark pureblood
+rituals that it was absolutely essential he go to Hogwarts knowing, but
+had often taken their son away for a private talk afterwards. He was
+remembering, now, that Narcissa had got her way in many things that
+seemed small at the time, from Draco's name---after a constellation,
+instead of after his Malfoy grandfather, the way that Lucius had wanted
+to name him---to the fact that he had attended Hogwarts instead of
+Durmstrang. He was remembering his wife's soft and subtle comments to
+their son, comments that could build up, over a lifetime, and change the
+way that someone viewed the world.
+
+Lucius had wondered why his son was not a more perfect copy of himself.
+He had blamed weaknesses in Draco, for a long time, and he still thought
+it likely that his son was not made of the pure metal. Then he had
+blamed Harry, for overwhelming the independence and pride that a Malfoy
+should have had.
+
+Now, it seemed he should have looked closer to home. And perhaps even
+encouraged her, since the changes she had sculpted into Draco had
+insured that he was doing much better in the world than Lucius.
+
+Lucius set the letter aside. For reasons that had nothing to do with
+what he had just learned, he told himself, he didn't feel like writing
+to the Americans right now.
+
+It was time to think, and decide how he would speak to Draco when he saw
+him again, this time consciously not just his son, but Narcissa's.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Harry nodded as he watched the hovering star-shape spray its rays across
+the door of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. ``And you'll remain here to
+guard the people inside when the first day of spring comes, Miranda?''
+he asked. There were people in the old Black house now, since Harry felt
+able to control the forces that might harm them in the wake of his
+proper inheritance. That made the house a possible target when Voldemort
+recovered his power, of course, so Harry wanted to be sure that the
+former house elf understood the importance of protecting it.
+
+``Yes, I will!'' The star danced back and forth. ``I love the safehouse
+in the north, but I have learned the people there, and I know all their
+stories. There are new stories here.'' She skimmed up and down the front
+door, and Harry saw small sparks of green and golden light fly out and
+sink into the wood. He shivered. He felt them as tickling fingers that
+stroked up his sides and down his spine. ``I will do what I can to
+protect them, and I will call on you if the attack falls here.''
+
+Harry nodded, feeling one of the worries in his mind collapse. Because
+he could not say where Voldemort might choose to strike first, he was
+strengthening the defenses at all the safehouses, arranging at least one
+powerful protector who would both be able to hold his or her own for a
+time and summon him if danger came knocking.
+
+``Thank you, Miranda,'' he said, and stretched out his hand so that her
+light could fall on his skin. He raised an eyebrow when the door opened,
+since he hadn't heard the sound of footsteps approaching, but understood
+when Argutus flowed out and came to him, coiling around his leg.
+
+"\emph{I have been upstairs and downstairs, and something screaming in
+the wall hurt my head.}" Argutus turned himself so that his snout was
+lying in the hollow of Harry's throat, something he only did when he
+wanted comfort. "\emph{Can we go home now? I promise to lie on your lap
+and warm you and be warm. But I do not want to be here with the
+screaming thing any longer.}"
+
+Harry chuckled and stroked the milky-smooth scales. They shone now, with
+no trace of the dullness that had afflicted them when Argutus showed up
+at Silver-Mirror in January. ``Not yet. We have a few more houses to
+visit today, and secure against the Snake Lord attacking.'' He walked
+out into the blustery March wind, to find a place where he could
+Apparate in peace, waving farewell to Miranda as he went. The green and
+golden star bobbed up and down in recognition. Harry felt a great peace
+well up in him. Here was a house elf who had never known slavery, and
+who had become what her people were meant to be, again. As soon as the
+safehouses were secured, Harry would try to free more house elves; if
+they had known slavery, they could at least know the intoxication of
+their own proper freedom.
+
+"\emph{He is not my Lord,}" Argutus said. "\emph{I wish you would stop
+calling him that. If anyone is my Lord, it is you.}"
+
+Harry rolled his eyes, and told himself he shouldn't blush over
+something a snake said to him. It wasn't as though anyone else in the
+immediate vicinity could understand Argutus, anyway. ``It's convenient
+to call him that in Parseltongue.''
+
+"\emph{But it's wrong.}"
+
+Harry shook his head. This was an argument that they'd had for weeks
+now, and he doubted he would win it. On the other hand, it was fun to
+argue, or at least it could be when his emotions were free and nothing
+great was at stake.
+
+``Snake Lord, Snake Lord, Snake Lord,'' he hissed mockingly while he
+prepared to jump to Woodhouse, and then lost his breath for the hisses
+when Argutus squeezed him.
+
+"\emph{Remember that I'm a constrictor,}" Argutus said darkly. "\emph{I
+don't need any silly venom to make you regret taunting me.}"
+
+And then, of course, Harry had to stroke his head and flatter him so
+that he wouldn't feel unappreciated, and that had to continue after
+they'd Apparated, too. Not even the promise of a new house to explore
+could pacify Argutus when he was this irritated.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Snakes had made the seas. Each curling wave was a serpent, and the foam
+that crashed on the beaches was the poison from their jaws. The humans
+believed that such foam could not hurt them---they had lost their fear
+of the sea-serpents---but who knew? Perhaps the venom would grow potent
+again someday, and then they would scorn themselves for having scorned
+the danger.
+
+The dreams were near now, were tapestries made of hooks, swelling folds
+of cloth that leaped and wavered in the breeze of his victim's mind. He
+no longer had to prevent himself from yanking on them, and revealing his
+hand too soon. This was \emph{artistry}, and he would no sooner destroy
+his own artistry than he would forgive Harry his crimes against him and
+let him go.
+
+His mind raced smoothly among the folds and plunged into another mind he
+had learned well. He could reach his coiled serpent, the serpent in the
+breast, even when he was awake now, and whisper the old ambitions into
+his thoughts, and tug on the tangled threads of dreams and hatred. It
+was a trick he had used before, but so keen had his patience been this
+time that no one had noticed the telltale signs. He had \emph{shown} his
+victims their nightmares, last time. This time, there was no need for
+that.
+
+And now the time was very near. The first day of spring. The moment when
+the balance passed from Dark back to Light, and the power suppressing
+the Lord Voldemort's own magic would vanish.
+
+He had emerged from his regeneration. He had a clean new skin, the
+coiled serpent, the serpent beneath the earth, the serpent in the sea,
+who reached out and called to his unwitting willing child, the serpent
+in the breast.
+
+They all thought he would burst from the earth and attack Harry's
+precious safehouses. Or they all thought he would create Horcruxes to
+replace the ones he had lost, as if any wandering Muggle child would do
+for the murder, any old shoe do for the object that would hold a shard
+of his soul.
+
+They were fools. They understood \emph{nothing}. The deaths had to be
+significant, and the objects trophies laden with emotional depth, or
+what emerged was not a Horcrux. It was worth nothing. That was the way
+the world worked. Every shadow was full of hidden webs of significance
+that the Lord Voldemort had long since accepted no one but him saw. At
+the very least, it made it hard for his enemies to guess what he would
+do next.
+
+He had already chosen his next Horcrux. He would Transfigure Harry's
+Omen snake into an enameled statue, and Harry's death would be the one
+he used to split his soul. But he need not worry about that yet, even if
+Harry managed the impossible, summoned Evan Rosier, and destroyed the
+Cup Horcrux.
+
+But the other, the battle.
+
+They were fools, all of them.
+
+Why did he need a final battle, when he had his serpent in the breast,
+and the third?
+
+The Lord Voldemort would win not because of what Harry would do---Harry
+always found some way around his most ingenious plans---but because of
+what Harry would \emph{never} do.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+``Leave me alone.''
+
+Well, Honoria didn't intend to do \emph{that}. Ignifer had lain under
+the blankets, a covered lump, for most of the morning. Honoria had
+spoken sweetly to her, coaxing her to rouse; she had offered breakfast
+in bed, which Ignifer still treated as an almost unimaginable luxury;
+she had offered to summon Tybalt and John through the Floo and let them
+laugh at her partner, lying around like this. The last had been
+desperate, admittedly, and not worthy of her, but Honoria had hoped the
+threat to Ignifer's dignity would get her on her feet.
+
+It hadn't worked. Ignifer still lay with her arms around her head and
+wailed like a much younger child. Honoria rolled her eyes, and,
+balancing with some confidence now on her artificial leg, decided that
+she could resort to a child's tactics in return. She conjured a sharp
+stick, softly enough that Ignifer didn't hear the incantation, and then
+poked Ignifer in the side with it.
+
+The blankets flew aside, and Ignifer sat up with a wild look on her
+face. Honoria stood, with the stick hovering next to her, and blinked at
+her as if she had no idea what had made Ignifer so angry.
+
+``You're finally up!'' she exclaimed, and clapped her hands.
+
+"\emph{Honoria.}"
+
+Ignifer said that in a dangerous tone, but Honoria had become rather
+used to hearing people say her name that way. Her mother had run out of
+ways to impress her with it long before Ignifer entered her life. So
+Honoria cocked her head to the side, widened her eyes, and pursed her
+mouth in a parody of attention. ``Yes?''
+
+"You don't \emph{understand}," Ignifer said, and ran a hand through the
+long, bright curls that Honoria found so appealing, and at the moment
+wished were disheveled for another reason than because Ignifer wouldn't
+keep her hands out of them. "What is going to \emph{happen} when my
+father's Minister? I \emph{know} he'll win the election, and I know that
+this compromising attitude he has right now can't last forever. It's the
+seventh of March, and the election is set for---what---the seventh of
+May? That means only two more months of freedom before he starts passing
+laws against the use of Dark magic, just the way that Juniper did. And
+he'll probably pass laws against children changing their names, too,"
+she added darkly.
+
+``No, he won't.'' Honoria thought Cupressus Apollonis was a bastard when
+it came to Ignifer because he \emph{was}, and anyone could see that; it
+wasn't something open to argument. But she thought Ignifer was wrong
+about this, and letting her conflicts with her father blind her to the
+fact that he could want what was best for the wizarding world \emph{and}
+be irrational when it came to her. ``He's given you up for lost,
+Ignifer. He'll always be far too polite to you, but that doesn't mean
+he'll hate other Dark wizards just because you Declared Dark. He's been
+working with them in the rebuilding of the Ministry, you remember.''
+
+``That's only for right now,'' Ignifer muttered. ``The minute he has the
+Minister's power, he'll change, mark my words.''
+
+Honoria snorted and sat down on the edge of the bed. ``I know what's
+wrong,'' she announced.
+
+Ignifer regarded her warily between strands of hair.
+
+``You want to reconcile with him,'' Honoria said. ``And you don't know
+how to do it, since you were the one who stamped out. Rather decisively,
+I might add,'' she said, with a faint sigh. The lovemaking from that
+night was still one of her favorite memories, but Ignifer probably
+wasn't up to a repetition right now, since Honoria had to enlighten her
+as to her true motives. "But you could \emph{admit} that, Ignifer, and I
+could help you figure out a way to reconcile with him. It's not the end
+of the world, you know, even though you changed your name and refuse to
+change your Declaration. You can overcome even his irrationality and his
+stubbornness. I managed to overcome yours, didn't I, when I first took
+you for my lover?"
+
+Ignifer's mouth fell open.
+
+Honoria patted her hand. ``You don't have to tell me how brilliant I
+am,'' she said, a bit condescendingly. Really, she could do with
+accolades for her brilliance, but even if Ignifer offered them right
+now, they wouldn't be sincere, so Honoria thought she might as well wait
+to demand them. ``I understand you better than anyone else does,
+Ignifer, even yourself. And I promise that I'll do the best I can to put
+you and your father into a room and get you to cooperate.'' The more she
+thought of this impossible goal, the more her interest kindled. Pranks
+would \emph{have} to be involved. And illusions. She felt the glamours
+of the lions gyrate above her shoulders as she thought of it. ``It might
+take years, but you'll have him back again, and he'll see that he has a
+daughter to be proud of, not to scorn.''
+
+"I don't want to \emph{reconcile} with him," Ignifer spluttered. ``I'm
+just afraid of what's going to happen when he becomes Minister, that's
+all!''
+
+Honoria patted her hand again. ``Of course you don't want that, dear.''
+\emph{Stubborn to the bone, both of them. It's no wonder they're so
+miserable apart. They need each other to take out their spleen on.}
+
+``Listen to me carefully, Honoria.'' Ignifer had leaned forward and
+gripped her hands, staring into her face. "I do not \emph{want}
+reconciliation with my father. I'm just worried about what will happen
+when he's in the position to bring down that peculiar idea of `justice'
+he has on the whole world."
+
+``Bah,'' said Honoria.
+
+And then she had to duck, because Ignifer seemed intent on calling
+enough fire to char her to a crisp. Honoria grinned as she changed into
+her Animagus form, her smile sharp enough to cut.
+
+\emph{No, it may not be true yet, but I can make it true. And at least
+she's not hiding beneath the blankets any more.}
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Cupressus gave a small shrug. He could not understand why the people
+around him demanded certainty, when the election hadn't happened yet and
+wasn't intended to happen for another few months. ``It is likely that I
+will win the election,'' he said. ``Until I do, I cannot promise you an
+appointment.''
+
+Periwinkle closed her eyes and fought for patience. Cupressus could see
+that, because he'd known her for years. He wondered what she had
+expected when she came to see him. She was of one of the Irish Light
+families who had followed him for decades, and then changed her
+allegiance to Harry and freed her house elves for money. Had she
+expected him to simply give her a position when she came questing
+around, sniffing around? What part of loyalty was alien to her?
+
+"I understand that you may be unable to \emph{say} yet," she said,
+finally forcing her eyes open. "But you could \emph{hint}---"
+
+``I have no need to hint,'' Cupressus said, and held her gaze. ``I do
+what I must do first for the survival of the Light, and secondarily of
+the alliance, and thirdly of the new Ministry, and fourth of my line. I
+see no place for hinting in any of that, madam. If anything, I must be
+honest, because there are too many parties around me who would take
+innuendo as a sign that I have betrayed one or another of my duties.''
+
+Periwinkle rose to her feet, trembling. ``You will regret the day when
+you turned me away, Cupressus Apollonis,'' she hissed.
+
+``I doubt that very much.'' Cupressus watched her in puzzlement that he
+took care to keep hidden. Why did she think such tactics would convince
+him? What had he done to her, that she thought taking revenge in this
+way would work?
+
+``I can keep votes of the Light from you.'' Periwinkle's face was
+triumphant.
+
+``Then I may not win,'' said Cupressus. \emph{Ah. That is what she
+thinks I want. She thinks I am so involved in the politics of it all as
+to care for my own power. But I am here because I think I can serve the
+Light here. If the people of the British wizarding world do not want me
+here, I will go home and serve the Light from there. She thinks she can
+threaten me because I have something to lose.}
+
+\emph{But the service of the Light is not something one can lose save by
+one's own actions.}
+
+After a long staring contest, Periwinkle whirled and strode from the
+room. Cupressus shook his head. \emph{There goes one who has forsaken
+her allegiance in her heart, and begun to hunger after power.}
+
+His Floo connection flared. Cupressus turned. There were only a small
+number of houses he permitted to reach him directly, without going
+through one of the lower offices, and he knew Harry was still involved
+in securing the safehouses, as best he could, against an attack by
+Voldemort.
+
+The face of the woman he supposed he must call his daughter-in-law,
+because it was the most convenient way to refer to her, appeared in the
+green flames. Cupressus inclined his head. ``Miss Pemberley.''
+
+``There are two of us now, you know,'' Honoria told him smartly.
+
+``No,'' said Cupressus, wondering that she did not know the usage. ``She
+is Mrs. Pemberley, because she joined into the family, and you are Miss.
+What can I do for you, Miss Pemberley?''
+
+Honoria only smiled as if he were amusing. To someone who was incapable
+of taking life seriously, Cupressus supposed, he might be. ``I came to
+talk to you about reconciling with your daughter.''
+
+Cupressus blinked, caught out for a moment. Then he raised his eyebrows.
+``Has she renounced her Declaration to the Dark?''
+
+``No.''
+
+``Has she said that she wants to reconcile with me, or that she will
+forgive me for the infertility curse I cast upon her?''
+
+``No.''
+
+``Then I cannot see that we have anything to say to one another.''
+Cupressus drew his cloak around his shoulders and gave a faint shrug.
+``A reconciliation between us will not work without those things, Miss
+Pemberley.''
+
+``You think so,'' said Honoria. ``But I am determined to make it work,
+and I think you know how strong my determination can be, Mr.
+Apollonis.''
+
+She closed the Floo connection before he could say anything more, and
+left Cupressus regarding the hearth thoughtfully.
+
+The partner Ignifer had chosen for herself was very far from the one he
+would have chosen for her: female, and therefore unable to give her
+children; Dark; half-blood; of a family so minor that its son had almost
+not spoiled himself by marrying a Muggle.
+
+But she was forceful. Cupressus could grant her that. And if she did
+manage to reconcile them, then he would be forced to grant her a measure
+of respect, as well.
+
+He put it out of his mind as he strode from the building. He would not
+resist the reconciliation if it happened, as long as at least some of
+his own wishes were respected.
+
+\emph{What happens, happens, and all is the will of the Light.}
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Owen took a deep breath and pushed his hair back behind his ears.
+Shoulder-length, he noted absently. He should really cut it, or perhaps
+just trim the ends a bit. Shoulder-length hair on a head of family was
+appropriate.
+
+He was surprised to find out how much he \emph{enjoyed} politics.
+
+Yes, he had enjoyed being near Harry, guarding him and fulfilling the
+duties of a sworn companion, too, but that had been a different kind of
+enjoyment. He had been serene then, knowing exactly what he needed to do
+and how to do it. It was the pleasure of competence, of trained muscles
+and magic doing what he told them to do.
+
+Here, in the Ministry, serving as liaison with the Dark families and
+their representative to Light wizards like Cupressus Apollonis, his mind
+had to work harder than ever, flinging itself through myriad wheels,
+like a Crup trained to perform in a circus. And still there were always
+demands pressing against him that he hadn't thought about, and ruffled
+tempers to soothe, and laughter that followed him and might or might not
+be directed at him. This was like dancing across broken glass and
+eggshells, with the knowledge that a shard could pierce his foot at any
+time.
+
+It was \emph{wonderful.}
+
+And here came one of the women he needed to see now. Owen patted his
+robe pocket and stood.
+
+``Miss Nonpareil, ma'am!'' he called, and watched her turn around in
+surprise. Faustine Nonpareil wasn't used to people calling for
+\emph{her} instead of Elizabeth, her older cousin, who was the head of
+the family and the one most people paid attention to, since she had all
+the money and all the prestige. But, of course, Elizabeth had no
+\emph{sense}, and while to most Dark wizards that just made her more
+convenient, since she couldn't challenge their dominance over her, Owen
+was determined that \emph{no} one who was Dark and running for Minister
+would look like an idiot. Not even if she really, really wanted to. And
+that would have to include Elizabeth.
+
+``Yes, Mr. Rosier-Henlin?'' Faustine asked. ``What can I do for you?''
+Like her cousin, she wore black and silver, but the silver was weaker on
+her, the black more severe. Owen liked the effect. She shone like a
+comet when she walked the halls of the Ministry, and her family had been
+sending her to walk them more and more often, since she was one of the
+few immediate relatives who could manage Elizabeth. Her hair was dark,
+her eyes were dark, and her complexion was dark, though Owen couldn't
+immediately tell if her heritage was Indian, Egyptian, or something
+else. ``Has Elizabeth made another mistake?'' The grimace at the mention
+of her cousin was so fleeting that one would have to concentrate to know
+how she felt.
+
+``Not as such,'' said Owen, and held out his hand. Faustine looked at
+it, but didn't clasp it. ``I wanted to know if you would be amenable to
+doing something that would improve the reputation of the Nonpareil
+family, or at least hold it steady through this election. I do not want
+to see Elizabeth making such a fool of herself as to stain the rest of
+you.''
+
+Faustine's eyebrows rose. ``And why would the fate of another family
+matter to you so much, Mr. Rosier-Henlin?''
+
+Owen kept his hand out. ``Because I've been watching Light wizards, Miss
+Nonpareil.''
+
+``Really.''
+
+``Yes.'' Owen shifted so that the books under his other arm were more
+firmly balanced, and, hopefully, so that his arm wouldn't start to
+tremble with weariness. ``They cooperate to protect their allegiance,
+the best of them, to insure that Light children will grow up with the
+chances that come with being Light. I think we should do the same, those
+of us who can, to protect the Dark.''
+
+\emph{I didn't judge her wrong,} Owen thought as her eyes fired.
+\emph{Yes, she's interested, and she can look beyond herself, and even
+the end of her family's interests.} It was the rare Dark wizard or witch
+who could, even now. They simply weren't trained to it the way the Light
+ones were.
+
+"That sounds \emph{very} interesting, Mr. Rosier-Henlin," Faustine said,
+and this time she took his hand, letting her fingers slip along his
+palm. ``In more ways than one.''
+
+Owen felt his brow flex, and then he smiled. Well, why not? A bit of
+flirting never hurt anyone, and it might make things more interesting.
+
+``I have an office where we can talk, Miss Nonpareil,'' he said.
+
+She gave him a smile as deep and dangerous as a well of still water.
+``Please, Owen,'' she murmured. ``Call me Faustine.''
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Syrinx wondered sometimes if anyone had noticed. She didn't think they
+had.
+
+When Laura had sent her to Harry, it had been because Syrinx was
+entering the phase of her war witch training where she would need to
+find an anchor---the person who kept her sane, who inspired her, who was
+her example---and she had chosen Harry. A few of her relatives had
+argued against the choice, saying Harry was likely to die any day, and
+did Syrinx really want to be left in the shattered sanity that would
+follow if her anchor perished? Look what had happened to Augustus
+Starrise when his sister died.
+
+But Syrinx had been sure. One couldn't argue with a war witch, or
+perhaps one couldn't argue with a determined Gloryflower woman, and so
+at last they had given in, muttering, and Laura had sent her to serve
+Harry as a sworn companion. She had been one of three, and then two, and
+then four. It was rather interesting, watching how the patterns swarmed
+and how they changed.
+
+But more interesting than that was watching Harry, and gathering her
+feet under her, and becoming a war witch, and making him her anchor.
+
+He was a good anchor, Syrinx knew. Others might see him as undeclared;
+in fact, they let the idea of his Declaration rule them to the extent
+that they could not see what he \emph{did}, what magic he actually used,
+or what he believed. But she had watched him in quiet moments when no
+one else was about to observe, and in the midst of battle, and she saw
+the Light that underlay his morals, shining and singing like a flute
+buried long ago but enchanted to play when someone brought it into the
+sunlight again.
+
+The Light understood free will, and Harry embodied it.
+
+The Light valued cooperation, and Harry built alliances.
+
+The Light knew peace, and that was what Harry longed for.
+
+The Light loved honesty, and Harry stuck to that where he could, even
+when it damaged him.
+
+The Light enacted restrictions, and so did Harry, holding back his power
+when he could easily have used it, limiting himself \emph{voluntarily}.
+The Dark wizards around him had the most trouble understanding that,
+Syrinx knew. Why wouldn't you exercise all the power you could, claim
+all you might, take all you wanted for yourself?
+
+They did not ask the question that was the complement of that: Why
+\emph{would} you?
+
+So he was her anchor, and she walked with him in the guise of an
+emotionless servant, the war witch in this phase of her training, while
+under the surface lay a wonderful sunlit world that only she was aware
+of. The sunlit world stretched, and blossomed, and she leaned much that
+even her older relatives did not know, because Gloryflowers rarely
+ventured out to meet Dark wizards, and rarely battled beside them when
+they did.
+
+So no one had noticed her sculpting herself into what she had wanted to
+become, but that did not matter. Now she had completed the sculpting,
+and left this phase of her training, and she could press forward into
+the next.
+
+Syrinx lifted her head and \emph{became}.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+``But you can't just do that,'' Padma argued.
+
+Parvati felt a great peace. ``We can,'' she said. ``We could. We did.''
+She had decided, after all, to tell her twin the great news of her
+marriage first, in private. There would be time for shouting and tears
+from Rama and Sita later. But she wanted to hear what Padma had to say
+separately from what their parents would say. ``We're married, Padma,
+and it's one of those bonds that will not let you leave it. So I'm bound
+to Connor for all this lifetime, and probably in the next as well.''
+
+"That's \emph{stupid}," Padma pointed out. ``What happens if one of you
+dies?''
+
+Parvati shrugged. ``Well, we can actually get married again, if we wish,
+but not with the same ritual, or another as binding. And I could always
+have lovers. Or he could have lovers,'' she had to add, though she
+didn't like to think about it. ``But that's the kind of thing that we
+chose to accept when we chose this ritual, Padma. Believe me, I took a
+long time to think about it.'' An unconscionably long time, it seemed to
+her now, since their wedding had turned out so well. " And now we're
+married, and no one can separate us. Even if we weren't of legal age,
+this binding would take precedence over any claim of family, you know."
+
+Padma scowled at her, and muttered something Parvati couldn't believe
+she'd heard. ``What?'' she whispered.
+
+``I said,'' Padma repeated, ``that I would have liked to be invited to
+attend my twin sister's wedding.''
+
+And then Parvati felt as if clean air were pouring in on her, because
+Padma \emph{wasn't} angry with her, not at all, and she understood the
+reasons that Parvati had wanted to marry Connor like this, and even with
+one circle of her soul closed so that she only shared it with Connor,
+they were still sisters.
+
+Parvati extended her hand through the Floo connection, and Padma grasped
+it back. They knelt there on either side of the flames for a moment, not
+mirror images of twin girls, but something better than that.
+
+Then Parvati pulled her hand back, and asked, ``Do you want to be in the
+same room when I tell Mum and Dad?''
+
+``Of course,'' said Padma, and her small, vicious smile made Parvati
+expect that she'd enjoy the yelling from both sides. \emph{Well, she can
+enjoy it. I would never deprive my sister of that.}
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+``Potter! Wait up.''
+
+Connor turned around, his eyebrows raised in polite inquiry, but his
+inner child snickering. He'd expected Draco to pounce on him much
+earlier in the day, actually. People around the kitchen table, when he'd
+first seemed to notice the remnants of the ritual hanging about Connor
+and Parvati, had probably kept him from it, though. ``Malfoy,'' Connor
+said, returning last name for last name. "What's the matter? I believe
+Harry's still out at the safehouses, since it \emph{is} only ten days
+until Voldemort attacks, after all---"
+
+``What ritual did you perform?'' Draco scratched his nose, and then
+scratched the centers of his palms, as if he had to convince Connor that
+he really did itch all over. "It's been driving me \emph{mad.}"
+
+``Oh, that.'' Connor gave a little shrug, making sure that it was
+casual. ``Parvati and I joined in a marriage ritual a few days ago. We
+talked to Harry about it afterwards, and he gave us his blessing. I
+didn't mention it to you because you've been busy with those new spells
+for the Ministry and I didn't think you'd really care about such things,
+but---''
+
+"You did \emph{not} get married, Potter." Draco's cheeks were flaming
+patches of color in a very pale face.
+
+``Yes, we did,'' Connor said, controlling his intense enjoyment. He had
+known this would shock Draco, and that had been one of the first
+pleasant side-effects he'd thought of when he first discovered the
+ritual in a book. ``Oh, granted, it wasn't an enormous ceremony like
+some couples have. Or a three-year-dance,'' he added, because he
+couldn't help himself. ``But that doesn't mean it isn't legitimate. It's
+based on a justice ritual. It would have separated us, violently, if one
+of us was unwilling, or if we had agreed at first and then backed out
+halfway through the binding.''
+
+"But you can't be \emph{married}," Draco repeated. ``It's impossible.
+You're still impossibly childish, and you know it.''
+
+Connor clapped him on the shoulder. ``I suppose that I should take your
+word for it, of course, mate,'' he said. ``The ritual must have been a
+mirage, and Parvati must have shared the same dream, since she's walking
+around thinking we're married, and even mentioned it to her sister and
+her parents. At least they'll be relieved, though. They were awfully
+angry we married.''
+
+Draco jerked away from him. ``Why did you do this?'' he hissed.
+
+``I think the better question, Malfoy, would be why do you care so
+much?'' And Connor turned his back and left him there, spluttering,
+because of course Malfoy didn't care so much about the marriage itself
+as the fact that something had happened which he couldn't predict.
+
+Connor slowed when he passed Michael standing at a window, staring out
+into the sky, tears streaming down his cheeks. The temptation to pass on
+was great, but---well, he was Michael's friend, in a way, if only
+because no one else would be, so that made it his duty to ask after
+things like this.
+
+``Michael?'' he murmured. Perhaps the other boy wouldn't hear him, and
+then Connor could creep on.
+
+Michael whirled around and caught Connor in an embrace. Connor blinked
+and stood still, wondering what had happened. Luckily, Michael told him
+immediately, instead of demanding that he guess.
+
+``Connor,'' he said. ``I got---I got a letter from my brother. From the
+Ministry. He's thinking about me! He even gave me a Portkey so that I
+can visit him whenever I want.'' He held up a pebble, and his smile was
+wide enough to stretch the burn on the side of his face. "He's
+\emph{thinking} about me," he whispered.
+
+Connor patted him gently on the shoulder and then detached from him.
+``I'm glad, Michael,'' he whispered. ``So glad. If anyone deserves to
+have the notice of his older brother more often, it's you.'' He
+remembered when he would have given a Quidditch victory to have Harry
+pay attention to him.
+
+Michael smiled at him, and bounced off. Connor stood where he was for a
+moment, feeling a silly grin widen across his face.
+
+The world was full of light.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Thomas sat back and stared at the book expectantly. It looked thick
+enough, having a wooden cover and creamy parchment pages. The gold
+lettering on the front proclaimed what it was, \emph{A Record of Common
+Sense and Morality.}
+
+He picked it up and hit himself over the head with it.
+
+The stunning impact traveled down through his skull, and Thomas dropped
+his forehead to the table, gasping. It \emph{hurt}, but the pain was
+only a distraction, really. He was much more interested in seeing if the
+knowledge he'd imparted into the book, of moral precepts he'd only read
+a few times, would brighten and glow inside his mind.
+
+And---
+
+Yes! It was happening! Thomas would have danced if it weren't for his
+pounding headache and the book crushing his hand and the fact that the
+knowledge probably still needed time to trickle down and really settle
+into his mind. It didn't yet work as \emph{well} as he would like, since
+the words were just silent, as if someone had read the book to him once,
+and not repeating themselves in his head, but he could improve it.
+
+And then, there would be no excuse for anyone anywhere in the
+\emph{world} to be stupid.
+
+Thomas smiled. The world was full of light.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+``Thank you, Neville.'' Henrietta smiled up at the Longbottom boy as she
+crouched over the vines he had helped her pot and settle when they
+arrived from the Yaxley garden. ``I could never have done this without
+you.''
+
+Longbottom nodded and wiped his forehead with the back of one hand,
+leaving a long streak of sweat in the dirt. ``They were tricky ones to
+settle, Professor,'' he said. He still called her that, though the
+chances that Henrietta would ever teach at the rebuilt Hogwarts were
+nonexistent. ``I'm glad that you called on me. I'd hate to have seen
+them die.'' He eyed the dark green vines with silver markings down the
+middle as if they would die now just to spite him.
+
+Henrietta nodded back. ``And you won't tell anyone about them, of
+course, will you, Neville?''
+
+At once his face paled, and he all but stumbled away from her,
+swallowing at the same time as he tried to speak, so that the result was
+rather muffled. But Henrietta still made out the, ``Of c-course not,
+Professor.''
+
+Satisfied, she turned back to the pots as Neville ran away, and stroked
+a finger down the middle of a vine. It curled around her finger and
+tried to hold tight, but Henrietta eased her hand gently away. She'd
+tried the vines on herself, of course, and they had worked to
+perfection. It would be considerably harder to use them on Harry, but
+she had twenty-five pots here, and the vines still had some time to grow
+before the equinox arrived.
+
+She could not wait.
+
+Harry really should have paid more attention to the fifth stanza of the
+fourth prophecy.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 91*: The First Day of
+Spring}\label{chapter-91-the-first-day-of-spring}
+
+\textbf{Warning:}This begins a series of very tense and dark chapters
+that don't end until Chapter 80 and the story's climax. No specific
+warnings for this one, except a \textbf{cliffhanger,} but if you don't
+like suspense, be warned it doesn't let up much for the next few days.
+
+\textbf{Chapter Seventy-Four: The First Day of Spring}
+
+Harry rubbed the sweat off his hands onto his robes. He had just reached
+the calm, balanced state of mind necessary to cast the summoning spell
+that he'd found in the old book in the library, when---
+
+``Are you sure this is going to work?'' Draco muttered.
+
+His concentration thrown \emph{yet again}, Harry turned around and
+hissed, "Of course I'm sure! Will you \emph{shut up} for a while?"
+
+Draco folded his arms across his chest and looked sulky. Harry took a
+deep breath and turned back to the rune circle in front of him. He'd
+created it with Henrietta's help---she knew something about rune
+circles---and Draco's---he knew something about them, too, when he
+wasn't getting stuck in them---and Argutus's---he could reflect the
+runes in his scales and tell Harry if they were right or wrong. Argutus
+currently clung around his neck, watching the circle, and Draco sat at
+his right shoulder. Henrietta had said she had other things to work on,
+but had promised to come at once to Harry's call if the summoning spell
+actually worked.
+
+Harry saw no reason why it wouldn't. He'd worked Evan Rosier's name into
+the runes in every imaginable permutation. He could visualize the man
+far more clearly than he liked, with his heavy stare and mad, laughing
+dark eyes. He had even put blueberry pies around the outer rim of the
+circle, following the advice of the book that said he should try to make
+it worth the summoned person's while to show up.
+
+But this was still powerful magic, Dark---because it trod the line
+between free will and compulsion---and dangerous. Harry would have to be
+extremely careful not to tip over that line and actually \emph{command}
+Rosier to appear, or he could lose his position as \emph{vates}. It
+would be more like a combination of manipulation and persuasion, at
+least once he made contact with Rosier's mind. Thus the blueberry pies;
+those in themselves might be enough to tempt the madman.
+
+\emph{And then you must hope that he has the Hufflepuff Cup with him,
+and you must find someone who will agree to be the sacrifice.}
+
+That last was the part Harry resolutely avoided thinking about. He
+locked his gaze on the rune circle again and summoned walls of calm to
+rise in his head, cutting him off from those sights and sounds he didn't
+need to absorb. That included Draco's breathing and the rustling of his
+robes. He didn't like the summoning spell, didn't think that Harry
+should be even partially alone while calling Rosier, and didn't like the
+fact that Snape and others were poised behind doors to break into the
+room if he should succeed. Harry had explained that he couldn't
+concentrate if they actually were present \emph{in} the room, but Draco
+had not wanted to listen. That had been the cause of another yelling
+session last night, and was probably part of the reason that Harry had
+so much trouble settling his mind now.
+
+\emph{Of course you will, if you think of everything but the summoning
+itself,} Harry's thoughts said sharply, and slapped him back into
+position over the incantation he'd memorized.
+
+"\emph{Cito Evan Rosier!}" he said, the words welling up from inside him
+at nearly a shout. There were other summoning spells he could have used,
+including ones that were variants on the \emph{Accio}, but this spell
+left more free will for its victim. The Latin phrasing implied that
+Harry was calling on Rosier as an expert in his chosen field.
+
+Yes, in a way, it was deception. But so long as Rosier still had the
+option to refuse the call, Harry was leaving open a loophole. It was not
+something he would have risked three years ago.
+
+\emph{You would not have risked many things three years ago. Now, for
+Merlin's sake, shut up and repeat the incantation. It's been three
+heartbeats.}
+
+"\emph{Cito Evan Rosier!}" The words tore themselves from Harry this
+time, the spell doing what it needed to exist. A thin tracing of green
+light glowed above the runes of the circle, and Harry tried not to think
+about how much it reminded him of the light of the Killing Curse. Then
+it dived into the runes, and Harry could feel it running over the
+reconfigured letters of Rosier's name like fingers running down his own
+spine. He shivered convulsively, but kept kneeling there, counting his
+heartbeats until the moment came to repeat the chant. The spell took the
+time to learn that name beyond the point of turning back or mistaking
+it.
+
+"\emph{Cito Evan Rosier!}"
+
+The green light spun up above the rune circle, twisted and twirled there
+like a noose, and then shot out, fading as it hit the wall. Harry could
+see rushed, blurred buildings and forests and pools and gardens passing
+by. He guessed those were the representations of other minds, what a
+Legilimens would see looking through someone's eyes. But the spell was
+not interested in them; it reached, always and only, for the one that
+would say \emph{Evan Rosier.}
+
+"\emph{Cito Evan Rosier!}"
+
+Harry wasn't sure that fourth cry was him; the instructions for the
+spell had only said it would happen, not who would say it. The spell
+could have been speaking for itself. They were very close now, he knew.
+The summons cut through the air between them, and firmed. It would not
+drag Rosier in, like the more powerful summoning spells would have, but
+it would let him know his presence was desired, and present him with the
+choice to answer the call or not.
+
+Harry braced himself. He was almost sure that Rosier would choose to
+answer the call, if only because he'd like the chance to hurt Harry.
+That was the reason for the rest of the rune circle, and Argutus's and
+Draco's presence there as well as Harry's own. Rosier's sanity and magic
+could do unpredictable things. Yes, it was unlikely he would manage to
+break the ring, but Harry no longer took risks with his own life when he
+didn't have to.
+
+The summons snapped taut. Harry clenched his fists. The book had
+described that happening when the spell had hold of the prey it wanted
+to find. It still would not compel him to come, but it would stay there,
+unable to be ignored, until Rosier chose one way or the other.
+
+And then the spell collapsed. Harry yelped in pain as an invisible fire
+scorched his hands, and had to grab hold of his knees, hard, to keep
+from tipping forward into the rune circle. Draco was at his side in a
+moment, snatching his shoulder. Harry looked back to meet a pair of eyes
+that was similarly wide.
+
+``What happened?'' Draco demanded.
+
+The answer sounded in Harry's head before he could respond, an ageless,
+sexless voice that simply said, \emph{Evan Rosier as you understand him
+no longer exists.}
+
+Harry hissed as the release of magical energy backlashed into him. The
+runes of the circle went flying away from each other, bouncing like
+disturbed scree from the walls and the floors. Argutus whinged about
+pieces hitting his scales, but Harry's mind was on the spell's message.
+
+``The spell failed because we tried to target the wrong mind,
+apparently,'' he said. "\emph{Evan Rosier as you understand him no
+longer exists.}"
+
+"What does \emph{that} mean?"
+
+Harry shook his head, but his mind was on the small smile Henrietta had
+given him when Harry came to her and asked her to help him with the rune
+circle, since she understood both rune magic and Evan Rosier the best of
+them all. ``I don't know, but I'm going to ask Henrietta.''
+
+``We failed to snare him,'' Draco pointed out unnecessarily.
+
+``We couldn't have sped up either finding the spell or constructing
+it.'' Harry whirled the runes into the air with his magic, wary of
+touching them by hand. They could still shimmer with sparks of power he
+wasn't ready to absorb yet. Though he wouldn't show it to Draco, because
+he did not want Draco to be smug at him over not being ready, that
+backlash of magic had \emph{hurt.}
+
+``Tomorrow is the first day of spring.''
+
+``I know.''
+
+``Voldemort will be moving---''
+
+"I \emph{know}, Draco, I \emph{know!}" Harry spun around, and the magic
+around him billowed and rippled like disturbed curtains. "I \emph{know}
+that, all right? I \emph{understand} that. That doesn't mean there's
+anything I can do about it. We did the best we could to retrieve the
+final Horcrux before he attacked again, using a plan that took a long
+time because it was a \emph{good} one. We failed. Now we'll just need to
+hold off his attacks as long as we can tomorrow, and then track Rosier
+down and destroy that Horcrux. And then we can kill him." He clapped his
+hands together, sending out a blast of blue wind, because that would be
+better than the things he \emph{wanted} to do to Draco just then. "You
+act as though I don't know the requirements of defeating Voldemort. I
+do. \emph{All} of them."
+
+Draco's face was tight in a way that said they would be sleeping in
+separate beds that night. Harry didn't care. He stomped away up the
+stairs with Argutus, and tried to convince himself that his network of
+defenses in place, behind powerful protectors who would contact him the
+moment they sensed Voldemort moving to the attack, was a good one. He
+had done everything he could to shelter those who didn't want to flee
+Britain. The rebuilt Ministry and the rebuilt Hogwarts were under close
+guard, along with all the safehouses.
+
+He had done what he could. He could not anticipate every move that
+Voldemort or, as it turned out, Evan Rosier would make. He would do
+everything he could think of, and if Draco had any better suggestions,
+maybe he should \emph{offer} them instead of keeping them behind a smug
+smirk.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+The call came at noon.
+
+Harry looked up from lunch---he'd finally decided to eat something after
+a frustrating conversation with Henrietta, in which he talked and she
+smiled at him and stroked the sides of her teacup and said nothing---to
+see a flare of golden-green light above him. He rose, his heart beating
+hard. That was Miranda's signal.
+
+When he raised a hand and invoked the connection to Silver-Mirror that
+he had as Black heir, everyone in the house heard him. The doorknobs and
+the walls, the floors and the chairs, spoke with his voice.
+
+``Voldemort is attacking Grimmauld Place,'' he said. ``Miranda is there,
+and house elf magic will hold him off for a short time, but we must go.
+Everyone who wishes to join me, meet me in the kitchen in no less than
+three minutes.'' He dropped his hand, and the walls and furniture went
+back to being no more than silent mirrors.
+
+He felt little to no \emph{fear} as he waited. He knew that he would see
+Voldemort again, and not kill him today, because they did not have the
+last Horcrux in their possession. But, at the same time, he thought he
+was prepared to do battle. He'd drain Voldemort for all he was worth the
+moment he saw him. No talking him out of anything, no letting him
+capture Draco, no slowing down to listen to his taunts. Harry just
+wanted his magic, which Voldemort would fight to protect, and he would
+grab that and drag on it until nothing was left.
+
+Footsteps pounded down the stairs, and Draco ran in, his hair looking
+windblown. Snape followed him, and Henrietta, and Ginny, Thomas, and
+nearly everyone else in the house, it looked like, though Harry didn't
+see his brother, nor his sister-in-law. He wasn't surprised. From the
+sounds, Connor and Parvati had been up rather late the night before, for
+purposes that had nothing to do with fighting Voldemort.
+
+``Did you think you could leave me behind?'' Draco muttered, shouldering
+his way to Harry's side.
+
+Harry stared coldly at him. "I said nothing about leaving you
+\emph{behind}," he pointed out. ``As long as you could make it into the
+kitchen in three minutes, then you were welcome.''
+
+``But you would have left me behind if I didn't.''
+
+"Just like everyone \emph{else.}"
+
+``I'm not everyone else.''
+
+Harry opened his mouth to shout, and became aware that the people around
+them were watching them with varying degrees of disgust and amusement.
+He shut his mouth, instead, and cleared his throat. ``We're going to
+Grimmauld Place,'' he said. ``Everyone who hasn't seen the house often
+enough to visualize it, grab onto someone else's arm.'' He watched
+approvingly as Ginny latched on to Thomas, and Henrietta to Snape, who
+looked repulsed. ``Come.''
+
+And they Apparated.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+The burrow was filled with laughter, echoing and diving and darting
+across the walls.
+
+Harry had fallen for his trap. There was no need for blood and battle,
+not when the Lord Voldemort carried the advantages he did, the
+advantages that had lain slumbering in the darkness for more than a
+decade, the advantage that began here, where it all began, and would end
+here, where Harry would end.
+
+His magic joined the laughter, whirling blade-like around the walls,
+humping and traveling in waves like an obsidian serpent. Strong he was,
+and mighty, mighty, mighty. Power enough to shake the oceans respired in
+one breath. His magic roared and rose and clawed at the air like a
+dragon.
+
+And \emph{this} was the power that Harry thought to stand as heir of?
+This was what he imagined he could both take from the Lord Voldemort and
+control? It was not enough. Not even the inheritance process, which
+favored the boy because magic flowed naturally from magical ancestor to
+magical heir, would be enough to give him strength here. The power was
+too great, a wave of darkness, blowing away from him and then slamming
+back into his body when he willed.
+
+There would be no final battle, because the Lord Voldemort would use
+Harry against himself, would use the traits he would never betray
+against the ones he would. There were things that mattered to Harry more
+than the war.
+
+What would Harry \emph{never} do?
+
+The walls of earth that Falco had carved for him shook like dolphins
+leaping at sea. And the Lord Voldemort calmed his magic, because he did
+not mean to collapse his home yet. It had to endure, because he had
+carved torture chambers he meant to use.
+
+He sent out the call, tugged on the tangled fabric of hatred and need
+and power embedded in his serpent's mind. The serpent stirred,
+sluggishly, and then began to do what he was told.
+
+\emph{The third, the third, the third!}
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Harry arrived at Grimmauld Place, and tasted the familiar violent, acrid
+tang of Voldemort's magic in the air. He charged forward at once,
+hearing Draco yell for him to stop, and not caring. If they got there in
+time, then they could back him up. But what he needed right now was to
+drain Voldemort's magic; he was the only one who could do that, and
+there it was right in front of him, thick as dark treacle.
+
+His blood was up, his anger free from its long prison around his
+deadliest enemy for the first time. There was no way that he could have
+refused the call.
+
+Miranda was dancing in front of the door to Grimmauld Place, still
+denying the bastard entrance. The wards parted for Harry, of course, and
+Voldemort, a blurred figure in the midst of magic like heaving smoke, as
+if he hadn't wanted the Muggles who lived on either side of the house to
+stare at him, turned away from the house elf magic to face Harry. Red
+eyes shone from the smoke like fires of lava burning far down in a
+volcano's throat.
+
+Harry smiled, and opened his \emph{absorbere} gift.
+
+Voldemort was doing the same, but he was \emph{just} a bit slow. Harry's
+gift was open first, and he didn't bother drawing on the smoke and the
+magic that Voldemort had draped around himself for show, tempting though
+it was. He pulled at the red eyes instead, and they went out. His enemy
+shrieked---in confusion and pain and anger, Harry knew, not fear.
+
+\emph{That will be remedied.}
+
+He drank and ate, crushing up the magic as it passed down his throat,
+the sides of the gullet bracing and flexing as he swallowed. This was
+easier than it had once been. Distantly, Harry wondered if that came
+from his growing familiarity with Voldemort's magic, or from the fact
+that this time, he was actually determined to take the power away,
+having no lingering distaste or distrust about his ability to swallow
+magic.
+
+Not everything set free from the prison within him when he drained his
+Occlumency pools was positive, a stray thought informed him.
+
+Harry ignored it, and concentrated on draining the magic. It was almost
+sweet, now, in the way that even the foulest-tasting potion could become
+sweet when one knew it would soothe the pain from a broken limb. He
+could feel Draco at his back, a steady presence, and just knowing he was
+there sent Harry to new heights of determination. He couldn't back down,
+because Draco was there and he had to protect him, and because he would
+\emph{show} Draco that he'd been ready for this battle. No, they hadn't
+destroyed the last Horcrux yet, but if Harry could weaken Voldemort
+sufficiently, as he had managed to do in the Chamber of Secrets after he
+tormented Snape, then he could leave him lying helpless for enough time
+to secure and destroy the Cup. And this time, there was no Indigena
+Yaxley to spare her Lord.
+
+He heard Draco yell a curse, and a line of red light glowed and flew
+over Harry's shoulder to strike at Voldemort.
+
+And went straight through him.
+
+Harry didn't stop swallowing the magic, because by this point he
+couldn't, but he was startled, and he increased his efforts to mash the
+food. \emph{What happened? Did he actually manage to step aside from the
+spell, even though he's blind?}
+
+Another spark of unease struck him just then. \emph{For that matter, why
+isn't he trying to drain me back? Why isn't he taunting me? Is he just
+in too much pain? But I've never known him to be in that much pain---}
+
+Harry hit the limit of the magic he could swallow just then, and had to
+close his gift and concentrate on incorporating the power into himself.
+He could feel it squirming within him, evil and determined to twist him
+for its own ends, but Harry had had experience taming Parseltongue magic
+and Voldemort's power and Dumbledore's by now. He bore down, and the
+darkness went away, flowing smoothly into him. It still resented him,
+but as time passed, it would become indistinguishable from the other
+magic that Harry used.
+
+And the smoke dissipated.
+
+Harry roared with rage as he realized what the smoke and the red eyes
+and the magic he had drained had been. \emph{A glamour. A sending. He
+made a construct of himself, powerful enough to fool me and Miranda into
+thinking this was the real thing, and sent it here to attack.}
+
+\emph{Then where is the real attack? And why would he give up part of
+his magic like that? He doesn't} do \emph{sacrifices. What in the world
+could he gain, what attack on what other safehouse, could he make that
+would cause him to give up enough of his magic to make this deception
+convincing?}
+
+And then Harry knew, as if someone had slung the answer like a stone
+into his skull, or Thomas had written a book proclaiming the knowledge.
+
+\emph{To get me away from Silver-Mirror.}
+
+Harry swung around and Apparated.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Connor yawned and pushed his hair out of his eyes. He felt
+extraordinarily sleep-mused and even now, knowing that he'd missed his
+brother's summons to battle because he'd been slumbering too deeply,
+more than satisfied. He chewed a piece of toast, thought about what he
+and Parvati had done last night, and grinned. He wondered if Harry had
+thought of intruding to pay him back for all those times Connor had
+broken in on him and Draco.
+
+\emph{I'm lucky that I have a brother more understanding than I am.} He
+licked crumbs from his fingers.
+
+A footstep echoed behind him, and Connor turned, surprised that Parvati
+was already done with her shower. But then he realized it was only
+Michael edging into the kitchen, and he grinned and waved him over.
+Michael refused to take a seat, though, fidgeting nervously, eyes
+downcast.
+
+``Do you think I'm a coward because I didn't go to battle with them this
+morning?'' he whispered, so softly that Connor could hardly make it out.
+
+Connor frowned, surprised by the illogic. He'd thought they'd got beyond
+this. ``Why would I, Michael? After all, I'm here myself. It was a
+matter of how fast we could get to the kitchen when Harry called us, not
+cowardice or bravery.'' He considered. \emph{Should I have marmalade or
+butter on my final piece of toast? It's so hard to decide. Or I could go
+up and surprise Parvati in the shower.}
+
+``I'm glad,'' Michael said, his voice barely above a breath. ``I'm glad
+that you think that of me. You've been a friend to me, Connor, even when
+I haven't deserved one.'' His head drooped, and he stared at the kitchen
+table as if it were the most fascinating thing he'd ever seen.
+
+Concerned, Connor stood and went over to him. ``Come, now,'' he said,
+putting a hand on Michael's shoulder. ``If you don't have confidence in
+yourself, how can you expect your brother or Harry or Draco to do so? No
+one likes talking to someone who mopes around feeling sorry for himself
+no matter the cause.''
+
+Michael took a deep breath and looked up at Connor, with a slight nod.
+``I suppose you're right,'' he said. ``At any rate, you've had more
+confidence in me than I merited. Thank you.'' His face widened into a
+gentle, melancholy smile. "\emph{Portus.}"
+
+The whirl of a Portkey grabbed Connor, long before he had time to
+stagger back from Michael. The only slight comfort he had was that
+Michael came along with him. The much bigger discomfort was that they
+were going somewhere unknown, and Connor had left his wand on the table
+beside his bed.
+
+His mind worked frantically, dragging up a memory he couldn't have
+recalled at any ordinary time. \emph{He said that he got a Portkey from
+Owen. Maybe he wanted to take me to visit his brother this morning, or
+negotiate between them, and he just didn't know how to ask. He's not
+very good at asking for anything.}
+
+And then they landed in darkness, and Connor knew it wasn't the
+Ministry.
+
+He tried to lunge upwards, soft earth stirring beneath his feet, but
+magic grabbed him and slammed him to the ground. Connor barely got a
+breath before he was frozen, his head held back at an awkward angle, so
+that he could see both Michael, staring at the Portkey in his hand, and
+the white shape, far too familiar from nightmares and battles, stalking
+towards him.
+
+Connor drew in his breath to scream at Michael to run, and then Michael
+turned his head, and Connor saw his triumphant eyes, and the hand-shaped
+burn on his face he'd received in the fall of Hogwarts, and felt the
+scream die in his throat.
+
+\emph{He was marked by Voldemort. He hates Harry. That kind of hatred
+and a mark that Voldemort inflicted himself can be used to control
+someone, the way that he controlled Snape, the way he tried to control
+Harry.}
+
+\emph{Shit. Oh, shit.}
+
+The words seemed to fall into a deep well inside Connor, pebbles that
+set up no echo. He gave a shiver, and for a moment the red eyes swung to
+him. Connor winced. There was a distant pain behind his scar, not nearly
+like the roaring agony that Harry got, but like something stirring,
+burrowing through his skull. Luckily, it went away after a moment, and
+then he only had Voldemort's smile and magic to face.
+
+\emph{Only.}
+
+``You have done well, little serpent,'' Voldemort hissed, and then put
+his long fingers beneath Michael's chin and tilted up his face. ``And
+now, go back to your den. You want to see Harry's face when you tell him
+what you did to his brother, don't you?''
+
+Connor's muscles seized up, as much as they could under the bonds.
+\emph{He's going to let Michael say where we are? Then---}
+
+That was the problem, though. Connor had no idea where they were, other
+than underground. And if Michael had been brought by a Portkey---a
+Portkey that Voldemort destroyed now, with a casual flick of his
+fingers---and Apparated back, he wouldn't know, either, and anyone else
+would be mad to follow his directions and simply Apparate in with
+Voldemort waiting.
+
+\emph{Assuming Harry stops to listen to those directions, before he
+kills him,} Connor thought, and felt a brief, hot flare of satisfaction.
+
+Then Michael was gone, and Voldemort turned to him, and Connor felt his
+head easing back to bare his throat.
+
+``I will cut through Harry's Occlumency,'' Voldemort said softly. ``We
+want your brother to see what's happening to you, don't we?''
+
+\emph{The only rule,} Connor thought, as he returned glare for glare,
+\emph{is to put off screaming as long as you can.}
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Harry landed back in the kitchen of Silver-Mirror, and yelled, without
+pausing to search, "\emph{Connor!}"
+
+There was no answer, though that shout surely should have brought one.
+Harry tried to calm his frantic breathing, tried to tell himself that
+Connor might still be sleeping in after his night with Parvati---
+
+And then Parvati came running through the doorway, a towel wrapped
+around her dripping wet hair, and demanded, ``What about Connor? Where
+is he? Has something happened to him?''
+
+A whip of darkness struck Harry's heart, starring it into ice. He heard
+more pops behind him as other people passed through the wards, but he
+couldn't turn to look at them. He lunged up the stairs, calling for his
+brother with all his might, while at the same time he woke every single
+ward and set it looking for Connor.
+
+The wards were more efficient than even his wandless magic. They came
+back to him before he reached Connor's bedroom. There was no sign of
+Connor anywhere in the house. But there had been, a few minutes before
+Harry Apparated back in, signs of Portkey use.
+
+Harry felt his throat burn. His mind was cracking like his heart had at
+the implications. He whirled away into a tunnel with a maelstrom
+awaiting him at the bottom, and his breath sped until he was
+hyperventilating, and he had to lean against the banister because he was
+going to fall.
+
+Then Draco was there, holding Harry firmly around the waist, and
+murmuring over and over to him, ``Harry, it's all right, we'll get him
+back, it can't be as bad as it looks---''
+
+``Yes, it can.''
+
+Harry looked up. Michael stood at the head of the stairs, and gazed down
+at him with an expression of vicious glee that Harry had last seen
+matched by Bellatrix Lestrange, his fingers tracing the burn on his
+face, over and over.
+
+``You took so many precious things from me,'' he hissed at Harry. ``My
+brother, my mother, my sister, my self-respect---'' His eyes flicked
+over Harry's head, and focused on Draco. ``The one boyfriend I wanted to
+have.'' His gaze fastened on Harry again. "And you never, you
+\emph{never}, paid attention to me the way you did to other people, or
+tried to extend your sympathy to my losses. \emph{Never}. You didn't
+even care that I was making friends with your brother, you thought I was
+so harmless." He drew himself up. ``Well, now I've proved you wrong.''
+
+``Where is he, Michael?'' Harry thought Snape had asked that. Then he
+realized it was his own voice.
+
+``With the Dark Lord.'' Michael held out his hands and laughed a little.
+``I'm afraid that I can't give you a more specific location.''
+
+A moment later, his face went white, and he sagged against the banister,
+though he didn't scream. Harry's magic had broken his arm. Harry only
+felt the impulse of the rage a moment later, as the magic twisted and
+flowed past him and lazily circled Michael, humming and purring. He
+could have lied to himself, told himself that that was the taint of
+Voldemort's magic and not his, but he couldn't. He would rip Michael
+apart if it would get him the answers he wanted.
+
+``Where is the Portkey you used?'' he demanded.
+
+``The D-Dark Lord destroyed it,'' Michael said, and then coughed as the
+magic tightened around his throat. ``Sent me back here to tell you,'' he
+added, with a spark of defiance.
+
+\emph{Snap, and snap, and snap.} Harry stove in three of Michael's ribs.
+He was three parts of his mind: magic, and clear thoughts, and the
+roaring pain beneath that, so that he did not have to feel everything
+from the loss of his twin yet.
+
+``Was it worth it?'' he asked, in his father's voice.
+
+Michael tossed his head up, panting. ``Yes,'' he whispered in a strained
+voice. "Oh, \emph{yes.} You have no idea. The look on your face---"
+
+Harry drew back one hand. He knew what would happen when that hand
+traveled forward. Michael would die.
+
+Draco snatched his wrist, and then interposed himself between Harry and
+Michael, leaning hard against his arm. Harry stared at him. He could see
+Draco, but only in between darting, twirling particles of white and red.
+``Get out of my way, Draco.''
+
+``No,'' Draco said, as calmly as if he were speaking to Lucius about
+tea.
+
+``He has to die.''
+
+``Oh, yes, he does,'' Draco said. "But there's someone with a greater
+claim than you have to destroying him, someone with a greater
+\emph{duty}. Remember the Dark pureblood dances you learned as a child,
+Harry."
+
+And then he did, and Draco was right, and murder drew back and circled
+away and left him alone. Harry dropped his hand. Draco didn't let it go,
+but pulled Harry close to him, one arm circling his shoulders.
+
+And then Harry drew a breath, and began to weep like a thundercloud
+breaking. Distantly, he was aware of Draco binding Michael, and speaking
+slicing words about how nothing he could have done would be enough to
+earn Draco's respect, but that was distantly.
+
+His mind was full of pain and grief and guilt and screaming panic. Every
+time he tried to make a plan, he crashed full-on into the fact that he
+didn't know what Voldemort would do with Connor.
+
+The first of the Occlumency pools around his scar boiled into mist and
+vanished.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 92*: Intermission: Love Grows
+Bitter}\label{chapter-92-intermission-love-grows-bitter}
+
+The title of this Intermission comes from lines in Swinburne's ``Hymn to
+Prosperine'': ``Laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet for a
+day;/ But love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not May.''
+
+\textbf{Intermission: Love Grows Bitter With Treason}
+
+Owen shut the door behind him with a click so faint that he thought no
+one could have heard it save one who was listening for it. So, of
+course, Michael jerked his head up and fastened his eyes on his brother
+with a hunted, fervent look in them. His fingers, which had moved
+together in front of him like a nest of blind, burrowing worms,
+intertwined and interlocked, and then froze.
+
+They had told him what his brother had done.
+
+Owen moved a step forward, slowly. This room was a bare stone chamber,
+one of the many in Silver-Mirror that had been used for storing
+treasure. Then Harry had removed the artifacts in search of one that
+could help him fight Voldemort, and shifted treasures around so his
+guests could be comfortable, and it had become a mere construct of four
+walls and a floor. It made a perfect prison. Michael could find no
+weapons here, and he could not dig through the walls, and he could not
+charm the door open or the walls to weaken without his wand.
+
+The question he asked then was predictable, but because he had to know,
+he had to ask it.
+
+``Why?'' His voice was quiet.
+
+Michael laughed rackingly, as if he had contracted some fatal disease.
+Then he stopped, and said, ``You know why, brother.''
+
+``I want to hear you say it.'' Owen's hand curled around his wand, deep
+in one robe pocket. Frustration shifted past his eyes like dark weed
+caught in the maze of a flowing river. It drifted on and was forgotten.
+He stood with his gaze locked on Michael, and waited for confirmation.
+
+Michael tossed up a hand airily, and spoke the same way. "Oh, I don't
+know. Maybe because our mother and sister died, and still you didn't let
+that change your attitude towards me. Maybe because Harry made all these
+promises that he couldn't keep. Maybe because he's the center of the
+world, or thinks he is, the admired, the adored, the self-centered
+\emph{vates}, and he never looked beyond himself in the way I needed him
+to. Maybe because---"
+
+And then he was on his feet, and had Owen not been prepared for that, he
+might have overcome him and wrested his wand from him. As it was, Owen
+turned slightly, neatly, to the side, and Michael sprawled on the floor.
+Owen put a foot in the middle of his back. He had always been stronger
+than his brother, he thought, with the detachment necessary to this. In
+all things.
+
+Michael struggled to rise. Owen ground down until he heard the crack of
+bone, and Michael cried out and went still.
+
+``Tell me,'' he whispered.
+
+``I wanted Draco,'' Michael whispered back, alone in this place before
+him. "And he rejected me. And neither of them even cared to look at me
+again, to ask me what I thought or how I felt or acknowledge that I was
+\emph{dangerous}. I wanted to hurt Harry. I wanted to be part of
+something that hurt him. He deserved it. Draco doesn't---that's just the
+way he is, glittering, beautiful, selfish---but Harry sold himself
+differently. And then it turned out he wasn't different. I had to show
+him that."
+
+Owen nodded. It was what he had expected, but it had to be done. The
+condemned was allowed a confession.
+
+He drew his wand.
+
+Michael, twisting to look up at him, saw it. For a moment, he went
+still, and then he snorted. ``Going to torture me, then? Your Lord
+allows that?'' His voice was twisted, mocking, and he stared at Owen's
+covered left arm as if he could see the lightning bolt scar there. "I
+knew he was just a Lord after all, not a \emph{vates}. Did he tell you
+that he tried to kill me, when I first told him what I'd done?"
+
+``Draco told me.'' Harry had been in no shape to tell Owen anything.
+Besides, he was motionless just then, under the influence of Dreamless
+Sleep. Snape had forced it down his throat when Harry saw the first
+vision of his brother's torture and began to scream. Draco had fed
+Michael the healing potions, and told Owen the truth, and then sat back
+and looked at him in silence for a long time.
+
+They were both the heirs of Dark families. They understood each other.
+
+``That was good of him,'' said Michael, and his face softened with some
+hint of an unnameable emotion. ``Did he say---anything else about me?''
+
+Owen moved back and lifted his boot, letting his brother scramble to his
+feet. ``To tell you that he hopes the wild Dark makes you its plaything
+for eternity,'' he answered, leveling his wand, ``for hurting his
+partner, and kidnapping his brother-in-law.'' Draco disliked Connor, but
+Connor was still connected to the Malfoys, unavoidably, and one did not
+\emph{do} that kind of thing to a Malfoy relative.
+
+Michael stared at him. ``Owen. What are you going to do?'' Puzzled, so
+puzzled, as if he did not know.
+
+And perhaps he did not know, for he had always been deficient in
+education. Owen recited the words as his father had recited them to him,
+the day Charles sat him down and explained about the less pleasant
+duties of a family heir, a family head. ``The head of a family is
+covered in glory, but the glory depends from responsibility. When a
+member of the family betrays his allies and dishonors his name, it is
+the family head's responsibility to remove the dishonor. Otherwise, the
+chain of responsibility cracks, and the bauble of glory is revealed for
+the fool's gold it is.''
+
+``You and metaphors,'' Michael said, and tried to laugh. It sounded
+rather hard with a dry throat.
+
+``I am going to kill you,'' Owen said.
+
+And Michael's face was white, all white. \emph{He didn't think I would
+actually do this,} Owen realized, meeting his twin's eyes. \emph{Maybe
+he wasn't deficient in education, this once, maybe he did know what his
+treason meant, but he never thought I would go through with it.}
+
+And that made Owen weary with a great weariness, because one thing
+Michael should have learned about him by now was how seriously he took
+his promises.
+
+``And present my head to Harry, I suppose,'' Michael said. He tried to
+drawl. It didn't work.
+
+``The heart used to be traditional,'' said Owen, and began to summon all
+the force of his will. ``In this case, since Harry would not want to
+subject me to having to cut apart my twin, I imagine your body will
+do.''
+
+``No,'' Michael whispered. ``You can't do this, Owen. You can't. I'm
+your brother.''
+
+``You are a disgrace to the Rosier-Henlin name.'' Owen's voice was as
+steady as his father's would have been. And in that moment Owen was glad
+that Charles was dead, that he had not lived to see his son dishonor
+their name. ``The family has always been more important than the
+individual.''
+
+``I was controlled by Voldemort! I was---''
+
+``The actions, and not the intentions, matter.'' The magic filled him,
+welling towards the tip of his wand. ``If Millicent Bulstrode had
+encountered her father on the field before he died, she would have been
+no less obligated to kill him. The laws are absolute.''
+
+``Draco didn't try to kill his father---''
+
+``The Malfoys,'' said Owen very precisely, ``have not always been
+concerned with honor.'' And then there it was, the moment when he must
+let his magic and his will fly or lose them all.
+
+"\emph{Avada Kedavra.}" He said the words tenderly, with love, granting
+his twin the dignity of a painless death, which Connor Potter would not
+have.
+
+There was no shield against the Killing Curse.
+
+Green light filled the room like a prayer.
+
+When it was done, Owen stepped forward and gazed for a moment into the
+still eyes. He mourned, but distantly, gently. The brother he mourned
+was one he had lost already, drowned into the currents of jealousy and
+hatred.
+
+Michael had, perhaps, not been meant for the strict life he found
+himself living, the life of a Dark pureblood, the life of a
+Rosier-Henlin. But he had been born into it. He should have lived it, or
+he should have rebelled utterly and utterly fled, separating himself
+from what was left so that no one would expect its obligations from him.
+
+He had tried to choose neither, tried to have all the rewards and none
+of the laws, and so his glory lay on the ground in smashed pieces of
+gold.
+
+Owen opened the door. Draco waited there. He looked past Owen, and his
+face changed in no particular except to grow colder.
+
+``It is done?'' he asked.
+
+Owen inclined his head. ``It is. The dishonor is avenged.''
+
+He walked out of the room, up the stairs, and to the roof of
+Silver-Mirror. He stood there for a time, watching the stars as they
+turned in their courses.
+
+The life he lived was a cruel one, in some respects. He wished he could
+have lived it beside his twin.
+
+But it was the life he had, and he had never given himself---never known
+\emph{how} to give himself---in a way that was less than full-hearted.
+He was no halfway wizard, no halfway companion, no halfway family head.
+
+He could be no halfway brother.
+
+He had failed Michael, and that failure would walk with him like the
+ghosts of his parents and his sister. But he would have failed him still
+further if he had excused this and let Michael go on living as a
+spoiled, indulged child, never understanding what he had done wrong.
+
+Besides, he knew what Draco would have done, or Harry, if he had not
+taken up the task of executing his brother himself.
+
+His mourning and his mind alike were one pane of black glass, and his
+spirit was a light, cold, crisp gray, like morning on the first day of
+spring.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 93*: The Decay of a
+Mind}\label{chapter-93-the-decay-of-a-mind}
+
+\textbf{Warnings}There \textbf{is torture and gore}in this chapter.
+Please don't read the sections with those things if you think they'll
+upset/trigger you. This is not, in any sense of the word, a pleasant
+chapter.
+
+In addition, this chapter ends in a \textbf{cliffhanger.}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Seventy-Five: The Decay of a Mind}
+
+Connor had long ago given up his vow against screaming. If he hadn't,
+then he would have bitten through his lips and his tongue, and then
+probably screamed anyway. Harry had said once it was better to
+gracefully surrender and rob your enemy of this means of stealing your
+dignity than to sit in stubborn silence when the torturer would win
+anyway.
+
+Except that Voldemort was winning \emph{anyway.}
+
+He had already done some of what he had made Connor understand were
+minor tortures: broken his fingers, pulled his fingernails, applied hot
+knife blades to his back. He had done it all expressionlessly, and that
+was the memory that most remained with Connor out of the mess---that
+white, mask-like face watching him---when everything else had become a
+haze of pain. Then he had used healing spells, and Connor had been
+physically whole again, but with the memories in his mind like another
+scar. And Voldemort had cast a spell over him that appeared to do
+nothing, but which was long, complicated, in Latin as well as another
+language, and which Connor was sure would be taking effect any time now.
+
+The worst thing, Connor thought, somewhere in the panting mire that his
+brain had become, was that he knew Harry was seeing all of this.
+Voldemort had told him so, carefully working through Harry's Occlumency
+and sending the visions to him. Of course, he could have been lying, but
+Connor had seen the expression of joy on his face just before the
+torture began. He thought Voldemort would find it hard to feign that
+much glee unless he had cause.
+
+But then Voldemort began to unveil his latest torture, and Connor
+understood that, no matter how much it was convention to say so, the
+worst thing was \emph{not} his brother seeing this. The worst thing was
+suffering it. The pain extinguished thoughts of Harry and brought Connor
+close to the edge of screaming madness.
+
+It began with a nail.
+
+Voldemort drove the nail through the fleshy underside of his arm and
+directly into the earth. Connor arched his back and screamed, but his
+enemy gave no sign that he had heard. He began to cast a long, intricate
+spell centered on the nail, while Connor lay shivering in shock, trying
+to come to terms with there being that much agony existing in the world.
+
+He only became aware that his arm was changing when he felt his skin
+crawl in an odd way. He looked down.
+
+McGonagall could not have done better. Brown streaks of corruption, the
+color of fallen autumn leaves scattered across a pavement and trampled
+in the rain, extended away from the nail, up towards his elbow and down
+towards his hand. Where they went, the flesh turned to sludge, sliding
+stickily away from the magic. Connor's muscles locked as he realized
+that this was his \emph{arm}, the bastard was doing this to his
+\emph{arm}, he couldn't be expected to stay silent in the face of
+this---
+
+He screamed again just as the streaks locked into place, at the end of
+his fingers and at the crook of his elbow.
+
+His bones began to melt. Connor reconstructed that later, because at the
+time he'd been kicked into a maelstrom of red and black that utterly
+consumed him. He cried so hard that something ruptured in his throat,
+and he tried to roll under the pain, the way Harry had described doing
+in the graveyard when Bellatrix cut off his hand, but there was no way
+under it. The pain \emph{was} all that existed, over, above, under,
+below. Connor could not stop screaming.
+
+Voldemort gave him time to recover, of course. When both his bones and
+flesh were sludge, Connor could draw a breath. He promised himself that
+he would not look at his arm, and, like all his promises since he came
+here, it was broken. He glanced down.
+
+Voldemort Transfigured what was left, gathering up the broken slime and
+reshaping it into a tentacle.
+
+Connor stared at the thing now growing from his right shoulder, and
+retched. Had his head still been bound down, as had happened at the
+beginning of the torture session, he would have choked on his own vomit.
+He managed to turn his head this time, but his chest still grew warm and
+soaked with small sliding pieces of food.
+
+The tentacle crept over his face and crouched there, palpitating like
+the wings of a black butterfly. Connor could feel it tugging at his
+skin, as if his cheeks would shred any moment and fly into the thing's
+suckers. And he could picture the tentacle worming into his face,
+sinking into the bones of his skull, turning them to pulp such as his
+arm had become and feeding on them---
+
+And this had been his arm. His \emph{arm.} It was part of him now, made
+from the remains of his limb.
+
+There was darkness and pain everywhere, and there was no end to it.
+Connor could almost feel his mind decaying. No one could walk through
+this unchanged. He would never again be what he had been.
+
+There was mourning as well as pain in his scream. The tentacle wormed
+down and sealed his mouth shut with a sweet paste.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Harry could not take it. He had awakened from the Dreamless Sleep in
+time to see Voldemort begin the Transfiguration of Connor's arm. The
+Occlumency around his scar connection with the bastard was utterly gone
+now, and whenever he tried to summon more---a pitiful attempt, given
+that he \emph{wanted} to see what was happening to his
+brother---Voldemort effortlessly cut through it. He saw the visions with
+his eyes opened or shut, though they were a little clearer in the
+darkness behind his eyelids.
+
+And Voldemort had whispered the cost already, before he began the first
+torture session and during this one, while Connor writhed whimpering on
+the floor. Harry didn't think his brother could hear. The Dark Lord knew
+Harry was watching, though, and knew he heard.
+
+``All it will take, Harry,'' Voldemort said, without a smile in the face
+of crushing reality, "is for you to come to me. \emph{You} are the one I
+want. You know it. My magic cannot be complete while the tunnel between
+us exists, and I want complete power. And will you really regret ending,
+when you know it saves your brother more pain?" His eyes never blinked,
+being made of magic. ``I know you, Harry,'' his voice whispered. ``You
+once said you would die if you knew you caused more pain being alive
+than being dead. And now that time has come.''
+
+Harry really thought he could have endured it if some of his Occlumency
+pools still existed. Then he could have shut his emotions away and
+thought about what his going would do to the war effort. He could have
+thought of more people than his brother writhing tortured in a deep
+cavern.
+
+But the pools were gone, and his emotions crashed through his head,
+rampaging, blaming him and suggesting things to do all at once. He had
+never realized, truly, how sharp the teeth of guilt were.
+
+So he had feigned sleep when Snape came to check on him and make sure
+the potion was keeping him silent, and now he crept down the stairs
+towards the front door of Silver-Mirror. One part of his plan was clear.
+He would get beyond the wards that protected the house, and Apparate.
+
+The images of the burrow wavered in his mind like water disturbed by the
+touch of a hand.
+
+It \emph{had} to be enough to serve as an Apparition target. It would
+have to be. There was not---he could not---
+
+He would have had to go if it were Draco. He could not have abandoned
+Draco to the necessities of war, frowned thoughtfully and said, ``Well,
+I suppose I must stay safe, since my life is worth more to the war than
+his.''
+
+And he would have to go to Connor.
+
+He came level with the kitchen, and relaxed. The front door waited a
+short distance away now, and no one had stopped him. He wondered if
+Michael had been executed yet.
+
+Then he forgot about it as the Voldemort behind his eyes cut Connor's
+new limb off at the shoulder. And Harry sagged sideways, because, this
+time, Voldemort had found a way to transfer the physical pain as well as
+the image through the link---perhaps using a connection Harry and Connor
+had through their birth as twins, like the blood bond that allowed them
+to use the Switching Potion. Fire ate up and down Harry's right side. He
+didn't scream. He couldn't scream, because sound would alert someone and
+prevent him from preventing more of this pain. Worse, and worse, than
+having his left hand taken.
+
+A crushing pain centered in his chest, and he realized he had stopped
+breathing. Harry gave a choked sob and swallowed a whoosh. He had fallen
+so that he leaned against the kitchen doorway. He scrambled slowly up to
+his feet, and summoned his magic to wrap his right side in layers of
+soothing, cool air. It was cheating, but if he continued to be this
+distracted by pain, he couldn't Apparate, and that meant he couldn't
+save Connor from this.
+
+Something coiled around his feet and tripped him up.
+
+Harry fell, and then the same weight rolled expertly around his legs and
+crawled across his chest. Harry forced his eyes open and found himself
+meeting Argutus's gaze. The Omen snake hissed at him. It was the first
+time Harry had ever heard him on the verge of panic.
+
+"\emph{I saw a vision in my scales. You were moving. You were going to
+go. And then the vision ended, and I knew you would be dead if you
+went."} Argutus's head wove back and forth endlessly, a series of little
+hisses breaking free around his words in what was the Parseltongue
+equivalent of curses. "\emph{I don't want you dead. You're my friend.}"
+
+``I have to go,'' Harry whispered. "You don't understand. This is my
+brother dying, and it's my fault---\emph{ah!}"
+
+He arched his back, because Voldemort had figured out something new to
+do to Connor, and was breaking his spine, small tiny bone by small tiny
+bone. Harry felt Connor's terror of permanent paralysis as clearly as if
+he were in the same room and his brother were speaking to him. He
+rolled, frantic, his magic lashing misdirected, but coming more and more
+under his control as the fear focused. He had to get \emph{out} of the
+house, had to find Connor and exchange their places. Merlin, he was so
+tired of \emph{hurting,} and of \emph{causing pain}, and that was what
+had to end.
+
+Footsteps vibrated in his head as if he had become a snake, to hear them
+that way, and then hands curled around his shoulders and forced him to
+his feet. Harry stumbled. He couldn't walk, could he, since Voldemort
+had snapped his spinal cord?
+
+Draco was shouting into his ear. ``Harry, you can't do this! You know
+this is what he wants, for you to walk up to him, defenseless, and
+unarmed by pain. You can't---''
+
+``I would if it were you!'' Harry screamed, so powerfully that something
+tore in his throat. "I would if it were Snape! This is my
+\emph{brother.}" He got his feet under him, though still not control of
+his magic, and lunged for the door.
+
+Argutus squeezed him, stealing his breath and spilling him to the floor.
+Draco's arms wrapped around his shoulders, and Draco murmured
+meaningless nonsense into his ear until he said, ``Sir? You have another
+vial of the Dreamless Sleep, then? And it's safe for him to take that
+this soon?'' A pause. ``Good.''
+
+\emph{No!}
+
+Harry did his best, but the visions behind his eyes and the pain echoing
+up and down his body made it hard to move even as they fed his resolve.
+Someone opened his mouth. Someone else poured the potion down it. And
+someone else, or maybe the first or second person, made sure he
+swallowed it.
+
+Harry raged as he disappeared into the blank peace of slumber, though
+none of them could hear or feel it. \emph{I have to be here to see what
+he does! Don't you understand? Who can be witness to this, if not me?
+And who can stop it, if not me?}
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Connor did not know what was happening. Voldemort had stopped torturing
+him, and used healing spells and potions and magic Connor didn't like to
+think about to repair his spine and give him another arm that looked
+exactly like his first one. That did puzzle him, in the very small part
+of his mind where he could think about such things. Why wouldn't
+Voldemort want to kill him in front of his twin? Or did he think Harry
+was asleep right now or otherwise unable to focus, and so he was waiting
+until Harry was fully conscious and could ``appreciate'' it better?
+
+He stood, on his feet, with a whip in his right hand and a knife in his
+left. And he shivered, and did not know what would happen.
+
+Voldemort gave a low hiss. A pair of snakes writhed into view through
+the burrow entrance. Connor cowered instinctively, an old, remembered
+pair of golden eyes dominating his mind. Strange how the Chamber of
+Secrets could still seem so frightening to him, or the idea of dying at
+the eyes of a basilisk, when he was in the middle of an experience far
+more terrifying.
+
+But they weren't basilisks, Connor saw a moment later. Properly
+speaking, they weren't snakes at all, just constructs of magic. They
+dragged a burden to Voldemort's feet and then vanished into wisps of
+smoke. Voldemort spent a moment staring down at the bundle. Connor
+craned his neck, but the way Voldemort stood made it impossible to see
+what the thing was.
+
+Then Voldemort stepped aside, and Connor saw, with a horror that
+appalled him so much it clouded his understanding, a girl of about
+twelve lying at his feet. Muggle? Pureblood? He could not tell, and it
+didn't matter. If she were magical, Voldemort had certainly made her a
+Squib already.
+
+Connor lunged forward, trying to stick Voldemort with the knife, trying
+to save her.
+
+In a moment, he hung suspended above the ground on a meathook he
+couldn't see but could feel in his neck, and Voldemort smiled lazily at
+him, his long yew wand swinging in his hand like the claw on a massive
+cat's paw.
+
+``I cannot use compulsion on you,'' he said, and then laughed. Connor
+was not sure what was so funny. ``And our---connection---is not of the
+sort to encourage commands, though perhaps at the last I could try to
+separate your scar from you. But some methods of control are beyond your
+opposition.'' He gave a lazy flick of his wand, and if Connor's own
+terrified heartbeat had been a notch louder, he would have missed the
+incantation. "\emph{Imperio.}"
+
+Fog came crawling into Connor's mind. Connor had heard the Imperius
+Curse described as a comforting sensation, a yearning to do exactly what
+the caster told you to do, but this wasn't like that at \emph{all}. This
+was more like the mist that could shroud a particularly lonely walk
+home, and make him fear what horrors lurked in it. He retained enough of
+his will to be horrified by it, but not enough to make the difference in
+resisting it. He suspected Voldemort had probably learned to twist the
+spell to produce exactly that effect, because, of course, Connor
+thought, with a bitterness that shocked him, ordinary Unforgivable
+Curses weren't enough for the Dark Lord.
+
+The meathook dropped him. Connor staggered in the sand, then rose and
+walked towards the girl.
+
+``You know what to do,'' Voldemort murmured, and stepped out of the way.
+
+And while his mind did not, his hands did.
+
+The whip struck the girl across the stomach, and she woke from whatever
+stupor or slumber the Dark Lord had put her in. She opened her eyes, saw
+him, and screamed.
+
+Not for very long. The whip coiled out, found its target, and pulled.
+The girl's tongue came loose from its bearings, yanked by the whip. She
+still wailed, her mouth filled with blood, but the sound had grown
+muffled to a series of croaks. Connor could feel Voldemort's pleasure
+from behind him.
+
+He wanted to cry. He did cry out for the Light, in his mind, but there
+was no answer.
+
+He slapped the girl again and again with the whip, taking one eye,
+taking the top of an ear, taking any beauty she might have had left in
+her face. The tip of the whip was iron, coated with what smelled like
+some of the more acidic ingredients they'd used in Potions class.
+Wherever it struck, it left a wound that would sink deep and mar
+forever, assuming the girl was allowed to live past the torture. Connor
+did not think she would be.
+
+His hands knew she wouldn't. When Voldemort grew tired of the whip,
+Connor knelt down and began to carve her alive, to joint her as if she
+were a pig he were preparing for food. He felt his stomach buck and
+heave and roil, but either Voldemort kept that under control too, or he
+had simply retched everything in it up during the first rounds of
+torture and there was nothing left. He did have to pause in his carving
+several times to dry-heave.
+
+The girl screamed throughout it, until he cut too deeply, and there was
+too much blood, and she was dead. Connor's hands never faltered. He
+prepared her carefully, slabs of flesh on a blanket of skin, and when
+Voldemort bade him, he picked up one piece and put it into his mouth,
+chewing slowly.
+
+Voldemort ended the Imperius Curse then, of course, so that Connor had
+something to expel from his stomach this time. He dropped the knife and
+the whip, but it was too late, wasn't it, with the images of what he had
+done carved into his brain? And all around him was the Dark Lord's
+gentle laughter.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Harry woke slowly. The Dreamless Sleep hadn't lasted as long this time.
+He wondered dismally if his own magic had worked to burn it up, knowing
+that Harry wanted to be awake and see what was happening to his brother,
+or whether Voldemort had found a way to get through that barrier, along
+with the Occlumency shields.
+
+His heart banged against his chest, and his mind banged inside his
+skull. He lay still, watching Connor carve and eat the girl, because he
+was in the middle of a shock too numb and deep for tears. Then he
+started to move to throw his legs over the bed, but a voice spoke, and
+Harry froze. \emph{Someone's in the room with me. I should pretend to be
+asleep long enough for them to leave.}
+
+``What are we going to do with him?'' That was Draco, but it actually
+took Harry a moment to identify his voice. He sounded so simple, so
+weary, in a way that Harry hadn't heard from him in months, since at
+least his mother's death. He was a child begging for reassurance from an
+adult, and it was Snape who answered in that role.
+
+``I do not know,'' said Snape. "The Dreamless Sleep will hold him for a
+time, but \emph{only} a time, before it becomes too dangerous to use. We
+must, instead, speak to him and convince him to remain here, that going
+to his brother will damage the war effort. Even if he went there with
+the intention to kill Voldemort instead of sacrifice himself, he could
+not manage it. There is still the last Horcrux."
+
+``We can't convince him of that,'' Draco said simply. "You don't
+understand, sir. It's not just the emotional shock of seeing his brother
+tortured like that. I saw his eyes. He's going mad. The strain will make
+him \emph{unable} to listen to us, unable to realize the very rational
+points you bring up."
+
+``The only other choice is keeping him drugged until Potter dies.''
+Snape's voice showed strain of its own, now. ``Do you suggest this?
+Especially when the Dark Lord might toy with his new pet for months?''
+
+\emph{I would do as much for either of you,} Harry thought, his hands
+clenching under the blankets. \emph{Don't you realize that? If it were
+you taken, sir, or you, Draco, I'd go after you. I came for Snape in the
+Chamber of Secrets. I took Draco from Rosier, and I froze when Voldemort
+had him. Why don't they see that I can't abandon him just because it's
+Connor? They may dislike him, they may despise him, but} I don't,
+\emph{I love him, and I'm the one who has to make this decision.}
+
+``Not that,'' said Draco. ``But I think there's one other thing that may
+work.'' He hesitated for a long moment, then said, ``Sir, will you leave
+us alone for a few minutes?''
+
+Snape caught his breath. ``You mean to say---''
+
+``Yes, sir. Harry's awake, and has been for the last few minutes.''
+Harry heard the chair Draco was sitting in creak as he moved across the
+room to the bed. A moment later, a hand caressed his cheek, welcome as a
+drink of cool water across his tongue, and Harry couldn't stop himself
+from leaning into it, even as his conscience told him, sharply, that
+Connor was suffering right now, and why wasn't he on his way to stop the
+suffering? ``I can always tell by the way he breathes, now. And I need
+privacy for what I'm about to tell him.''
+
+\emph{He must mean to help me!} Joy flooded Harry like Light, like
+phoenix song. \emph{I knew he understood, that he'd help me! But he
+needs Snape out of the room so that we can make our escape.} He gave a
+compliant little sigh and shifted closer to Draco, as if he planned to
+cooperate, but he didn't open his eyes. There was the chance that Snape
+would read the truth, and the hope, out of them with Legilimency.
+
+Snape waited in silence, and Harry \emph{did} wish he could open his
+eyes and see the look Draco was giving him. At last, Snape said,
+heavily, ``Very well. Do remind him that he has a father and a lover,
+Mr. Malfoy.''
+
+``I'll tell him what I choose to tell him.'' Draco's voice was quick and
+bright with anger.
+
+Snape didn't say anything else, though Harry could imagine his
+expression. Instead, there came the sounds of his boots crossing the
+floor, and then the door opened and closed behind him.
+
+Harry opened his eyes at once, and smiled up at Draco. ``Thank you,'' he
+whispered. ``I was stupid to leave by the front door, wasn't I? We
+should try the roof this time. I can summon brooms, or we can Apparate
+from there. I should know well enough what the burrow looks like, by
+now.''
+
+``Harry.''
+
+And then Harry saw that Draco wasn't smiling, and he saw the utter,
+quiet focus and determination in the lines around his mouth, and he knew
+Draco wouldn't help.
+
+But---Draco had sent Snape away, had argued against drugging him into
+helplessness. If he didn't mean to help Harry get to Connor, then what
+did he mean to do? Curiosity, and fear, and the desire not to hurt Draco
+by tossing him aside with magic, kept Harry in the bed, staring up at
+his partner.
+
+Draco took a deep breath, leaned in, and placed his forehead against
+Harry's. Harry started. He hadn't realized, until he felt the coolness
+of Draco's skin, how hot his own scar was.
+
+``I have no right to ask this of you,'' Draco began. ``And if I were a
+Gryffindor, I'd already be helping you. Sacrificing the world to the
+individual, and all that. Helping you with your great love for your
+brother, though it cost me.'' He took another deep breath, and his face
+shifted and closed.
+
+"But I'm a Slytherin, and I'm selfish, and I love you, and I
+\emph{listened} to what you said about going to Voldemort if he had
+Snape or me, while Snape only heard nonsensical babbling. There are some
+things you can't do, that you could never do. Leave your brother to be
+tortured. Leave me. Leave Snape."
+
+``Yes, yes,'' Harry whispered. "You \emph{understand.} Come on, Draco,
+he's making him torture people, he's---"
+
+``And so,'' Draco said, his voice as heavy as iron bells, ``I'm asking
+you not to leave me, Harry.''
+
+There was a long pause. Harry could feel understanding creeping nearer
+on clawed feet, but he did not want to \emph{feel} it. He shoved it away
+when it tried to mount into the forefront of his mind.
+
+``What?'' he whispered. ``I don't understand.''
+
+``Going to Connor,'' Draco continued, steady as rain, ``will mean
+leaving me. You'll die, and I'll suffer. I love you, Harry. You know how
+much. And when Voldemort kills you, even if he keeps your bargain and
+leaves off torturing your brother, he'll come and torment me. Do you
+want that to happen? Would you really leave me here, expose me to
+that?''
+
+Harry stiffened. This could not be. Draco would not do this to him. It
+was not fair.
+
+Except that Draco had been the one to, among other things, keep urging
+Harry to face up to the truth of his past even when it would have been
+most comfortable for Harry to just leave things alone. He had kicked and
+screamed and punched their love into being, because he wanted it. He had
+chosen the most dangerous Dark ritual for his Declaration he could think
+of, because he knew the depths of his own heart far better than either
+Harry or Lucius did.
+
+He did things because he wanted them. And he had the strength to ask
+this of Harry, to play his love for him against his love for Connor, one
+thing he could never do against another thing he could never do.
+
+Harry began to cry.
+
+Draco leaned nearer, wrapping him in strong arms, and murmured over and
+over again into his ear. "It's not done, Harry. We can find a means to
+capture Evan Rosier and destroy the final Horcrux. And when that moment
+comes, I swear by Walpurgis and may the wild Dark destroy me if I do not
+keep my vow, I'll go with you to find Connor. We'll \emph{face}
+Voldemort, Harry, and we'll \emph{defeat} him. The war will be over, and
+the world will be safe, and you'll have all of us. Just promise me that
+you won't go now, because I love you, and I need you."
+
+The world was impossible. The world was cruel.
+
+Harry could no more do one thing than he could do the other.
+
+But about one thing, Draco was right. There was still a chance of
+rescuing them both this way, if only a small one. So far, Voldemort had
+shown no signs of killing Connor. But Harry would never know if he would
+kill Draco or only keep him alive through years of torment, if Harry
+died in this bargain and was not alive to see it happen or not happen.
+
+He knew the strength it must have taken Draco to do this, and someday,
+when his mind was not breaking and shattering into tiny shards, he could
+even acknowledge it.
+
+He nodded, and promised.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Connor could not even keep up with the transformations and the pain now,
+and by that alone, he knew he would never be the same.
+
+Limbs became spikes of bone that held him to the ground while Voldemort
+broke his ribs over and over again. Torture drove the blood out of him,
+and drove it back in again. Voldemort gave him visions of himself raping
+Parvati, raping the body of the girl he had murdered, tearing Harry
+apart. He dragged the darkness from the back of Connor's mind to the
+front, and found the jealousy of Harry he still retained, the jealousy
+of Draco he had never acknowledged, the fact that Connor considered
+himself good at nothing but Quidditch and cheering people up.
+
+The world cracked and crazed around him, and not even the knowledge that
+he had been under Imperius when he killed the girl could sustain him. He
+had still done it. His hands had been the ones that wielded the whip and
+the blade, and his mouth had been the one that chewed the meat.
+
+He curled up around himself, and sanity went away.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Draco sat with his head in his hands, taking deep breaths. He had forced
+himself through saying those things to Harry, but he had not known how
+much \emph{effort} it would take. And Harry, of course, had already
+grabbed a book on summoning spells and retreated to his room. Snape had
+set wards to let them know if anyone went in or out. They would know if
+Harry fled.
+
+Draco \emph{knew} he would not.
+
+It was one thing to be willing to inflict such pain on someone, another
+to do it. Draco lifted his head and stared down at his hands, noting
+with academic interest how they shook. Then he lowered his chin to rest
+on them again, and closed his eyes.
+
+It had been necessary, he told himself for the fiftieth time. No one
+else could have made Harry listen. And he \emph{had} to listen. Too much
+would be lost if he went to Voldemort, too much sacrificed for the sake
+of one life. And the idea that Voldemort would keep his bargain and free
+Connor if Harry went to him was laughable.
+
+And the idea of losing Harry---
+
+No. No. That image could give Draco strength against anything, even
+strength to do as he had done just now.
+
+It was \emph{horrible.} He was sorry that he had had to do it. But he
+would have done it again.
+
+He knew, for the first time, the very first time, exactly what Harry
+meant when he said that he stood witness for the dying because no one
+else would do it, and someone had to. Draco had lost another part of his
+childhood that day.
+
+He wondered if his father had ever done something as hard and as
+necessary as this. He thought not. He would have seen the marks of it if
+so, and Lucius Malfoy's face was too unlined.
+
+``Mr. Malfoy.''
+
+Draco looked up, wondering at the oddly formal tone from Snape. He stood
+in the doorway, and the moment Draco's glance fell on him, he bowed his
+head. Draco just stared.
+
+``Well done, Mr. Malfoy,'' Snape said calmly, and Draco understood then.
+Snape was addressing him as an adult because he considered him that way.
+
+``You fucker,'' Draco said, without strength. ``You stood outside the
+door and listened to the conversation, didn't you?''
+
+Snape's eyes showed no trace of guilt. ``I had to know what you would
+say. I was prepared to Body-Bind both of you if you had agreed to help
+him leave.''
+
+``You couldn't have bound Harry for long,'' Draco muttered.
+
+``I would have used Legilimency, then.'' Snape took a step forward.
+``You are right. He is---not sane. He will not be sane until the end of
+this, if then. There will be healing for both him and his brother to
+do.''
+
+"I'm so \emph{tired} of this." Draco buried his head in his hands again,
+not caring how childish it looked. ``Pain after pain after pain, and
+where is the end of it?''
+
+``You chose this when you chose to bind yourself to Harry,'' Snape said,
+without malice. ``We both did. I knew what I was facing when I helped
+him rebuild his mind at the end of your second year, and I could have
+turned aside from the road. But I did not.'' A shadow slid over his
+face. ``And we should remember that more of this is the result of
+Voldemort's existence than Harry's.''
+
+Draco started to reply, and then Snape turned and was gone like an arrow
+out of the room. Draco stared after him with his mouth open, then
+followed hastily. He knew only one thing which would have made Snape run
+like that now. \emph{The wards on Harry's room sounded.}
+
+A terrible anger began to coil itself inside him like a basilisk. If he
+had made this sacrifice of himself and it was all for nothing, he
+believed he could be angry enough at Harry to break their joining.
+
+But when they arrived at the open door and the empty room, Snape halted
+and said at once, ``He did not go willingly. He was taken.''
+
+``How can you tell?'' Draco swept the room with a glance, but he had
+been far more involved in talking to Harry than memorizing what it
+looked like. The blankets on the bed were rucked, but they could have
+been like that earlier; Harry had not had an easy sleep. And the book on
+summoning spells was tossed aside, but that could also have happened if
+Harry had decided to bolt.
+
+``The wards,'' Snape said briefly, and then waved his wand, hissing an
+incantation under his breath. Smoke flooded from every corner of the
+room, crossing in front of their eyes. Snape stared hard at it, and
+Draco did, too, eyes watering, until the smoke curled and assumed the
+shape of letters spelling out the name of Harry's kidnapper.
+
+\emph{Henrietta Bulstrode.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 94*: Morituri Te
+Salutant}\label{chapter-94-morituri-te-salutant}
+
+\textbf{Warnings: gore.}
+
+The title is Latin, and was the greeting used by Roman gladiators to the
+Emperor on entering the arena: ``They who are about to die salute you.''
+
+\textbf{Chapter Seventy-Six: \emph{Morituri Te Salutant}}
+
+Harry woke slowly. His brain was fogged, confused. He knew he had taken
+up the book of summoning spells to study, and to make sure that he could
+find out how to call Evan Rosier and destroy the last Horcrux \emph{now,
+today}. The moment he destroyed it, he could face Voldemort and destroy
+him, since there would be no Horcruxes to protect him anymore, and then
+he could take Connor home and heal him. And in that way, he would keep
+both his promise of love to his brother and his promises of love to
+other people and his duty to the magical creature species he had yet to
+free as \emph{vates}. He did see that, once Draco had explained it. If
+he had done nothing but sacrifice his life against Voldemort---and it
+would have been sacrifice, since he could not have killed him without
+destroying the Hufflepuff Cup---then he would have done nothing but buy
+Connor a few more moments of life. Oh, he might have died in the name of
+his principles, but he would not have fulfilled them.
+
+Those thoughts were so strong that for long moments he didn't notice he
+wasn't in his bedroom. Then he wondered if Snape and Draco had come up,
+administered another dose of Dreamless Sleep, and removed him to a more
+secure place. He felt a current of indignation. Didn't they \emph{trust}
+him to keep his word about staying in Silver-Mirror, once he was
+convinced of the necessity?
+
+And then he remembered Henrietta.
+
+He tried to sit up. He reached a halfway position before he jackknifed
+and fell to the ground again. He coughed and looked weakly from side to
+side. He knew that having visions of his brother's suffering forced into
+his mind had reduced his visual acuity and his perceptiveness, but he
+should surely have noticed his bonds before now.
+
+And his location, he thought dazedly. He lay on the grass near a pine
+copse, beneath the open sky, and a faint intimation of light in the east
+said dawn was coming. Vines bound his limbs, curled around his shoulders
+and waist, and had just settled into a comfortable position about his
+neck. Harry shook his head. \emph{Vines. Why did she bring me to a patch
+of vines?}
+
+\emph{If, of course, it was Henrietta who did this.}
+
+He felt almost ready to meet anyone else who could have abducted him,
+though. For one thing, destroying someone evil would have felt good. And
+for another, he had endured all the grief and pain and fear that he
+could for right now. His brain floated in a haze of numbness, and he saw
+no more visions. He was not sure whether Voldemort had ceased to torture
+Connor, or whether his magic had shut down the connection.
+
+\emph{Why would she have taken me? Why would she have brought me here?}
+Harry was sure he had never been here before, and it was a very long way
+from any safehouse he knew of. Perhaps it was a place special to
+Henrietta, but she could have mentioned it to him, and he would have
+traveled there of his own free will, without her having to abduct him.
+Of course, that would have had to wait until Connor was rescued and at
+least partially healed, and perhaps she had not wanted to wait.
+
+\emph{But why?} No matter how he thought upon it, worked upon it, his
+perplexity grew. He could remember Henrietta leaning over him now,
+putting pressure on a nerve in the side of his neck that drove him
+unconscious, but that got him no nearer to the truth of why she had done
+it.
+
+Then a rustle sounded to the side, and Harry managed to turn his head
+against the pull of the vines to regard Henrietta. She wore a thick gown
+of some dark color---autumn brown, he thought, or deep red. She came
+close to him and stood over him, looking down with a faint smile.
+
+``Why?'' Harry whispered, since no other word occurred to him at the
+moment.
+
+Henrietta gave him a smile as vast and tender as the sky, and then knelt
+next to his legs, running a hand over his arm. ``Harry,'' she breathed.
+"Did you really think I was a \emph{tame} Slytherin?"
+
+Harry shook his head, in denial and more confusion. ``That doesn't
+answer the question of why you brought me here,'' he pointed out.
+
+``You would never have lured Evan.'' Henrietta rose to her feet and
+looked to the north, and soft as her voice was, Harry had the impression
+that she was speaking mostly to herself. ``He has no reason to come to
+you, no reason to bring the Cup if he does. But for me---oh, yes. The
+hatred will pull him. I told him once what happens to Dark wizards and
+witches who hate each other as much as we do. He didn't believe me, but
+he still has no choice save to act on it.'' Her hand smoothed her dress
+with a small, repetitive, hypnotic motion.
+
+``Does this have something to do with why we couldn't summon him with
+that rune circle?'' Harry demanded. He could feel his magic building up
+under his skin, though as yet the numbness prevailed, and he could not
+bring himself to actually attack Henrietta. ``Did you interfere? Meddle
+with some of the runes so that they wouldn't do what they were supposed
+to do?''
+
+Henrietta's blink was cat-like. ``No,'' she said. ``But I suspected what
+had happened when you told me of the spell's response. During my last
+meeting with Evan, he was different. The shard of Voldemort's soul has
+migrated out of the Horcrux, I think, and possessed him. Thus, though
+his body still walks the world, Evan Rosier as you knew him has ceased
+to exist.''
+
+"Your \emph{meeting} with him." Anger ate quietly at the numbness.
+
+``Yes.'' Henrietta inclined her head. ``I have been writing to him and
+meeting with him for some time, in order to get him fascinated enough
+that he would have no choice but to come to me when I wanted.'' She
+turned and checked the eastern horizon this time, apparently calculating
+the position of the sun. ``And that time is now,'' she added, and drew
+her wand from her pocket. She raised her voice. ``Evan!''
+
+``You can't just take me,'' Harry hissed. ``Do you know what's happening
+right now, what my brother is suffering?''
+
+``Of course I do.'' Henrietta tapped her wand against her palm. ``And I
+know, too, that you have no choice of saving him unless you destroy the
+last Horcrux, and I know that you should have paid more attention to the
+fifth stanza of the fourth prophecy.'' She turned to the north.
+``Evan!''
+
+It took Harry a moment's struggle to recall that stanza, and when he
+did, he felt foolish for not understanding the matter at once.
+
+\emph{The fourth, in the old hatred curled}
+
+\emph{Has found its way to move and end.}
+
+\emph{Beware, for when you most wish to hide from the world,}
+
+\emph{You'll be taken by one who's a friend.}
+
+That said, at least, that he could trust Henrietta's intentions. Maybe.
+Harry had more personal experience with the slipperiness of prophecies
+than anyone he knew.
+
+``What makes you think I won't break free and prevent your sacrifice for
+the Horcrux?'' he asked. The magic was bubbling to his face now. He
+could open his mouth and shoot something foul at Henrietta, or simply
+burst the vines.
+
+``You should have recognized the plants by now, Harry, really.'' When
+Henrietta looked back at him, her face expressed slight disappointment.
+``Do you like them? I requested the seeds from Indigena's garden, via
+Lazuli. She was happy to send them to me.''
+
+Harry strained, and then realized the truth. He had felt the clutch of
+these vines before, on a Midwinter night more than two years ago, when
+he confronted Voldemort and Indigena in the graveyard near the Riddle
+house. These were the vines that Indigena had used to bind his wandless
+magic.
+
+``I can't have you interfering,'' said Henrietta, in a voice of glacial
+calm. ``But, at the same time, you need to be here after the Horcrux is
+destroyed, so that you can swallow the shard of soul and the magic
+that's binding it to Evan's body---or the Cup, if it flees there.'' Her
+smile gave a feral flash. ``Strike with all your might, Harry, when I am
+done. For me.''
+
+She raised her voice again. "\emph{Evan}!" It struck like thunder
+through the clearing, and Harry heard behind it the sweet thunder of the
+prophecy---and, more distantly, the soft, padded footsteps of a huge
+dog. He would not be surprised to see a black hound step from the copse
+of pines soon. ``Come to me, if you are not a coward!'' Henrietta
+yelled.
+
+``I am here, Henrietta.''
+
+Harry jumped as best he could in the grip of the vines. A cloaked figure
+strode from the north, around the pines. He held a wand in his hand with
+more steadiness than Evan Rosier had ever gripped it. Harry snarled
+softly. It seemed that Henrietta's guess about the shard of Voldemort's
+soul taking Rosier over was correct, and knowing that a piece of the
+bastard was so near made him want to destroy it now.
+
+He envisioned Rosier's body decaying, falling apart into the kind of
+sludge that Voldemort had briefly turned Connor's arm into.
+
+His magic rose as far as the vines before it slammed back into his body,
+like a kitten striking a closed door full-force.
+
+"Let me \emph{go}, Henrietta!" he shouted, thrashing about. The vines
+curled a little tighter. Harry had no trouble feeling the rage this
+time.
+
+``No,'' said Henrietta simply, and then she smiled, a smile so fierce
+that Harry lost his breath and recovered from the anger a moment. ``This
+is my free will, vates, and you cannot prevent it. You should never have
+turned your back on me.'' She bowed her head, dipping into a
+half-curtsey. "You may dislike the title, but you have ever been my
+Lord. Farewell, Harry. \emph{Morituri te salutant}," she added, and then
+turned and ran merrily away.
+
+``Henrietta!'' Harry shouted. ``How do you plan to set me free from
+these vines if you die in the duel?''
+
+She only flipped him a wave with one hand, her attention fixed on her
+opponent.
+
+Harry went back to digging his heels into the ground. He could not use
+magic to tear the vines, but perhaps he could rip them by sheer force of
+physical strength.
+
+Before him, Henrietta danced, in madness and hatred and love. Harry was
+not even aware when his struggles ebbed and he lay there gaping, content
+to watch her. There was no way that anyone could not have watched.
+
+It was dawn, and Lady Death watched from the copse, and Henrietta
+whirled in the midst of a lovers' waltz.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Henrietta felt all other concerns fall away from her as she came
+forward, and halted, and bowed to Evan.
+
+This was what she had been working towards for months. And now the
+moment was here, and she had no more elaborate plans to arrange, no
+letters to write that would fan the sparks of Evan's madness and keep
+him rushing towards her, no more commitments of sanity and soul to make
+that might end up costing her more than she gained. She had put herself
+at risk every time she wrote a letter, every time she went to meet him,
+every time she conversed with him as if they were equals.
+
+But if she had not entered into this with her full heart, Evan would
+have known something was wrong, and he might have managed to pull back
+in time.
+
+Not this time, not this time, not so, and Henrietta's heart was high and
+singing like a lark. She wished one were in flight above them, singing
+to make the music for their dance, their duel.
+
+\emph{Well, I can pretend that one is, and it will be less mad than many
+things Evan has been convinced of.}
+
+When she straightened from the bow, she saw the alien intelligence
+watching her through amused dark eyes. ``And how do you plan to fight in
+that, my lady?'' he asked, gesturing to her heavy robe.
+
+``It is the traditional costume for such a duel,'' Henrietta replied,
+holding out her wand. She was not worried. The shard of the Dark Lord
+might be in control, yes, but if Evan, her Evan, were not still alive
+somewhere within that damaged and twisted mind, he would never have come
+to this summons. The fascination she had encouraged, the poetic madness,
+was all Evan's. ``And I could ask the same of you.'' His robes were
+dirty and disgusting. It seemed that this last piece of Voldemort's soul
+didn't care any more about wild living or fine clothes than Evan had, or
+maybe the constant fight for control in his mind reduced his ability to
+take care of himself.
+
+From above her came skylark song. Henrietta smiled slowly.
+
+``I plan to destroy you,'' said that too-calm, too-sane voice. ``You
+have caused me too much trouble.'' And he was drawing his wand, but it
+was Evan's wand, and Henrietta had faced it in the past and knew what it
+was capable of.
+
+``Of course I have,'' she said, and stamped her foot, and then the
+whirling pace began.
+
+The spells he fired at her were all offensive, not defensive.
+\emph{Cogo. Crucio. Cremo. Adsulto cordis. Imperio. Avada Kedavra.}
+Spells in languages she had never heard and did not know the names of,
+but could well imagine the effects of, should they land. He never tried
+a Shield Charm. His manner said, plainly, that he would worry about that
+when she managed to land a blow.
+
+Henrietta responded with defensive magic. \emph{Protego. Haurio.}
+Incantations that increased the movements of her legs and the strength
+of her arms and somewhat compensated for the heavy robes. She wondered,
+distantly, that Evan, or Voldemort, or the mingling of the two that was
+in control of the body, had not thought she would use such spells. Of
+course she would. He seemed to have little notion of cheating, unless he
+was the one doing it.
+
+She was sensitive to the rhythm and the pace behind the movements, and
+she increased the tempo, beat by beat, circle by circle. She kept trying
+to strike at an opening in his defenses, but he always closed it quickly
+and returned to the flowing motion. His incantations were coming faster
+and faster now, and most of them were nonverbal, odd rests of silence in
+between the shouted spells. Henrietta knew she had been extremely lucky
+to escape them so far.
+
+If ``luck'' could be said to have anything to do with it, when a Dark
+wizard and Dark witch danced in a fated duel like this.
+
+The pattern was only like that on his side, however, though Henrietta
+was sure that it was the only side he paid attention to. On her side,
+she hesitated in blocking the unfamiliar spells, and whirled aside from
+more and more of them. Then she stumbled, her foot catching in the robe,
+and he grazed her knee in a thin line, with a spell that should have
+done much more damage.
+
+``First blood to me,'' he announced, sounding pleased about that.
+
+``In this dance, only death counts,'' Henrietta snapped back, and
+returned to her pattern. Now she could see him sensing it, in the way he
+responded and the spells he chose if nothing else. She faltered every
+few rings, each time became a little more clumsy, and then a little
+more. Strong as mountains her resolve might be, but her body was a poor
+vehicle for it.
+
+So her body said. So her mind would say, on the surface, should he
+possess the Legilimency of his embodied counterpart. So her full heart
+said, as she gave herself to this deception just as she had to the
+flirtation with Evan. The dance had to be perfect.
+
+Down and down and down.
+
+They danced and they danced and they danced, and Henrietta began to
+murmur under her breath and sing, scraps and fragments of the poetry she
+knew Evan had some reason to be familiar with, because he had believed
+the poets' parents to be Squibs or wizards or witches. Yeats. Dante
+Gabriel Rossetti. George Meredith. Algernon Charles Swinburne. Arthur
+Symons. Thomas Lovell Beddoes. All those who had walked sometimes in the
+strange and dark ways of love and death, Eros and Thanatos, the singers
+to them and their celebrants.
+
+She watched awareness flare in his eyes, and his movements slow a bit,
+as her Evan's consciousness struggled to climb back to the surface. The
+Voldemort-shard had to stop fighting, sometimes, in order to slow him
+down. Henrietta did not want that to happen too much, because it would
+disrupt the pattern she had established, so she ceased to quote the
+poetry after a time.
+
+Besides, she needed her breath too much for \emph{breathing} just then.
+
+Sweat ran down her face and dried in the still-cool air. It might be the
+second day of spring, but the weather did not feel like it. The robe
+lifted and whirled around her thighs, and heat exploded outwards from
+her skin. Eyes watched Henrietta from the copse, and from behind her,
+where Harry lay entangled and enthralled among the vines. Overhead, the
+skylark sang.
+
+And then came the moment, the point, the \emph{time.}
+
+Henrietta began her movement in the turning point of the pattern when
+Evan was just beginning to launch his spell. She turned aside from him,
+and dropped to one knee, and the will that filled her mind was concerned
+not with defense or the battle, but love and death.
+
+\emph{Ave, domine! Morituri te salutant.}
+
+The spell she shot was not a defensive one, but a Severing Curse,
+cutting the vines and freeing Harry from them.
+
+Evan, caught in the pattern, trapped in it, could not stop his own spell
+from flying, or change it to a different one.
+
+Henrietta closed her eyes and tipped her head back as a steel arrow went
+through her heart. The music of the dance sounded in her ears as one
+great crash of chords and then went still.
+
+Henrietta Bulstrode died laughing.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Harry knew the Unassailable Curse was broken. He knew it by the way Lady
+Death roared from behind him, the hungry cry of an enormous dog starving
+for meat. He knew it in the way Rosier's movements slowed for just a
+moment, as though a defense so much a part of him he hadn't noticed he
+was depending on it had fallen away.
+
+He knew it in the way Henrietta sprawled on the ground, life freely
+given, a steel arrow sprouting from her chest, and the cry that had
+reached him and echoed in his mind---how? He did not know. Perhaps
+through the connection they still shared because of the Unbreakable
+Vows, perhaps only because he \emph{knew} what she would say as she
+died.
+
+And he was free.
+
+He rose to his feet, and called a wheel of diamond shards with hardly a
+thought. Evan Rosier was hurrying forward to kneel beside Henrietta. He
+picked up her head by her long curls and stared into her face as if he
+did not understand, then gave her a little experimental shake. He seemed
+to think the life was in her and would return if he only pulled enough.
+
+Harry sent the revolving wheel straight at his head.
+
+He looked up in the moment before it reached him, and the flying
+triangles of diamond shared off his jaw, sliced through his face under
+the nose, continued upwards at an angle and shaved off the top of his
+skull. His hair went flying. Brains drained like jelly down the sides of
+his face, and his body sprawled over Henrietta's, shorn at last of grace
+and poetry, tricked into death by a woman he may even have believed
+truly loved him.
+
+Harry had sharp eyes, though, and did not let the momentum of Rosier's
+death distract him. He was looking for the small black scrap that flew
+pitifully away from the back of Rosier's skull a moment later, shrieking
+in a high, thin voice that made blood burst from his ears.
+
+Harry roared wordlessly, and opened his \emph{absorbere} gift. The
+tunnel scooped up the shard of soul and crushed it utterly, closing
+around it like a fist. The shrieking rose higher, in fear that Harry
+enjoyed, and then went silent. Harry tucked and yanked it into him, and
+the explosion of magic that followed, which probably represented the
+power the piece of soul had used to bind itself to Rosier's body.
+
+The moment he finished swallowing, a ragged bay made the copse of pines
+shake, and the silver dogs-head emblem in Harry's left palm burned cold
+as deep sea ice.
+
+Then there was silence, and he sagged to his knees and began to laugh,
+and to cry. Snot dribbled down his face from his nose, and his eyes were
+swollen in moments from the tears, and his throat hurt as much from the
+laughter as it earlier had from the screaming. He tried to recover, but
+he couldn't even \emph{think} until he spat the churning emotions out.
+
+And then he was on his feet, as he realized what the destruction of the
+last part of Voldemort's soul meant.
+
+He could free his brother. He could confront Voldemort. He would go back
+to Silver-Mirror to inform Draco and Snape of what had happened, but
+then he was on his way to kill the snake-faced bastard.
+
+He reached out to Voldemort, through their link, and said in a voice
+like a snapping of steel chains, \emph{I am ready. Tell me where you
+are.}
+
+The voice that returned his communication was more amused than he had
+ever heard it, which could only mean, Harry thought, that he hadn't
+sensed the destruction of the last piece of his soul. \emph{In the place
+where it began, and the place where it will end. I am sure that you can
+find it. My heir.}
+
+That was all he said, but Harry found, thinking about it carefully, that
+he \emph{did} know. Where it began.
+
+Voldemort was under Godric's Hollow.
+
+With firm steps, Harry crossed to Henrietta's body, and bent his head to
+kiss her cold lips. Then he turned and leaped for Silver-Mirror.
+
+\emph{Yes, where it began. And where it will end.}
+
+\emph{I am coming, Voldemort---for my brother's life, and for your
+death.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 95*: All the Joy Before
+Death}\label{chapter-95-all-the-joy-before-death}
+
+The title of this chapter (along with the next two) comes from
+Swinburne's ``Hymn to Proserpine'': ``Breasts more soft than a dove's,
+that tremble with tenderer breath;/ And all the wings of the Loves, and
+all the joy before death;/ All the feet of the hours that sound as a
+single lyre,/ Dropped and deep in the flowers, with strings that flicker
+like fire.''
+
+\textbf{Chapter Seventy-Seven: All the Joy Before Death}
+
+Connor had known a simulacrum of peace before some hours before he felt
+someone pressing on the outer shell of his mind. He waited for a moment,
+and the person began to tow the scattered pieces of his sanity towards
+the center. He knew he would be sane again if they came back together,
+though it had been long enough now that ``sanity'' was a word and not a
+concept to him.
+
+But he could still remember pain. And he knew that he did not want to go
+back.
+
+He struggled and kicked. He didn't know if his body echoed his
+movements, or if they were only in his mind; he had lost track of his
+body, too. He did know that he was crying, and whether that was with or
+without sound, he gave as much power to his voice as to his movements.
+He was tired. He had ceased to care about dignity or pride or honor,
+which were words like ``sanity'' at this point. He knew only that he
+wanted to go to sleep, or drift here in the blackness, and never wake up
+again. That was all he wished for himself.
+
+But the force was relentless. He vaguely remembered that it had been
+relentless in forcing pain on him, too.
+
+And then he was back together, and he opened his mouth and
+\emph{screamed.} At once, a pale hand clamped over his lips, and a voice
+murmured into his ear, ``I will be displeased if you cry out. You would
+not like to displease me, would you?''
+
+Connor shut his eyes. He remembered, now---remembered how Voldemort had
+captured him, and what he'd used him for. His stomach contracted in a
+dry heave, but that had become a useless reflex by now. Nothing could
+\emph{change} what he'd done. He could not go back to being what he had
+been, and it was ten to one whether Harry would ever look at him with
+anything but pity again, or whether Parvati would welcome him to her
+bed.
+
+``You are not healed,'' Voldemort whispered into his ear. "I do not need
+\emph{that} from you. But you are sane again. So many times as you
+rupture, that many times I will bring you back. Legilimency is the art
+of dominating the mind." He was silent for a long moment, and his
+fingers stroked Connor's cheek like the touch of mildew or spiderwebs.
+Connor moaned a little. He had that much strength left.
+
+And then Voldemort's hand drifted back, and he smiled at Connor. His
+front teeth resembled a viper's fangs. Connor wondered if that was a new
+modification, or just a trait he had never noticed before. It wasn't
+like he had come face-to-face with the Dark Lord that often.
+
+\emph{No, that's Harry's job.}
+
+Sickness roiled through Connor, that he could be so close to his enemy
+and be so useless, but he didn't show it. He just watched Voldemort, and
+after a moment Voldemort turned away from him and held up his hand. An
+invisible rope yanked Connor into the air and tugged him after Voldemort
+as he paced towards the burrow's entrance. Connor watched shadows move
+along with them, the currents of the Dark Lord's power.
+
+``Come,'' Voldemort whispered. ``Let us prepare to welcome your
+brother.''
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Harry had expected questions from Snape and Draco when he appeared. It
+seemed, though, that the force with which he Apparated in shut them up.
+That, and the magic churning around him, he had to concede. Since he had
+swallowed the latest burst of the magic that bound the soul shard to
+Voldemort's body, he had become even stronger.
+
+\emph{Strong enough to take the bastard down?}
+
+\emph{Yes.}
+
+He looked at Snape, who stood with a potions vial in one hand as though
+he had intended to force it down Harry's throat and now could not, and
+at Draco, whose mouth was open, and said, calmly, ``Henrietta is dead.
+She sacrificed herself for the final Horcrux, and I destroyed Evan
+Rosier, whose body it hid in, and swallowed the soul-piece itself. She
+had brought me there so that I could be close when the Horcrux was
+vulnerable, but not interfere with the sacrifice. It is quite possible
+that we may owe the salvation of our world to her. And now I can kill
+Voldemort, and I know where he is, since he foolishly chose to reveal
+his hiding place to me. Come with me, both of you. You should be there
+to see it happen.''
+
+Snape's fingers clenched so hard around the potions vial that Harry
+thought it would shatter. Draco made a hungry sound and took three steps
+across the floor of the bedroom, seizing his shoulders and bringing
+Harry's mouth to his. Harry shared an open-mouthed kiss with him for a
+moment, then pulled back and bit down as hard as he could at Draco's
+lower lip. Draco cried out, but when he pulled back from Harry, he
+looked far more dazed than upset.
+
+``Don't do that again,'' he whispered, ``unless you want to finish what
+you've started before we go and find your brother.''
+
+``Not now,'' said Harry, a dark fire growing within him and changing his
+voice to something he scarcely recognized. ``But later? Oh, yes, Draco.
+I think we can.''
+
+The dark fire surged up, filling him, sweeping every single limb with a
+spike of obsidian in which frozen lava glittered. Harry resisted the
+urge to tip back his head and howl like a werewolf, because he thought
+that would upset Snape, but he did lift his lip to show his teeth and
+snarl a little.
+
+\emph{I am going to kill him. He doesn't know that we took his last
+Horcrux from him, and he is ready to die.}
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Harry Apparated both Draco and Snape with him to Godric's Hollow,
+because he was the only one who knew what the house was liable to look
+like now. And, indeed, when they landed on the hill next to it, he could
+see that not much had changed. The shattered walls where he and his
+brother, their parents and Sirius and Remus, had once dwelled and played
+and loved gaped at the sky still, and the ground rolled up to meet them
+at the edge of a broken wall. The only visible change was a softly
+blossoming garden on one ridge, which had probably been Indigena's. Of
+course, Voldemort had had no need to repair the house for himself. He
+had dug an underground sanctuary, like the serpent he was.
+
+Harry knew without being told that the chamber where Voldemort kept his
+brother would be under the bedroom where he and Connor had slept as
+children, the room where Voldemort had entered to make Harry his magical
+heir and mark both him and Connor with their scars. The place where it
+all began.
+
+For a moment, the edge of a thought about that night teased Harry,
+trying to connect with something else in his brain. But it flared and
+vanished when he saw Voldemort striding out to meet him, an incongruous
+sight, like a strutting carrion crow, beneath the mild gray sky of a day
+in March. Something floated behind him, and paused just inside the
+entrance to the burrow. Harry's heart seized up. That was Connor.
+
+But so angry was he that he did not have to think about what he would do
+first, or pause and gape at Connor, or call his brother's name. He had
+come to do one thing, and one thing only. And Voldemort halted and stood
+there, smiling at him, so confident of his own invulnerability, so
+secure in the idea that Harry had not destroyed his last Horcrux and the
+Hufflepuff Cup was still in Rosier's possession.
+
+Harry had sometimes pictured giving a grand speech when he defeated
+Voldemort, asking him if he was ready to die.
+
+But, given what he had done to Connor and how badly Harry wanted to take
+his brother \emph{away} from there, he found he had no heart for an
+announcement. He didn't pause to watch Voldemort's gleeful glances at
+Snape and Draco, either. He simply lifted a hand and spoke the spell he
+could finally speak, the spell he had used once before in the Chamber of
+Secrets and had no luck with, waiting for the moment when Voldemort's
+face changed from glee to panic.
+
+"\emph{Avada Kedavra.}"
+
+The green light filled the air around his palm, and then flashed away,
+traveling so fast that Harry wondered if Voldemort's face would have
+\emph{time} to change expression before it reached him.
+
+The answer seemed to be no, because his expression was the same when the
+green light reached him.
+
+The beam struck him---
+
+And faded away.
+
+Voldemort began to laugh.
+
+Harry took a step back. Ground and air danced around him, sky and earth,
+and he could not keep his footing, could not cry out his brother's name
+or a plea against the unfairness of the universe, could not
+\emph{breathe.}
+
+``No,'' he said, or thought he said. Or perhaps Draco or Snape said it.
+Or perhaps Connor called it, in a voice like a seagull's. The roar of
+the sea seemed to overwhelm Harry's ears for a moment, and he nearly did
+not hear the words Voldemort was speaking to him.
+
+``What will you never do, Harry?'' he said softly. "\emph{Never} do?
+Killing me would be very easy. But you cannot complete the harvest of my
+soul. You have not paid enough attention to the beginning, and that will
+take the end away from you. You have not found the third. You do not
+\emph{know}." Deep triumph flashed in his eyes.
+
+And then his magic began to rise, wave on wave, roaring like the sea
+itself, challenging Harry, tireless depths of darkness. Harry knew he
+could not fight it, not yet, not now, and not with Snape and Draco
+vulnerable behind him.
+
+He went on staring, though, unable to move, because he did not---
+
+And then he \emph{understood}.
+
+His scream ripped the air as he Apparated himself, Snape, and Draco
+away, and Voldemort's laughter followed him, deep and mocking.
+
+\emph{What will you never do, Harry?}
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+The Lord Voldemort had seen despair in his heir's eyes before he
+Apparated.
+
+For the first time in seventeen years, he was content.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 96*: Standing, Look to the
+End}\label{chapter-96-standing-look-to-the-end}
+
+The title of this chapter, likewise, comes from ``Hymn to Proserpine'':
+``Though all men abase them before you in spirit, and all knees bend,/ I
+kneel not neither adore you, but standing, look to the end.''
+
+And now, the monster under the bed.
+
+\textbf{Chapter Seventy-Eight: Standing, Look to the End}
+
+The moment he landed back in his bedroom at Silver-Mirror with Draco and
+Snape, Harry broke from them. He headed for the library; they could
+think that he was studying summoning spells or a way to kill a Dark Lord
+who was immortal, if they wanted. At the moment, he did not care.
+
+He slammed the door behind him with magic, and put locking and warding
+spells around it that Jing-Xi would have had trouble getting through.
+Then he bowed his head and wrapped it in his arms as he dropped to the
+floor. Short, muffled screams burst from his mouth, cries of pain he
+could no more stifle than he could have grown wings and flown to the
+moon.
+
+Connor was the last Horcrux.
+
+Chains of understanding, long buried beneath the earth of his mind,
+burst into being, ripping his view of Voldemort and his brother up and
+setting the pieces down in a new, jagged pattern. He could not doubt his
+conclusion. It made too much sense.
+
+Piece after piece after piece tumbled into place in his mind with a
+click and a clack and a thunk like fire.
+
+Lady Death had shown the number seven to Regulus when he asked after
+Horcruxes. Regulus had assumed it meant six Horcruxes and one piece left
+for Voldemort---seven shards of soul.
+
+\emph{``Death showed me the number seven. That makes sense. Seven is a
+magically powerful number. He split his soul into seven shards- one each
+for six Horcruxes, and one for himself.''}
+
+Oh, yes, it made sense, Harry thought, with his understanding eating him
+like acid. But it had only been an \emph{assumption.} It could as easily
+have meant seven Horcruxes, but Regulus had not interpreted it that way,
+and everyone else, guided by the way he thought, hadn't interpreted it
+like that, either.
+
+The tide of comprehension and bitterness swept him up and on.
+
+The bird had tried to show Harry the locations of Horcruxes, and Lady
+Death had done the same thing for Regulus. One of them was the desk that
+had contained the Ravenclaw wand, one the burrow where at the time
+Voldemort had kept the Hufflepuff Cup, one the shack where Slytherin's
+shade and the ring had waited, and one---
+
+One had been Hogwarts.
+
+Where, at the time, both the Sword of Gryffindor \emph{and} Connor had
+been.
+
+Harry was crying hard enough that the skin around his eyes felt
+stretched and swollen, but he could not stop, either weeping or
+thinking. More and more came springing out of the darkness like a clawed
+creature, dragging the past into the harsh and unforgiving light, making
+sense of Voldemort's actions in a way that no other explanation could
+have.
+
+The Stone had said that there was a place in Harry's aura for a third
+person, someone connected to both him and Voldemort. And Harry, in going
+through the Imbolc ritual and reliving in his alternate world the night
+when Voldemort had come to Godric's Hollow, had seen the Killing Curses
+flash, connecting him, Voldemort, and Connor in a bent triangle. That
+was the idea that had almost managed to scratch its way into his head
+when he was at the house a few minutes ago.
+
+A triangle. The third. Someone else bound to this endless turning of
+soul and magic, by his blood bond to Harry and the fact that Voldemort
+had lodged a shard of soul behind Connor's scar.
+
+The part of Harry's mind that tried to deny reality asked frantically,
+\emph{But wouldn't we have sensed something amiss with Connor? Wouldn't
+Voldemort's evil have manifested itself in him somehow? How can he be
+the Horcrux then? The others all felt evil.}
+
+Harry began to laugh bitterly, and he could not stop. Connor's
+compulsion gift. Where had it come from? It could be inherited, but
+neither Lily nor James had had much evidence of it in their family line.
+
+But Voldemort was a compeller.
+
+Harry had once half-entertained the idea that Connor was Voldemort's
+magical heir, too, only taking the one magical gift that Harry himself
+did not bear. But, yes, it could have been the shard of soul stirring in
+Connor, expressing its evil the only way it knew how. Merlin knew it had
+certainly reacted strongly to the tutelage of Sirius, and especially
+Voldemort in Sirius's body, and Tom Riddle, when he vanished into
+Connor's head in second year, had been able to wield it like a veritable
+sword. If the connection between them was not Connor being Voldemort's
+magical heir---and surely he would have pulled on the Dark Lord's magic,
+too, if that was the case---then what \emph{was} it? A Horcrux
+connection would serve.
+
+Tom Riddle.
+
+Harry closed his eyes and fell into the memory of the Chamber. The
+silent self reared again above the younger Dark Lord, having frozen
+Connor into a statue, and Harry could hear the words he spoke then.
+
+"\emph{Not him. Never him. It was} you, \emph{it must have been, and the
+nature of our connection---}"
+
+That had been the moment when Riddle discovered that Harry was the
+Boy-Who-Lived; he had assumed before that that Connor was, and that he
+could only use Harry's scar at all because of Harry's connection to
+Connor. Harry had assumed that ``the nature of our connection'' referred
+to that stunning moment, too late, when Riddle recognized his true
+enemy.
+
+But what if it had meant that he recognized Connor as a Horcrux, and
+only in that moment, too late to do anything about it?
+
+Tom Riddle had been a rather immature and thoughtless shard of the Dark
+Lord's soul, Harry thought, with a speed and clarity that astonished
+him. \emph{Click} and \emph{clack} and \emph{thunk} went the pieces of
+his mind.
+
+The one they had faced at the end of third year had been an older
+version of Voldemort, cannier and more experienced. And he had
+threatened to kill Draco and Snape, had delighted in describing to Harry
+throughout the corrupted justice ritual how he would torture them.
+
+He had said he would keep Connor alive.
+
+"\emph{Why, I have been training him these past three months. It would
+be a shame to let such a well-trained and natural compeller go to
+waste.} Imperio \emph{should remove any obstinate moral fixations he
+has, and then I have a follower skilled in doing Dark magic.}"
+
+Yes. A follower with a piece of himself inside him. Harry wondered if
+Voldemort had shivered with delight and irony when he called Connor a
+natural compeller.
+
+\emph{Click} sang the puzzle pieces.
+
+Connor had flared with white light at the end of their first year, when
+Voldemort attacked him in Quirrell's body. Harry had thought it was his
+natural purity that saved him. Snape had assumed it was Harry's love.
+But while a willing sacrifice might very well create such a protection,
+Harry had not given up his life. He had lain there helpless while
+Quirrell attacked Connor.
+
+And then there had been the white light that flared around Connor when
+the shard of Tom Riddle tried to attack him in McGonagall's office.
+
+Harry had not been able to find information like this, because books on
+Horcruxes were so rare, but he wondered if it would be impossible for
+two shards of a soul to destroy each other, for Horcrux to be wielded
+against Horcrux, and if there was a book somewhere that described the
+reaction when that nearly happened as a flare of white, shadowless, pure
+light.
+
+\emph{Clack} sang the puzzle pieces.
+
+Voldemort---the piece of Voldemort Harry had faced again and again, the
+man holding his brother captive now---must have known what Connor was
+from that confrontation at the end of first year. After that, he had not
+tried to kill him.
+
+Oh, he had endangered his life. He had sent Rabastan to cast the
+Severing Curse at him during the Second Task of the Triwizard
+Tournament. But he could easily have ordered his follower to use the
+Killing Curse, if Connor's life wasn't important to him, if he wanted to
+bring despair to and break Harry.
+
+He had used the spell during their fifth year that would have locked
+Connor in a dreaming coma, unable to come out unless a Marked Death
+Eater felt genuine willingness to help him, but that spell would not
+have killed him.
+
+Connor had run into the midst of an attacking vampire hive, but none of
+them had attacked him.
+
+When Voldemort tested his control over Evan Rosier by having him lure
+Connor out of Hogwarts during their sixth year and to Hawthorn's house,
+Indigena Yaxley had appeared in time to defend Connor and prevent Rosier
+from killing him---and Harry was willing to bet Indigena Yaxley knew all
+about the Horcruxes.
+
+And Voldemort had Connor now, torturing him endlessly, but always
+healing him.
+
+\emph{Thunk}, sang the puzzle pieces, and rolled to a stop.
+
+\emph{What will you never do, Harry?}
+
+\emph{Kill my brother,} he answered Voldemort, and lifted his head, eyes
+dry and staring into the distance.
+
+He remembered the long incantation Voldemort had cast over Connor early
+on in the torture session, before Snape could force the Dreamless Sleep
+down his throat. Harry had not recognized the spell, and had discounted
+it when it appeared to have no immediate effect, more concerned with the
+other things that Voldemort did to Connor in the name of hurting him.
+But he would wager, now, that the spell was an Unassailable Curse,
+insuring that his last Horcrux could not be destroyed without a willing
+sacrifice. Even if Harry had the strength of will to kill his brother,
+someone else would still have to die to make it possible.
+
+It was no wonder that Voldemort was so confident. Harry might be able to
+delay going to Connor, for a little while, because Draco had asked him
+to.
+
+He could never kill him, any more than he could kill Draco.
+
+The world might fall under the reign of darkness, and still Harry could
+not willingly harm him.
+
+\emph{Voldemort has---}
+
+And then, he stopped. All the breath rushed out of his lungs, as it had
+yesterday when he first struggled under the pain of what was happening
+to Connor, and he stared, while the puzzle pieces shifted twice and
+reoriented into a new pattern.
+
+Voldemort had trapped him with what he would never do.
+
+But he was notoriously bad at estimating what Harry \emph{would} do.
+
+And there was a way. Small and nimble, creeping around the edges of what
+was possible and permissible, but there \emph{was} a way to destroy the
+Horcrux and yet not have to kill his brother.
+
+It would even fulfill the prophecies.
+
+Harry wore a small smile that he knew held no joy. He rose to his feet
+and gave a rippling stretch, arms over his head, and a small nod. He
+could do this. He would do this. He would tell Snape and Draco he knew
+why Voldemort could not be killed, and tie it to the prophecy. The
+prophecy mandated that an elder stand at his right shoulder, didn't it?
+But it had to be a different elder each time, and Snape and Draco had
+already both fulfilled the role once, with Falco and Dumbledore
+respectively. Harry could not kill Voldemort until he brought along
+someone else who loved him. Peter would do.
+
+It sounded perfect. It sounded beautiful.
+
+It was a lie.
+
+But they would not know that.
+
+Harry let out a soft breath, and went to unlock the door and comfort his
+father and lover, who were no doubt frantic. He would explain the need
+to wait a while before they left, to brew some rather specialized
+healing potions for Connor. And it was true that his brother would
+probably die if they simply tried to remove him from Voldemort's lair.
+
+He didn't think he could have done this, had his Occlumency pools still
+been in place. He would have considered things too objectively. But his
+emotions were free now, and Harry knew exactly the level of guilt he
+could live with.
+
+\emph{I'll make myself human past the doubt,} he told the prophecy
+echoing in his head. \emph{Don't you worry about that.}
+
+The dogs-head in his left palm burned softly, as if in response, or
+promise.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 97*: Intermission:
+Brewing}\label{chapter-97-intermission-brewing}
+
+\textbf{Intermission: Brewing}
+
+\emph{Three hippogriff feathers, shredded into three parts each.}
+
+Cut and cut and cut, and the hippogriff feathers existed. Toss them into
+the potion. Watch them float, drift across the surface, while a red
+stone cut into his palm and he forced all the thoughts of what he wanted
+done into it. The stone grew warm with magic, and he had to concentrate
+to stop it from exploding.
+
+\emph{Impart the stone with your magical essence.}
+
+Done, and \emph{toss}, and the potion spat steam the color of lava and
+foamed and danced against the cauldron. Put up a ward around the
+cauldron, \emph{just} in case it spilled. It could not spill, not now.
+Contain it. Brew it. Remember the discipline Snape had taught him,
+embedded in breaths and body.
+
+\emph{The chips of stone must be identical.}
+
+They were. Oh, they were. Twin stones for twins. Cradle it tight, think
+of what he wanted to do, and watch the bubbles leap.
+
+\emph{Leap}, and the potion ate of the stone, and settled back into
+place as if thinking. Its bubbles floated above the surface now. Where
+was the largest one? \emph{There}, and it tasted of him and fell back
+into the cauldron with a faint pop when he punctured it with one finger.
+
+\emph{The potion must have the breath of the body.}
+
+Lean in. Blow. The potion singing to him, singing like a little boy
+finding frogs in a pond on a spring morning. Changing color, silver now,
+smug silver, languid silver, silver of light that defended one Horcrux
+from another.
+
+\emph{Watch for the maelstrom. It must have one of the brewer's hairs}.
+
+Pluck it forth, the smallest pain he had endured that day. Watch. There
+was the whirlpool! And in the hair went, and the potion appeared to turn
+upside-down, a smooth silver turtle shell extending above the rim of the
+cauldron.
+
+\emph{The potion must taste one more time of skin and sweat.}
+
+A finger in. The dome trembled, and buckled, and then slid apart,
+halving itself, petals reaching out like a flower's. Then it settled,
+and he could move it into the vial waiting for it. Couldn't have two;
+they would suspect something. But he could, and did, place a red line of
+magic inside the vial, invisible unless one looked closely, dividing
+exactly half from exactly half.
+
+Done.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 98*: And Death Is a
+Sleep}\label{chapter-98-and-death-is-a-sleep}
+
+And another title from ``Hymn to Proserpine,'' the concluding lines:
+``So long I endure, no longer; and laugh not again, neither weep./ For
+there is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep.''
+
+This is the chapter I've been envisioning since I started writing the
+very first story.
+
+Let's take it home.
+
+\textbf{Chapter Seventy-Nine: And Death Is a Sleep}
+
+Draco did not really like the look in Harry's eyes when he came out of
+the impromptu potions lab Snape had constructed on the second floor of
+Silver-Mirror. His face was---not sane. And he slipped a vial into his
+robe pocket as Draco watched, a vial full of a silver potion that looked
+familiar. Draco frowned. \emph{That's not Snape's Imperius potion, is
+it? He can't be planning on using that, can he?}
+
+And then he dismissed the idea, because Harry was \emph{vates}, and he
+would never use compulsion like that, whether it was in the form of a
+curse, the compulsion gift, or a potion. And Harry was smiling at him,
+his eyes so bright that Draco could almost pretend he was all there.
+
+Harry would need healing in the wake of what had happened, of course,
+just as Connor did. But now they were going to defeat the Dark Lord.
+
+Draco could hardly think of it; his thoughts charged up to the idea and
+then stopped as if at a wall. He had lived all his life under the shadow
+of the Dark Lord; the tales of him were the first he could remember
+Lucius whispering about, rather than simply telling, and that had
+increased the attraction of them to a child greedy for secrets. Draco
+had lived with the notions that he would serve him, that his father
+would serve him, and that he would fight Voldemort all along.
+
+And now, he was going to be \emph{destroyed?}
+
+It seemed too real to be believed.
+
+Sane or not, Harry was taking them along: Peter, Draco, and Snape. The
+others had been told enough to content them, but Harry had very firmly
+refused to take anyone else. Draco actually understood that, this time.
+Peter was necessary to the prophecy, and he and Snape could not bear to
+be parted from Harry, but taking too many people would just put them all
+in danger. They could not hope to overcome Voldemort by strength of
+magic. It needed Harry and Peter and the prophecy. And if Harry wanted
+to brew healing potions for Connor, the way he had done, then that was
+his right. At least, if Voldemort used his dying moments to inflict some
+horrible strike on Connor, then he was much less likely to die with
+Harry's healing potions right there.
+
+Draco wondered what he should say to his brother-in-law when he saw him
+again, and then shrugged. He would find the right thing in the moment
+when it happened, and not before.
+
+A hand smoothed over his arm, and he looked up into Harry's face.
+``Ready?'' Harry asked.
+
+Draco nodded. ``It's going to be strange when we get out of there,'' he
+said, and tried to laugh. ``Who do you think is going to react worse to
+the news of Voldemort's disappearance? All those people who still
+secretly sympathized with the Death Eaters? Or the Light wizards who
+won't have an enemy to fight any more?''
+
+``Probably the Pact,'' said Harry, and Draco swallowed what he'd meant
+to say next, because, good Merlin, Harry's eyes were green. ``I love
+you, Draco.''
+
+``I love you, too,'' Draco responded, wondering what had brought this
+suddenly on.
+
+Harry leaned forward and kissed him. It was the softest, gentlest, most
+passionate kiss Draco could ever remember them sharing. He was still
+staring at Harry when his partner pulled away, but Harry had turned to
+talk to Snape and Peter, and didn't seem to notice.
+
+\emph{I hope there are more kisses like that in our future,} Draco
+decided, dazedly. \emph{I want them.}
+
+He would consider, later, that it had been meant as a way to say
+goodbye.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Emotions raced through Harry's head, colliding with the sides of his
+skull, softening the world around him, making him see everything through
+his haze. It was rather like his dream of the sea, where there had been
+a black glass box that contained him and the water, and the grief had
+pounded outside. Outside him, now, were all the people who thought
+differently than he did, and doubtless would tell him he was mad.
+
+Inside were him, and his selfishness.
+
+Slytherins were selfish. It was one of the defining traits of the House,
+at least according to the wild Dark when it had accepted Draco's
+Declaration. And that was the reason Harry had been Sorted there in
+first year, he now believed: he really hadn't cared about anything but
+serving Connor, which, though it was an unselfish end in itself,
+involved him in a rather suffocating and constricted world as far as
+people other than his brother went.
+
+\emph{As it began, so it ends.}
+
+In more than one way, Harry thought, while they landed on the edge of
+the ruined wall containing Godric's Hollow. He had wrapped all of them
+in the \emph{Extabesco plene,} so that Voldemort's senses and magic
+could not detect them. They could, however, still see and otherwise
+sense each other.
+
+In truth, he did not believe they needed it. He believed that Voldemort
+would have let Harry walk openly into the burrow and come to his
+brother, because Voldemort did not think Harry would have the strength
+to kill Connor. It \emph{was} true that Harry might have brought along
+someone intended as a willing sacrifice---he glanced sideways at
+Peter---and that could break the Unassailable Curse Voldemort had cast
+on Connor. But then there would still be the problem of getting the
+shard of soul out of Connor's body.
+
+The example of Evan Rosier suggested that a shard embedded in a living
+body would not leave it, had no reason to leave it, unless that body was
+killed. They preferred bodies to objects. Harry could ask Peter to die,
+but he would still have had to kill his brother to make the shard of
+soul fly, and that he would not do, would never do.
+
+It was too bad that Voldemort underestimated him in other ways, Harry
+thought, clinically detached. Really too bad.
+
+His hand brushed against the vial of Switching Potion in his pocket as
+they walked towards the entrance of the burrow. Harry could feel wards
+plucking at his skin, but it was easy enough to shunt them aside. They
+were confused, anyway, by the distinct similarity between his magic and
+Voldemort's. Soon enough they stood staring down into the vast hole in
+the dirt. Harry could see steps if he squinted, and make out footprints
+in them. He wondered whose footprints they were. Voldemort's alone?
+Indigena's? Had Connor walked here?
+
+\emph{You will walk up them, brother. You will walk away. I have
+sacrificed too much already. I can be selfish too, and with my emotions
+free, it's so much easier to be that way, to be human. I'm tired. I
+don't want to see more sacrifices. I don't want to see more people die,
+and I can't see you die, and I can't see Draco die, or Snape, or Peter,
+or anyone else.}
+
+Now and then, like a muffled thump against the glass from the part of
+him that was still sane, came a reminder that he was a bit mad. A
+\emph{bit}, Harry corrected himself. He had a plan. It was a good one.
+
+``Shall we descend?'' Draco asked at last, when they'd stood there for
+some minutes in uncomfortable silence.
+
+Harry nodded. ``I'm not sure where Connor is, or Voldemort,'' he lied.
+He knew Connor would be slightly to the north of them, under the ruined
+bedroom where they'd both been marked, and he could feel Voldemort at
+the end of the tunnel of magic stretching between them, in a burrow that
+squatted to the west and south. ``We should go down and feel for them.
+Maybe I can sense something then.''
+
+He would have to be careful, he thought, as he descended the stairs,
+shielding Draco, Snape, and Peter. Depending on the conformation of the
+tunnel, he might have to take drastic measures to keep them from
+following him.
+
+The healing potions in his pocket bumped against his ribs, \emph{clink,
+clack, rattle}, and the Switching Potion, larger and more majestic than
+they were, seemed to be breathing. Harry wondered if such perceptions
+were part of his madness. He didn't much care if they were. His emotions
+were free now, he was human, and that was what the prophecy and all the
+people around him had wanted, wasn't it?
+
+As it turned out, no drastic measures were needed. The tunnel in front
+of them split two ways, one leading to the room where Harry knew Connor
+lay, the other turning into an alcove which Voldemort had probably used
+for storage at some point. Harry smiled slightly, and his magic began to
+stir around him. He could feel Voldemort watching him, confident,
+curious to see what he would do.
+
+\emph{You are going to die,} Harry thought, but quietly, since he didn't
+know what Voldemort might be able to pick up with Legilimency.
+
+Abruptly, he stiffened and stared into the alcove, as if he saw
+something. It worked for two of them. Snape and Peter both stepped
+forwards into it, wands drawn. Draco stayed by his shoulder.
+
+\emph{He was always the difficult one,} Harry thought with fond
+exasperation, remembering the child who had clung to his side like a
+burr in his first year to prevent him from associating with Gryffindors.
+He lifted a hand, and his magic responded to his order, howling around
+Draco as a wind and giving him a gentle but firm shove after Peter and
+Snape.
+
+Draco stared at him. They all stared at him.
+
+``I'm sorry,'' Harry said quietly. ``I love you. Goodbye.''
+
+And then he conjured a stone wall across the front of the alcove,
+sealing it off. Air could flow under it and around the sides, so they
+wouldn't suffocate, but there was no way for so much as a finger to fit
+through a crack. Harry then carefully cast an Unassailable Curse on the
+wall. Only a Light wizard, or the Light itself, would be able to surpass
+it, crack the wall, and let the three of them out---and it couldn't be
+someone on the inside, which meant Peter couldn't tear it down. That
+effectively protected them from Voldemort, who was Dark in every sense
+of the word. Harry was confident that Connor himself, or someone else
+who could decipher the notes he'd left in his bedroom on a half-hidden
+scrap of paper, would come eventually and let them out.
+
+Draco's fist hit the wall. "\emph{Harry}," he said, with so much misery
+in his voice that Harry had to close his eyes for a moment. ``What in
+Merlin's name do you think you're doing?''
+
+``Connor's the final Horcrux,'' Harry said calmly. ``And I don't intend
+to let him die. I'm going to take care of that.''
+
+Shocked silence. Harry turned up the tunnel that led to his brother.
+
+"\emph{Harry}," Peter said.
+
+``Harry!'' Snape called.
+
+Draco's response was a wordless wail.
+
+Harry set his sights forward, and trotted. He'd done everything for them
+that he could. He had to do something for his brother now, and for
+himself.
+
+The Switching Potion bumped and bumped and bumped against him, at least
+until he gripped the vial to hold it still and make sure it wouldn't
+break.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Harry was indeed glad that he'd brought the healing potions when he saw
+his brother. Connor lay on the dirt without a chain or rope---speaking
+further to Voldemort's scornful confidence, that Harry would never
+destroy his brother---but he had fingers still badly broken and harshly
+reset, and his limbs twitched in small, regular convulsions. Harry knelt
+down beside him, dropped the \emph{Extabesco plene,} and smoothed a hand
+over his brow, over the scar that concealed the Horcrux. Connor shivered
+and opened his eyes.
+
+The tears in his eyes said clearly that he thought he was seeing a
+dream. ``Harry?'' he whispered.
+
+``Here, brother.'' Harry had never known that his own voice could sound
+so calm, so steady. He tipped a few of the healing potions down Connor's
+throat, until his breathing eased and he could sit up. Connor leaned
+against the dirt wall. Harry put the rest of the healing potions
+carefully within his reach, and then drew out the Switching Potion. The
+red line in the middle separated half from half, and he nodded and
+uncorked the vial.
+
+``Harry?'' Connor whispered. ``What are you doing?''
+
+Harry ignored him for the moment. Now was not the time to let Connor
+talk him out of anything. He would explain once he was done, because his
+twin deserved to hear it, but not before.
+
+He drank half of the potion, down to the red line.
+
+The effect was immediate, though very odd---not at all like the other
+times he had used it. Then again, he'd never been the one to whom the
+dreams or knowledge was transferred. He felt another tunnel open across
+his brow, this one connecting his scar to Connor's, and a mighty
+\emph{yank} made his head bob forward. Then his mind filled with the
+heavy sense that he could compel people if he wanted to. Harry let out a
+slow breath. That, of course, was not a true compulsion gift, but just
+the form that this shard of Tom Riddle's soul had taken.
+
+``Harry?'' Connor repeated, insistently.
+
+Harry looked up at him, and smiled as gently as he could under the
+circumstances. He had the feeling that it was more exhausted than
+tender. ``You were a Horcrux, Connor,'' he said quietly. ``That's why I
+couldn't kill Voldemort, why he prevented his Death Eaters from killing
+you, and why he took you. It happened that night he came hunting us in
+Godric's Hollow. A shard of soul became embedded in you.''
+
+Connor stared at him with an open mouth, then whispered, "\emph{How}?"
+
+Harry shrugged. His head really did feel heavier. "Ask the prophecy. Ask
+the odd combination of magic going on in the room that night. My guess
+is that the Killing Curse he cast at you, and which got interrupted by
+my rebounded one, split his soul again, using \emph{him} as both the
+murder victim and the source of the shard, and then the shard took the
+only available path it could and flew into you."
+
+Connor swallowed several times, then said, ``But that means---that
+means---'' He stopped.
+
+"It \emph{did}," Harry corrected him, taking pity. He would not make
+Connor say that he would have to die for the safety of the world. ``I
+used the Switching Potion to transfer the Horcrux into myself.''
+
+More silence. Harry thought it had been perhaps two minutes since he
+took the Potion now.
+
+"\emph{Why}?" Connor said, both a demand and a rebuke at once.
+
+``Because I'm so damn tired of sacrifices.'' Harry yawned. He would wait
+just a few more minutes, to say farewell to his twin and make sure that
+he understood the truth and what he needed to do, and then he would kill
+himself. He was looking forward to the sleep that awaited him. Perhaps
+there would be sounds of the sea, or beloved voices, but he would prefer
+soundless oblivion. "I couldn't bear to see you die. Voldemort knows it.
+Even if I could bear to stand by and watch, say, Peter sacrifice himself
+to break the Unassailable Curse on you, we would still have to destroy
+your body to get the shard out so I could swallow it. I couldn't kill
+you. But I can, quite willingly and happily, die. That will be the
+willing sacrifice that breaks the Curse, \emph{and} the one that
+destroys the body so that the shard will have to flee."
+
+``And what if the shard just possesses me?'' Connor demanded tensely.
+``I was its home for seventeen years.'' He shuddered as if he had
+swallowed something foul-tasting.
+
+Harry laughed softly. ``That won't happen, Connor. When I die, my magic
+is going to snap right back to Voldemort. The shard will go with it, I
+think, drawn along by the sheer pull. Then Voldemort will have two
+pieces of his soul in the same body again, but no more Horcruxes. He can
+be killed.' He lifted his head. The air was filling with sweet thunder.
+''The prophecy will insure it," he added. ``You're the younger now,
+Connor, and you can kill Voldemort just like I could have. He's a
+powerful wizard, but he'll be mortal in a few moments. A successful
+Killing Curse will slay him just like anyone else.''
+
+The prophecy, somewhat to Harry's surprise, didn't continue congealing.
+It hung in the air like a miasma instead, as if waiting for something.
+Harry frowned at a corner where it seemed strongest, wondering what it
+wanted.
+
+"You \emph{think}," Connor said, voice like a whiplash. ``What premise
+is that to hang the safety of the world on, Harry?''
+
+``When otherwise we would have no chance at all? A very good one.''
+Harry started to lie down.
+
+``What about everyone who needs you?'' Connor demanded. ``The magical
+creatures? Draco? Snape? Me?''
+
+``I've done what I can for them,'' said Harry, and lowered his head to
+rest on his hands. ``Now I've run up against something I can't do. It's
+just like asking me to kill Draco to save the world. I can't change what
+I am. But I can do this, Connor.'' He sighed. His eyes wanted to droop
+shut, but he had a few more things to say first. ``I will miss you. But
+I can't go on now. I've finally learned to be human, just like the
+prophecy said.''
+
+\emph{Prophecies, inevitably, run out}, sang the line in his mind.
+
+Connor was staring at him. His chest heaved as if he were struggling for
+air, but no sound escaped his mouth. His eyes were bright and very
+hollow.
+
+``Snape, Peter, and Draco are trapped behind a wall down the corridor
+that only a Light wizard can break,'' Harry said. ``Your wand is in my
+robe pocket. I---''
+
+Connor lunged.
+
+Harry reared backwards instinctively, but it wasn't him Connor was going
+for. He realized what it was too late.
+
+Connor snatched the vial of Switching Potion, and gulped down the second
+half.
+
+Harry didn't know the voice with which he screamed. The burrow shook
+with it, though, and he thought he could hear Voldemort's laughter as
+the Horcrux flew from his body back to Connor's.
+
+Connor's hands were still moving. He picked up one of the healing
+potions lying beside him and dashed it down his throat.
+
+The prophecies sang like wildfire. Three heavy weights whirled down, one
+right after the other, and landed like iron barbells in the corner.
+
+Letters overrode his vision, information Harry remembered from
+\emph{Medicamenta Meatus Verus,} where he had first discovered the
+Switching Potion.
+
+\emph{There are three ways in which the Switching Potion is fatal. One
+is if another potion is consumed within five minutes of drinking half
+the draft.}
+
+Connor coughed.
+
+Blood burst from his ears, and trickled down his cheeks in lazy patterns
+of red. Then another stream of blood answered from his nose. Connor
+sagged to the ground, and Harry could hear his internal organs
+rupturing, one after another.
+
+But he was smiling.
+
+Harry grasped his hand. ``No,'' he said, but it was the helpless noise
+of a child denied something it badly wanted.
+
+Connor grinned up at him, and answered as if he had asked, ``Why?''
+``Because the world needs you more than me, Harry. Merlin knows I love
+Parvati, I love my life, I love what I am---'' He broke off to cough.
+Red flecked his lips. He finished, with a determination that Harry could
+only stare at. ``I love you. But I choose to lay it down, I choose to
+sacrifice it.'' He touched Harry's cheek with a trembling hand. ``And
+that ought to take care of both the willing sacrifice and the body the
+Horcrux is hiding in, just as you said it would.''
+
+\emph{The elder will stand at his shoulder, loving him, but the younger
+will love the whole of the wizarding world\ldots{}}
+
+Never, in all his dreams and his interpretations of the prophecy, had
+Harry imagined that one moment of loving the whole of the wizarding
+world---the kind of moment just long enough to contain one of Connor's
+impulsive actions---might be the answer to the third round of the
+prophecy.
+
+``I love you, Harry,'' Connor said, steadily. ``But this hurts as much
+as anything Voldemort did to me.'' Harry heard something burst in his
+chest cavity, and Connor's face went white. ``Please,'' he said. ``Knock
+me unconscious now.''
+
+Harry could not stop weeping, and he could not disobey his brother's
+last request. ``I love you,'' he said, and touched Connor's scar, and
+quietly shut down the center of his brain that kept him awake, so that
+he would not be aware and in the midst of pain when he died.
+
+Connor smiled at him, and closed his eyes.
+
+He did not open them again.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+\emph{The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches}.
+
+The shard of soul had indeed fled from Connor's body the moment he was
+dead. Harry had caught and shredded it like a bat, taking it apart down
+to the tendons, absorbing the magic inside him. He had no pity for
+things like this, things of Voldemort, not anymore.
+
+\emph{Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh
+month dies.}
+
+He and Connor had indeed both been born here, at the end of July in
+1980, to parents like that. They had entered the world only fifteen
+minutes apart.
+
+\emph{He is the younger of two, and he shall have the power the Dark
+Lord knows not.}
+
+Connor indeed had loved. And Voldemort had never anticipated the power
+that could have, or he would have taken far greater measures to guard
+his last Horcrux than he had.
+
+Harry's footsteps as he left the room where his brother lay dead were as
+soft as a leopard's.
+
+\emph{For the elder is power, but the younger is power united with
+love.}
+
+No one had ever said that that power in the second phrase had to be
+magical power. It could be determination. Harry himself had used the
+Dark, not sheer magical power alone, to defeat Falco.
+
+Harry passed the stone wall. He could hear that, ahead of him, Voldemort
+was no longer laughing. He did not appear to know what had happened. Or
+perhaps he simply assumed that he should have felt something more, if
+his Horcrux was really gone.
+
+\emph{O guard him, O shield him, for the darkness through which he
+passes otherwise is vicious and hideous, and love has but a scant chance
+of surviving.}
+
+And it had been. Connor had been kidnapped and had nearly succumbed to
+insanity. And he had not survived.
+
+The final tunnel gaped before Harry. He could feel his own magic rising,
+dark as Voldemort's, dark as deep water, violent as the sea in storm.
+
+\emph{The elder will stand at his right shoulder, loving him, but the
+younger will love the whole of the wizarding world.}
+
+For one moment; Connor had loved the world that he thought needed Harry,
+and sacrificed himself and died before he could change his mind. But one
+moment had been enough.
+
+Harry lifted his head and shook it. When he glanced to the right, the
+bird with claws on its wings and teeth in its beak hovered there. When
+he glanced to the left, a black dog with silver eyes tilted her head and
+looked wisely up at him.
+
+\emph{Power to the right of me, death to the left of me,} Harry thought,
+and stepped forward.
+
+\emph{The Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, and in so doing mark his
+heart.}
+
+Cause a heart-shaped scar, and give him a piece of his soul, such as
+Voldemort himself bore. Such a pity no one had ever thought of that
+interpretation.
+
+Lady Death might have raised her voice like a hunting horn, to warn her
+prey they were coming. But she did not. This was the proper place for
+silence, and she moved in it, though every hair on her body bristled.
+Ahead of them waited one who had escaped her for far too long, Harry
+knew.
+
+\emph{The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches, born
+as the seventh month dies.}
+
+The bird's wings were loud in the silence.
+
+Harry came to the entrance of the room.
+
+\emph{Three on three the old one coils,\\
+Three in its times, three in its choices.}
+
+And yes, it had been. Draco and Harry, Snape and Harry, Harry and
+Connor. The prophecy could have made another choice even now, Harry
+knew: Peter and Connor, for example, or maybe Peter and Harry, if Harry
+had died and Peter had been the one to kill Voldemort. That had been the
+reason it had hesitated the way it had. Until the very last moment, the
+choice could have fallen either way, and it had had to wait to come true
+until Connor did something irrevocable.
+
+With a soft snort, Harry wondered what a necromancer would have seen if
+trying to foresee his and Connor's deaths.
+
+\emph{Something confusing}, Lady Death said into his head, in a voice
+like cold dust.
+
+\emph{So much pain running without a halter,\\
+More than is traded every day in gold.\\
+Yet remember that even prophecies falter,\\
+And it is up to human hands to hold}
+
+\emph{And cling together at the end of all things.\\
+Prophecies will, inevitably, run out.\\
+It is on humans to take up wings,\\
+And makes themselves human past the doubt.}
+
+\emph{Connor was human. Always human. Selfish, bratty, limited,
+ordinary, and capable of such sweetness and generosity as could stun
+you.}
+
+Three prophecies come true, all entangled, and Voldemort mortal now.
+
+Harry stepped into the room.
+
+Voldemort rose to face him. His power mounted around him, still grand,
+still great, still more than anything Harry could call. But he was
+confused, hesitating, having felt the prophecies but not knowing what
+they meant, or perhaps frightened by the sight of the great black hound
+at Harry's left side.
+
+The hound belled.
+
+The bird shrieked.
+
+Harry said, "\emph{Avada Kedavra.}"
+
+The green light blazed and beamed between them. No time for Voldemort to
+change his expression, nothing that he could do to alter things, and no
+time to make another Horcrux.
+
+No time for anything at all.
+
+The green light struck home. Voldemort fell dead. Harry stared at him,
+and wondered if it could all be over, as simply as that---though the
+madness whispering in the back of his mind, caused by the torture of his
+brother and heightened by the loss of his brother, said it could not be.
+
+And then he fell to his knees, screaming.
+
+Voldemort's power had begun the transfer to his magical heir.
+
+It came upon Harry in thin lines, stretching from claw-shaped marks on
+Voldemort's forehead and shoulders, arms and hands and body, to him.
+Wounds flared on his body in the matching places---the scratches that
+the bird had inflicted on him during his fifth and sixth years, Harry
+remembered dreamily. The bird itself flew back and forth over the
+flowing magic, cawing and cooing happily. \emph{Love, love, love!} it
+said into Harry's head. \emph{Love you now!}
+
+So much magic. Harry had never imagined so much magic. As the tunnel
+contracted, on and on it poured, not a flood of water but a flood of
+pebbles, then a flood of boulders, then a flood of darkness that lay in
+caves and had never seen the light, intent on crushing him flat with its
+evil and tainting his power.
+
+But Harry had lived in his body for seventeen years, and with the
+powerful magic that Voldemort had accidentally granted him when he
+shattered Harry's barriers with the Killing Curse for sixteen. He had a
+core of his own magic, untouched, untapped by the shared connection, and
+loyal to him only.
+
+\emph{No! I say no!} he shouted, and wielded his will and the
+\emph{absorbere} gift against the magic, constraining it, swallowing and
+crushing it, forcing it to do as he said.
+
+The power roared and romped and blazed around him, and the fragile
+balance in Harry's mind tipped. He felt his sanity fall and smash like a
+little clay figurine on rocks.
+
+He scrambled to his feet, aware that the magic moved with him, but still
+sulkily, still slyly, as if it would strain to win control over him the
+moment it could. Harry knew he was probably the most powerful wizard in
+the world now.
+
+Nothing could have mattered less to him.
+
+No magic in the world could pierce the barriers of death to call his
+brother back.
+
+He raised his head, and his arms. Wings opened behind him, glittering
+black things edged in horns and spikes, and with a wordless cry he
+sprang skyward---
+
+And was \emph{elsewhere,} on gray sand where waves dashed up to meet him
+with an equally wordless roar.
+
+On a beach in Northumbria.
+
+Harry cast himself down, and gave himself to the tumble of magic and
+madness and rioting inside him. Love was a shard to cling to, but it was
+very small, a raft of ice against a sea of lava. He would have to bring
+himself back if he were to come back.
+
+Harry closed his eyes, and curled in on himself, and wept like something
+dying, and the sea answered with cry after rushing cry of pain.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 99*: Intermission: Light of
+Ruin}\label{chapter-99-intermission-light-of-ruin}
+
+Once again, a title from ``Hymn to Proserpine'' (they'll let up soon, I
+swear), describing the wave of the world: ``In its sides is the
+north-wind bound; and its salt is of all men's tears;/ With light of
+ruin, and sound of changes, and pulse of years:/ With travail of day
+after day, and with trouble of hour upon hour;/ And bitter as blood is
+the spray; and the crests are as fangs that devour:''
+
+\textbf{Intermission: Light of Ruin}
+
+Draco's knuckles bled from where he'd dashed them against the wall over
+and over again. His mind didn't feel much better: scraped raw by the
+sheer \emph{effort} to comprehend what was happening, and the certainty
+that he knew nearly nothing and, at the same time, that he knew enough
+to mourn.
+
+\emph{He's gone to sacrifice himself. All the work that we put into
+making him human, all of the man I loved, given up for his brother---}
+
+It would have been easy to hate Connor then, even given all he'd
+suffered, but it was easier to hate the fact that Harry still felt this
+way, inclined to die.
+
+And then Peter and Snape cried out simultaneously, and sagged to their
+knees. Draco opened his mouth to ask what was wrong, even as he drew his
+wand with one hand. His body seemed to think Voldemort had come to stand
+outside the wall and that they would have no choice but to fight him.
+
+It was lucky he had one free hand, so that he could fling his arm across
+his eyes when the light started.
+
+It was a golden-white, piercing, stern kind of radiance. It opened in
+streaks and gaps through the Dark Marks on both men's arms, and chewed
+through the flesh. Draco could smell hair singeing. When he did force
+himself to look straight ahead and see through to the source, he saw the
+light scraping the Dark Marks as black scraps like burned paper off to
+either side, and stretching itself outward in a molten birth.
+
+Then it vanished, or migrated from Peter's and Snape's arms to the wall.
+They knelt there, and Draco stood, in silence, staring, trying to grasp
+the fact that Voldemort was gone. He \emph{had} to be, or else what
+would have happened to the Dark Marks?
+
+Then a golden claw hooked over the top of the stone wall and dragged it
+down.
+
+Draco gasped as light like a thousand \emph{Lumos} charms struck his
+eyes for a moment, but then it faded, and he stood in a dark tunnel
+flaring with afterimages. He heard Snape and Peter follow him hesitantly
+out of the alcove, over the tumbled stone, so surprised that fear had
+been left behind them.
+
+\emph{I don't know what happened,} Draco thought. \emph{But I need to
+find out.}
+
+``I'll take this tunnel,'' he said quietly, indicating the one in front
+of them. ``You explore other ways.''
+
+Though Peter, and especially Professor Snape, probably would have argued
+against letting him out of their sight under any ordinary circumstances,
+these were not ordinary circumstances. Or perhaps they were simply as
+anxious to find Harry as he was. They nodded, and turned towards a
+massive, arched tunnel that led to the south.
+
+Draco bent and followed the faint traces of Harry's footprints in the
+dust. He ignored the fact that there was a set coming back the other
+way, with odd, faint marks beside it like the pawprints of a dog. He
+could not allow himself to hope until he saw what lay in the room at the
+end of the tunnel.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Draco was thus the one to find Connor's body.
+
+He saw black hair around the corner, and stopped suddenly. It was only
+by drawing on the coldness of his father's voice---\emph{Malfoys are not
+cowards}---and his mother's---\emph{Never allow fear to cripple you,
+Draco, for it means you are not being true to yourself}---together could
+he go forward.
+
+And then he saw Connor lying in the dirt with blood splayed down his
+face, and the strength went out of his legs. He dropped to his knees,
+and looked for a long time. He looked at the empty potions vials next to
+his brother-in-law, and that blood, and the set of footprints that led
+out of the room.
+
+And the faint tingle of magical power in the air, power that he knew
+well.
+
+Draco closed his eyes. ``You prevented Harry from sacrificing himself,''
+he said. ``I don't know how you did it, but thank you.'' He hesitated
+for a long moment, then whispered, ``I'm sorry.''
+
+Well, he \emph{hadn't} known what would be appropriate to say to his
+brother-in-law until he saw him again, after all.
+
+A muffled footfall sounded behind him. Draco glanced over his shoulder,
+wondering if he would see Harry standing there.
+
+The gryphon of the Light, feathers all aglow with the same white-golden
+radiance that had illuminated the Dark Marks, bowed its eagle's beak
+towards him and watched him with brilliant eyes.
+
+\emph{The Light pulled the wall down,} Draco thought, paralyzed, staring
+back, though it was like staring into the sun. \emph{Peter said that
+only a Light wizard on the outside of the wall could remove it---or the
+Light itself. I suppose now we know which one it was. But what in the
+world is it doing here?}
+
+And then he was glad that he hadn't asked the question aloud, because
+the answer was obvious.
+
+His face flaming, he moved aside and allowed the Light access to
+Connor's body.
+
+The enormous creature flattened as it crept past him, until the moment
+when it stood above Connor. Then its eyes softened, in a way that Draco
+didn't understand---how could an eagle look compassionate?---and it bent
+its head to rub its beak against him. The white wings rose, and wrapped
+around the corpse. Draco bowed his head. He knew the Light was probably
+gathering Connor, to take him home, and he felt uneasy and uncomfortable
+and awed being so close to the force Connor had been Declared to.
+
+Something crossed his face, a burning shadow. He looked up, and saw one
+claw hovering above him.
+
+The claw descended.
+
+The nails scraped through Draco like light, and, for one moment, he
+\emph{understood}. He shared the morals of a Light wizard. He understood
+what would make someone Declare to the Light.
+
+One could limit oneself voluntarily, so that other people could have
+freedom and pleasure and beautiful things. They deserved to have them,
+too, didn't they? And one could lay down one's life so that other people
+could live. And one could dance between free will on the one side and
+order on the other, and make it one's life work to reconcile them in a
+pattern of both joy and beauty.
+
+Draco emerged from that strange experience shaking his head, as the
+morals left him like water from a sieve. He shivered, and wrapped his
+arms around himself. He was glad the Light had not forced him to change
+his mind. He did not \emph{want} to think differently. He was Dark,
+Declared, and that was all there was to it.
+
+But he knew the Light had given him a gift nonetheless. For a moment, he
+had comprehended why Connor had done this.
+
+And, more lastingly, he now understood Harry in a way he doubted he
+would have achieved otherwise.
+
+He sat back as the gryphon rose on its hind legs, the lion's paws, and
+spread its wings. Its claws clutched something shining and indistinct,
+perhaps vaguely human-shaped, close to its breast. Its cry rang out, the
+eagle's scream breaking into the lion's roar halfway through, the sound
+of mingled pain and triumph.
+
+Then it blasted straight up through the roof of the burrow, and dirt
+shook down and covered Draco. But when he looked up through the hole
+thus left, he saw the stars.
+
+Connor, he noticed when he looked back at him, had a smile on his face.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Snape and Peter met him in the middle of the tunnel near the collapsed
+stone wall, dazed enlightenment on their faces.
+
+``Voldemort is dead,'' Snape said simply. Peter looked too overwhelmed
+to talk.
+
+Draco nodded. He'd worked out the story now, finally remembering the
+silver color of the Switching Potion. He held up the vial that had
+contained it, and Snape at once narrowed his eyes and snatched it away.
+
+``Connor's dead back there,'' Draco said. Peter closed his eyes, and
+Draco winced, wishing he'd found some gentler way to break it. But,
+well, Snape had \emph{had} to know that it wasn't Harry. "Harry intended
+to switch the Horcrux into himself, I think, and perhaps he even managed
+it. But Connor took it \emph{back}, and then---then he died. I think he
+drank a healing potion to do so."
+
+``So where is Harry?'' Snape asked.
+
+Draco shook his head. ``I don't know. But he probably fled after---after
+he inherited Voldemort's power and saw his brother die.'' He shuddered
+to imagine what Harry's mind might look like now, and then turned and
+made his way to the steps out of the burrow.
+
+As if something in the earth itself had kept them from feeling it, now
+Draco could sense the enormous power bleeding from the north and west.
+It pulsed like a heart torn from the body. He shuddered again.
+
+``He's in Northumbria,'' he said absently.
+
+``How in the world do you know?'' Snape demanded.
+
+"I don't \emph{know}," said Draco. ``But I'm sure.'' He hesitated,
+wondering if he could approach Harry in this mood, and then straightened
+his shoulders. ``We'll have to go to him,'' he said. ``But carefully. We
+don't want to trigger a wizard that powerful into lashing out.''
+
+Snape nodded, and then no one really seemed to know what to say, so they
+stood silently there. The stars blazed overhead with more clarity than
+Draco remembered them ever having.
+
+\emph{The Dark Lord is gone.}
+
+In the distance, an eagle cried.
+
+And Draco saw Connor's bloody face and smiling mouth in his mind again,
+and thought, as he would never do again, \emph{Farewell, brother.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 100*: All So Fair That Are
+Broken}\label{chapter-100-all-so-fair-that-are-broken}
+
+Thank you for the reviews!
+
+Fair warning: most of this chapter is, um, kind of strange. But then,
+most of it is written from Harry's point-of-view, and Harry is far from
+sane right now.
+
+Another ``Hymn to Proserpine'' title: ``Ye are fallen, our lords, by
+what token? we wist that ye should not fall./ Ye were all so fair that
+are broken; and one more fair than ye all.''
+
+\textbf{Chapter Eighty: All So Fair That Are Broken}
+
+Monika did not step back from her pool until she was quite sure that the
+interaction between Lord Riddle and his heir had ended---long moments
+after the pool had gone dark. She had enchanted it to record those kinds
+of interactions solely, and so it made sense that it would become
+obscure when one of them died, but Lord Riddle had had so many tricks to
+cheat death that Monika half expected the water to brighten to silver
+again.
+
+It did not. This time, the man who called himself Voldemort was truly
+dead, and his magic had transferred to Harry.
+
+Harry was the most powerful wizard in the world.
+
+And weakened, emotionally insane, terribly vulnerable\ldots{}
+
+Monika did not hesitate. There was a way around the Pact's sanctions
+about going to Britain, and she knew what they were. She had prepared
+herself against such a day. She would create a sending of herself, a
+powerful glamour that would gradually fill in with her physical body,
+and place it on the beach where the pool had showed her the last vision
+of Harry---more than clear enough for Apparition. She still had a
+tapeworm of the kind that would steal magic for her. And even a third of
+that incredible power would be enough to insure that no member of the
+Pact after that could challenge her and force her to face any
+consequence of her actions. She would \emph{be} a consequence. And the
+Pact mostly lived with what occurred. They would accept Harry's
+death---probably with more than one secretly grateful that the slayer of
+three Lords had gone out of the world---and her new status without fuss.
+
+\emph{If they know what is good for them.}
+
+Monika smiled, and then began to chant the words and fuel the will that
+would create the sending for her.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+A black wolf with green eyes and a silver lightning bolt scar looked
+into his face.
+
+A green wolf with silver eyes and a black lightning bolt scar looked
+into his face.
+
+A silver wolf---
+
+No! No silver wolf. The silver he had seen was the gray color of the
+beach and the waves transmuted, and what he had thought was the wolf's
+howl was the laughter of gulls, springing around him like foam. Harry
+clenched his fists and screamed back. The laughter fell silent in
+startlement, and then the sea crept up the sand and licked at his boots
+like a servant. Harry knew it would do what he asked of it, did he but
+ask piercingly enough. He stretched out a shaking hand, which firmed
+when he felt the cold of the spray on his fingers.
+
+The wolf had retreated a short distance away from him, to sit at his
+left shoulder. It could never stand at the right one. No one could stand
+at the right one without being terribly hurt and marked more than he
+should be. There was a prophecy about that. Give Harry a moment, and he
+would recall the wording.
+
+But what if he didn't want to recall the wording? What if he wanted to
+lie here for the rest of his life, and feel the sea on his fingers?
+
+His magic whispered eagerly that it could make it so. He might turn into
+a statue with nerves only in its hand, and no one would be able to
+approach that hand, which a sphere of pure white light would guard, but
+he could feel the sea, again and again, as long as he liked. It might
+disintegrate him into a mixture of sand and air and magic, but the hand
+would stay. It could move him from world to world, opening gates
+whenever he tired of the feel of one particular set of waters, while he
+need never move his body but could only stare into the sea.
+
+This was the beach where he had come with---
+
+And the sounds of the name formed in his mind, hard stop, soft vowels,
+loud nasals, and he screamed, the cry of a wild and lonely thing.
+
+Wild and lonely things played in the corners of his mind, creatures that
+lived in the paths between Dark and Light, and which he would have had
+to glance away from the sea to acknowledge. The waves whispered their
+condolences for his loss. A slim dog, a lovely greyhound, came up out of
+the sea with a collar of salt on her neck and stood there, licking
+softly at his cheek, and the silver center of one palm, with a cold
+tongue. Then she turned into a woman, which had never happened before,
+and sat down beside him. Harry saw her through his magic, since his eyes
+would not turn away from staring in front of him. One side of her body
+lived and throve, with healthy skin and a soft brown eye and shining
+white hair of a snow-like loveliness. The other side of her body was
+flesh scraped and burned raw, with a seamed half-lip parched raw by
+thirst, and wisps of hair that cracked as she moved, and an eye-socket
+filled with smashed jelly. In her living hand she held a dead rose, in
+the dead hand a live one.
+
+\emph{Et in Arcadia ego}, Lady Death said softly.
+
+Harry knew the words. \emph{Even in Arcadia, I am.} In the most perfect,
+beautiful, idyllic place on earth, Death lingered. He could not escape
+from it. She was the counterpart to life. He was what came when life
+ended, and there was no immortality, no turning away from it.
+
+As Voldemort's death had proved, and Connor's---
+
+Harry flung the name from him as he would a branding iron. It hurt far,
+far too much to contemplate.
+
+\emph{Go away!} he screamed at Lady Death, and she bowed her head, and
+blew on the roses until they danced around him, bright blooming red
+flower and withered black husk together, and then went away.
+
+The roses smelled sweet.
+
+Any rose would smell sweet, Harry thought. Roses were interchangeable.
+Thoughts were interchangeable. He could lie here amid the smell of roses
+and the lure of thoughts and never, never think about things he didn't
+have to think about.
+
+There was an abyss of Light opening beneath his feet---the path into the
+paths, the gate to another world. He could fly into that. He could go to
+see what Calypso McGonagall, and other Light Lords and Ladies who had
+lived out their lives and faded, had learned so long ago. Harry knew
+there were beauties there which could soothe his pain, make him forget.
+If he listened, he could hear the running of a golden Lethe.
+
+Behind him, the wild Dark touched his neck with a cold nose. Harry
+turned and looked into the darkness between the stars. He could fly
+there, too. He could become the wind, and take delight for the rest of
+eternity in inflicting pain like his own on those who dared to have
+happy lives. The Dark gave a quiet, eager, wolf-like little whine. It
+had always wanted him. It could have him, if he would agree. Its longing
+was touched with awe now, the eagerness that came with the idea that it
+could absorb as much magic as currently hung around him.
+
+Harry lay on the beach beside the sea, his hand in the water, and hung
+between the Dark and the Light.
+
+And then he felt the pull as someone else Apparated in.
+
+He lifted his head, and his magic \emph{snarled}. He knew he could make
+the person who was coming towards him cease to exist with a thought. But
+he did not. Some cold part of his mind, which he had inherited from
+Voldemort, bade him wait and see how amusing she could be.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Monika shuddered and put a hand over her eyes. Even in sending form,
+with part of her still at home in a magically heated clearing, she could
+feel the cold of the magic ahead of her beating on her face. Ripples of
+power made her bones sing, and her blood rose and flowed in different
+directions like the tide called by the moon. It was an annoying
+sensation, and she had to pause a moment to deal with it before she
+could walk forward.
+
+Harry lay ahead of her, with one hand in the water, exactly as she had
+last seen him.
+
+Save that he was looking towards her.
+
+Monika lifted her head. Well, she had known he might look at her before
+the end. But she did not care if he did. He wanted to die, and she could
+offer him the death he wanted. She could even offer him a home for the
+magic he contained, which, being Harry, he would be rather concerned
+about. He had no reason to fight her when she sent the tapeworm into
+him.
+
+``Lord Black,'' she began. ``I am here to---''
+
+And then he reached out, with a faint, feral expression in his eyes that
+could not be called a smile, could not be called anything but insanity,
+and \emph{yanked}.
+
+The rest of her flew away from the clearing near her house and into her
+sending form. Monika collapsed to her knees, gasping. Suddenly she was
+really there, on the beach, and magic streaked her vision like melting
+snow, and filled the world all around her so that she could not sense
+the coming spring any more.
+
+A grip encircled her throat. It felt like an invisible iron band. It
+said, more clearly than death did, that he would break her neck if she
+moved.
+
+``You have been a bane to me since the first day I met you,'' Harry's
+voice said. He had not moved, but he was there, in front of her, and
+Monika wondered if he had commanded the beach to tip and spill him down
+to her. In the bowed position the magic was increasingly forcing her
+into, she could see only the tops of his shoes. ``And I say that you
+will be a bane no more.'' He laughed. ``I should have threatened your
+home and your people before now. What say you, Monika, to the sea rising
+and covering all of Austria?''
+
+And now Monika really understood what magic and madness of this sort
+meant.
+
+Sand filled her mouth. She had to spit several times before she could
+say, ``You would drown many innocents to reach my land.''
+
+``I do not care.'' Strange light shone from Harry's face onto hers.
+Monika was terribly afraid it came from actual sparks burning in his
+eyes. ``The sea is always hungry---immeasurably hungry. She birthed the
+land, and someday soon she will have all of us again. So Kanerva
+believed, and I am inclined to believe the same thing. The difference
+between us is that I can make something like this come true, if I choose
+to believe it.'' He bent down, and she could see the edge of his cheek
+and jawline now. Monika knew she did not want to see his eyes. ``What
+say you, Monika? Shall the waters rise? Or will you agree to stay away
+from Britain for the rest of your days? I shall require a vow from you
+that will kill you if you break it.''
+
+``The Unbreakable Vow?'' Monika whispered.
+
+``Hardly,'' Harry said. ``We have no one here to serve as Bonder, unless
+Lady Death would agree.'' He laughed, and one of Monika's eyes burst.
+She held still, because she could do nothing else, and she loved her
+life more than her sight. "This is a new spell I will create. You
+\emph{cannot} break it, in any way. You cannot come to Britain with
+another Pact member. You cannot send a servant here. You cannot create a
+glamour of yourself as you did today."
+
+Monika said nothing.
+
+``And I can do it,'' said Harry, with terrible gentleness, "as surely as
+I just insured that you will never see out of your right eye again,
+because I am the most powerful wizard in the world. Didn't you
+\emph{know}?"
+
+He lifted his arms, and Monika felt the form of the world change. The
+structures of magic, which had not included any such vow as Harry talked
+about, trembled and warped and split apart, and made place for the new
+spell. And then Harry cast it, in a voice so twisted with sea-wind and
+the cry of the waves leaping behind him, hungry and angry, that Monika
+could not make out the incantation.
+
+\emph{Perhaps that is just as well.}
+
+The vow settled around her like a cage that molded itself to every curve
+of her body, and then the grip on her throat ended. Monika lay,
+breathing, in the sand. Had she been of the Light, false courage would
+have required her to say that she was exhausted and could not stand. But
+it was not that, not at all. She was afraid to look up at him, and she
+knew, now, that she should never have come here.
+
+"Now, \emph{go}," Harry said, and flung her home.
+
+She landed in her clearing, face down in the dirt, as she had left
+Britain. A confused bleat came from some of her sheep.
+
+Monika took a deep breath and stood, shaking out her hair, her mind
+thronging with spells that could help compensate for her new blind side.
+
+She was of the Dark. She had gambled, and lost. She would live with the
+consequences.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Harry bowed his head, and took several deep breaths when the apparition
+of the woman flickered out as if she had never been, in Apparition.
+
+He could feel the magic pressing down, trying to crush his mind. It was
+eager to be of service to him, but that very service would be his doom.
+He was not meant to carry such a burden. Voldemort could have contented
+himself with this level of magic, Monika could have, maybe even Jing-Xi
+or Kanerva, but not Con---
+
+\textbf{\emph{Do not think the name}}
+
+--and not him. Harry knew his choices were two: to die, which would make
+the magic dissipate and appear again only among the memories of wizards
+dancing on Walpurgis Night, or to give it away and climb out of the
+madness it induced.
+
+And now he stood, abyss above him, darkness behind him, sea in front of
+him, and had to make that choice.
+
+Harry closed his eyes. He \emph{wanted} to die. He wanted it so badly.
+He could remember speaking to Joseph about that desire, last year, and
+the tingle of yearning in his stomach had increased since his brother---
+
+\textbf{\emph{Do not think the name}}
+
+--had died. What better way to die than to follow him? Harry had been
+content enough to do that when he went down to be the sacrifice. It all
+made sense. He had done something great for Draco, delaying going to his
+twin's side because Draco had asked him to. He would do something great
+for his brother, too, giving up his life so that he could live. It
+balanced.
+
+But what about the rest of the world?
+
+\emph{Does anyone else in the world want me, mad as I am, broken as I
+am?} Harry walked in his mind through a garden of tumbled white statues
+and snap-stemmed silver flowers, and he did not know.
+
+There were people he could help, but that was not the same thing as
+someone wanting him. There were people who would be glad to see him
+alive, but that was not the same thing as someone wanting him. There
+were people who would mourn if he died, but that was not the same thing
+as someone wanting him.
+
+In that hour of water, as Harry stood with the sea lapping around his
+feet, what came to him was a memory of sweat and skin and sex, a body
+beneath his, and a hand gripping his hair and tugging.
+
+\emph{Yes. Draco wants me.}
+
+So he had that reassurance.
+
+But even that was not enough. Harry stepped over a glinting pool, nearly
+drained, with a statue lying face down in it, and knew that, if he
+returned to the world, he would have to return for himself. \emph{He}
+would need to want to live. He could not bury himself again in service
+to other people, not with the Occlumency pools boiled away and not with
+Con---
+
+\textbf{\emph{Do not think the name}}
+
+--gone. He had to make this choice for himself.
+
+He stood in the broken garden. Under him was the abyss of Light. Harry
+stared yearningly into it. The wolf leaned against his back, a cold
+weight, and the sea spoke to him again and again, ready to rise if he
+commanded it and drown Austria.
+
+This time, the memory that came to him was one of the vial full of
+Switching Potion clashing against his ribs. He had been selfish, then.
+He had known that giving up his life would hurt Draco and Snape and
+others, but he had not cared.
+
+\emph{True to my House.}
+
+There was---
+
+\textbf{\emph{Do not think the name}}
+
+--enough in his memory that he did not \emph{need} to climb out. But he
+also did not \emph{want} to give himself to Light or Dark, or to step
+into the water. The madness would be simple, but it would also be
+boring. It would be the end of his existence as a conscious being. He
+would become, more or less, the plaything of any force that wanted him,
+until, perhaps, the Pact hunted and killed him, or he took over the
+world with his magic, or everyone drowned.
+
+\emph{No. I don't want that.}
+
+The thought of what lay ahead, all the healing and repairing to be done,
+foisted itself on him as a great weakness. So Harry narrowed his gaze,
+and refused to think about the healing and the repairing. He thought
+only of rest and sleep, not in madness or in death, but in Draco's arms.
+Everyone else who wanted his help would just have to wait their turns,
+that was all.
+
+Most of his life, Harry had been at the beck and call of one form of
+service, one person, one cause or another. The thought of simply laying
+down his burden for a while and dreaming in silence attracted him even
+more than death did.
+
+He looked up. A golden rope of his desire dangled above him. Harry
+reached out and gave it a firm tug. It held. Dark green strands braided
+it, he saw. Dark and Light, both always and forever intertwined.
+
+Harry grasped the rope and began to climb out of the abyss.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Jing-Xi turned. The window that showed Harry hovered in front of her,
+and behind her were the windows containing other members of the
+Pact---save for Monika, who was recovering on her own time. No one had
+opposed Jing-Xi when she refused to contact the Dark Lady of Austria.
+Besides, opening a window just as Monika approached Harry would have
+been too awkward to endure.
+
+``Need we argue about this again?'' Jing-Xi asked coolly. Of course, it
+felt as though all she had been doing for the past few months, whenever
+she was in communication with her peers at all, was argue about Harry,
+so she thought she had the right to sound exasperated. There were
+problems with the emergence of a new Lord-level child in the Pacific,
+and a wizarding disease on the verge of breaking out in Mexico, which
+looked like it could be a variant of the Serpent's Tongue Plague. They
+should be ready to think about \emph{other} things by now, Jing-Xi
+believed. "He didn't hurt Monika, even though he was insane at the time.
+He fought back against Lord Riddle \emph{alone,} and he didn't
+immediately take over the world or come hunting us. And he's coming back
+from madness on his own. Need we really appoint someone to watch over
+him?" That was the Pact's latest suggestion, put forth by Lord Brewer.
+Jing-Xi thought it sounded like the monitoring board that Aurora
+Whitestag had led, and had opposed it from the start.
+
+``There is the still the matter of the insult he offered us,'' Elena
+said in her dead voice.
+
+``And if you come to blows with him over insults, it is a private
+matter, and no need to involve the Pact,'' Jing-Xi snapped. Yes, the
+Dark Lady of Peru was a formidable enemy, but Jing-Xi was not afraid of
+her, especially not when she could see similarly disgusted looks growing
+on the faces around her. The demonstration of Harry's stability in the
+midst of madness, with Monika going away half-blind but not dead and not
+even drained of her power, had impressed most of them, she knew. "He has
+never been allowed to fit in as he should have. We distrusted him for
+not being Declared, and then we said he must fight a war on his own, and
+then we tried to distract him while Lord Riddle still threatened his
+land and his people. He has grown up \emph{much} better than can be
+expected, and with much less help. We should accord him as much courtesy
+as any other Lord now. Preventing you from attacking his partner, my
+Lady Elena, and turning his back while he spoke to us, could hardly be
+said to be an insult by any of the standards we use."
+
+``I agree,'' said Alexandre. His face was as nearly content as Jing-Xi
+had ever seen it. She thought he was satisfied to have seen so many
+prophecies come true at once. ``Leave the boy alone. We may watch him
+until the end of his return to sanity if we wish, but he has done more
+than we could expect of anyone.''
+
+``I agree,'' Pamela said at once.
+
+``And I,'' said Brewer.
+
+``And I,'' Coatlicue added. Her voice had a ring of pride, as if she had
+been the one to mentor Harry to his current level. Jing-Xi could forgive
+that, really. She had held out for being as neutral in Harry's situation
+as possible, and so had ended up being the one who treated him most like
+part of the Pact already. ``Besides, I would like to turn our attention
+to the Serpent's Tongue crisis.''
+
+One by one, other voices murmured their assurances. Elena was the only
+holdout, and from the way Alexandre eyed her, Jing-Xi rather thought she
+would have a problem if she tried to go after Harry, even undetected.
+
+And Monika---
+
+Jing-Xi concealed a smile. She had never seen the Dark Lady of Austria
+so thoroughly spanked.
+
+``Yes, let us look to Mexico,'' said Pamela. ``When this is ended.''
+
+Jing-Xi nodded, and turned to face the window again.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Harry climbed, and, as he climbed, he gave his power away.
+
+Oh, not \emph{all} of it. But he could not live with so much magic
+squatting in the back of his mind, or racing about his head like a crown
+of song, asking to do things for him. And there was always the
+possibility that Voldemort's power would gain a will of its own if he
+confined it for long enough and try to break free of the prison or make
+him do things he would rather not do. Harry would not risk that.
+
+He was Slytherin in his selfishness, perhaps, but not his ambition. Or
+perhaps he was more ambitious than others, to want to accomplish
+something without the magic that would intimidate many of his potential
+opponents before they even lifted their voices.
+
+So he cut Voldemort's power from his. Had he not lived so long with the
+magic released from the phoenix web at the end of his second year, it
+would have been impossible, but he had, and he knew what his magic
+should feel like. Everything else, he cut away, and sent elsewhere.
+
+One third went to the wild Dark, which immediately stopped floating
+beside him in the form of a black wolf and went away to play with it.
+Harry almost smiled at that, the first smile he had given since---
+
+\textbf{\emph{Do not think the name}}
+
+--his brother had died. The wild Dark was a child in so many ways that
+he couldn't regret his decision not to join it, powerful and beautiful
+though it could also be. It was not in him to Declare for Dark. It had
+probably been too late for that the moment he fully understood his vows.
+
+One third went to the Light. The golden abyss beneath him had opened and
+contracted like a beating heart, but when he dropped his magic into it,
+the contractions increased, until only a small slit of gold remained,
+rather like the gold that had split the surviving Death Eaters' Dark
+Marks as they burned away. It would open for him if he wished to drop,
+but not otherwise.
+
+\emph{How did I know that, about their Dark Marks?}
+
+When he stopped to think about the question, he hung motionless from the
+rope, and the magic made a determined effort to come back. Harry shook
+his head and started climbing again. One thing at a time.
+
+And one more third of extra magic to give away.
+
+He gave it to the sea, that ever-hungry creature that would have obeyed
+his command to drown Austria, and which had called him to her when
+Voldemort died. He had dreamed of that. Or had he simply had dreams of
+the sea, and his mind and magic used the coincidence to pull him here,
+to a place where he had felt something like peace and safety, and a
+connection to the Potter line?
+
+He would never know.
+
+His magic vanished into the sea like a diving dolphin. Harry knew the
+waves would use it better than he would. Perhaps it would go to nourish
+hippocampi, to split the web on a kraken, or to encourage the
+flourishing of sirens. He could not know, and he was glad not to.
+
+And then he had the most difficult part of the abyss to climb, through
+diamond shards that waited to cut into him. Harry hesitated only a
+moment before he struck forward, watching with clinical detachment as
+the shards cut into his arms and made them bleed. None sliced across his
+wrists, though. None would unless he changed his mind and decided he
+wanted to die.
+
+He did not. He had made the decision to reach the top of the abyss for
+himself, and he would go on living. For himself.
+
+It had to be so, no matter how much he loved and admired and respected
+other people. Otherwise, the deep desire to die would reassert itself
+someday, and he did not know if he could always keep himself from
+following it.
+
+And when he was back to sanity, he was back to grief.
+
+\textbf{\emph{Do not think the name}}
+
+So he climbed, and the diamond shards closed in harder and harder, until
+the golden rope ran like a narrow stream of warm water through pack ice.
+And still Harry climbed, his mind cleared, concentrated on that single
+goal.
+
+To live. For himself.
+
+Memories poured in, and Harry fitted and spun them into place. Emotions
+crashed into his head, and he winced but continued the climb. Sanity
+slipped nearer and nearer, and sometimes he stopped to take a breath,
+but on he always went.
+
+He had to. He wanted to. He needed to.
+
+For himself.
+
+It must be so. Harry understood that now, as though the death of the one
+person he had tried most to live for---
+
+\textbf{\emph{Do not think the name}}
+
+--had shown him the folly of doing it for anyone or any\emph{thing}
+else. He could not be just his causes. He could not be just his
+sacrifices. He had \emph{tried}, when he went to Voldemort's lair, and
+that had resoundingly failed, just as every project begun in Godric's
+Hollow ultimately had.
+
+The old way did not work. So he would try this new way.
+
+He reached a glassy roof. Harry lifted one hand from the rope and ran
+his palm over it. Pain waited on the other side, pain and the full
+consciousness of pain.
+
+He took a deep breath, and butted his head and shoulders against the
+glass, shattering it.
+
+His eyes opened, and saw what was there, the gray sea in front of him
+and the weak sun rising, and the people walking cautiously towards him
+across the damp sand of the beach. And then he screamed, because the
+voice that had protected him relentlessly in the depths of his madness
+was equally relentless now.
+
+\textbf{\emph{Say the name.}}
+
+``Connor,'' Harry whispered, and there were tears on his face as if he
+had never wept for his brother. He was in the world he had fled because
+it contained his twin no longer. Now he would never flee it again.
+
+\emph{It hurts, it hurts,} he wailed to himself.
+
+\emph{But you are not alone,} another part of himself answered, and he
+looked up the beach again.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Snape and Peter had both been reluctant to approach Harry, insisting
+that a mad wizard with that much power was dangerous in any case, and
+that they should wait until Harry had some chance to get used to his
+status as Voldemort's magical heir and control his power. Draco had not
+listened. They had Apparated to the beach and come slowly closer and
+closer to Harry, pausing several times along the way to watch.
+
+And then the sense of his magic had diminished. Draco had looked back in
+time to catch the look of shock on Peter's face, the near-sorrow on
+Snape's.
+
+\emph{Did they really think he'd keep it?} Draco snorted and turned away
+again. \emph{He wasn't thinking of what he could do with it. He was
+thinking of what it might make him do to other people---or he was
+thinking that he didn't want it. Either way is a very good sign.}
+
+And then Harry stumbled and gave a low-voiced cry that Draco knew, just
+as he knew where Harry would be, was his brother's name, and the time
+for caution had passed. Draco ran forward.
+
+Harry turned to meet him, and devastated though his face was with the
+remnants of grief and mourning, his eyes were sane. Words dried in
+Draco's throat. He put his arms around Harry instead and held him tight,
+tight, tight.
+
+\emph{He could have died. He wanted to die. But he didn't stay mad, and
+he didn't commit suicide. He came back. He came back.}
+
+And Harry whispered---perhaps his magic or his Legilimency had brought
+Draco's thoughts to him, but Draco didn't really care about the method
+right now---the words Draco had most desired to hear. ``I wanted to come
+back.'' His arms encircled Draco's shoulders in return. ``But I don't
+want to be alone.''
+
+``You won't be, ever again,'' Draco said, and his arms clamped down
+tight, tight, tight.
+
+Harry whispered his brother's name and began to weep, then, and Snape
+and Peter came forward. Snape tried to take Harry out of Draco's arms.
+Draco refused to let him go. He knew what Silver-Mirror looked like, and
+could Apparate Harry there as well as Snape could.
+
+His hand wandered into Harry's hair and clenched there, though he could
+not bring himself to tug.
+
+\emph{Mine.}
+
+\emph{No, ours, more precisely.}
+
+And then he pulled back enough to look Harry in the eye, and remembered
+Harry's words, and corrected his own wording.
+
+\emph{No. Ours, yes, but his own, too. At last.}
+
+\emph{Come back from the breaking.}
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 101*: Back From the
+Abyss}\label{chapter-101-back-from-the-abyss}
+
+Thank you for the reviews on these last chapters! I'm glad that the
+climax worked for people. Just five more chapters (counting this one),
+one Intermission, and an epilogue to go now.
+
+\textbf{Chapter Eighty-One: Back From the Abyss}
+
+Harry waited until they were back in their bedroom before he yawned. It
+was such a massive, jaw-cracking yawn that Draco would not have been
+surprised to see it travel around the sides of his head and split the
+top half from the bottom.
+
+``I'm tired,'' Harry said, opening one eye.
+
+Draco nodded gravely, and then dragged him towards the bed. ``Do you
+want Dreamless Sleep?'' he asked. He could only imagine what Harry's
+nightmares would look like if he didn't take some kind of potion.
+
+``No,'' Harry said, and twisted somehow, so that when he fell onto the
+sheets, he looped his arms and legs over Draco and Draco fell with him.
+"I want just to \emph{rest}. And I want you to stay with me."
+
+Harry probably wouldn't understand why the tone of his request---sweet,
+gentle exhaustion, without a hint of apology---made Draco's throat
+tighten and his eyes spark with tears. At least, he wouldn't understand
+right \emph{now}. But Draco was more than amenable. His own muscles
+still shook with aches, dirt felt ground-in to his pores, and his hair
+dangled in his eyes from sweat, but next to the relief of having Harry
+back, he could ignore them for a while. He rolled over so that he lay
+next to Harry, head resting on his chest, arms around him. Harry gave a
+little sigh at him, and then closed his eyes.
+
+If Draco was any judge of his breathing---and he should be---Harry was
+asleep on the \emph{instant}.
+
+Draco did stay awake himself long enough to consider what people would
+probably demand over the next few days. Explanations of how Voldemort
+had died, proof that it had happened, proof of Connor's death,
+information on the Horcruxes and why Harry had taken so long to locate
+the last ones and destroy them---
+
+\emph{I don't care. They can demand whatever they like. It doesn't mean
+that either one of us has to answer until we're ready.}
+
+And with \emph{that} in mind, Draco closed his eyes and gave himself to
+sleep.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+It was hours before Snape could take a seat in an armchair, lean back,
+and close his eyes.
+
+To him had fallen the task of telling the others in Silver-Mirror that,
+at last, Voldemort was truly dead; Peter had been too overwhelmed by the
+loss of Harry's brother. Stares had followed, then innumerable
+questions, and then a celebration that the others had tried their very
+best to drag him into. Snape had resisted. He wanted to find a room
+where he could be alone and \emph{think} about all that had happened.
+
+Strangely, with as much as he had to think about, his memories tended to
+dance like hurricane winds around one central point: the moment when his
+Dark Mark had torn and burned with light, and he had understood that the
+monster he once sold his soul to was, finally and completely, dead.
+
+Snape's hand moved lightly, tracing his unmarked left arm, and the skin
+there, which looked unaffected other than a small bare patch where the
+fire had also burned hair. No matter how many times he touched it, he
+could not believe it. The black snake and skull had been part of him for
+so long he had adapted his movements to them, learned how to act so that
+the sleeve always covered them, learned to ignore the bitter, biting
+pain that arose in them when Voldemort felt angry, learned how to turn
+away from the stares that resulted when people learned he was Marked.
+And now---gone. Now he could shed those instincts if he liked, and the
+people still staring would be the ones society judged rude for it.
+
+He did not know what to think, how to feel. It was as though he had died
+and opened his eyes expecting an afterlife of torment, only to find that
+he had been allowed into a world of tests and trials identical to the
+one he left behind.
+
+\emph{Tests and trials. Do not forget that.}
+
+It would have been easier if Regulus had been with him now.
+
+Snape frowned and opened his eyes. He did not like the feelings that
+assaulted him: loneliness chewing a hole in the center of his chest, and
+regret keener than he had felt since Regulus died. Yes, he knew now that
+he should have acknowledged Regulus's love while he still lived. But he
+had known that for more than two months. Why should the feeling reoccur
+so strongly now?
+
+\emph{Because now I have a life worthy of sharing with him.}
+
+Snape leaned his head back again, and was still for a long time. When he
+rose, it was to brew.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+The depth of his grief made Peter feel as if he were made of rotten ice.
+Now a weight had shattered the surface of him, and he stared into the
+cold water beneath, and \emph{mourned}.
+
+\emph{Not James's son, after all, nor Lily's. He was more than those,
+his own person. And Harry's} brother.
+
+Of course, Peter did not yet know the whole story, only what Draco and
+Snape had managed to surmise from the Switching Potion Harry had taken
+into Voldemort's lair and the state of Connor's body, which Peter and
+Snape had gone to fetch while Draco took Harry away. But it seemed
+likely. Harry had gone down, seeming to obey his old training after all,
+and intending to die as a sacrifice for Connor---save that Peter was
+sure this \emph{had} been his own choice, however much it might not seem
+like it to someone else. But Connor had died as a sacrifice for him
+instead, and not just because he wanted to spare Harry's life, or Peter
+doubted the prophecy would have been fulfilled.
+
+And now Peter stood in the room where they had placed Connor's body,
+under preservation spells to keep it from decaying until Harry was well
+enough for the funeral, and stared at it, and could think of nothing
+equal to this.
+
+\emph{I intended to die in the garden. But I didn't intend to die} for
+\emph{something so much as think that I should use my death for good,
+because my life was less precious than someone else's.}
+
+Peter closed his eyes. \emph{And that would have been an empty sacrifice
+next to knowing that I was loved, seeing with clear eyes how much people
+would miss me, and laying down my life anyway. This was a gesture of
+love. Mine would have been a gesture of---emptiness.}
+
+In silence, as if he and Connor were the center of a wheeling galaxy,
+Peter stood there, and watched. Connor's face bore perhaps a dozen
+trails of blood, springing from eyes and ears and nose. His eyes were
+shut, and, to hear Draco talk, had been since he found him. He had a
+faint smile on his lips, a smile of farewell that Peter hoped Harry had
+seen before he departed and killed Voldemort.
+
+And somewhere, in the early hours of the morning, the transition came.
+
+Peter put one hand over his face, and took a deep breath of the kind he
+last remembered heaving when he broke through his phoenix web and
+realized the extent of the Marauders' betrayal.
+
+\emph{Even if no one else cares for me as much as they do for others,
+even if I think I could die and no one would miss me, there is still
+good that I can do if I live which I can't if I die.}
+
+That was the vow he had given himself when he chose to escape from
+Azkaban and help Harry, another victim of the phoenix web and
+Dumbledore's sacrificial training, instead of simply squatting where he
+was and meditating bitterly on how wronged he'd been.
+
+He could make that vow again now, couldn't he? And it wasn't true that
+no one needed him. Harry did. Connor had. There were the students he had
+taught during his tenure as Defense Against Dark Arts professor, and the
+students of Gryffindor House whose tears he had dried and whose triumphs
+he had cheered. The idea he'd formed of himself as someone without human
+connections when he decided to die for the Ravenclaw Horcrux was as
+limiting, in its own way, as the idea the other Marauders had formed of
+him when they thought him only fit to act as a traitor so that no one
+else would find out Dumbledore had exposed the Potter children to
+danger.
+
+\emph{I'm not just that. I'm more than that. And if, by some chance,
+that idea was true, I can be more than that in the future.}
+
+\emph{We labored so long to make Harry consider the future instead of
+just the present. And now I'm going to be so much of a hypocrite as to
+forget that?}
+
+For the first time since Voldemort had stolen Connor away, Peter smiled.
+And if the hand he reached out to touch Connor's hair trembled, well, no
+one but Connor and him had to know that.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+The world had darkened.
+
+He was dead.
+
+Parvati had told Padma, lightly enough, that the marriage ritual she and
+Connor used had bound their souls, but didn't require that they be
+endlessly faithful to each other if one of them died. And that was true
+enough. She could marry someone else with another kind of ritual, or
+take lovers.
+
+At the moment, though, she wished they had used a ritual that would drag
+one partner into death immediately after the other. She wanted, so
+badly, to just \emph{be gone}. Not really into death, not permanently,
+but to end the pain, and a ritual that dragged her away would have been
+one solution.
+
+She sat in a corner of their room and cried, her hair shielding her
+face, her nose so swollen that it felt as if it would burst any moment.
+The tears would not stop coming. She hadn't prepared herself for this.
+
+Every moment since Connor's capture had been a nightmare. But, somehow,
+she hadn't faced up to the ultimate nightmare at the end of it. She had
+believed that he would return to her, that Harry would rescue him and
+bring him home. Yes, Voldemort was a monster, but heroes always faced
+and fought monsters in the stories, and they always won in the end. When
+Parvati listened to the history songs and the tales her mother used to
+tell her, that was the part she loved most, the happy ending. She had
+felt sorry for the people who died in the pursuit of the ending and
+thought they were very noble, but, well, the story wasn't \emph{about}
+them, really; it was about the heroes. And since Connor filled the
+position of hero in this story, she hadn't thought he would die.
+
+He had. She had known it from the expression on Professor Pettigrew's
+face when he Apparated back in, even before she saw him holding Connor's
+body. She'd rushed forward, and tried to shove him aside. If he wasn't
+breathing, they should \emph{make} him breathe. Didn't they \emph{know}
+that? You used a spell that would remove a block if someone was choking,
+and you used a spell that would guide air in and out of their lungs if
+someone wasn't breathing. It was simple magic, something that every
+Light pureblood child learned from the time she was six years old or so.
+
+Parvati had pointed her wand at Connor and said, "\emph{Creo aurae!}" It
+was the spell to make someone breathe. She'd known it for \emph{such} a
+long time, but she'd never had cause to use it. Now she did, and it was
+a relief to know that something she had learned in childhood, something
+so simple, could be the means of bringing her husband back from the
+dead.
+
+But Connor's chest refused to move. Parvati frowned.
+
+Professor Pettigrew spoke in a horribly gentle voice that Parvati knew
+would break her if she listened. ``Miss Patil---Parvati---''
+
+``Patil Potter,'' she said, not looking at him, but at Connor. ``I took
+his last name like that, and he took mine. He's Potter Patil now. It's
+part of the ritual we used.'' She aimed her wand at Connor again.
+"\emph{Creo aurae!}"
+
+Nothing. No movement.
+
+Parvati turned fiercely on Professor Pettigrew. ``What did you do to
+him? If the preservation spells are keeping him like that, take them
+off!'' She stamped her foot. ``He needs air, you know.''
+
+``He's dead,'' the professor said quietly.
+
+"No, he's \emph{not}," Parvati said.
+
+``Yes. He is.'' And the professor held a hand out towards her, as if
+that would comfort her.
+
+Parvati had darted away from it, and then she had looked back at Connor,
+and then she had \emph{run}. Because, obviously, if he was dead, she
+could not stay there.
+
+She had wept since then. Vague thoughts about contacting Padma and her
+parents drifted across her mind, but before she could have their
+sympathy, she would have to explain what had happened. The effort that
+would take was wearying just to think about.
+
+So she sat there, and cried until she could cry no longer, and then
+simply slumped against the wall, drained and dead in her own right.
+
+The door opened. Someone crossed the floor to her, grasped her chin,
+brushed her hair aside, and held a Calming Draught to her lips. He never
+spoke. As Parvati swallowed the potion, she realized it must have had a
+sleeping draught intermixed, because her muscles relaxed at once and her
+mind slipped away, into the temporary cessation from pain she had
+wanted.
+
+She told herself, when she woke the next morning, still leaning against
+the wall, that grief had done strange things to her memory. Professor
+Snape might have been the one who brewed the potion, but he would never
+have been the one who brought it to her.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Ginny wondered for a moment why \emph{she} had to be the person to pull
+her brother out of depression.
+
+Then she remembered. \emph{It's because I'm stronger than he is, some of
+the time.}
+
+"Well, \emph{I} want to go see him," she said. She could perhaps have
+been less bossy if she tried, but coaxing rarely worked on Ron. Bossing
+did the trick, perhaps because he was so used to it from Mum and
+five---\emph{four}---older brothers. ``So, come on, Ron. The funeral
+can't be more than a few days away, and this might be the only private
+hour that we'll have with him.''
+
+Ron just closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall. ``I
+never thought he would die,'' he whispered. "Out of any of us. He was
+Harry's \emph{brother}. That was supposed to make him safe."
+
+``Percy was our brother, and the Minister's assistant, and it didn't
+make him safe,'' said Ginny quietly. The reference to Percy made Ron
+open his eyes and glare at her, as she had hoped it would. She put her
+hands on her hips and stared him down. ``Besides, Hermione wants to see
+Connor, too. So get on your feet, and let's go to the room they set
+aside for him.''
+
+That was, perhaps, playing more than a little dirty, because Ron still
+had the lingering remnants of a crush on Hermione, but it made him
+grimace and get to his feet, so Ginny didn't really care how fair she
+had to play it. "I swear, if that prat Zacharias makes \emph{one}
+comment about Connor he shouldn't---" Ron started.
+
+``Zacharias won't be there,'' Ginny cut in. It was true. Zacharias had
+spent some time comforting Hermione, but he had also gone home to his
+mother now, probably to discuss what the Light purebloods were going to
+do in the wake of Voldemort's fall. Ginny grimaced in turn. She supposed
+it was necessary, and, after all, Zacharias hadn't been in Gryffindor
+and hadn't known Connor like the rest of them. But, since she was not
+interested in being fair right now, she didn't think he should have left
+Hermione alone to grieve, either.
+
+Ron's eyes brightened, a bit, and he moved down the hall in the
+direction of Connor's room---the funeral room, as Ginny had started to
+call it in the privacy of her mind, though for all she knew, they would
+move Connor's body out of the room before the funeral. Ginny kept at his
+heels, just to make sure he couldn't turn his back and walk away at the
+last moment.
+
+There were wards on the door, but they slid apart the moment Ginny held
+out her hand. She managed a small smile, then. Professor Pettigrew had
+set the wards to make sure no merely curious bystander could wander in
+to gawk, but he'd created them so that they would recognize sympathy in
+someone who really \emph{wanted} to enter.
+
+When they opened the door, the first person Ginny saw was Hermione. She
+stood with her eyes tightly shut and her hands clenched, as though she
+didn't want anyone to see her crying. Then Ginny's gaze went over
+Hermione's head and to the body on a cot in the middle of the room.
+
+Absurdly, her first thought was, \emph{They could have cleaned his
+face.} It still bore trails of blood.
+
+Then she came closer, telling herself that it was probably because Peter
+thought such decisions should be left up to Parvati or Harry, and forced
+herself to look at his silent face.
+
+He was smiling. Were people supposed to be smiling when they died? Of
+course, the only dead people Ginny had ever seen close at hand had died
+in battle---including Percy, really, of a thorn through the heart---and
+so she had no experience with someone who knew his death was coming and
+had time to arrange his face however he liked.
+
+Ron made a choking sound beside her. Ginny reached out and clasped his
+hand, without looking away from Connor.
+
+She'd had a varying relationship with him, really. The first two years
+she was in school, she hadn't liked him much. And then he was suddenly a
+Triwizard champion, and he'd won the Cup. After that, he was all right,
+her slightly older brother's best friend, prone to taking part in the
+pranks Ron played on her. But he didn't always agree with Ron when he
+and Ginny had arguments, and he'd come up to Ginny on occasion and told
+her that he appreciated her supporting Harry when the school turned
+against him and when half the world appeared to want him dead for
+denouncing Dumbledore.
+
+So he'd been---a friend. Ginny didn't consider him a friend in the same
+way Hermione had been, or Neville, but he had always been there. And, as
+Ron said, she had never given a thought to his dying. He could be
+captured, but Voldemort would keep him alive to torment Harry, and he
+would come back in the end.
+
+And now he was gone.
+
+"It's just not \emph{fair}," Hermione whispered.
+
+For all her own unfairness, Ginny found herself nodding. Connor should
+have lived longer. He shouldn't have suffered before he died. He should
+have had more of a chance to be Parvati's husband than he did. All sorts
+of things should have happened differently.
+
+\emph{But would I want that, if it meant that Harry died instead?}
+
+Ginny shifted uncomfortably. Her mind tended to work like that in the
+last few months, taking situations she should feel simply about and
+twisting them around to look at from different angles. She could even
+understand her parents' desire to protect her better than she had at
+first, even though she intended to ignore their desperate advice and go
+on to be an Auror in the new Ministry. But she didn't think it was right
+to talk about this right now, when Ron was mourning his best friend and
+Hermione was mourning someone who had been \emph{a} friend, if not as
+close to her in the last few years as he had been during their first
+few.
+
+Hermione at last bent over and gave Connor a kiss on a part of his cheek
+that was free of blood, and then turned and left the room. Ron reached
+out, slowly, and grasped Connor's shoulder. He squeezed so hard, Ginny
+saw his knuckles turn white. The silence was so thick it choked all the
+words in her throat.
+
+``I'm going to miss you, mate,'' Ron said at last, and if that wasn't as
+full a mourning as Ginny thought would be good for him, it was much
+better than the brooding he'd done in the hall.
+
+She reached out, for her part, and flicked the fringe on his forehead
+away, exposing the heart-shaped scar. That was the scar that had once
+announced him as the Boy-Who-Lived, and which she had stared at even
+after she knew that wasn't true, in wonder that a curse could have
+carved something so perfectly shaped.
+
+``Goodbye,'' she said softly.
+
+More words would have to come later. Ron was on the verge of a
+breakdown, so Ginny put an arm around her brother's shoulders and led
+him away.
+
+\emph{Care for the living first, because they need it more than the
+dead.}
+
+Yes, sometimes Ginny really didn't like her own mind.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Rita smiled slowly. There were advantages to persistence---or perhaps
+for staying away for two days after Voldemort's defeat and then asking,
+politely, for an interview. She'd been admitted to Silver-Mirror. Now
+she waited in the same anteroom where Harry had once made her wait,
+surreptitiously using an Aura-Reader that looked like another quill to
+check the level of magical power in the house. If Harry had been
+Voldemort's magical heir, as she'd started to suspect, then his strength
+should surely have increased.
+
+Draco Malfoy walked through the door in the opposite wall.
+
+Rita quickly dropped the Aura-Reader into her pocket and gave him a
+majestic nod, sitting back in her chair. ``Mr. Malfoy,'' she said. ``I'm
+glad you've decided to talk to me. The wizarding public of Britain
+deserves to know what happened to the Dark Lord so many of them were
+frightened of, don't you agree?''
+
+Malfoy's smile was slow, too, and sparked with winter. He regarded her
+as if she were an insect---which, while it might be her Animagus form,
+didn't mean Rita couldn't occasionally be human---and shook his head.
+``What makes you assume that they deserve to know?'' he asked. ``Or that
+they shouldn't be asked to wait another few days, when Harry feels well
+enough to tell them himself?''
+
+"I assumed he \emph{did} feel well enough to tell them himself," said
+Rita mildly, while her instincts began to scream at her. \emph{Harry was
+wounded? How? How bad was it?} ``I thought I would be talking to him.''
+
+``You should have asked beforehand.'' Malfoy's cold smile remained, but
+his eyes were distant, which made him look bored. ``You'll be talking to
+me, and you can accept my words or leave now.''
+
+\emph{An interview with his partner is better than nothing. And if their
+words don't match, that's an article in and of itself.} ``I have no
+aversion to talking to you, Mr. Malfoy,'' Rita said, and readied her
+quill. ``First, of course, the question everyone wants to know the
+answer to. Is You-Know-Who really dead?''
+
+``He is.'' Malfoy continued to look at her from behind his mask. ``So
+you might as well print his full name, and not that ridiculous moniker.
+He can't come back and hurt you.''
+
+``Malfoy,'' Rita chided, even as she scribbled. ``You know, of course,
+that it will take some time to sink in.''
+
+``Then why did you want an interview today, instead of waiting for a
+time when people could be more rational?''
+
+Rita shook her head. \emph{He would make a terrible reporter. No sense
+of what the public needs, at all.} ``And was Harry wounded in the
+battle? Is that the reason no one's seen him since then?''
+
+``Harry is physically whole,'' said Malfoy, and now his smile was very
+obviously just a carved line in snow. ``But he lost his brother in the
+battle. He deserves the time to recover from that, don't you think? As
+much time as he wants.''
+
+``I was unaware Connor Potter was dead,'' Rita said, though she had
+heard some confused rumors to that effect. Of course, all the reporters
+who'd tried to gain entrance to the Black house in the past two days had
+been summarily removed by Severus Snape or Peter Pettigrew, so the
+rumors had amounted to no one seeing Potter so far. ``What happened to
+him?''
+
+``He died nobly, fighting to keep the world from Voldemort.'' Malfoy's
+eyes were focused on her now, but every word was touched with mockery.
+
+"Some more detail than \emph{that} would be appreciated," Rita
+commented. She didn't know how to construct an article out of the
+scattered bits of nothing Malfoy was giving her. Oh, she could if she
+\emph{must}, but in a situation like this, when the meat of the matter
+had to be rich and thick and full? She didn't want scraps.
+
+``You won't get it until and unless Harry feels like telling you.''
+Malfoy gave a slow lizard's blink. ``He probably will. He'd want his
+brother to be honored for his sacrifice. But, for now, those are the two
+pieces of information that most matter: his brother is dead, and so is
+Voldemort. Those should explain well enough why Harry doesn't feel like
+celebrating, I would think.'' He turned his back on her, as if the
+interview were done, and started to walk towards the door he came in by.
+
+Rita rapped her quill against her notebook. If Harry had been there, she
+would have been gentler, but then, Harry would have told her more. She
+decided it could do no harm to remind Malfoy that the public was not
+interested in Harry as a \emph{person}, or his brother, either, but as
+fighters. They would ultimately be more sympathetic to Harry if they
+could swallow the truth whole. ``Mr. Malfoy, not everyone will be as
+kind as I am. In the absence of information, some of the papers are
+printing lies.'' She softened her voice when he turned around and stared
+at her. "Doesn't it make more sense to give me your perspective on the
+story \emph{now}, so that the \emph{Daily Prophet} can spread the truth
+instead of rumors? I'm assuming you must know everything Harry does,
+since you're so close to him." \emph{A little judicious flattery never
+hurt.}
+
+Malfoy snorted at her, and then drew his wand. Rita fumbled for her own,
+but Malfoy had already murmured two words. She thought one of them was
+\emph{Exsculpo}, but didn't hear the other. A purple-red beam of light
+struck her and then faded into the faint touch of a chill wind along her
+skin.
+
+``What did you do to me?'' Her voice was unfortunately shrill.
+
+``A variation on a spell Harry invented.'' Malfoy shrugged at her. "He
+created it to turn people inside out. \emph{I} simply altered it so that
+it'll turn you inside out if you write anything more than the bare facts
+into your article."
+
+Rita shivered, and resisted the urge to hug herself. She would have
+thought he was lying, or joking, but the cold smile was back, and he
+watched her with eyes that were empty.
+
+"I can't always control what the \emph{Prophet} edits my articles into,"
+she said weakly.
+
+``Then I would tell them you didn't learn enough to write a worthwhile
+article.'' Malfoy put his wand carefully back in his robe pocket. ``Just
+to be safe, you understand.''
+
+With an effort, Rita met his eyes. ``Harry wouldn't like your using that
+spell,'' she said.
+
+``Harry and I are two very different people.'' Rita had heard Lucius
+Malfoy speak in the past weeks about his candidacy for the office of
+Minister. His son's voice gave even fewer hints of emotion away than his
+had. ``I use---more direct methods than he does. And he'll doubtless
+disapprove, but we'll argue, and that's all. I will risk an argument
+over protecting him.'' One blond eyebrow arched. ``I would risk much
+more than that, Skeeter, just in case you think about trying to get
+around this spell somehow.''
+
+Rita slowed her breathing. \emph{Well}. The tale that Harry's partner
+had cursed her for daring to speak the truth would make nearly as good
+an article as the one about what had really happened in the final
+battle. She turned to leave. She didn't see that she and Malfoy had
+anything more to say to each other.
+
+Malfoy coughed, and, when she looked, his smile had widened. ``And,
+Skeeter?''
+
+She frowned at him.
+
+``There's a spell on the door that won't let you tell anyone about the
+magic I used on you, or, in fact, any magic performed in this house.''
+The smile widened a bit more, and now the gray eyes saw her all too
+well. ``Just in case you need an extra incentive to respect Harry's
+privacy. Good day.''
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Harry opened his eyes and blinked at the ceiling. There was a moment of
+pure white bliss, soft and pale as the pillows and blankets containing
+him, before his memories rushed back and put Connor in his head.
+
+He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He missed his twin like part
+of his mind, but he had known he would, and that hadn't stopped him from
+climbing back into sanity.
+
+``Good morning.''
+
+Harry looked again. Draco leaned against the bedroom door, watching him
+carefully. He straightened up when he met Harry's gaze, but didn't
+relax. He looked almost feral in his desire to protect, Harry thought.
+
+\emph{Well, I'll let him indulge that.} For once, Harry was in the mood
+to be protected.
+
+``What do you want?'' Draco asked softly.
+
+``Breakfast in bed,'' said Harry. ``And then another nap.'' He thought
+of asking how long it had been since the beach, what people in the outer
+world were saying about him, and whether everyone believed that
+Voldemort was dead, and then decided all that could wait. If there was
+ever a time in his life when he would earn complete privacy and the
+right to leave people to their own devices, it was now. They would get
+along without him. They'd managed it for centuries before he was born,
+and they'd manage it for centuries after he died. One person just wasn't
+that important in the grand scheme of things. ``A nap with you.''
+
+Draco gave him a flashing smile, and then stepped forward. He wore no
+smile when he kissed Harry, gently, returning the kiss that Harry had
+given him as they were about to depart Silver-Mirror for Godric's
+Hollow.
+
+``Good,'' Draco breathed against his lips. ``I'll bring you toast and
+eggs and pumpkin juice. Sound tasty?''
+
+``Yes,'' Harry said, and snuggled back into the blankets as Draco
+vanished out the door.
+
+He lay there, and remembered how to breathe, and remembered Connor, and
+hoped the breakfast would be good.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 102*: A Silver Splendour, A
+Flame}\label{chapter-102-a-silver-splendour-a-flame}
+
+\textbf{Warning}The last scene here (but only the last scene) contains
+\emph{very} heavy slash. As usual, please feel free not to read it if
+you think you'll be offended.
+
+Also, this is another non-linear chapter, every ``present-time'' scene
+alternating with one from the past month or so, as Harry prepares for
+the Walpurgis ritual.
+
+The chapter title once again comes from ``Hymn to Proserpine'' (the last
+one that does): ``White rose of the rose-white water, a silver
+splendour, a flame,/ Bent down unto us that besought her, and earth grew
+sweet with her name.''
+
+\textbf{Chapter Eighty-Two: A Silver Splendour, A Flame}
+
+Harry grimaced as he smeared the oil across his hands. It was necessary,
+as a preparation for the Walpurgis ritual he and Draco would share later
+that night, but \emph{Merlin}, it smelled strong.
+
+It had to be put on in any case, however---at least in every place but
+the middle of his back, which Draco would cover for him. For now, Harry
+took a deep breath, sneezed at the scent of frankincense, and began to
+wipe the clear oil carefully over his face. It would dry and cling in a
+very light mask by the time he was done, and then he need only be
+careful not to move too fast, which would crack it.
+
+Harry was sure the Silver Splendor and Flame, the third Walpurgis rite
+he and Draco would share, and the ninth of the thirteen courting
+rituals, \emph{had} to be the strangest one.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Harry stood quietly in the entrance to Silver-Mirror, and did his best
+not to show how intimidated he was to the reporters gathered on the
+grass in front of his house and staring at him. He had thought it better
+to invite everyone at once---the reporters for minor newspapers as well
+as the \emph{Vox Populi} and the \emph{Prophet}---so that of the dozens
+of questions that could be asked, and the dozens of replies he would
+need to give, at least he would not be asked the elementary ones more
+than once.
+
+But he hadn't anticipated how many people would be interested in his
+news of the defeat of Voldemort. Draco had told him that the wizarding
+world had held off on celebrations so far, out of uncertainty that
+Voldemort was actually dead. That had increased Harry's determination to
+give this press conference a week after his brother died. If he
+hesitated too log, panic might start spreading.
+
+Draco hadn't been happy about it, but after a short argument that had
+resulted in a heated snog, he was resigned to the fact that Harry wanted
+to do this. He learned against the door of Silver-Mirror anyway, eyes
+cool as he regarded the reporters.
+
+Harry coughed, and the whole gathering turned its eyes to him. Harry
+felt a moment's disorientation. He hadn't done anything like this since
+he fell off the mountain. The Ministry gatherings and other public
+occasions had always relied on the pureblood dances, and there, he could
+be confident, because the knowledge still existed in his head even after
+the suspension of his emotions cracked. But this---this, he would have
+to use his readings of people and the situation for rather than dances.
+
+\emph{I don't like this.}
+
+Nevertheless, he put on his best Slytherin smile and said, ``Thank you
+for coming. I know you must be very curious about what happened in the
+final moment when we defeated Voldemort.''
+
+He and Draco had argued about the pronoun, too. Draco thought he should
+say ``I.'' Harry refused, because, to his mind, Connor was just as much
+a part of Voldemort's death as he was. Draco had stood down when Harry
+grew upset enough to use his magic to shake and crack the walls.
+
+He won his share of their debates, too---what Harry should wear for this
+announcement, for example, and exactly how many political gatherings he
+should attend in the next few months---but he could read Harry well
+enough to know when something was really important to him. Harry
+half-thought he'd argued this time because he thought it expected of
+him, as Harry's partner and as someone who hadn't liked Connor much when
+he was alive.
+
+\emph{He seems to have changed his mind, a bit, now that he's dead.}
+
+``Mr. Black?''
+
+With a start, Harry realized he'd been collecting Kneazles in his
+thoughts, while the reporters waited for him to say something about
+Voldemort's defeat. He took a deep breath and herded the Kneazles into
+line, then lifted his chin proudly. \emph{Connor would want me to do
+this. I can't run away from my responsibilities. He certainly didn't.}
+
+``The Dark Lord was immortal,'' he said, which attracted several gasps
+from the listeners. Otherwise, everyone seemed much more interested in
+what he was saying than their own reactions, which caused Harry to cough
+again. \emph{You can be nervous,} whispered a voice in his head that
+sounded like Snape's, \emph{just as long as you never show them you're
+nervous.} ``His immortality depended on several enchanted objects that
+guarded pieces of his life-force.'' He'd chosen the wording on that
+carefully. ``Soul'' might have said ``Horcrux'' to someone, and the last
+thing Harry wanted was to deal with this problem over again. Fighting
+three Dark Lords was enough for any one lifetime. ``Unfortunately,
+destroying each enchanted object required a willing sacrifice, thanks to
+an Unassailable Curse Voldemort had cast.'' He wasn't going to mention
+wrestling the soul-shards, either. He was tired of people thinking he
+was Dark simply because of his actions, and the second-to-last thing he
+needed, next to a second Voldemort, was someone assuming a soul-shard
+had managed to possess him.
+
+``Several noble people died to fulfill those conditions,'' he said
+quietly. ``Narcissa Malfoy.'' Draco shifted beside him---small, but it
+was enough to tell Harry what he was feeling. Harry reached out and
+squeezed his arm without looking away from the reporters. ``Minerva
+McGonagall, during the collapse of Hogwarts. Regulus Black. Henrietta
+Bulstrode.'' He wondered for a moment how many people would disagree
+with calling Henrietta noble, and then told himself that was just a
+distraction to keep from speaking the last name. ``Connor Potter.''
+
+Several more gasps sounded, and Rita Skeeter called out, ``Is it true
+that Voldemort kidnapped your brother, Mr. Black?''
+
+Harry nodded. ``He did. He intended to make me come to him and give up
+my life out of despair.'' It was odd to remember that he might have done
+it, too. But then again, the events of those two days---the spring
+equinox and the day that followed, during which he'd been nightmaring,
+witnessing Henrietta's sacrifice, brewing the Switching Potion, and
+approaching Voldemort's lair---felt like disjointed pieces of another
+life, save for the bright point of pain that was Connor's death. ``But
+instead, I went armed, and Connor died willingly, and then I defeated
+Voldemort.''
+
+``What proof is there of this?'' A tall woman with keen brown eyes
+leaned forward. ``Forgive me, Mr. Black, but we only have a lack of Dark
+activity to tell us that You-Know-Who is dead---and we've had that for
+the last several months, too.''
+
+That question, Harry had expected, and it made him feel a bit more
+confident about the way he might handle the rest of the conference. He
+lifted an eyebrow, and then snapped his fingers together.
+
+The tall woman ducked as a streak of fire manifested in the air above
+her head, and then turned itself inside out to reveal Voldemort's body
+dangling there as if on a thread. Now the gasps were mostly noises of
+disgust; Harry heard more than one person retching. He didn't know why.
+Voldemort hadn't died bloodily.
+
+Of course, perhaps he had underestimated the impact of a noseless face
+and empty eyesockets on people not used to facing Voldemort in their
+dreams and in battles several times a year.
+
+``There he is,'' Harry said. He hadn't summoned the body. He'd had it
+ready, hanging invisibly in the air, but his magic had made it look
+showier. Harry saw less wrong with that than he used to. ``Would you
+like to look at him more closely, madam? That can be arranged.''
+
+The woman cringed, but didn't back down. Harry found himself liking her.
+``How do we know that's the real thing?''
+
+Harry shrugged. "Are you going to trust my word that I defeated him?
+What other proof would convince you? You cannot \emph{prove} a negative,
+so I cannot \emph{prove} he's not out there still." He watched
+unsympathetically as someone else was sick and a few people closed their
+eyes and swayed on their feet. \emph{Better they understand this now, so
+they won't plague me for impossible things when I have more important
+tasks to accomplish.} ``But I will say that he isn't. This is the real
+body.'' He nudged Voldemort's corpse, and it spun as if on a string.
+
+``Why hasn't it been burned?'' Melinda Honeywhistle complained. Harry
+would have recognized her nasal tone anywhere.
+
+``If I did that, I would surely be accused of having a fake.'' Harry
+gave her a sharp-edged smile and swept the body towards her. "Would
+\emph{you} like to be the brave one who examines it, Madam
+Honeywhistle?"
+
+``No, I---'' She turned her head away, flinching.
+
+Harry shook his head. He had learned that nothing he could do would
+content everyone; that lesson still burned in his stomach like the cut
+of a sickle, after Connor. So he would keep the body a few more days and
+then burn it at sunrise.
+
+He told them that plan, and they clucked like chickens, some approving
+the plan, a few objecting. Harry invited the objectors to examine the
+body. They all declined, but said that \emph{someone} should. Harry
+asked for names of their preferred candidates. Other than one malicious
+rival who nominated Honeywhistle, no one said anything. Harry nodded and
+hid the body behind magic again. He didn't miss the way most people
+subtly relaxed when it was gone.
+
+And that was his attitude for the rest of the press conference: tell
+them the truth, offer proof where he had it, and ignore questions that
+he couldn't have answered to their satisfaction \emph{anyway}. Several
+departed with a gleam in their eyes that said he would have their
+articles biting at his heels soon. Harry felt almost relieved. If the
+defeat of Voldemort had transformed him into the darling of the press,
+he would have felt even less like he was living his own life than he
+already did.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Harry finally finished smearing the oil everywhere except the middle of
+his back, and corked the vial, setting it aside. That wasn't the end of
+the preparations, of course. He waited a few minutes for the newest oil
+to dry, then turned slowly to examine the robes on the end of the bed.
+
+Draco had had them made. No courting partner could enter the Silver
+Splendor and Flame wearing anything but those clothes their partner had
+given them as gifts. Thus Harry would have the silver ring that Draco
+had given him as a gift of intention during the first ritual---
+
+And these.
+
+The cloth was deep black, which unexpectedly flamed blue in the light
+when Harry cast a \emph{Lumos} charm. It made for heavy but comfortable
+robes, and Harry didn't think they would scratch his skin. His real
+problem was with the symbols in silver and golden thread stitched all
+over the hem and sleeves and collar. He had taken the trouble to look
+them up.
+
+That had resulted in \emph{another} argument with Draco. They spent a
+lot of their time lately doing that, as if to make up for all the years
+when each fight had been a devastating blow.
+
+Harry could accept the variation on the Black crest that said he was the
+head of the family now, and the spread-winged raven that each Dark heir
+was entitled to, and the charging unicorn that Britain's last potential
+\emph{vates} had borne. He objected more to the sun in the arms of the
+crescent moon, a symbol Draco had taken from the Pact's seal, and which
+he was using to mean ``Lord-level wizard,'' and the forms of all the
+various magical species he had freed. Harry didn't want it to seem as if
+he \emph{ruled} over those species, which he certainly did not. And he'd
+objected most of all to the small golden crest on the front of his
+collar. The only good thing about it was that his chin would, mostly,
+cover it if he kept his head bowed.
+
+It was the Potter family crest.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Harry came face-to-face with Parvati for the first time since Connor's
+death when he walked out of his room. He didn't think she'd been waiting
+for him, and he hadn't sought her out. He'd simply been walking in the
+upper hallway, trying to convince himself that he \emph{needed} to see
+someone other than Draco, and then she turned the corner.
+
+They both stopped. Harry braced one hand on the wall and met her eyes
+gravely. Parvati slowly inclined her head to him.
+
+``No one else will tell me what happened,'' she said.
+
+Harry grimaced. Part of that was meant to shield her, no doubt, but it
+had also come about because no one else \emph{knew} what happened, not
+for certain. And she had the right to know how her husband had died.
+
+``Come with me,'' he said quietly, and led her down the corridor towards
+a room that he knew about as head of the Black family, and which the
+wards would let him extend the knowledge of to Parvati, since she'd
+married his brother. All the way, he chided himself for the trembling
+weakness in his muscles. He hadn't fallen from a height or hurt himself
+in the battle with Voldemort. Why should he feel as if he would like to
+go back to bed and draw the blankets over his head?
+
+It had to be the conversation with Parvati, and nothing else, and that
+was silly. If she wished to hate him, that was her right. Harry had
+changed enough not to accept condemnation from everyone as justified,
+but Parvati---she had a right, a position with him now, that no one else
+in the world did.
+
+The room's door opened when Harry passed his hand just above the stone
+that shielded it. Beyond, the walls swelled into a sudden glory of green
+and blue, silver and red and gold. Parvati halted and stared in
+astonishment. Harry felt his cheeks warm. The walls showed stars from
+common constellations, but so close at hand that one could see their
+true colors. He hadn't brought her here to \emph{impress} her, just to
+insure their privacy.
+
+``Please,'' he said, and gestured to the chairs in the middle of the
+room, small white things that were easy to forget in the domination of
+starlight. ``Sit.''
+
+Parvati did, though she stretched her head back to get a glimpse of
+Orion sparkling overhead. Harry turned his own chair to face hers;
+ordinarily, they were meant to orient away from one another, to give the
+two people the room could accommodate a better chance to view the stars.
+
+Parvati didn't examine the walls or ceiling long. Her gaze rested on
+him, and her hands clasped together in her lap so hard that she uttered
+a little gasp of pain. ``Now,'' she said. ``Please tell me, Harry.''
+
+And Harry did, from the details of how Connor had become a Horcrux---or
+how he guessed that Connor had become a Horcrux---until the moment when
+Connor gave his life away. Parvati shut her eyes halfway through, and
+tears dripped down her cheeks with enough regularity that Harry had to
+fight to keep his own voice steady. By the end, Parvati had given up
+every pretense of control and was weeping softly.
+
+Harry hesitated, then moved over beside her and put an arm around her
+shoulders. He wasn't sure she would welcome it, but she turned around
+and hung on with frightening strength.
+
+``He had a chance to live,'' she whispered. "He would have died
+\emph{anyway} if you hadn't brewed that potion, and you could have left
+him like that, asked him to die for you without trying to remove the
+soul-shard, and he would have done it. But you tried to save him, and
+then---and then he gave it up." Her head rested against his chest for a
+moment. Harry stroked her hair. ``I thought I'd hate you for that,
+Harry,'' she said. ``But I can't. You tried. You didn't kill him. He
+killed himself.''
+
+Harry just nodded. He felt, as he mostly had not since he climbed back
+into sanity, that he should have died. If Connor could have been with
+Parvati again, perhaps it would have been worth it.
+
+And then he thought of Draco, and winced. One bad part of being human
+and in the midst of his emotions was that his ability to hide from
+himself had considerably diminished.
+
+But even that he could not regret, since it was so essential to his path
+as \emph{vates.}
+
+At last, Parvati pulled away from him, and wiped her tears with a
+semblance of dignity. Relieved, Harry took his chair again, and locked
+his eyes with hers before she could look away. ``You know that anything
+you need, you may come to me for,'' he said quietly. ``You're my
+sister-in-law. And, of course, I think that you may fall heir to the
+Potter estates, since you took Connor's name---''
+
+Parvati closed her eyes and shook her head. ``No,'' she said quietly.
+``The ritual we used---it doesn't bind us like that, because most of the
+time, the married couple have siblings who are still alive. It was
+rebellious younger brothers and sisters who used it most often, not
+heirs.'' She gave a small smile. ``And I think the vaults and the lands
+and Lux Aeterna should be kept intact, Harry. Give them to someone whom
+you think is worthy to become the adopted legal heir of the Potter line.
+Or maybe someone can be your magical heir, or you'll find a Potter
+relative still alive.''
+
+Harry felt a hope he'd not even admitted he'd borne die. ``You're not
+pregnant, then.''
+
+``No,'' Parvati said, opening her eyes. ``I used the spells on myself
+when I first woke from my grief. I didn't conceive. The estates have
+gone dormant, Harry, the way they always do in a situation like this,
+and connected themselves to you.''
+
+``Dormant?'' Harry hadn't encountered the term.
+
+Parvati smiled, but there was a tinge of pity to the expression. ``James
+Potter did no favor in rearing you ignorant of your Light pureblood
+heritage,'' she murmured. ``Yes, Harry, that happens when an heir dies
+and hasn't designated a replacement---or he has, but the replacement is
+someone who's separated himself from the line, as you did by rejecting
+the Potter name. The estate, the vaults, and any magic attached search
+for the nearest possible relative, or the `heir of the heart' of the
+family head, and attach themselves to him---or her, of course. You can't
+use the Potter lands, properly speaking, but you'll hold them in trust
+for the next heir, and they won't respond to anyone else in the
+meantime. And you'll be in charge of finding and training that heir.''
+
+Harry nodded quietly. He had anticipated that for the Black line, and
+this was just another thing to add.
+
+``I would have liked to see---a niece or nephew,'' he said.
+
+``So would I,'' said Parvati. ``Invite me to the adoption ceremonies
+when you find someone who suits, Harry. Though my right to be there is
+mostly formal, I would like to meet that child, and get to know him or
+her.''
+
+Harry reached out and took her wrist firmly. ``So far as I am concerned,
+you're my sister,'' he said. ``You will be welcome whenever you choose
+to come.''
+
+Parvati leaned forward, brushed her lips against his cheek, and then
+left him there.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Harry fastened the robes carefully, scowled one more time at the Potter
+crest, and shook his head. Draco had told him the symbol didn't change
+even if one merely held dormant estates and vaults in trust for the next
+heir. A lot of shouting had left his partner unmoved. Harry huffed under
+his breath, and began the next step in his preparations.
+
+Draco had told him he had to ``do something'' with his hair. Harry had
+imagined a glamour that would make it appear less messy.
+
+That wasn't what the ritual required.
+
+Harry resignedly eyed the silver circlet---torque, Draco had insisted on
+calling it, though Harry didn't think that was correct---that would hold
+his hair back. He would have to use spells to make it lie flat, and
+probably to hold the torque in place.
+
+\emph{Why did I agree to a three-year joining dance, again? Or, at
+least, why didn't I read up on the rituals first?}
+
+He knew the answer, of course. At the time, reading about it would be to
+admit to its happening, and Harry hadn't wanted to admit that. He had
+still been, in his heart, more than half the humble servant, and less
+than half the person who wanted to join with Draco.
+
+\emph{But I'm not the only one who's changed,} he thought, as he picked
+up the torque and stared into the mirror. \emph{And if my father can
+make such an effort, so can I.}
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Harry and Draco had said they would attend Lucius's latest speech in
+pursuit of the office of the Ministry together---it was attend all of
+the candidates' speeches or attend none, in Draco's opinion---but Draco
+had excused himself with a murmured apology. Harry didn't mind. Draco
+needed to circulate on his own, to exchange winks and nods and words
+with those who were fast becoming his contacts in the world of Ministry
+politics, and to establish himself as firmly outside Harry's shadow. And
+Lucius's, come to that, though Harry thought that rather more likely to
+be already in place.
+
+He ended up watching Lucius's speech while leaning against a wall.
+Lucius had chosen Diagon Alley as the site, and established a small
+platform in front of Gringotts. Harry had to admire the symbolism.
+Lucius wanted it to seem as if he had nothing against nonhumans. He
+wouldn't be so crass as to claim that the goblins supported him, of
+course, but he would try to use a silent language to bolster his actual
+words, and have the best of both the magical creatures and the humans
+who didn't want them in the Ministry.
+
+The seventh of May had been chosen for the election, and it was the
+fourth of April now. Harry was rather looking forward to the election.
+He'd had a quiet word with Syrinx, and the Gloryflower artisans were at
+work enlarging the ranks of the golden voting owls. Harry wanted to see
+Lucius's expression when he found out why.
+
+``Harry.''
+
+He glanced up in surprise. His father stood next to his shoulder and
+stared down at him. Harry straightened with a small nod. It was true he
+hadn't spent much time in Snape's company since Connor died, but then,
+Snape himself seemed occupied, brooding over Regulus and more concerned
+with Harry's state of sanity and health than discussing what had
+happened to Connor. And Harry wanted to think of his brother's death
+when he didn't have something else he \emph{must} spend time on, because
+he still needed to turn and settle it in his mind, and find a place for
+all his grief.
+
+``Walk with me,'' Snape said.
+
+Harry nodded again, and followed him deeper into the crowd. Few people
+noticed him going, since he had tamped down on his magic and wrapped a
+Notice-Me-Not Charm around himself. Perhaps someone did and would
+anticipate it as a political commentary on Lucius's speech, but Harry
+had finally begun to realize he couldn't control everyone's perceptions
+of his minor actions.
+
+Snape guided him almost to the end of Diagon Alley, and the entrance
+that led to Muggle London. He halted outside the Leaky Cauldron's back
+wall. Harry looked up at him and waited.
+
+``I have not been sure what to say about the death of your brother,''
+Snape began quietly.
+
+Harry nodded. Other families might have rushed together at once,
+extending sympathy and condolences. And his relationship with Draco was
+like that, because they understood each other well enough that Draco
+knew what kind of sympathies to extend. But he and Snape had always trod
+on a more formal footing. Snape would have wanted to wait until he
+\emph{was} sure what to say.
+
+``You know I didn't like him.''
+
+``Yes, I know,'' Harry said calmly. He was no longer in that state of
+mind where hearing anyone disparage Connor cut him to the bone. He
+hadn't been since the first three days he spent solely in Draco's
+company, when Draco had talked almost solely of Connor's virtues. ``But
+you agreed to train him in dueling nonetheless, and you put up with him
+when you could have hurt him badly, and for that, I'll be grateful
+forever, sir.''
+
+Snape gave a small shake of his head. ``I was not trying to create
+excuses for my behavior, Harry. I wanted to explain why I took so long
+to consider his sacrifice in the proper light.''
+
+Harry cocked his head. ``Isn't even that sort of an excuse for your
+behavior, sir?''
+
+Snape glared at him. Harry smiled back. No, his relationship with his
+father would never be perfect. He didn't care. He had once thought he
+had the perfect parents, perfect in their attendance to the duties
+needed to save the world. If he never thought that again, he would be
+happy.
+
+``I have been angry with you, as well,'' Snape continued, ``for going
+into Voldemort's lair intending only to die, and for imprisoning us when
+you know we would have stood beside you.''
+
+Harry shifted from foot to foot. This was something Draco hadn't
+approached him about; he seemed to feel the death of his brother had
+punished Harry enough for his mad plan. But, of course, it would come up
+with Snape.
+
+``You would have prevented me from doing what I intended to do,'' said
+Harry quietly. ``It was especially pertinent that I get rid of you,
+since you would have recognized the Switching Potion.''
+
+``Yes, I would have tried to prevent your death,'' said Snape. ``And I
+will not think myself in the wrong for that.''
+
+``I don't think you should.'' Harry ran his hand through his hair, and
+wished, for a moment, for the confidence that had led him to confront
+Snape after Regulus's death and pull him out of his grief. Of course,
+\emph{then}, he had been sure he was in the right and Snape in the
+wrong. It wasn't easy when the shoe sat so heavily on the other foot.
+``But I didn't care, at that moment, about what you might think, or
+Draco, or Peter---or Connor. I didn't mean to give him a choice, you
+know. I drank the Switching Potion before I told him what would happen
+to the Horcrux. He was the one who made the choice to take it back and
+then swallow the h-healing potion.''
+
+\emph{Fuck}, his eyes were tearing up. Harry took a deep breath and held
+them shut for a moment. He would not suppress his emotions with
+Occlumency again, but that didn't mean he wanted to tear up whenever he
+thought of his brother.
+
+``What made you care so little?'' Snape demanded. ``I have never known
+you that deficient in consideration for others, Harry.''
+
+``I know,'' Harry whispered, and sought for words to explain it. But, at
+the last, only the truth would do. ``I was insane at the time, sir. And
+I thought I had done everything I could for you, and I owed Connor my
+life and the chance for he, himself, to live. Dying was the only way I
+could think of to accomplish that.''
+
+Snape's hands closed on his shoulders with surprising force, and pulled
+him into his arms. Harry stumbled, but went. Snape held him there, in an
+embrace too tight to be comfortable, and hissed into his ear.
+
+``None of us will ever be done with you, Harry. Do you understand me?''
+
+Harry shut his eyes and nodded. A current of clear mourning ran through
+his head, mingled with a strange kind of pity. When his emotions first
+awakened and his magic shook off the phoenix web, he had been angry at
+Connor for having so much of their parents' attention and affection.
+Now, though, he had to wonder if his brother had ever been loved like
+this.
+
+\emph{He was. By me. The way he died suggests he knew that. I hope he
+did.}
+
+``Thank you,'' he said, his voice muffled against Snape's robe. His arms
+rose and snaked around Snape's middle.
+
+``For scolding you?'' Snape sounded frustrated with himself. ``I meant
+to explain myself, Harry, not excoriate you.''
+
+``For loving me,'' Harry said. ``For being my father.''
+
+There was a pause, and then Snape's hands relaxed on his shoulders a
+bit. ``Well.'' His voice was the soft one Harry had often heard him use
+around his potions when the slightest bit of noise would disturb their
+brewing. ``I can live with that, I think.''
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+The torque was as in-place as it was going to get. Harry shoved at it
+with the heel of his hand, and then growled under his breath. \emph{When
+they designed these rituals, didn't they ever think about people with
+messy hair? The ancient wizards must have all looked like Draco, for as
+much consideration as they gave me.}
+
+Torque---given from Draco's hand---done, it was time for him to call the
+tame slice of the Dark that powered this ritual. Harry shook his head
+even as he held out his hands. He didn't quite believe that a joining
+dance was powerful or interesting enough to attract the attention of the
+Dark, but it seemed so. On the night when it raged wildest, a slice of
+it would come to the courting couple, if called, and make the magic that
+bound them what it was.
+
+\emph{Rather like a shard of Voldemort's soul---}
+
+Harry cut the thought off with a jab of his mind, and then whistled. He
+felt the calm, cool attention of a, well, of a something that grew more
+and more excited as it examined his mind. And then it burst into
+existence above his palms, a shimmering trail of dusty darkness edged
+with silver. Harry touched it, and felt soft warmth, like rotting meat,
+bathe his hands.
+
+Except for the silver dogs-head, of course. Harry had to look at that in
+resignation. It remained cold, and always would.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Harry had had to get away from the celebrations. It seemed that most of
+the wizarding world \emph{did} believe Voldemort dead, after all, and
+they had thrown festival after festival until Harry's mouth hurt from
+smiling.
+
+And no one who was outside his immediate circle seemed to care about the
+\emph{death} that it took to achieve it all.
+
+It was as his own private compact with death and mourning, in a way,
+that Harry went to the Forbidden Forest one night in the middle of
+April. He carried a hooked branch with thorns on it, and he carried much
+more knowledge of the web in question than he had the first time he
+went, and he carried Blood-Replenishing Potions so he wouldn't lose his
+life there in the darkness.
+
+And beside him walked Draco.
+
+Draco had said nothing when Harry intimated that he wanted to free
+thestrals again. He had simply looked at Harry with bright eyes, and
+then reached over and put a hand on his forehead that felt as if it
+could strike down as easily as bless. Then he had said, ``I'm coming
+with you.''
+
+Harry nodded. ``I would expect nothing less of you,'' he said. "I
+\emph{need} someone to help me with the Blood-Replenishing Potions. I
+want to free two thestrals at least this time, but the chains are so
+long that I'd die before I could shed all the blood necessary to cover
+and melt them."
+
+``The way you almost did last time,'' said Draco, in a voice nearly
+without malice.
+
+Harry inclined his head.
+
+So they had come to the Forbidden Forest, after promising Snape that he
+could come after them if they weren't back by midnight. The days were
+getting longer, but there were still hours of darkness before then, and
+a wintry chill in the air which Harry found appropriate, given their
+place and their purpose. He walked until he heard the \emph{taps} of
+hooves sounding beside him, and turned to face the thestrals trotting
+towards him, their tails high.
+
+A mare and a foal, he saw at once, and they halted and sniffed when he
+saw them. Harry could not communicate with them as easily as he had
+before, now that his phoenix song was gone, but having taken the web and
+the chain off the stallion, he thought he could do it a second time.
+
+He bared his left arm. His right hand held the thorns that were
+necessary to cut his skin and shed the blood. The mare at once came
+towards him, tail flinging itself about like a flag. The foal crowded
+close to her, halfway, Harry thought, between the innocence that
+afflicted young magical creatures who'd never seen a wizard and
+nervousness about what these strange beings might do.
+
+Harry knelt, and examined the web and the chain flowing about their
+hooves. Draco drew one deep breath, as if he could see them himself.
+Maybe he could. Then his hand landed in Harry's hair, and latched tight.
+
+\emph{Reminding me of what I could lose, if I insisted on falling so far
+into the web-breaking that I died to free the thestrals.} Harry
+appreciated it. He would have reached up and clasped Draco's hand back
+if he didn't need both of his for the blood-drawing. As it was, he had
+to use his magic to lightly, warmly caress Draco's fingers, and hope
+that would be enough.
+
+A deep breath, and then he drew the bough down his arm.
+
+Blood shed willingly, blood shed with thorns. The first drop made two
+links of the cold blue chain around the mare and her foal whirl apart
+into steam, with a slight hiss that was echoed by an ecstatic snort from
+the mare. It occupied the whole of his mind, and for the first time in
+nearly a week, Harry found that he could think of something else than
+how annoyed he was at people calling him a hero.
+
+\emph{I did what I had to. Connor was the real hero, the one who made a
+decision he didn't have to make.}
+
+But here, \emph{here} was the work he'd dedicated himself to, not the
+work prophecies and fate and the hour of his birth had compelled him
+into, and so he dragged the thorns over and over again through his skin,
+parting it into ragged slivers and runnels of liquid, and the mare and
+the foal danced around each other as the chain lifted from their hooves
+and their necks.
+
+When Harry grew exhausted, he stopped, panting, and leaned against
+Draco. Draco used his hold in Harry's hair to force a Blood-Replenishing
+Potion more easily down his throat. Harry gulped, and grimaced a bit at
+the foul taste, and nodded his thanks to Draco as he moved forward
+again. Apart from anything else, the support of Draco's hip and thigh
+against his cheek kept him much warmer and more braced than he'd been
+the first time he did this.
+
+When he got close in under the mare's belly, she whuffled at his hair
+and then bent her neck over his shoulder and between his arms to lick at
+the blood flowing from his wounds. Harry let her do it. The foal wanted
+a taste, too, and so he rested for a moment, touching the cold, slick
+short fur. The foal wriggled against him, seeming to have entirely lost
+its fear. At least when Harry set them free, they would have no cause to
+fear wizards again.
+
+On and on and on, until Harry fell into a kind of trance where he
+dragged and cut and dripped, and only paused every now and then for a
+drink from one of the vials Draco held. It seemed almost anticlimactic
+when the final chains disappeared from the pair, and Harry could swallow
+the remains of their web with his \emph{absorbere} gift. It tore like
+rotten silk, and left two more thestrals free.
+
+The mare reared high, and her wings turned white. Harry blinked, lifting
+a hand to shield his eyes. The foal whirled around its mother, snorting
+and stamping and squealing, and Harry heard a sound like enormous gates
+of ivory swinging open.
+
+He had expected the mare to mimic the stallion's strange transformation,
+rearranging her bones, but, he supposed, there was no reason to expect
+that. Thestrals seemed to be individual creatures, as different from one
+another as house elves, not a hive like the Many.
+
+The white light whirled like a whip through the Forest, or like the
+wheel of diamond shards he had used to cut Evan Rosier's face apart.
+Harry felt the trees shivering in the wake of the enormous \emph{boom}
+that accompanied its traveling, and lowered his arm to stare in silent
+disbelief at the burned area where the mare had been.
+
+The foal capered for a moment, then stopped and bowed its head. A moment
+later, it, too, combusted in white flames that burned bright as
+magnesium before collapsing on each other.
+
+In the silence that followed, Harry heard Draco swallow heavily and say,
+"I suppose you know best about what to do, since you're \emph{vates},
+Harry, but it's bloody creepy sometimes."
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+It was time now, and Harry went to the entrance of Silver-Mirror where
+Draco would be awaiting him. The others had all left for the Walpurgis
+Dance already---well, at least those who were Dark had---and it had felt
+decidedly strange not to go. Harry could feel the wild Dark pulling at
+him, calling him on to the frenzied noise of music and movement of feet.
+He would be welcome there, it promised him, and it would be more than
+happy to help him forget.
+
+But the small shard of tame Dark drifting around him helped him forget
+its mad cousin's invitation. It draped like a stole on his shoulders
+now, and licked his face with a tongue full of maggots. Harry wiped them
+off, and nodded to Draco, who waited with a calm expression on his face.
+
+Not that he hadn't fussed when Harry bought pale robes for him, because
+he had. Harry didn't care. The robes were the color of marble, and made
+Draco's hair and eyes look exotic, and suited him. He'd bought the
+golden torque, too, which was almost lost in the ash-blond of Draco's
+hair, and which complemented the golden Portkey bracelet on his wrist.
+It was Harry's small revenge, that Draco looked like a creature of the
+Light this Walpurgis.
+
+\emph{And, considering the name of the ritual, not entirely
+inappropriate.}
+
+Draco wore a smile that Harry hadn't seen since the moment just after
+Connor's funeral, when he had seemed to share Harry's sense of peace in
+finally laying his brother to rest. ``Ready?'' he asked softly,
+extending the hand without the bracelet. The tame Dark surrounded that,
+too, in a blaze with silver on the inside and black on the outside, the
+opposite of Harry's piece.
+
+Harry nodded, and put out his own hand, and as their fingers
+intertwined, the Dark embraced them and took them---elsewhere.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Harry lifted his head and stared, then shivered. In spite of what Draco
+had told him, and what he'd read to prepare, he still found himself
+overcome by the sheer power of the room in which they stood. A black,
+cavernous hall, with a ceiling so lost in shadow that stars dangled from
+it and didn't seem out of place, and walls of gleaming black stone,
+veined here and there with silver. Gleams of light near at hand revealed
+the black was either sleek dark green or at least had some shades of
+that color in it.
+
+Light\ldots{}
+
+Harry turned and looked over his shoulder. A silver flame burned in the
+center of the hall, of course, in mimicry of the silver fire that would
+burn elsewhere that night as the Walpurgis celebrants danced, and to
+give the ritual its name. Harry cocked his head. The fires of Walpurgis
+often felt frosty. He expected to feel that sensation from this
+flickering, single tongue of flame, which wept sparks like tears to
+either side.
+
+He didn't. A soft warmth engulfed his body instead, and he closed his
+eyes against that, and against the silver light that had begun to shine
+from his skin.
+
+``The Dark encloses us,'' Draco whispered, the first of his ritual
+words. ``The tame Dark we summoned has created this for us, and will
+hold us close this night and all the nights to come. My beloved, will
+you come with me and see the gentleness in the heart of the Dark? For
+even that which is pitiless may know joy.''
+
+Harry nodded, and opened his eyes. Draco shone with glory like lighted
+obsidian, beaming out of him and making his hair hold soft glints of
+red, his eyes of green, his robes of black. \emph{He ought to be
+pleased,} Harry thought inanely. \emph{He gets to look like a proper
+Dark wizard after all.}
+
+``I will be pleased,'' he whispered, when he realized he hadn't yet said
+the words he needed to.
+
+Draco leaned forward and kissed him, then took his hand and drew him
+towards the fire. It grew warmer as they approached, and Harry found
+that he couldn't take his eyes from it. He knew the flame would seek out
+his mind and offer him whatever glimpse of the paths, or the past, or
+the wild Dark, was most appropriate to his state of mind. Draco had
+called this the perfect ritual to undergo after a crippling loss,
+because it complemented the last Walpurgis in which Harry had taken the
+lead and cared for him, and this time it would focus on unlocking parts
+of Harry that had lain buried and diminishing those griefs that might
+keep him from happiness.
+
+And Draco would take the lead. Harry suspected the ritual's magic, as
+well as Connor's loss, might lie behind his hovering overprotectiveness
+for the last month.
+
+The flame grew larger and larger, until it consumed the whole of the
+world. And then it vanished, so suddenly that Harry wondered if it had
+managed to burn his eyes and lose him his sight. Or perhaps this was one
+enormous afterimage? Gaps and holes did begin to open in the darkness
+after a moment, like a spot from the sun slowly and gradually tattering.
+
+And then he saw what lay before him, and lost his breath.
+
+A group of women in dark robes surrounded a low altar of black stone,
+and on the altar lay flowers, locks of hair, goblets of wine, peaches,
+the carcass of a goat---
+
+And a young woman with her throat bared.
+
+Harry knew he'd made some noise, but he couldn't tell what it was,
+whether a word, perhaps his brother's name, or just a sound of distress.
+He stared in silence as the priestesses chanted, their voice soaring in
+joy. They didn't speak a language he knew---or even words at all; their
+voices slid by like water or birdsong---and he did not know which god
+they praised. He only heard the happiness, and saw the corresponding
+ecstasy in the young woman's eyes as she tilted back her head.
+
+There could be no doubt that she was offering her life freely.
+Willingly. She would let her blood be spilled and go to whatever god or
+power they served because she \emph{wanted} to.
+
+Harry closed his eyes. Why had the ritual believed he needed to see a
+vision of willing sacrifice? He knew what it meant. He'd lived with it
+for months now. He'd been willing to \emph{perform} it when he went into
+Voldemort's lair. And he knew Connor had died of it, had done it because
+he wanted to.
+
+And when that thought brought black resentment welling to the front of
+his mind, he knew why the Dark had chosen this sight.
+
+He gave a shudder, and made a low, ugly sound that held fury in it. He
+hadn't known he felt the fury. Along with all the tears he'd shed, the
+sad pride that Connor had died that way, the irritation that everyone
+who hadn't been there seemed to think \emph{Harry} had been the one to
+defeat Voldemort and not Connor---
+
+There was anger, as pitiless as the voice of a crow, as pitiless as the
+wild Dark. In part, he \emph{hated} his brother for having done this to
+him, committed suicide and left him here to mourn.
+
+The silver light gushed from his skin, bending around in front of him,
+forming two distinct and parallel lines that touched each other like
+hands clasping, and became the silver flame again. Harry stood in the
+black room with Draco's arms around him, and his own muscles fighting
+mindlessly to get free.
+
+Draco hissed into his ear, ``He did it because he wanted to, Harry, and
+while you have every right to be angry, that's the true, the deep
+reason. Not to make you furious. He didn't steal a death from you that
+you had the right to die. He died to spare you.'' He hesitated for a
+moment, then said, ``And all the people who love you.''
+
+"How can \emph{you} be sure what went through his head?" Harry ripped
+free and turned to face Draco, his eyes bright and furious. He saw two
+of Draco's head, and knew he wept again. He didn't care. These were
+tears of fury and frustration, not sadness. ``You weren't there.''
+
+``No,'' Draco said. His face looked half in shadow, half in dancing
+firelight, from the odd radiance that bled through his skin. ``But we
+have something in common that you don't---or, at least, that you didn't
+have in common with us until very recently.''
+
+``What's that?'' Harry snarled.
+
+``Love for you.''
+
+And then Draco kissed him, as intent as Harry had been the night he'd
+fallen off the mountain, pressing Harry back, to the side of the single
+flame, and towards a bed that the tame Dark raised from the floor for
+them. It was a replica of their old bed that had stood in the Slytherin
+seventh-year boys' room at Hogwarts, Harry saw, dark green curtains and
+sheets and all.
+
+He fought, at first. He wanted to fight. But the person he wanted most
+to scream at was gone from the world, and his rage dashed itself to
+pieces against the walls of both Draco's understanding and his firm
+non-regret. He was sorry that Connor had died. He wasn't sorry about it
+in the same way Harry was, and he wouldn't be. He didn't wish that
+Connor were still alive if it meant that he would have traded Harry for
+him.
+
+Harry clenched his hands, and found himself lying on the sheets. Draco
+hovered just above him, breath coming short and fast, eyes piercing him.
+
+``Will you let me do this for you?'' Draco asked. ``You've shown me
+openness. Will you let me show it to you?''
+
+Those questions were part of the ritual. Harry knew it, though he had
+not known why until now. He shut his eyes and tilted his head back.
+Sweat slicked his forehead like tears, and he had to clench his teeth to
+keep screams behind them.
+
+``Yes,'' he said, aware that he sounded angry.
+
+It was the permission Draco needed, evidently, not a particular tone.
+The sheets rose and wrapped themselves around Harry, turning him over
+twice, and when they let him free again, he was also free of clothes. He
+huffed out a breath and locked eyes with Draco, making their gaze a
+challenge. His power still streamed around him, his anger still rose in
+him, and the silver light made his limbs into swords. He stood a good
+chance of cutting Draco if they had sex now.
+
+Draco, already naked himself, eyes dark with passion and limbs dark with
+the obsidian flare, didn't look as if he cared about that.
+
+He climbed onto Harry and urged him onto his stomach. Harry lifted his
+head with a gasp of surprise when he realized Draco's fingers were heavy
+with more of the frankincense-smelling oil. Had the room given it to
+him, or the Dark, or had he conjured it himself? Harry didn't know, and
+then had no more time to think about it, as Draco carefully smeared the
+oil over the one patch in the middle of his back that he hadn't been
+able to reach.
+
+And Harry found out why they needed the oil, and why the ritual had
+Flame in its name as well as Silver Splendor.
+
+He shuddered, drowsy heat and gentleness flooding him. The oil had
+turned to liquid again, and was sliding everywhere on his body, bringing
+pleasure wherever it went. It didn't smother his emotions, though, as he
+had half-feared it would, but only softened the anger, bringing it to
+full bloom and then bearing it away on a tide of other sensations. Harry
+bowed his head and huffed again. This time, he was trying to catch his
+breath.
+
+Draco spoke softly to the nape of his neck, ritual phrase after ritual
+phrase that Harry didn't bother paying attention to. He tilted his head
+back and sighed with relief as tight knots in his muscles that seemed to
+have been cramped for the last month unwound. Boneless, he dropped to
+the middle of the bed.
+
+Draco came down with him, and turned his face for a kiss. Harry had to
+close his eyes, briefly, before the sight of the emotion in his face.
+Then he opened his eyes and returned the kiss, with interest.
+
+And after that, he lay there while Draco prepared him with the oil, and
+the silver light swayed back and forth inside him like seaweed moving in
+a current, or leaves moving in the wind. He had never felt so relaxed,
+so comfortable, so open and flowing to the emotions within him. When
+Draco entered him, Harry arched his back and only wished he could
+prolong the moment.
+
+Harry didn't know how to describe the motion they shared then, other
+than \emph{motion}. It wasn't fucking, and it wasn't making love,
+because emotions other than love sped his heartbeat and made his muscles
+languid and hazed his mind as he lay there. Best to call it motion, and
+to revel lazily in everything he was feeling.
+
+One feeling never changed, of course: utter and complete trust in Draco.
+If he'd been hiding any of that, the ritual had successfully dredged it
+up and used it as a bedrock for the rest of his emotions.
+
+He barely experienced his own orgasm, just a bright, sharp pinprick of
+pleasure in the middle of the rest, a star falling into the sea. He felt
+more keenly the moment when Draco gasped, stiffened, and lost himself,
+because in the next moment he collapsed onto Harry's back and smeared
+the oil all over himself.
+
+Harry's eyelids fluttered. He should rouse himself. He should ask Draco
+about the end of the ritual, which he knew involved the tame Dark
+returning them to the world, but which he wouldn't be awake to see if he
+kept lying here. He should explain to Draco what this ritual had made
+him feel, and how the anger had joined the rest of the emotions dancing
+through him---not something he'd suppressed, but something he wouldn't
+admit to himself, and which, now, he could admit.
+
+But all that came out of the mixture of embers and ashes filling him now
+was a dazed mumble of, ``I love you.''
+
+``The splendor has shone, and the flame has burned,'' Draco said, the
+words to end the ritual. Harry felt the room dissolving around them, but
+he felt, more clearly, Draco lean forward and say into his shoulder, ``I
+love you, too.''
+
+Harry flopped, boneless. It was an utter luxury, utterly decadent, and
+probably encouraged more by the ritual than what he would naturally and
+normally feel, but, for once, he didn't care:
+
+He would relax and let Draco take care of everything.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 103*: Gloryflower
+Owls}\label{chapter-103-gloryflower-owls}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Eighty-Three: Gloryflower Owls}
+
+Hawthorn sniffed deeply, and then shook her head. It was still hard,
+sometimes, remembering that she'd left her lycanthropy behind. If
+nothing else, the sense of smell that it had provided her would be quite
+useful now, as they walked into the Disillusioned tower that contained
+the Gloryflower owls. She had to place her feet carefully on invisible
+walkways and clutch at invisible walls and make educated guesses about
+how low the arches on the doors were, without a sense of smell.
+
+And the softer air of May would even have been kind to her nostrils. One
+of the very few moments of joy her condition had ever afforded her was
+sniffing at the air when the seasons were firmly established. Hawthorn
+had never known \emph{spring} had a scent all its own, or \emph{summer},
+but they did, and she missed them.
+
+\emph{Then brew a potion that will give you just the keenness of scent
+back,} she sniped at herself, and ducked under the final arch. She heard
+Lucius, following her, curse softly as his forehead apparently met the
+stone. She smirked, and then lost the smirk as she straightened and
+looked around her.
+
+Magic washed around them in soft, cooling waves, but still powerfully
+enough to make the hair on the back of Hawthorn's neck rise. The owls
+were compact birds made of gold, with emerald eyes. Hawthorn had seen
+them before, of course, since she'd voted in several Ministerial
+elections. Still, she had never seen this many, all crowded close
+together on small perches, all sleeping and motionless. It would take
+the touch of the candidates to bring them to life.
+
+She stepped aside so Lucius could make his way into the room. Elizabeth
+was behind him, and then Laura Gloryflower, and then Cupressus. Hawthorn
+watched him as he gazed at the sleeping birds in silence. She wondered
+if he had ever thought he would stand here. It was impossible, most of
+the time, to tell anything from his face. The first time she had met him
+after the defeat of Voldemort, he had only nodded to her and remarked
+how wonderful it was that the battle against the Dark Lord had claimed
+so few lives.
+
+\emph{The death of Voldemort.}
+
+Hawthorn stroked her left arm with her right hand. The hair had grown
+back into the burned place, and most people, even when they demanded a
+glimpse, couldn't tell where the Dark Mark had once been. When she first
+stared down through the light, saw the snake and skull had gone, and
+realized what it meant for her, Hawthorn had locked herself in her
+office at the Ministry and cried tears that burned her eyes. A chapter
+of her life she had sought so hard to unwrite was finally gone.
+
+And now she stood here, with the four other candidates for Minister,
+about to send a flood of owls into the air and ask people to vote for
+her, or for one of the others standing beside her.
+
+She even thought she had a reasonably good chance of winning.
+
+\emph{My loves,} her thoughts said, on Pansy and Dragonsbane. \emph{What
+would you say if you could see me now? Would you be proud? Or would the
+concerns of the dead occupy you so much that you would only smile at me
+from behind a veil of mist?}
+
+Elizabeth Nonpareil's nasal voice interrupted her reflections. ``Is it
+right for her to be here?'' she complained. Hawthorn turned, sure the
+insufferable woman would be complaining about her presence, only to see
+her glaring at Laura. ``Her family made these owls, after all. Are we
+quite sure she won't tamper with them?''
+
+Laura gave Elizabeth a smile that had a hint of the lioness behind it.
+``The owls themselves will protect the honesty of the candidates,'' she
+said. ``That is part of the magic on the Tower. You may believe me
+willing to undercut the election, Mrs. Nonpareil, but I assure you I
+could not even if I wished to.''
+
+Elizabeth's nose stuck a little higher in the air.
+
+Hawthorn shook her head. She was aware of the effort some of Elizabeth's
+own family had gone to to rescue her image and promote her as a viable
+candidate in the election, but there were some things money couldn't do.
+
+``We all need to touch an owl,'' she said, and nodded to the others.
+Lucius had already arranged himself a bit further down the line of
+golden birds, a hand extended to the nearest one's breast. Elizabeth and
+Laura fanned out beyond him, still trading hostile looks. Cupressus
+strode to an owl almost the opposite of Hawthorn's and stood waiting,
+blinking occasionally.
+
+Hawthorn returned the glance. Of all the candidates, she was the most
+comfortable with him. They didn't share an allegiance, nor even a
+generation, but they had the same attitude towards life. They cared most
+about Britain having a Minister, for example, rather than their own
+triumphs.
+
+Cupressus gave her a little nod, but that might have been her
+imagination. At any rate, Hawthorn was not surprised when his hand
+struck his owl and began the circle of power that woke the birds up.
+
+It was truly astounding to watch life flare in jeweled eyes, feathers
+shift, heads turn and orient on the candidates. Hawthorn shivered. She
+had cured lycanthropy, at least in potential, and she had used blood
+curses to kill and wound, and she had bred plants, but all those worked
+with materials originally alive in the first place. To call motion out
+of nothing but metal and magic---
+
+That made her want to learn another art.
+
+Hawthorn tamed her ambition as well as she could. For now, she would
+content herself with watching the birds, satisfied that the people come
+before them had the right to stir them, turn and leap out the windows.
+The air filled with a storm of golden wings that the Muggles below would
+see as nothing more than a gleam of sunlight, and the flock broke over
+London, clumps of them shredding as they sped in different directions,
+going to every wizard seventeen and older.
+
+Hawthorn became aware that Lucius was beside her, staring after the
+birds in quiet satisfaction. \emph{Perfect.} She would have made some
+excuse to draw him to the window if he had hung back, but now she didn't
+need to. He was in the perfect position to see what happened next, and
+she was in the perfect position to watch his face.
+
+Another storm of owls unfolded into the air from the middle of
+London---from Gringotts. They appeared identical in every way to the old
+birds, and where the streams crossed, it became impossible to tell them
+apart.
+
+Lucius's jaw fell gently open. He shut it almost at once, but Hawthorn
+could not have asked for a more satisfying reaction.
+
+``Where did those owls come from?'' he asked through gritted teeth, too
+stunned to be polite.
+
+``Those are the owls that will allow the magical creatures to vote,''
+Hawthorn said innocently. ``Forged by Gloryflower artisans, with goblin
+help, and given all the necessary enchantments that the old ones
+have---to only produce one ballot per bird, for example.''
+
+Lucius looked half-ill now.
+
+``Oh, dear,'' Hawthorn said, as if this had only just occurred to her.
+``No one told you the goblins and the others were voting, did they?''
+She paused. ``And you said many things in your speeches alienating them.
+How sad.''
+
+She moved away from him, and leaned against the far wall to wait. The
+owls were all to return by the evening, and they would produce five
+piles of ballots when they did, one for each candidate. Those piles
+would then need to be counted by \emph{everyone}, and their numbers
+compared and tallied.
+
+She sat in a place where she could watch Lucius's expression.
+
+Killing him for the revenge she was still owed was no fun, she had
+decided, and in any case, it was quite impossible to arrange for the
+death of Lucius Malfoy in such a way that his son and Harry wouldn't
+find out. Much better to cut him to pieces with the tools of politics,
+and in ways that he never saw coming.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Owen sighed as the owl landed on the table in front of him, and then
+glanced at Faustine Nonpareil, who sat in a chair across from him. She
+looked up and raised her eyebrows.
+
+``Do you think I should vote for Elizabeth?'' Owen asked, well-aware of
+how hopeless he sounded. "We did our best to make her a candidate
+\emph{someone} would approve of. I almost feel I owe her this vote, in
+the name of solidarity."
+
+``I think you should do whatever you desire,'' said Faustine calmly,
+taking her own ballot from the open beak of the owl that had landed next
+to her. "I will certainly not tell you how \emph{I} vote." She scribbled
+down the name with a flourish, shoulder ostentatiously hunched so he
+couldn't look over her arm.
+
+Owen looked down at his own piece of parchment, and then at the owl, who
+shifted from one clawed foot to the other and had no advice to offer. He
+bit his lip several times, and, in the end, followed the desire of his
+heart, the way Faustine had said he should. \emph{Merlin knows I have
+had enough of duty for a lifetime.}
+
+Michael's face flashed before his eyes.
+
+Owen put it gently aside. He had accepted that he would often be
+thinking of his brother, but he would not let the grief that image and
+name invoked control his actions. He wrote \emph{Hawthorn Parkinson}
+down and handed the ballot back to the owl. It clapped its wings with a
+small \emph{clang}, as though thanking him for the vote, and swallowed
+the parchment, which would come to rest in its belly. Then it turned and
+climbed out of the room in a dizzying sweep.
+
+Faustine's owl was right behind it. Owen wondered for a moment if that
+meant the name she'd written was longer than his, and tried to compare
+the length of the names in his mind, and then shook his head. It could
+just mean that she was a slower writer, or that she'd taken a bit longer
+to remember how to spell a certain name.
+
+He didn't intend to dwell on it. He turned back to the parchment in
+front of him, which contained suggestions to forge the Dark families
+into more of a united front for political action. ``And you think we can
+persuade the Black Heron to our side with monetary assistance alone?''
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Harry raised an eyebrow at Draco as he tucked the list of locations back
+into his robe pocket. ``You're sure that you want to come with me? It's
+going to be a nasty, bumpy ride, with constant Side-Along Apparitions,
+and we'll barely stay in one place long enough to have tea, except the
+Forest.''
+
+``You wouldn't do that on your own.'' Draco folded his arms. ``With me
+along, you'll be forced to take care of my comfort, and that means that
+you'll be forced to take care of your own.''
+
+Harry frowned at him. "I'm eating and sleeping regularly, Draco. For
+those first three days---back---I did nothing \emph{but} eat and sleep."
+
+``And talk to me,'' said Draco, his face and voice growing perceptibly
+more smug. "I know which one \emph{I} credit your recovery to."
+
+Harry bit off an impatient groan, and ended up shaking his head. ``You
+haven't said if you mind the Side-Along Apparitions.''
+
+``Of course I mind them. You still can't do it gracefully. And believe
+me, I do intend to complain about them.''
+
+"You can't be \emph{easy}," Harry said darkly, while wings briefly
+sparked above his shoulders before falling into oblivion. He was
+reasonably sure he should not be grinning like an idiot at the same
+time.
+
+``If I was easy, then you'd know I was Polyjuiced.'' Draco stepped
+forward and leaned his face against Harry's, not kissing him. ``Come on,
+hero. Let's do your Side-Along Apparitions. I've already voted, so I'm
+not worried about my owl having to chase me all over Britain.''
+
+Harry nodded, and slung an arm around Draco's shoulder. He carried a
+precise list of Apparition coordinates for every place in the British
+Isles where intelligent magical serpents lived. He would have to go to
+them and translate their votes from Parseltongue for the owls. The
+magical birds had provisions to record voice votes for those who
+couldn't write, but they didn't understand the snake language, and
+Lucius, the only other one who could have helped, was a candidate and
+had to remain in the Tower the owls came from while the election
+continued.
+
+Harry had voted already himself, for Hawthorn. He hadn't asked whom
+Draco had voted for. It would be a hard enough choice between the Dark
+candidates he thought might do a good job, a Light candidate he might
+favor for sheer sense but feel constrained from voting for because of
+his allegiance, and his father.
+
+"\emph{I am here! I have voted!}"
+
+Harry looked down in surprise. The arrangement had been that he would
+return to Silver-Mirror this evening and collect Argutus's vote, because
+the Omen snake had been unable to decide whom he wanted for Minister.
+But here came Argutus with a piece of parchment held firmly in his mouth
+and an owl fluttering after him, clacking its beak and trying to take
+the parchment away.
+
+``How in the world did you manage to write this?'' Harry asked, taking
+the parchment from Argutus's snout. The owl came and sat firmly on his
+shoulder, staring fixedly at the ballot. Harry shifted so that his hair
+stroked it, and unfolded the parchment. The writing was shaky, but
+clear. \emph{Laura Gloryflower.}
+
+"\emph{I have learned to write now!}" Argutus swayed his head proudly
+from side to side. "\emph{Letters are not as complicated as runes, and I
+have learned to mimic them with a quill held in my tail! And soon I will
+understand English!}"
+
+Harry couldn't help but smile, at least in the moment before the owl
+leaped, snapped the ballot from his hand, swallowed it, and coasted out
+the window. Argutus hissed in disappointment. "\emph{I wanted Draco to
+see my writing,}" he said.
+
+``Write it again today,'' Harry assured him, slipping his arm through
+Draco's. ``You can show it to him when we come back.''
+
+"\emph{And you'll make him look at it?}" Argutus tapped his tail in a
+meaningful pattern on the floor. So far as he was concerned, there had
+been many important things to show Draco in the three days immediately
+after Connor's death when he was cooped up with Harry, but Draco had
+turned him away each time, unable to understand the Parseltongue and
+worried that the Omen snake would disturb Harry.
+
+``I promise.''
+
+Argutus bobbed his head, his approximation of a human nod, and slithered
+away. Harry looked around to see a slightly stunned expression in
+Draco's eyes.
+
+``Harry,'' Draco begged quietly, ``please tell me that your snake didn't
+just vote.''
+
+``Of course he did,'' said Harry, a bit surprised. Draco had been in on
+the secret of the new Gloryflower voting owls; Harry would never shut
+him out from anything that important. ``You knew he was going to.''
+
+``I was picturing a vote translated from Parseltongue. Not---writing.''
+Draco gave a slight shudder. ``He will read my letters and probably
+write one himself, if he takes the fancy. Merlin, Harry, sometimes your
+snakes are more than a bit frightening.''
+
+``Says the one who got me this one,'' Harry retorted, clasped his hand
+around Draco's arm, and Apparated to the Forbidden Forest.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Syrinx gazed thoughtfully at the parchment in front of her. Had this
+been two months ago, she would have put down her cousin's name. She had
+owed her everything, from the shared Gloryflower name to the fact that
+Laura had agreed to put her with Harry as a sworn companion.
+
+But her mind had changed since then, quite literally. She was in the
+next-to-last phase of war witch training now, reintegrating herself with
+the world, learning to think things she had never thought. She was no
+longer tempted to vote for Laura simply because she was family. Syrinx
+had listened to her, and while Laura was a brave warrior, politics was
+not war. It had different rules and different requirements, and
+sometimes Syrinx thought Laura hadn't realized there was no longer a
+Voldemort to be fought. There were people as bad, perhaps, but without
+that magical power to make themselves known, there was no Voldemort on
+the horizon.
+
+So she thought about what she believed, sitting by the upper window of
+Silver-Mirror's library in a flood of sunlight, and what Laura believed,
+and what the other candidates believed. The owl sat beside her, wanting
+the ballot but content to wait for however long it took her to decide.
+There were rumors of an election in the last century where the owl had
+waited two weeks for an old, deaf witch to have the positions of the
+candidates explained to her in detail several dozen times.
+
+In the end, Syrinx wrote down \emph{Cupressus Apollonis}, and the owl
+beside her began to hop from foot to foot like a small child who had to
+use the loo. Syrinx smiled and held out the parchment. With a little
+hoot of comfort, the bird snatched it from her fingers and sped out the
+window. Syrinx sat back to watch it go with a smile that would have been
+impossible for her before Harry became her anchor.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Harry knelt down next to the Many hive and hissed at the entwined ball
+of snakes. Draco raised his eyebrows. He could accept Argutus as a
+single being, nearly as intelligent as themselves though in a different
+way, and certainly it was even easier with the magical creatures who had
+some semblance of human form, like the centaurs, but he would never find
+the many minds spread among dozens of tiny golden-green cobras anything
+but alien.
+
+Harry nodded, and then spoke softly to one of the owls who hovered
+overhead. Draco shook his head when he heard the name of Elizabeth
+Nonpareil. Ah, well, it was to be accepted that magical creatures who
+had never voted before would make mistakes; they might be impressed with
+the sound of her name in Parseltongue, or the impression that she had
+many eggs, or anything else that Harry had neglected to explain to make
+them understand just how unsuitable a Minister she would make.
+
+When he had first heard that Harry would be translating Parseltongue
+votes for the magical snakes, Draco had assumed that this was a prime
+opportunity to throw a few more votes behind Hawthorn. Harry had stared
+at him for a moment, then told him he was merely \emph{collecting} the
+votes, not assuring them. He would make as great an effort as he could
+to insure that he represented all the candidates fairly and the snakes
+could choose among them, just as if they were human and could read or
+enter the human debate about them in English.
+
+On some things, Draco had concluded, he and Harry would never agree. He
+could understand, in an abstract manner, why Harry wanted to be fair,
+but politics wasn't fair, and they should use any advantage they could
+get. It wasn't as though anyone else would be present who could
+understand the votes and insist that a snake had said Elizabeth when
+Harry could pretend that it had said Hawthorn. This was the first
+election with magical creatures voting. Harry should guide them.
+
+Harry had hissed at him when he suggested that, something that Draco was
+quite sure was an insult in Parseltongue, and stalked away. Draco
+shrugged. He himself had voted for Hawthorn, and done his part to secure
+a better future for wizarding Britain. She was the best of them, the
+most able and the most flexible and the most trusted by the other people
+in Harry's alliance. It was not his fault if Harry tried to undercut
+that and ended up cutting Hawthorn out of office.
+
+When the Many hives had finished giving Harry their votes, the
+Runespoors came forward and did so. That drove Draco quite mad, because
+the three heads of every snake had to agree, and that often took minutes
+of debate, or what sounded like debate: sharp hisses and two heads
+combining to threaten the other. Luckily, the list of locations they had
+to visit after this was not long. There were other Omen snakes living in
+Britain as friends of wizards, a few more scattered colonies of
+Runespoors, and apparently a crossbred snake of some kind in the north
+of Scotland that was rumored to have hydra blood. They would go to the
+shores of Loch Ness and call out, but Draco doubted that the kelpie in
+the lake would come to them wearing the form of a giant snake, or would
+be interested in voting if it did. It was far more likely to drown them.
+
+A movement on the edge of his peripheral vision caught his attention,
+and he turned sharply. A small shape slid through the undergrowth,
+coming closer. Draco warily drew his wand. No matter what Harry thought,
+not all magical creatures were friendly to wizards, and some mindless
+magical snakes, incapable of voting, did live in the Forest and might be
+as happy to bite the \emph{vates} as anyone.
+
+The leaves at his feet stirred aside, and the golden-and-black shape of
+a Locusta revealed itself, coiled so that the broken
+skull-and-crossbones signs on its scales were visible. It hissed
+something in Parseltongue to Harry, who had just turned away from the
+last Runespoor.
+
+Harry caught his breath and went very still.
+
+\emph{He still misses Sylarana,} Draco thought, lowering his wand as the
+snake danced and hissed but made no move to attack. \emph{He savors loss
+like a fine wine. I don't think he'll get over his brother any time
+soon.}
+
+It wasn't that Draco had \emph{wanted} Harry to stop thinking about
+Connor, exactly, so much as that he had not wanted grief to poison him.
+But if Harry reacted this way to the mere sight of a Locusta snake, who
+knew how long it would take him to stop freezing when his brother's name
+came up in conversation?
+
+Harry had a slightly dazed expression on his face as he hissed back.
+Then he turned to an owl and said, ``Laura Gloryflower.'' The owl flew
+back towards London at once.
+
+"Laura \emph{Gloryflower?"} Draco said, as he found his voice. ``Why is
+a Dark snake voting for a Light witch? You did explain to it that she's
+of a different allegiance than it is, right?''
+
+``He,'' Harry said absently, still seeming dazed. ``And yes, I explained
+that. He doesn't care. He rather thought the family of the creator of
+these owls should be his choice.'' He licked his lips, and seemed to be
+avoiding Draco's gaze. Draco felt his eyes narrow suspiciously. ``And,
+um, well, his name is Yaraliss.''
+
+``Yes?'' Draco said, as neutrally as he could.
+
+``Yes.'' Harry hesitated a moment longer, then extended his arm. The
+Locusta slithered happily up it, and curled around so that his head
+rested on Harry's shoulder. Draco found himself confronted with a pair
+of green eyes, at least as bright as Harry's, or as Sylarana's. ``And
+he's decided that he's coming home with me.''
+
+Draco shivered. He didn't fancy sharing the house with an extremely
+venomous snake who would demand as much of Harry's attention and time as
+Sylarana had. ``And you think that's a good idea?''
+
+Harry avoided his gaze even as he stroked the golden-black scales.
+Yaraliss wriggled in pleasure. ``He absolutely promises to get along
+with Argutus, and not to bite anyone unless they try to attack me.
+Really,'' he added, when Draco opened his mouth. ``That's what he said,
+and we even defined `attack' so he won't bite someone who, well, tries
+to hug me exuberantly.''
+
+``Harry---'' Draco began.
+
+Harry looked up at him through his fringe. ``I really want him to come
+with me,'' he said in a tiny voice.
+
+\emph{Oh, for Merlin's sake.} Draco sighed. ``Just remember what
+happened last time, and don't let him intertwine that deeply into your
+mind,'' he said.
+
+``Oh, Yaraliss is more interested in the outer world than---she was,''
+Harry said softly, and touched the Locusta behind his head. He wriggled
+again, but Draco thought there was a smug spitefulness in the green eyes
+that Harry's other snakes \emph{definitely} did not have. ``He won't
+blackmail me the way she did.''
+
+Seeing the helpless adoration in Harry's eyes, Draco decided that he was
+doomed and might as well give in now. He shook his head as the Locusta
+said something imperious-sounding to Harry and slithered into a pocket,
+then stepped forward and leaned on Harry's shoulder. ``Where are we
+going next?''
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Lucius lifted his head. The last of the owls had flown into the room,
+and the Tower was filled with softly stirring bodies and cooing voices.
+At least they did not have the shed feathers and dust of real birds, he
+thought.
+
+The owls cocked their heads forward and spat out ballots. They flew into
+five neat piles---one for each candidate, Lucius knew. He had heard the
+stories of this, and even known that he might stand here someday, though
+he had certainly never believed it would be at the end of the first
+election in which magical creatures could vote---
+
+He cut the thought off sharply.
+
+A number of owls hovered above the ballots for a moment, then separated
+and flew to certain piles. Those would be the owls with the voice votes
+translated from Parseltongue, Lucius knew, and sometimes owls who
+contained votes by wizards and witches who couldn't write.
+
+``Well,'' said Hawthorn in a falsely bright voice, when they had sat
+there for some minutes contemplating the folded parchments. ``Shall
+we?'' She stepped forward to one of the larger piles, which was surely
+hers. The others moved as confidently towards the piles that would have
+their names on them. They would count the parchments for their names,
+then move and count those for the other names. Magic in the Gloryflower
+owls themselves would insure their counts were as honest as could
+be---prevent them from lying about the numbers, at least, though not
+from miscounting.
+
+It did not escape Lucius's notice that his pile was smaller than anyone
+else's, save Elizabeth Nonpareil's.
+
+He told himself that was because the wizarding population of Britain was
+reduced right now, with many people fled and others dead.
+
+He did not believe it himself.
+
+Bending over his own pile and beginning the count, he coldly
+acknowledged to himself that he had made mistakes, and those would have
+to change. No, he had truly not expected to win the election, but he had
+expected to do better than this---better than Laura Gloryflower, for
+instance, who had depended on her name to carry her through too much of
+her campaign. He intended to use this as a rung up the political ladder,
+and if he could not do that, he had failed in far more than simply
+losing the election.
+
+In silence, they counted, and switched piles, and counted again. Lucius
+could feel his cheeks burn when he saw how much larger Hawthorn's pile
+was than his own---by more than a thousand ballots. He did not look up,
+and he hoped that none of the others saw his flush.
+
+In the end, there could be no doubt. Elizabeth Nonpareil still looked
+stunned that she had lost, and Laura Gloryflower thoughtful over the
+fact that more people had voted for a Dark witch and former Death Eater
+than had voted for her. Therefore, it was Hawthorn's task to incline her
+head and say, ``Congratulations, Minister,'' to Cupressus Apollonis.
+
+Apollonis accepted the declaration with no more than a nod, which was
+like him. Lucius turned away before they could lock eyes. He despised
+the new Minister not because he was weak, but because he was the very
+epitome of Light, the opposite of everything that Lucius stood for.
+
+``Shall we go down and announce this to them?'' Apollonis asked, and the
+other candidates nodded. Reporters would be waiting at the foot of the
+Tower---they probably had been as soon as they saw the owls fly back,
+Lucius knew. The others turned and left the room.
+
+Lucius lingered where he was for a moment, looking out over Muggle
+London. One by one, lights came to life, shining, and Lucius curled his
+lip. \emph{Not torches, not} Lumos \emph{charms. Our worlds are
+separate, and better by far that they stay that way.}
+
+Currently, he was thinking less of the lost election than the fact that
+he had recognized his son's handwriting on a vote for Hawthorn.
+
+There was still work to be done to restore his reputation and name, that
+was clear.
+
+But there was no one better to do it.
+
+With silent dignity, resolved to do even better than he had in the past,
+Lucius turned and made his way down, composing answers in his mind all
+the while for such critical questions as, ``What do you feel about
+magical creatures voting for the Minister, Mr. Malfoy?'' He would answer
+that of course they had a place in magical Britain, and he had accepted
+that things must take their course. It balanced between his old
+position, which no one believed he would so easily abandon, and the
+future that was coming now.
+
+It was time for a change.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 104*: Intermission:
+Snapshots}\label{chapter-104-intermission-snapshots}
+
+The format of this Intermission is somewhat unusual, but without it, I
+don't think there's a way to even \emph{hint} at most of the characters'
+fates. This isn't meant to close all possibilities off completely and
+end the stories, of course, since so many people are still alive, but
+give a series of small glimpses.
+
+\textbf{Intermission: Snapshots}
+
+\emph{If there were a camera that could take pictures evocative of life
+amid the ruins and the flowers of Voldemort's defeat, these are the
+kinds of pictures it might produce.}
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+A photograph of a young woman, showing her pregnancy, entering a vault
+where two stone statues stand: a woman, and a child in her arms. When
+she speaks the proper words, golden and silver light races around the
+statue, and tears open stone to reveal the flesh beneath. The woman
+shakes her head, and shivers, and blonde hair spills free of its
+confinement. The girl in her arms clears her throat and says,
+``Millicent?'' in blurred but understandable tones.
+
+Millicent Bulstrode hugs her mother and her sister, and in silence and
+gladness welcomes them back into the world.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+A series of photographs, showing Floo connections and stubborn faces,
+both of them framed by bright her. Sometimes a third face comes and goes
+from the pictures---the face of a patient, long-suffering woman. Honoria
+Pemberley keeps her promise of trying to reconcile Cupressus Apollonis
+and his daughter.
+
+It will take years, it will take many more photographs, to show the
+whole process. But if they did not want this to happen, Ignifer and
+Cupressus should never have allowed Honoria to pick up the camera.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+An American wizard is visible in this picture, come to Britain to speak
+to the \emph{vates} about the magical sea serpents that the Americans
+have kept fenced in several deep lakes, and what should be done about
+them. Yet he does not dominate the picture, nor does Harry Black, who
+has come ceremoniously out of Silver-Mirror to greet him. The ones who
+do are a tall blond wizard with eyes more gray than blue, and a younger
+wizard with eyes more blue than gray. They stand in the corner of the
+picture, and stare at each other as if locked in a duel of stares alone.
+
+The photograph after that one would show the younger wizard moving to
+greet the ambassador from America before his father could. It would not
+be entirely clear whether Lucius Malfoy stepped aside of his own free
+will or was ``convinced'' to do so, but those who cared to could read
+their own answers in the slight bow of his head, and the fact that it
+would be directed at his son.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+A photograph of two documents, made before they are sent to the
+Ministry. One is on thick, heavy parchment, burnished to a golden-cream
+color, and contains carefully penned phrase after carefully penned
+phrase. It is full of solemn promises from Harry Black to guard the
+Potter estates and vaults as if they were his own, to search for and
+train a suitable heir to them, and only to use the money from the vaults
+in pursuit of a comfortable life for the heir once he finds him or her.
+
+The second document is much simpler: the form to tell the Ministry of a
+change of name. It simply says that, from now on, Harry James Black
+wishes to be known as Harry Polaris Black.
+
+The line requesting a reason for the change says, in writing that looks
+as if it were done in haste, or by a hand trembling with embarrassment:
+\emph{Polaris is the guide star, the north star. I would be that for
+people if I can---a sign to lead them home, one they can follow if they
+wish to.}
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+An oddly-shaped coffin dominates this picture, which shines in hues so
+rich it could be a painting. And why should it not be? The scene is a
+hillside vivid with flowers and with trees in blossom, a sheltered
+magical sanctuary where harsh winds never come and only time will take
+the flowers from the branches. The trees will bear apples. They curve in
+around the coffin as if sheltering it from the harsh gaze of the world,
+which will not understand.
+
+The coffin is made of dark wood, as is traditional when burying one of
+the Bulstrode line, but very much larger than it needs to be to hold one
+body. It might, possibly, hold two bodies lying across each other---a
+man and a woman, say. As if a couple had gone down entwined in madness
+and bloody death, and it did not seem right to separate them in burial.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+This comes from the \emph{Daily Prophet}, and shows an old woman calm
+and gratified by her reception at the Ministry; readers will know that
+is so, because the article accompanying the picture proclaims it. She
+is, visibly, not human. Faint spots cover her body. She sports a tail.
+Green eyes stare back at the camera as Augusta Longbottom shows off her
+nonhuman heritage, as well as the fact that the Ministry is fully
+committed to protecting the rights of half-human wizards.
+
+By her side, beaming, stands her grandson Neville, who seems
+considerably more excited than she does.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Brightness emanates from this picture. Its source might as easily be the
+young woman's smile as the sheen of her long red hair. She stands with
+her older brother's hand on his shoulder, and there is an expression of
+sturdy pride on his face. Ginny Weasley waves a document above her head,
+fast enough that it's hard to see what the writing on it is.
+
+In the second picture, she stands still and looks a bit sheepish,
+document unfolded before her so that others can read it. It states that
+the Ministry, based on a series of preliminary exams, intends to accept
+her into their new Auror program once she finishes a term at the rebuilt
+Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Ron Weasley, behind her,
+looks as proud of her as ever, but also rather worn. That might be
+attributed to the long series of arguments with their family that
+undoubtedly preceded this picture.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+This picture is dark, blurry, and difficult to see. Oddly enough, one
+must hold it up to moonlight to glimpse everything in it, and no one is
+likely to do that. Luckily, it rests in the possession of one who knows
+what to do with it, because he took it.
+
+Properly illuminated, it shows the sliver of a moon just come in from
+the new, and dark, winged shapes in flight. The remnants of blue chains,
+perhaps, newly shattered, trail from their hooves. One does not need to
+have seen someone die, because the cutting of their chains and their web
+changed that about them. Free thestrals, the last remnants of the herd
+in the Forbidden Forest, they arch over the black landscape below and
+heard towards some destination unknown and unimaginable to humans. On
+the far side of the photograph, one can just make out the hindquarters
+of the flight's leader passing through what looks like an open door.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+How one views this picture would depend on how one feels about the
+headline that accompanies it. Cupressus Apollonis stands calmly on the
+steps of the Ministry, holding up what appears to be an ordinary
+Pensieve. That is all. That the image could be the subject of so much
+controversy seems astounding.
+
+The headline, of course, explains matters. Rather than construct a
+prison of torment in the manner of Azkaban, or one of boredom and slow,
+creeping madness such as Tullianum was, the new Minister has chosen a
+different approach. Through the modification of a spell first invented
+by Draco Malfoy, criminals will share their victim's pain at the
+crime---living through the horror of a rape, for example, or the
+pitiless fear of confronting a thief who threatens their children to
+make them hand over money. If the victim is dead, the spell will capture
+family members' and friends' emotions, and make the criminal understand
+exactly what he has taken from the world.
+
+This punishment of empathy is to be repeated until the criminal fully
+comprehends what he has done, or repents---or, sometimes, both of those
+things. Prison awaits only those who will not repent, who are in danger
+of doing it again.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+It might be best to show four of these photographs, though three would
+be sufficient to tell the story.
+
+The first shows a pair of snakes nose-to-nose. One is much larger than
+the other, but the smaller one does not look intimidated. Indeed, since
+the larger one has the gently shimmering color of an Omen snake, and the
+smaller the gold-black scales of a Locusta, it could be said that size
+does not correspond to deadliness among this pair.
+
+The second shows them curled on a bed together, carefully side-by-side
+but not far apart. Feeling each other out, as it were. Seeing how much
+space is necessary between them when they both wish to nap. The careful
+observer will note that the space is about as much as a human body would
+take up.
+
+The third photograph is the liveliest. The Locusta lunges at a figure
+out of sight, beyond the border of the picture. The Omen snake has
+clamped his mouth down around his tail and holds tight. It is clear
+that, in a moment, the Locusta will snap taut and fall on the bed---and,
+probably, turn and strike from embarrassment or spite at the snake who
+prevented him from biting someone else.
+
+The last in the series shows the snakes calmly tangled together on the
+bed, a smirking black skull on gold just barely visible over an expanse
+of scales like milk. Both heads are out of sight, submerged in the
+tumble of coils. It seems the dispute has resolved with not only no one
+being poisoned, but a new friendship occurring.
+
+Beneath the photographs, tacked on a wall, someone has written a
+caption.
+
+\emph{Never let it be said that Argutus can't make friends with anyone
+he likes. Or that Yaraliss doesn't admire bravery.}
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+This scene would seem violent to anyone who does not know the story.
+Thomas Rhangnara brings down a book with careful force and excellent
+precision on the head of a young girl whom people might guess is his
+daughter, if they squint.
+
+The next photograph is even more enigmatic. It consists of nothing but a
+scroll of difficult math problems, all of them with correct answers.
+
+But the third photograph, which shows father and daughter dancing
+through the Black library and upsetting shelves, must show a wealth of
+happiness, even if the means by which they reached it is not quite
+visible.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+It takes an inquiring mind to suspect \emph{much} from this photograph,
+truly. And the kind of mind one has will determine what inference one
+makes beyond the mere inquiry.
+
+Owen Rosier-Henlin has his mouth open, obviously giving an important
+speech; the photograph is from the \emph{Vox Populi}, and probably bears
+some radical, angry article along with it. Next to him stands Faustine
+Nonpareil, carefully contriving to look as unimpressed as possible. She
+has her arms folded, and her gaze divided between the photographer---or
+audience---and Owen.
+
+One might inquire whether she looks at Owen as if she would like to stab
+him, or as if she appreciates what he is doing.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+This picture is a blur of movement, and it will take more than one look
+to sort out the participants. Both have golden hair, both move fast, and
+both have extended blades in their hands, rather than the more usual
+wands.
+
+By staring closely, one might decide that both are women, and that one
+is younger than the other by virtue of her size, and that they are most
+probably related.
+
+It is, in fact, a picture of Syrinx Gloryflower dueling Laura, and
+managing to surprise her older cousin more than once. She has begun the
+penultimate phase of a war witch's training, and Laura admits, in the
+movement of her body and her blade, that Syrinx will be a formidable
+one.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+The room is covered in spilled liquid---mostly silver, but with glimpses
+of purple and red mixed here and there. Crushed swan feathers litter the
+foreground, since the picture was taken, or might have been taken, by
+someone stretched full-length on the floor. Two women draw more
+attention than the swan feathers, however. One, with her head bowed and
+her long hair falling over her face, is anonymous. The other, kneeling
+in front of her with her hands on her shoulders, will be familiar to
+anyone who reads the \emph{Daily Prophet} as Hawthorn Parkinson.
+
+The next day, this photograph, or one very like it, will run under the
+byline of Rita Skeeter, and the headline of \emph{Lycanthropy Potion
+Cures Delilah Gloryflower.}
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+As if in defiance of the fact that a lycanthropy cure exists in the
+world, the two werewolves run through the picture, at the head of a
+large and mingled pack. The full moon is just visible in faint shadows
+across their fur and a pale light that seems to shine from the ground
+beneath their paws more than the sky above them. Both move with the easy
+assurance of those bitten in childhood, those who have been werewolves
+for years.
+
+One werewolf is large, gray, and male, with amber eyes; he becomes a
+human named Remus Lupin when the moon is not full, but more and more he
+accepts \emph{this} form as part of his true self. The second, slightly
+smaller, is black, female, and has dark eyes; she will be Peregrine when
+the moon relents, and she is learning the virtues of cooperation between
+the London packs and with the wizarding world, now that the Ministry is
+paying attention and acting properly.
+
+For now, though, there is the moon, and the run, and all the smells
+visible to a werewolf's nose.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Probably, the subject of this photograph would not have wanted it to be
+taken. He would prefer to be caught in a happier moment, not now, as he
+is, crying and turning his face away.
+
+From thinking of oneself as a sacrifice to leaping into power is a long
+distance. Peter Pettigrew did not know what to do with himself when the
+Wizengamot told him that, based on consultations with Hogwarts's
+surviving students and those professors who wish to return to the
+school, they chose him to be Headmaster.
+
+In time, in a few moments, he will be able to smile. But not now.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+There are few photographs like this one, because word spread among the
+newspapers quickly: \emph{stay away from Harry Black's foster father.}
+Only Dionysus Hornblower, who is immune to fear, regularly sends his
+people to take pictures of Severus Snape now.
+
+Snape strides along a rocky path, which the knowledgeable are aware
+leads to one of the hidden Black houses---sanctuary for the \emph{vates}
+and those close to him when they don't wish to deal with the press. His
+cloak billows behind him, and his face is set into a scowl. It doesn't
+appear as though the acclaim lately fallen onto his shoulders, as people
+praise him for raising the \emph{vates} and pushing through the trial
+that led to the ending of his birth parents' influence over him and,
+ultimately, the revelation of Headmaster Dumbledore's crimes, has
+changed him.
+
+What changes Severus Snape moves far beneath the surface. Thus Dionysus
+Hornblower, along with a few select others, believes, and he is
+determined to capture one of the moments when the miracle happens.
+
+Severus Snape is unchangeable. Thus most of the other reporters, even
+the daring and truth-committed Rita Skeeter, believe.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+This photograph is not precious for its rarity. While Harry Black is
+still, often, shy of the camera, Draco Malfoy is quite ready to pose by
+himself, and answer questions, and---the clever are coming to realize
+this---mine information from the person talking to him with his own
+``innocent'' assertions.
+
+But this photograph is precious because it shows the Malfoy heir not
+smiling, or smirking, or wearing one of the serious expressions that
+come up when he discusses politics. Instead, he stands on a shore and
+looks at the waves with a solemn, unguarded expression, as if he wanted
+to know an answer they will never give him.
+
+In his hand he holds a clutch of flowers---narcissus, and snapdragons.
+There are not many who know that he comes every week, quiet and alone,
+to place them on his brother-in-law's grave.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Flames burst skyward, arching as if eager to escape from the darkness at
+their heart, their edges rippling and shedding shimmers of heat far into
+the air. Harry Black stands to one side of the pyre and watches it, face
+stern. When necessary, he adds more magic to the fire so it will burn
+hotter.
+
+Thus, unmourned, thoroughly burned, the ashes willed to vanish and not
+to scatter, the last remnant of Voldemort passes out of the world.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Lazuli Yaxley, intertwined with shadows, kneels beside her daughter.
+They are digging in a garden, planting a rose together. Jacinth is
+laughing. Since the establishment of the new Ministry, and the visits
+she and her mother have made there a few times, without her father, she
+has known something like happiness.
+
+The second photograph shows a banner draped around the rose, now a
+flourishing bush, the petals open and aided, probably, by the
+application of magic. The banner bears the symbol of the House of
+Yaxley: a thorn tree in front of a rising full moon. The letters beneath
+the symbol are small, almost unnoticeable against the colors of the
+banner and the living glory of the bush, but present: \emph{In memory of
+a sister beloved, and gone too soon.}
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Cupressus Apollonis is careful. One can indeed say that for him. He does
+not simply run tests for those who might become Aurors in the future, he
+does not simply snatch up talented newcomers who might prove to be what
+he needs, he seeks out and hires those who, involved in disputes with
+the Ministry, left in the last year before Minister Scrimgeour fell.
+
+Thus, among the Aurors standing stiffly on the front steps of the
+Ministry in this official photograph are Nymphadora Tonks, who looks
+more than a little uncertain---
+
+And Alastor Moody, who never looks uncertain about anything.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+This is quite a large and beautiful room in the Ministry, with space for
+many wizards to stand. Doors along the walls lead to other rooms, made,
+from their dark wood and their vaguely furtive air, to hold secrets. A
+number of men and women stand beside the doors, gray hoods pulled back
+to reveal their faces.
+
+In the center sits the Stone, currently projecting a dragon's head. The
+head holds a placard in its mouth, proclaiming exultantly, \emph{I know
+what right and wrong are now!}
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Harry Black looks more than a little stiff and out of place in this
+picture. The other personages around him---the Ministers of France,
+Spain, and Portugal; Cupressus Apollonis; Evamaria Gansweider, the
+Minister of Austria---are far more used to ceremonies and official
+occasions and people being interested in what they have to say.
+
+The banner above them proclaims, in five different languages, the
+creation of a new and smaller union of countries that will stand
+slightly apart from the International Confederation. In particular, the
+banner continues, this organization will investigate new models of
+wizard-Muggle interaction and coexistence, the ethical ramifications of
+using \emph{Obliviate} on Muggles, and the creation of Ministries in
+which being beyond the influence of Lords and Ladies is the first
+concern.
+
+It is notable as one of the few photographs, official or otherwise, in
+which Evamaria Gansweider is smiling.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+This is a private photograph, not meant to be widely shared. Tybalt
+Starrise sits in silence, with a sober face, for once, above a diary.
+The diary documents the relationship between his mother Alba and her
+twin brother Augustus. He had not really known, before then, that his
+mother was his uncle's anchor, and what happened to his sanity when she
+died.
+
+His partner John stands beside him, gently touching his shoulder.
+Tybalt's cousin Portia, currently being reared as the heir to the
+Starrise properties, stands next to him, barely tall enough to put her
+chin over the table, and pats his hand.
+
+The photograph is put in a private book, and beneath the picture is
+written, \emph{To be looked at when I think I know everything about a
+person.}
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Calibrid Opalline and her father face each other across an expanse of
+stone which is the threshold to their home made of a dragon skeleton,
+Gollrish Y Thie. Calibrid's arm rests across her stomach, and she looks
+as stubborn as a mule. Paton has one hand over his eyes.
+
+It appears that his daughter is pregnant, and will not tell him who the
+father of her child is. This is not a great problem, save that Paton
+wishes to welcome the father into the Opalline clan, and Calibrid is
+making it impossible.
+
+But then, his daughter has made his life difficult in many ways since
+her birth more than twenty years ago.
+
+Not far from both of them is a chair, not fully included in the picture,
+from which a leg projects. The leg might, with a little squinting, be
+perceived to have the black ridges that are a sign of dragonfire
+burning. Though it took long recovery in the Sanctuary, Doncan Opalline
+has returned to his home, and his appointed task of guarding his sister,
+at last.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+This photograph is the most blurred and uncertain of them all---just a
+glimpse of turning face, fluttering hair, shut eyes. The \emph{focus} of
+the picture is a woman and her child posed proudly in front of Madam
+Malkin's, where the child has gone to be fitted for her first formal
+robe, but someone has cut them out and focused on this turning figure
+instead.
+
+The figure resembles, in certain respects, Fiona Mallory, the former
+Auror who tortured the Potters, and then was locked into a coma by
+Lucius Malfoy, released by Unspeakables, and sent Merlin-knows-where.
+
+Despite hunts made by the person who now holds the photograph, Harry
+Black, no other trace of her has been uncovered.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Parvati leans against her parents, who both stand with an arm around her
+shoulders. Beside her is Padma, holding her hand with a grip that says
+the world can try to tear her twin sister away from her, but this would
+not be very smart of the world.
+
+There are signs that the drifting shadows across Parvati's eyes, though
+they will always be present in some capacity, are beginning to melt into
+peace.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Hermione Granger and Miriam Smith stand facing each other across a table
+scattered with parchment. Hermione's face is flushed, but her chin high.
+She wears the silver knot of the Black jewelry Harry once lent her at
+her neck. Her expression is stubborn, saying she will not back down.
+
+On the surface, Miriam's face conveys only irritation with how ill-bred
+the girl in front of her is. But there may be---under the surface---a
+hint of buried admiration and amused respect.
+
+Possibly. If one searches.
+
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{\linethickness}\end{center}
+
+Harry Black lies on his stomach, eyes closed, head flung to the side so
+that the picture-taker can see his profile. His hair is still as messy
+as ever, and not helped by the energetic activities he's just been
+fallen out of. His skin still holds a slight sheen of sweat. His hand
+curls around the edge of the pillow. He looks as if he were
+\emph{engaged} with sleep, battling or wrestling with it. On the
+appropriate finger of his right hand, as always, rests the silver ring
+that Draco gave him as a present for their first joining ritual.
+
+But perhaps, here, the camera should be put aside, and the photograph
+permitted not to exist. Some moments should be remembered, not recorded.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 105*: A Toast to the Swift
+Years}\label{chapter-105-a-toast-to-the-swift-years}
+
+\textbf{Chapter Eighty-Four: A Toast to the Swift Years}
+
+Draco stepped back and eyed the chain on the wall, then nodded. Linked
+silver rings topped with blue-gray stones, in the colors of the old
+Malfoy crest, glinted and turned in small half-circles. The edges of
+their settings sealed together with clever hooks not visible from the
+ground, and the effect was of a familiar decoration turned strange by
+the array.
+
+Draco turned, directing his gaze across the room. It was not, of course,
+the size of the great receiving hall at Malfoy Manor, but Harry had not
+wanted to hold this celebration in the place where Medusa and Eos
+Rosier-Henlin died, and Draco had agreed with him. So they had chosen
+another Malfoy house, one allowed to lapse into disrepair as the family
+grew smaller or lost money, and then cleaned it themselves with the aid
+of more household charms than Draco had known existed. This room, with
+Harry's magic to change the color of the walls and the tiles, had become
+a dark blue sanctuary with chains of silver rings along the walls, and a
+small and tasteful banner announcing the celebration of Draco's
+eighteenth birthday. It wouldn't hold everyone who might expect to be
+invited---all the newspaper reporters and a good number of Ministry
+officials, for example---but Draco would say he wanted this to remain a
+small, semi-private gathering. That would reduce the crowd \emph{and}
+increase the smugness of those who managed to secure an invitation.
+
+``Draco.''
+
+His father's voice could once have produced a stiffening in his back and
+a rushing sensation in his mind, as Draco thought of every argument they
+could have and ways to step around it. Now, he cocked his head and
+looked over his shoulder. ``Father,'' he said. ``Have you come to wish
+me well?''
+
+Lucius shook his head briskly and extended a box in his hands. ``I
+wished to give you your gift in private,'' he said.
+
+Draco drew out his wand and cast several spells that would check for
+hexes, his eyes never leaving his father's. Far from being offended,
+Lucius looked pleased. He would have been displeased if his son were so
+stupid as to trust him without thought.
+
+Nothing showed up, and Draco took the box away from his father and
+hefted it. It was fairly small, whatever it was, and flat. A book? For a
+moment, Draco's mind returned to Tom Riddle's diary, which his father
+had ended up giving to Harry in second year, and he caught his breath.
+
+Then he shook his head and slit the dark blue paper with a soft
+\emph{Diffindo}, opening the box a moment later.
+
+Inside, a flat plaque of pale metal, probably platinum, looked up at
+him. Seven lines of writing graced it, carved letters filled with
+silver. Draco reached down and traced the first with a finger, then
+looked at Lucius for an explanation.
+
+``These are seven things I have thought of you over the years,'' said
+Lucius, without preamble, ``from the time you were eleven and in your
+first year at Hogwarts until now. Though you will finish your NEWTS out
+of school, this is still, technically, the last year you would have been
+at school, and when you left it, you would have been accounted an adult.
+This is a toast to the swift years, Draco, a record of things I have
+thought and no longer think, or may change my mind about in the
+future.'' And then he turned and walked out of the room, as if he could
+not bear to share it with his son a moment longer.
+
+Draco stared after him, then turned and read the seven lines. They went
+in chronological order, as he had suspected, with the first line of
+writing depicting his first year and the bottom line of writing his last
+one. No other interpretation made sense. Each was, at the most, a few
+sentences long.
+
+\emph{Too bright, too curious, and too obsessed with the Potter boy. I
+should have released this butterfly from the Manor's cocoon before this.
+He might at least have tested his wings against the wind, and if they
+tattered, I should have been there to rescue him from such mistakes as
+he will now make.}
+
+\emph{Even butterflies can dance.}
+
+\emph{Narcissa has told me about the unconscious effects of the Potter
+boy's magic and how they might have compelled Draco to act unlike
+himself. I wish I could believe her, but I cannot. If Draco allows his
+mind to be bent that much, then the weakness is in himself.}
+
+\emph{The butterfly sheds his wings, and I see the beginnings of a
+falcon. I wish I could know when that egg might hatch and the whole bird
+come forth, so that I can see his shape. At the least he will have a
+powerful protector in the Potter boy, whom he has convinced to value him
+above all people in the world.}
+
+\emph{The falcon emerges, and is a stronger flyer than I thought him.}
+
+\emph{I tried to tame Draco on account of his weakness, only to have him
+strike back and expos the weaknesses in myself. That is
+unforgivable---on both of our parts.}
+
+\emph{My son has power, and strength, and might, and this falcon is more
+of Narcissa's training than mine. She had the sense to set him free
+while I was still struggling with the jesses.}
+
+Draco closed his eyes and stood still for a moment. He wished he could
+go after his father and confront him about the lines, but he knew what
+would happen if he did. Lucius would stare at him coldly and deny that
+anything important had passed between them, and that might be the route
+to shut down the further intercourse with his father that was opening,
+slowly and cautiously, back up. Draco would have to live with the
+knowledge that his father had thought these things, and the reactions of
+anyone he wanted to show them to. But he could not discuss them with
+Lucius.
+
+If Lucius Malfoy confessed his mistakes, he must do it in such a manner
+that it was impossible to hold the confessions over his head.
+
+Abruptly, Draco strode out of the hall, and kept walking until he
+reached the front steps of the house. It was not far off sunrise, and
+the air had softened and warmed considerably from May. Early June,
+without a trace of snow. Draco sat down, put his arms on his knees, and
+buried his head in them.
+
+\emph{My father sees me as all three.}
+
+It was the distinction he had once mentioned to Harry, the rarest
+distinction in Lucius Malfoy's lexicon. Draco had never dreamed that his
+father would apply it to him.
+
+\emph{And then there are people who are powerful, and strong, and
+mighty. That means they have this kind of wild beauty that unites the
+other qualities and sends them flowing above their heads, flapping like
+a banner, calling other people to notice them. My father didn't think
+might was something you could be born with, or even decide to develop.
+You had to climb to meet it, and it's so tiring to live life at that
+level that most people never make it.}
+
+He wondered for a moment where Lucius thought he had forged the ability
+to keep living life at that level, and then shook his head, his hair
+brushing against his arms. That was another thing he would never know
+the answer to. Lucius would consider it a weakness to acknowledge that
+he'd written that last line, let alone acknowledge what it meant. Draco
+was sure he must have done the carving himself; he would have had to
+kill any craftsman who did it, not trusting to an \emph{Obliviate.}
+
+Draco knew he bore Harry's regard, which was a struggle enough to live
+up to. He had reckoned he'd long ago forfeited his father's, and now
+here it was, back again, tugging Narcissa's legacy in its train like a
+reminder.
+
+He was---
+
+He was more than he had thought, than many people thought him.
+
+Draco knew he wasn't what many people would think of as moral. He didn't
+see why he should demonstrate loyalty, or consideration, or love, to
+most of the world. They had to prove that they were worthy of it, by
+intimidating him or demonstrating a constant attachment and regard to
+him while, at the same time, being worthy of affection and regard
+themselves. There were few people like that. Michael Rosier-Henlin had
+certainly not been one of them. Draco was not above doing things for
+political partners that would benefit him as well, but they were badly
+mistaken if they thought that implied that he \emph{liked} them.
+
+He was selfish, and he would use Dark spells that Harry would never
+consider, and he thought Harry's delicacy on matters political was
+almost too much to be borne. He was \emph{not vates}, or anything like
+it. He was not the spoiled heir of the Malfoy line that he could have
+grown up to be, either, or Lucius's mindless puppet---the memory of the
+Imbolc ritual and the life he might have led without Harry pricked him
+then---but he was not the perfect, shining partner he knew many people
+thought should have stood at Harry's side.
+
+He was someone who saw his own imperfections in the eyes of the world
+and could face them unflinchingly, pretending to correct them if it made
+sense to do so, but most of the time changing permanently only if they
+hurt someone he loved. And then he made the changes with speed and
+power. The rest of the time---well, Harry had once accused him of
+laziness, but Draco preferred to think of it as the law of conservation
+of effort. He didn't need to please those who disapproved of him so
+thoroughly they would never work with him, so why should he try?
+
+Draco lifted his head, and gave a hard little smile that no one but him
+was there to see.
+
+\emph{I like myself, and don't care if I'm likeable. I don't plan to
+change right now. I may change in the future. No one can predict it.
+Harry is the only one who can demand it, and even he can't dictate its
+course.}
+
+\emph{I'm what I want to be and what I need to be for this phase of my
+life.}
+
+Draco rose to his feet, carefully shrinking the plaque with a spell and
+tucking it into his robe pocket. He needed to meet Harry at
+Silver-Mirror to discuss the catering for the celebration, and was
+already a few minutes late. He liked the idea of showing up now and
+letting Harry fuss over and at him.
+
+\emph{That's the way that I'm most different from my father, and even my
+mother. My mother planned for years in advance. My father makes plans on
+a smaller scale than that, but then he assumes that people will fall
+into place. I plan as I need to, in the moment and across years and in
+all the times in between. I can accept that change is necessary, and
+adapt to it when it comes.}
+
+\emph{If I'm not perfect now, I'll change until I am.}
+
+Draco lifted his head, challenging anyone who might watch him invisibly
+or from a distance in the way he moved, and Apparated home.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 106*: Ave Atque
+Vale}\label{chapter-106-ave-atque-vale}
+
+The title of this chapter comes from a poem by the Roman poet Catullus,
+whose brother died as a soldier and was buried far from Rome; Catullus
+composed it on visiting his grave. The last line of the poem reads,
+``atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale'' (And now forever,
+brother, hail and farewell).
+
+\textbf{Chapter Eighty-Five: Ave Atque Vale}
+
+Harry walked slowly along the shore.
+
+Waves rushed up to his feet and lapped down again. They no longer looked
+silver, as they had in his madness, but merely gray. Harry halted and
+spent a moment staring east. On Midsummer Day, the sun would come up and
+stretch its rays over the waters, and for the first time in centuries,
+there would be no Potters to greet it, no possibility of such a greeting
+even if they simply chose not to come.
+
+Harry sat down on the wet sand, ignoring the fact that it crusted his
+robes with heavy slime; that was what cleaning charms were for. He
+propped his knees up, looped his arms around them, leaned his chin on
+his right knee, and watched the sunrise. Now and then a flake of foam
+glinted from the spray, reminding him of unicorns, but no unicorns swam
+out of the morning to greet him. Harry would have refused the greeting
+if they had.
+
+It was not unicorns he had come here to speak to.
+
+``Parvati told me a bit about the wedding ritual,'' he said, ``what you
+told her. I remember the tadpoles. I remember that Lily trained me and
+made me hide the training from you, yes, but I also remember them.'' He
+shut his eyes and sat with them shut, until the closing in his throat
+lessened and he was ready to continue.
+
+"I loved you, and it was woven under the training, and would have
+existed without it. Lily couldn't have built a regard into me that
+wasn't already there. We were \emph{twins}, Connor. You were always with
+me. I suppose other children learn to think of themselves as separate
+because there's always a gap of experience between them; they know their
+siblings know things they don't, or they can remember a time without
+their siblings, or they see their parents treat them differently. I
+can't ask Draco, since he doesn't have a brother. But I can't remember a
+time without you, and the things that you didn't know and I did---they
+weren't that \emph{important}, they were always in service to purity and
+innocence. So I learned to value your wisdom more than mine, while also
+being sure I had to know what I did to protect you, and that the
+separation was equally inevitable and irrelevant.
+
+``The love might have been forced at first, but if it remained that way,
+it would have died at the end of third year with Sirius, when I finally
+let the scales drop from my eyes. Instead, we wound apart from each
+other for a long time, and then began a slow journey back towards each
+other again. You accepted your new position with strength and with
+grace, and strove not to be a burden on me.''
+
+Harry opened his eyes, and watched the water washing to his feet. "No
+one else ever understood how \emph{good} that was of you, I don't think.
+Even I didn't at the time, because I didn't notice. And Snape and Draco
+think of it as---as redressing some sort of cosmic \emph{balance}, as
+if, since I considered myself ordinary compared to you for twelve years,
+it was only right that you should think the same thing now.
+
+"That's \emph{stupid}, Connor. There isn't justice like that. If there
+were, Medusa Rosier-Henlin wouldn't have been raped, and Narcissa Malfoy
+would have lived, and Regulus wouldn't have endured years of suffering
+and lost his life at the end. What is that redress for? What crimes did
+they have to make up?" Harry shook his head wildly enough to send his
+hair whipping into his eyes. "No. I can't accept that. There's no one
+keeping a tally of all our actions and measuring out the grace we
+deserve and the punishment we merit. That's why the justice and mercy
+\emph{we} make are so important. They're the only kind we can actually
+depend on.
+
+"No. You were you, and you managed to transform yourself because you
+thought you had to. And you were something that none of the others were
+to me, because the others pushed me to be more human or thought of me as
+a savior or were convinced I could do better, be more, exist on a higher
+plane. You showed me all the grace ordinary human life has. You don't
+\emph{have} to be a Lord-level wizard to matter. The same surname isn't
+the only way people connect. You don't have to be a perfect specimen of
+maturity and adulthood for someone to take you seriously.
+
+``There were things about you that drove me mad---the way you constantly
+bickered with Draco, for instance.'' Harry closed his eyes, and sat
+until the memories of what Draco had told him about Voldemort's burrow,
+the way the Light had come to take Connor's soul away and what it showed
+him, had subsided into gentleness. Then he opened his eyes, and winced
+as the sun caught, glinting, on the edge of his glasses. "And without
+them, you wouldn't have been my brother, and I wouldn't have loved you
+nearly as much.
+
+"You looked into the future, and saw what you would be giving up, when
+you died. I can't imagine it. To realize you could have everything you
+wanted, and lay your life down. Peter wanted to die because he thought
+he had nothing to lose, no one to miss him. Snape punishes himself for
+past sins. Draco wouldn't have thought of giving his life up unless he
+saw no way for me to survive; then he might have deemed it worthwhile,
+to spare my suffering with his own. I wasn't thinking clearly. I
+preferred your life to the suffering of everyone else, and refused to
+look closely at what I was doing.
+
+"You saw \emph{everything}, and knew what it would mean, and you still
+died."
+
+Harry reached down, picked up a handful of wet sand, and spent a moment
+shaping it into a tiny tower that rose from the beach. The next wave
+rolled in and destroyed it.
+
+``I could say I'm not worthy of such a gift,'' he said. "But that would
+still be hiding from what you did, whinging and punishing myself the way
+Snape does. I think he's finally learned better, now, but he spent years
+hiding from the world and sneering at it because he assumed everyone
+would sneer at \emph{him}. His son or not, that's one trait of his I
+don't want to inherit.
+
+"Draco would think it only as much as he deserves, especially since he
+didn't like you that much while you were alive. And---I love Draco, I
+do, but I'm not him, either. People don't \emph{owe} me anything. They
+can make the decision to give me gifts, but I don't somehow deserve them
+by virtue of my existence.
+
+``Your perspective is the one I want to adopt, Connor, because you saw
+everything and you sacrificed it because you thought I could still do
+more good than would happen if you were alive and I were dead. I want
+that vision. I want that future you saw. And the best way, right now, is
+for me to live and work towards it. If something changes, if I can make
+more of a difference by pulling back and not engaging as much, say, I
+hope I have the sense to see it.''
+
+Harry pulled his glasses off. The rising sun had risen now, and its
+glory was all the world.
+
+"I want to \emph{see}. I want to know what is happening and what might
+happen, not just what happened and what will." Harry smiled a bit. ``I
+remember Lily saying once that the saddest words in English are `might
+have been.' If that's true, I think the gladdest words are `might' and
+`may.' You don't know if your dearest wish is going to come true, but
+you can hope until it happens.''
+
+He rose to his feet, put his glasses back on, and bowed his head,
+extending his hands to the sea. The sun rolled and glinted. The waves
+shone and sang.
+
+``I'll honor your sacrifice,'' Harry said softly. "But I can't let it
+define my life. I can't mourn you forever. I can't sink into permanent
+depression because you're gone. I want to mingle your vision with my
+own, and let it become \emph{part} of me, rather than the whole.
+
+"The recovery will be long, but I don't care how long it takes. It was
+for \emph{this} you died, Connor, for the sake of a world where healing
+is still possible. For that, take my blessing, my thanks, my hail---"
+Harry drew in a deep breath "---and my farewell. \emph{Atque in
+perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale."}
+
+The waves rolled in without answering. The sun shone. The beach sand
+beneath Harry's feet crunched as he walked back towards his Apparition
+point.
+
+It was a fair morning in June, and there was no need to hurry.
+
+\subsection{*Chapter 107*: Epilogue: In
+Memoriam}\label{chapter-107-epilogue-in-memoriam}
+
+This is the last post of the Sacrifices Arc. I will write nothing
+further in the future of the story than this. (Incidentally, pay
+attention to the date at the top of this, or the content will make
+\emph{no} sense). At a certain point, you've got to let the characters
+go and live lives that you can't even imagine.
+
+A hearty thanks to all the people who read and reviewed, and stuck with
+a story that turned out to be much more massive than I expected.
+
+And last word to Draco.
+
+\textbf{Epilogue: In Memoriam}
+
+\emph{June 5th, 1999}
+
+\emph{Dear Blaise:}
+
+I'm a bit surprised to see you writing to me after so long, but beggars
+can't be choosers, can they? And you need someone to tell you what's
+happened in England, and whether it's safe for you to return.
+
+Disregard nothing of this letter, Blaise, neither the content nor the
+tone. Harry has doubtless forgotten that you betrayed him, since he's
+had to live with so many and greater betrayals since then. I have not.
+When you return to England, tread softly, for you tread on my fangs.
+
+Incidentally, as to the question that you included in your letter, I
+have no idea if the youngest Weasley is married, joined, engaged,
+single, or living with three monkeys and a hippocampus. Do you really
+think she matters to me?
+
+Harry is asleep in bed behind me. Truly, truly asleep, without
+nightmares haunting him for once. He breathes deeply, which is why I can
+tell. Well, he should. We celebrated in many ways for my nineteenth
+birthday, including some that I'm {certain} you don't want to hear
+about.
+
+Made it to nineteen, Blaise, in spite of the best efforts of you and
+many other people. This year has been {mad}. I once thought the largest
+part of our danger and excitement had passed with Voldemort, and, while
+I certainly couldn't predict what Harry and I would do from now on, we
+would be able to control it better when it happened.
+
+I should learn not to make such statements where fate can hear me.
+
+Harry just had to visit the Hebridean Black sanctuary and see the
+hatchlings the hybrid eggs from their British Red-Gold had produced, of
+course. I suspect you've heard about that. The Dragon-Keepers made sure
+every wizarding newspaper in Europe carried articles about it; ``the
+blood of fire flowing in the world again'' or something similar was how
+they titled it.
+
+What you might not have heard was that Harry upset a dragon
+somehow---they don't {know} the {vates} so much as recognize him when
+they want to---and took a Hebridean Black's tail to the chest. I managed
+to hit him from the side and bear him down so that he missed some of the
+impact, but it happened anyway. He never came so close to dying, not
+even when he encountered a certain poison during the war with Voldemort.
+It was two weeks before he could walk again.
+
+Harry being Harry, this did not disconcert him, and he refused to listen
+to my suggestions that the dragon be put down.
+
+Then there was the journey to Africa and India, where we went to see
+about one of the magical species Harry's presence is loosening the webs
+on. I don't even what to mention it, Blaise. Don't talk to {me} about
+karkadanns and baobab trees.
+
+We came back, and Harry happened to be in the Ministry on the day that
+assassins decided to go after Minister Apollonis. (I suppose you heard
+about the election, even in your little hiding place in France?) That's
+Harry's kind of luck. He can't be normal, and neither were the
+assassins; they had {something} with them like the Stone under the
+Ministry or the Potter Maze, an artifact from another world, and its
+specialty was undoing barriers of all kinds, including wards and Shield
+Charms. Including Harry's wards and Shield Charms. There was a lot of
+shouting, and a bit of possession, and some running around. An Order of
+Merlin, First Class, was appropriate for me when the day was done and
+the Minister still alive.
+
+Did I mention that, Blaise? Cause trouble even just for me, not for
+Harry, and you're fighting someone whom half the British wizarding world
+considers a hero and is more than happy to aid. And that's not counting
+my political contacts, or the business ones that I've made by inventing
+new spells and selling them to the international community. They tell me
+that my new wards, modeled on house elf magic, will revolutionize
+security in the next few years. I don't care to know all the details all
+the time, of course. That's what the people I hire are for. But I know
+the money.
+
+I've established some contacts of my own, for another business, in Peru.
+Lovely place, Peru. Of course, when the Dark Lady Elena Dead-eyes
+kidnapped me and put me in her labyrinth, I didn't think it was all that
+lovely, but I wasn't seeing that much of it. I couldn't maintain a
+prejudice against the country itself when Harry came after me, blinded
+Elena---he has a penchant for blinding Dark Ladies---rescued me, and
+found an abducted child named Clara whom the Potter estates apparently
+have decided is perfect for them and needs to be raised as the Potter
+magical and legal heir. So Peru is quite beautiful, and Elena was quite
+trounced, and Harry's life---he Floos back and forth from Peru to give
+Clara lessons and to smooth out details with her birth family---is quite
+busy, and I am quite rich.
+
+We've completed the joining rituals, as of little more than a month ago,
+on Walpurgis Night. I am fully Harry's now, and he is mine, joined
+partner in everyone's eyes. I'm sure you will be pleased to hear that
+the Ministers of Austria, France, Spain, and Portugal---the other
+countries in what they're calling the Hand of Wizardry---continue to
+find Harry pleasing and to work with him on wizard-Muggle relations.
+They're slowly infusing Muggle popular culture with the acceptance of
+magic where they can, and have commissioned Professor Snape to make
+potions that can enable Muggles to see magic and may be quietly
+distributed to interesting and willing subjects.
+
+Tomorrow we go to Senegal. Reports of strange unicorns are rampant
+there, and Harry wants to investigate them, but he also wanted to wait
+until after my birthday.
+
+And I will never send this letter, Blaise, because I find it says rather
+too much of things I don't want to show to anyone else after all. I
+would much prefer to sit back, and watch Harry sleep, and avoid thinking
+about Senegal until tomorrow. I'll write you another letter, don't
+worry.
+
+By all the fates that gave him to me, Harry is beautiful. I am only glad
+that he was good enough to deserve me.
+
+Now to blow out the candles and join him.
+
+\emph{In conclusion,}
+
+\emph{Draco Lucius Black Malfoy.}
+
+\emph{\textbf{The End.}}
+
+I started this story for many reasons---to explore the ideas, to write
+about the psychology of a certain kind of abuse, to try and provide
+fuller and more rounded characterization than stories like this usually
+get---but the biggest was to see if I could do it.
+
+And the answer is: Yes, I could. Close on three million words, in close
+on a year and four months, and I did it.
+
+Thank you, once again, for following this, reviewing, offering
+constructive criticism, and letting me know that the story and its
+characters mattered to other people. I can never regret my decision to
+post this, even when it felt as if it bled me dry of all my emotions. I
+may write more fanfiction someday, even fanfiction in this universe, but
+now the Sacrifices Arc is ended, and I'm moving back to original
+fiction.
+
+Farewell wherever you fare!
+
+\emph{Lightning.}